made a New Year’s resolution for 2009: to take 5 million steps, 13,700 per day on average. On December 30, 2009, I crossed the 5 million mark, and go… - Martin E P Seligman

Both positive and negative ways of thinking are important in the right situation, but all too often schools emphasize critical thinking and following orders rather than creative thinking and learning new stuff. The result is that children rank the appeal of going to school just slightly above going to the dentist. In the modern world, I believe we have finally arrived at an era in which more creative thinking, less rote following of orders — and yes, even more enjoyment — will succeed better.

La depresión se presenta bajo tres aspectos, en tres formas. La primera es la que denominamos depresión normal, y es la que casi todos conocemos mejor. Surge el dolor y el sentimiento de pérdida que forman parte inevitablemente del hecho de pertenecer a especies sapientes, a criaturas que piensan en el futuro.

They argued that these perpetrators have high self-esteem, and that their unwarranted self-esteem causes violence. Baumeister’s work suggests that if you teach unwarrantedly high self-esteem to children, problems will ensue. A sub-group of these children will also have a mean streak in them. When these children confront the real world, and it tells them they are not as great as they have been taught, they will lash out with violence. So it is possible that the twin epidemics among young people in the United States today, depression and violence, both come from this misbegotten concern: valuing how our young people feel about themselves more highly than how we value how well they are doing in the world.