Failure is information-we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’
Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better.
The aim of Positive Psychology is to catalyze a change in psychology from a preoccupation only with repairing the worst things in life to also building the best qualities in life.
The good life is using your signature strengths every day to produce authentic happiness and abundant gratification.
Changing the destructive things you say to yourself when you experience the setbacks that life deals all of us is the central skill of optimism.
Optimism is a tool with a certain clear set of benefits: it fights depression, it promotes achievement and produces better health.
Not only do happy people endure pain better and take more health and safety precautions when threatened, but positive emotions undo negative emotions.
There is one aspect of happiness that’s been well studied, and it’s the notion of flow. Ask yourselves, when for you does time stop? When are you truly at home, wanting to be no place else?
Not why the addiction, but why the pain.
It is impossible to understand addiction without asking what relief the addict finds, or hopes to find, in the drug or the addictive behaviour.
Radical acceptance rests on letting go of the illusion of control and a willingness to notice and accept things as they are right now, without judging.
People with BPD are like people with third degree burns over 90% of their bodies. Lacking emotional skin, they feel agony at the slightest touch or movement.
Resilience is the maintenance of high levels of positive affect and well-being in the face of adversity. It is not that resilient individuals never experience negative affect, but rather that the negative affect does not persist.
Cognitive therapy seeks to alleviate psychological stresses by correcting faulty conceptions and self-signals. By correcting erroneous beliefs we can lower excessive reactions.
The parent-child connection is the most powerful mental health intervention known to mankind.
The more healthy relationships a child has, the more likely he will be to recover from trauma and thrive. Relationships are the agents of change and the most powerful therapy is human love.
Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.
It is hard to be happy without a life worth living. This is a fundamental tenet of DBT. Of course, all lives are worth living in reality. No life is not worth living. But what is important is that you experience your life as worth living – one that is satisfying, and one that brings happiness.
Self-regulation depends on having a friendly relationship with your body. Without it you have to rely on external regulation – from medication, drugs like alcohol, constant reassurance, or compulsive compliance with the wishes of others.
Self-compassion is a way of emotionally recharging our batteries. Rather than becoming drained by helping others, self-compassion allows us to fill up our internal reserves, so that we have more to give to those who need us.