The genius of evolution lies in the dynamic tension between optimism and pessimism continually correcting each other.
While you can't control your experiences, you can control your explanations.
Authentic happiness derives from raising the bar for yourself, not rating yourself against others.
Depression, I have argued, stems partly from an overcommitment to the self and an undercommitment to the common good. This
Along with this escalation in material expectations has come an escalation in what counts as acceptable in work and in love. our job used to be counted satisfactory if it brought home the bacon. Not s...
[R]aising children ... was about identifying and amplifying their strengths and virtues, and helping them find the niche where they can live these positive traits to the fullest.
Curing the negatives does not produce the positives.
Nature has buffered out children not only physically--prepubescent children have the lowest death rate from all causes-- but psychologically as well, by endowing them with hope, abundant and irrationa...
Life begins in utter helplessness. The newborn infant cannot help himself, for hefn1 is almost entirely a creature of reflex. When he cries, his mother comes, although this does not mean that he contr...
Good science requires the interplay of analysis and synthesis. One never knows if basic research is truly basic until one knows what it is basic to. Modern physics came into its own not because of its...
For example, if I promise you one thousand dollars to turn to this page, you will probably choose to do so, and you will succeed. If, however, I promise you one thousand dollars to contract the pupil...
Being in touch with what we do well underpins the readiness to change, David continued. This is related to the Losada ratio. To enable us to hear criticism nondefensively and to act creatively on it,...
Nature has buffered our children not only physically-- prepubescent children have the lowest death rate from all causes-- but psychologically as well, by endowing them with hope, abundant and irration...
Depression is now ten times as prevalent as it was in 1960, and it strikes at a much younger age. The mean age of a person’s first episode of depression forty years ago was 29.5, while today it is 14....
When our grandparents failed, they had comfortable spiritual furniture to rest in. They had, for the most part, their relationship to God, their relationship to a nation they loved, their relationship...
With patients, he pushed and pushed until he had persuaded them to give up the irrational beliefs that sustained their depression. What do you mean you can’t live without love? he would cry. Utter non...
Pessimistic labels lead to passivity, whereas optimistic ones lead to attempts to change.
People who made certain kinds of explanations, he believed, are prey to helplessness.
Bertrand Russell said that the mark of a civilized human being is the ability to read a column of numbers and then weep.
Made a New Year’s resolution for 2009: to take 5 million steps, 13,700 per day on average. On December 30, 2009, I crossed the 5 million mark, and got Wow! and What a role model! from my Internet frie...