Sensei

BBC Interview With Martin Seligman

Click here to listen to a brilliant interview with Professor Martin Seligman, modern founder of Positive Psychology an author of Authentic Happiness. Read more…

A Positively Brilliant Workshop

On Saturday 6th December I delivered a 1-day workshop at Queen’s University called The Psychology of Happiness: How to Grow Your Happy Skills.  Its purpose was to introduce the students to the new positive psychology movement, and to the thoughts of Martin Seligman and Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in particular.  Those who read the blog will know that I’ve reviewed Seligman’s latest work Authentic Happiness before, and I’ve also captured the two of them in a fascinating conversation.

In the workshop I did four things.  First, I discussed Seligman’s analysis of the three types of happy life: the Pleasant Life, the Good Life, and the Meaningful Life.  Then I explored the whole notion of optimism, perhaps Seligman’s main contribution to the field of academic psychology.  After lunch, it was time to check out our signature strengths.  Finally, we applied all this to the area of work, that most usual and difficult source of unhappiness. Read more…

Authentic Happiness

Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realise Your Potential for Lasting Happiness is a New York Times best seller and already destined to become a classic of ‘self-help with substance’.

I’ve already blogged about Seligman (see The Sultans of Happiness).  He’s a former President of the American Psychological Association, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, and founder of the Positive Psychology movement.  Before him, psychology was viewed in terms of diagnosing what was wrong with people.  Now, there is a complementary emphasis Read more…