Flourish

by Martin E.P. Seligman

When you’re in a bad mood, you’re better at “what’s wrong here?” When you’re in a good mood, you’re better at “what’s right here?”

Self-discipline outpredicts IQ for academic success by a factor of about 2.

C (the emotional consequences) do not stem directly from A (the adversity) but from B (your beliefs about the adversity).

thoughts about trespass drive anger; thoughts about loss drive sadness; thoughts about danger drive anxiety.

Indeed, any endeavor—nutrition, the immune system, welfare, politics, education, or ethics—that is fixated on the remedial misses this insight and does just half the job: correcting deficits while failing to build strength.

I have come to think that establishing external validity is an even more important but much more nettlesome scientific inference than establishing internal validity.