I listened to this as an audio book. I do not make a note to remember who recommended this title to me. #findhappinessbook
Seligman got started in Positive Psychology before it was labeled Positive Psychology. He believes the true benefit to people is not fixing what is wrong but rather teaching people how to do more of what is health promoting. The portion of this book that had the greatest impact on me was learning about Sligman's involvement in Army Resiliency Training. I knew that DoD leader reached outside the DoD to design the Master Resiliency Trainer (MRT) Program. It was interesting to hear about how that worked from the point of view of a person outside the military. Everything I have learned about how MRT is supposed to be implemented makes it sound like an amazing program I want to learn from and be a part of. I have participated in the actual execution of some of the training. It has been disappointing and had almost no impact on me or others that I can see.
The book started out a little slow and dry but picked up as it went along. Seligman has an above average writing voice. The book is written for the average reader but seems to have enough detail that is should be interesting to psychology professionals.
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The book starts out with what you'd expect, explaining what positive psychology is and some exercises in positive psychology.

The entire rest of the book is a off-topic. I give a quick chapter summary below to show you what I mean. He talks about how much he helped the American Military with Post Traumatic Growth, and how he's baffled at criticism. He talks about how he thinks IRB's (which review experiments to make sure that no one gets hurt, and if someone gets hurt it's worthwhile) are too restrictive (i.e. he's baffled at criticism of some of his study ideas). There is a lot of this.

The book should be called "How I invented positive psychology and what I've used it for and why you shouldn't doubt me", it probably deserves lots and lots of stars, all the stars, but the name and the blurb are completely misleading.

He has this odd habit of referring to PERMA* as "optimism" so even though what his studies have found is that a what-we-would-call pessimistic person with PERMA gets sick less and recovers faster from illness, even serious illness... what he says is that "optimistic people recover faster" but that's not what the studies say. I don't see how PERMA equates with optimism, that is nothing like the colloquial usage of optimism. What am I missing here?


Chapter list and summary

Chapter 1: What Is Well-Being?
- Explains what well-being is.:)

Chapter 2: Creating Your Happiness: Positive Psychology Exercises That Work
- gives you three positive psychology exercises to do, then talks about how good positive psychology is for a while

Chapter 3: The Dirty Little Secret of Drugs and Therapy
- Says drugs and therapy are not as good as positive psychology, and barely better than placebo, then talks about problems with ideology in academic psychology and philosophy...

Chapter 4: Teaching Well-Being: The Magic of MAPP
- talks about how he has taught other people positive psychology, not to be mistaken with him teaching us positive psychology, which he did in chapter 2 and hasn't done since.

Chapter 5: Positive Education: Teaching Well-Being to Young People
- similar to chapter 4... more reasons why positive psychology is great

Chapter 6: GRIT, Character, and Achievement: A New Theory of Intelligence
- explains what grit is and how it came to be seen as important, I'm sure it goes without saying by now that it doesn't tell you how to become gritty.

Chapter 7: Army Strong: Comprehensive Soldier Fitness
- explains how he has been involved with the army, both in terms of positive psychology and in terms of learned helplessness. Outlines a few positive psychology exercises the army is using! Woo!

Chapter 8: Turning Trauma into Growth
- Information about PTSD, more info about the army, and why Post traumatic growth is important. No, nothing about how to achieve this growth

Chapter 9: Positive Physical Health: The Biology of Optimism
- people with high PERMA* scores get sick less... whole chapter defending this idea and attacking critics of it.

Chapter 10: The Politics and Economics of Well-Being
- Money doesn't make you happy


*Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, Achievement ( )

Sadly, this is not a book I'd recommend. I wish I could - I've read about Seligman's work SO much that there really wasn't much new. It was oddly organised and way more about the history of Seligman and his science than about the science itself. The rhythm just doesn't work and you get through it feeling like you wee tricked into reading it. Rather read Authentic Happiness. ( )

Published nine years after [b:Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment|28012|Authentic Happiness Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment|Martin E.P. Seligman|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388186865s/28012.jpg|1930010], this book bills itself as a sequel to that book, saying that the Authentic Happiness model is incomplete. I liked reading Authentic Happiness better. Chapter 1 of this book makes a case for a more complete model, and describes that model. The rest of the book seemed like a travel log. The end of the book claims that this is good psychology despite the claims of critics.

The model proposed in this book is:
• Positive emotion (of which happiness and life satisfaction are all aspects)
• Engagement
• Relationships
• Meaning
• Achievement
(Page 24)

I read a Kindle edition, and liked how references were done. There would be a phrase in colored text. Clicking on it took me to that endnote. Going back was just as easy. (Either the back arrow, or click on the colored text at the start of the endnote.)

A Kindle disappointment: The Table of Contents on an iPad had ten chapters, but on the Mac Kindle reader, instead of 10 chapters it just lists: Part 1 & Part 2.

In summary: Authentic Happiness is more engaging reading. This book gives some information on what has happened in the intervening nine years. ( )

Dr. Seligman pioneered positive psychology and his work on quantifying happiness was presented in his book Authentic Happiness. After reviewing his work in light of additional findings, he's expanded his theory. To really flourish, an individual needs a high level of well-being of which happiness is just a small part. Flourishing is the true goal of positive psychology.

This book provides a lot of research background to Seligman's findings. In fact, this is a fairly scholarly publication with 25% of the book being dedicated to end notes and an index. There's information about the history of positive psychology and how various features of personality are measured. We're finally presented with the definition of a flourishing individual which is someone who has positive emotions, is engaged and their life has meaning and purpose. They also need to exhibit three of the following traits: self-esteem, optimism, resilience, vitality, self-determination and positive relationships.

The book provides insight into how the concept of a flourishing life can be worked into everything from politics to education to medicine. It also provides some exercises for how we can increase our own level of well-being. While the bulk of the book was somewhat clinical in nature, it provides a great introduction to positive psychology and its practical applications. ( )