Thursday 14 March 2013

Martin Seligman on Well-Being and Happiness


Recently as part of a fabulous weekend in Sydney I went along to the Opera House to see Martin Seligman talk On Well-being and Happiness. An event at the Opera House is always fun, and they have an interesting series of talks called Ideas at the House.

It was a beautiful Sydney day

I saw Michael Pollan speak at one of these last year, and would love to go see Pamela Druckerman speak in April (although just searching for a link, I think her appearance is in doubt, which is good in a way because I can't go).

Professor Seligman starts with a rather big question. What is the most you can hope for in life?

He feels that we used to not be able to measure happiness, but now through a concept of PERMA we can measure Well-Being.

Positive Emotion
Engagement
(Positive) Relationships
Meaning (or purpose in life)
Accomplishment/achievement/mastery

The nice folks at Ideas at the House have put a video of Martin Seligman's talk online, so you can watch it for yourself if you're interested. Martin Seligman has his own website AuthenticHappiness.org.

2 comments:

Dr. Mieke said...

Lovely post, Louise!

Deb Nance at Readerbuzz said...

I'm always reading about Happiness, watching videos about Happiness, looking for Happiness. No wonder it has eluded me...apparently it's been vacationing in Australia.