Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin E. P. Seligman

Just started Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment by Martin E. P. Seligman and am very much enjoying it so far. The basic concepts (money cannot buy happiness, finding meaning in life does lead to happiness) are not ground breaking but that Seligman backs these up with science and research, well that’s what does it for me!

Seligman is the founder of Positive Psychology, a new branch of psychology which focuses on the study of positive emotions, strengths-based character, and healthy institutions. As you probably know, psychology to date has largely focused on the abnormal. While this has done a great deal to treat mental illness, it hasn’t done much to help average folks live better lives.

Seligman’s research at the University of Pennsylvania has demonstrated that it is possible to learn to be happier — to feel more satisfied, to be more engaged with life, find more meaning, have higher hopes, and probably even laugh and smile more, regardless of one’s circumstances. Positive psychology interventions can also lastingly decrease depression symptoms.

Click here to read an except of Chapter One of Authentic Happiness. Here are the Parts/Chapter titles in case you’re curious:

Part I Positive Emotion
1. Positive Feeling and Positive Character
2. How Psychology Lost Its Way and I Found Mine
3. Why Bother to Be Happy?
4. Can You Make Yourself Lastingly Happier?
5. Satisfaction about the Past
6. Optimism about the Future
7. Happiness in the Present

Part II Strength and Virtue
8. Renewing Strength and Virtue
9. Your Signature Strength

Part III In the Mansions of Life
10. Work and Personal Satisfaction
11. Love
12. Raising Children
13. Reprise and Summary
14. Meaning and Purpose

Positive psychology seems like an interesting and exciting new field and I’ve checked out several other library books to learn all I can:

• The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom by Jonathan Haidt
• The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want by Sonja Lyubomirsky
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less by Barry Schwartz

Any other recommended books on Positive Psychology?