Why Your Brain Is Wired for Pessimism—and What You Can Do to Fix It

What distinguishes human beings from all of the other animals is that we're creatures of the future.

People are not infrequently in dire circumstances and you don't want them to unrealistically argue themselves out of it. That's a message to change your life. It's called the Dark Night of the Soul, and it's not to be brushed off. When you realistically appreciate the hopelessness of the circumstances you're in, that's a message to change your life.

well-being can be broken into five elements: positive emotion, engagement, relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (PERMA).

A lot of it depends on what you care about. So, I meditated 40 minutes a day for 20 years. And what that did, essentially, was to cure my anxiety. And by age 40, I found out I wasn't anxious anymore. But the big issue was depression. And that's when exercise took over, because what depression is about is demobilization, and what exercise does it, it mobilizes you.

Seligman compares being happy to falling asleep: it's not something you can actively do—in the way you can get stronger by lifting more weights. It just kind of has to happen.