Authentic Happiness

Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment

By: Martin E.P. Seligman Ph.D.

Narrated by: John Dossett

Length: 4 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Over a decade ago, Martin Seligman charted a new approach to living with "flexible optimism". Now, in his most stimulating and persuasive book to date, the best-selling author of Learned Optimism introduces the revolutionary, scientifically based idea of "Positive Psychology". Positive Psychology focuses on strengths rather than weaknesses, asserting that happiness is not the result of good genes or luck. Seligman teaches readers that happiness can be cultivated by identifying and using many of the strengths and traits that they already possess: kindness, originality, humor, optimism, and generosity. By frequently calling upon their "signature strengths" in all the crucial realms of life, listeners will not only develop natural buffers against misfortune and the experience of negative emotion, they will move their lives up to a new, more positive plane.

Drawing on groundbreaking psychological research, Seligman shows how Positive Psychology is shifting the profession's paradigm away from its narrow-minded focus on pathology, victimology, and mental illness to positive emotion, virtue and strength, and positive institutions. Our signature strengths can be nurtured throughout our lives, with benefits to our health, relationships, and careers.

The life-changing lesson of Authentic Happiness is that by identifying the very best in ourselves, we can improve the world around us and achieve new and sustainable levels of authentic contentment, gratification, and meaning.

©2002 Martin Seligman (P)2002 Simon and Schuster Inc. All rights reserved.

Critic reviews

"A bold new plan for taking control of your life and finding lasting happiness." (Elle)
"This smooth abridgment, read perfectly by John Dossett, will win new respect for the behavioral sciences, which have taken a beating during the recent resurgence of the spiritual disciplines." (AudioFile)

interesting perspective

not sure how scientific author's claims are, but i like the idea of deploying signature strengths frequently in life.

Boo for life

I will be reading this immediately again and it will be on "my resources for life books" list. To keep, utilize and refer to over time.

everyone should have it

this is a topic importans for everyone, and Seligman is one of top experts in industry. I liked that he talks also about topic on riseing joyfull kids.

Important and useful

I will definitely be looking for an unabridged version of this to study. I am very interested in the science contained in this book and hope to incorporate many of the skills and ideas presented.

3 stars for performance just because reading a science book doesn’t give a whole lot of scope for imagination and this was pretty bland.

It was good information

It was good information. I will probably listen again to get more out of it.

It didn’t “change my life” but it was still a good

I generally dislike self help books (especially the ridiculous ones claiming that the universe or quantum laws are doing the job for you). However, if a book at least aspires to be science based then I am willing to give it a try. In addition positive psychology i.e., the scientific study of what makes happy people happy, is a hot topic within psychology today and Martin Seligman is one of the founders of this field.

For these reasons I was able to overcome my fear of beeing pursuaded to change my life by a silly self help book. It was a nice surprise when early on Seligman acknowledged that happiness is not everything. One can find meaning in life without being extraordinarily happy. Interestingly, happy/optimistic people are actually quite inaccurate in their beliefs about the world when compared with depressed people. For instance, happy people thought they were in control of completely random events much longer than depressed people who acknowledged their inability to affect events much earlier.

Still happiness, at least statistically, is correlated with many beneficial effects. Happiness and optimism correlates with longevity, income, and ability to endure pain, and whether or not someone would end up in a happy marriage correlated with the type of smile (genuine or fake panam smiles) people had on photos from their youth.

So how do you become happy? Having the right genes helps but at least according to Seligman (who does quote a lot of studies), there are thing you can do to become happier. Be warned though, it requires an effort. Up to a rather low limit, money makes you happier. Having friends and a wife is also correlated with happiness.

Another strategy if you do not fancy wives and friends but would still like to be happy is to engage in gratifying activities. Gratifying activities (e.g. hiking) are the one that make you feel good about yourself for a “long” time after you have done them (often they require you to work in some way). This should be contrasted with pleasurable activities (e.g. eating chocolate) that make you feel good when you do them but not afterwards. Seligman (thankfully) does not say that you should never engage in pleasurable activities, only that to achieve happiness we should really focus on gratifying activities.

Seligman further argues that it is important to use your “signature strengths”. Signature strengths are essentially the positive parts of your personality. This includes things such as passion, curiosity, openness, integrity, sense of justice humour etc etc. In other words, the things that others value in you. Try to steer towards situations that let you use your signature strengths and you will become a happier person...

Have this book changes my life? Not really, no. It was interesting and it has made me think more about what type of activities I find gratifying which include training and doing research, and I try to do more of this. All in all “Authentic Happiness” is a good interesting book that I would recommend it to people interested in positive psychology, and who would like a science based understanding of happiness and its consequences.

Re-Read and Re-Read

Where does Authentic Happiness rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

This is a ground breaking and profound book, Listening to it makes it easy to re-read over and over again.

What did you learn from Authentic Happiness that you would use in your daily life?

I use the information every day. This book opened up a better way to look at life.

Great read-only learned alot.

The book was a great read. I loved the surveys that were provided for the reader to take throughout the book.

A fregar book

it s a very interesting and helpfull book. sure you will increase your happiness. the audio its also ok

Decent info, but incredibly annoying

For some reason I found this book soooo annoying… it took me months to finish it.

I think it’s a combination of the authors “know it all” tone and the narrators voice. Just rambling for no reason, trying to explain that he’s right.

Of course there’s some good info here, but definitely a coin toss.