I'm trying to broaden the scope of positive psychology well beyond the smiley face. Happiness is just one-fifth of what human beings choose to do.
Martin SeligmanRead
In your own life, you should take particular care with endings, for their color will forever tinge your memory of the entire relationship and your willingness to reenter it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Endings in relationships greatly influence how we remember them and if we are open to resuming them in the future.
This quote emphasizes the importance of endings in our personal relationships, suggesting that the way a relationship concludes can significantly affect our overall perception and memory of that relationship. It implies that the emotions and experiences tied to these endings can leave a lasting impact on our willingness to engage in similar relationships again, highlighting the need to be mindful of how we approach closures in our interactions with others.
Themes
EndingsRelationshipsMemoryExperienceClosure
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about how to end a romantic relationship amicably.
More from Martin Seligman
All quotes βOne of my worries about America is the epidemic of depression we've been in. One of the possibilities about that is that the 'I' gets bigger and bigger, and the 'we' gets smaller and smaller.
Martin SeligmanRead
The dirty little secret of both clinical psychology and biological psychiatry is that they have completely given up on the notion of cure.
Martin SeligmanRead
The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who, in the middle of great wealth, are starving spiritually.
Martin SeligmanRead
I believe psychology has done very well in working out how to understand and treat disease. But I think that is literally half-baked. If all you do is work to fix problems, to alleviate suffering, then by definition you are working to get people to zero, to neutral.
Martin SeligmanRead
The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.
Martin SeligmanRead
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