Martin Seligman is known as as one of the founders of positive psychology. In a podcast he made a fascinating point. He shared that when he was working with patients and would help them, for example, alleviate their sadness, anger, or anxiety, what he thought would happen is that person would then become happy. But that’s not what occurred. As Seligman puts it, “what I got was an empty person.” It was then he learned “happiness is not just the absence of misery.”
The habits of happiness, in other words, are different than the process of learning how to cope with and to move away from negative emotions.
In the coming days, we’ll look at skills we can learn to increase our sense of joy and not merely feel less miserable. What Seligman calls the skills of “well-being” and not just getting rid of “ill-being.”
On Emotions 