Here then is well-being theory: well-being is a construct; and well-being, not happiness, is the topic of positive psychology. Well-being has five me… - Martin E P Seligman

Some people can put their troubles neatly into a box and go about their lives even when one important aspect of it — their job, for example, or their love life — is suffering. Others bleed all over everything. They catastrophize. When one thread of their lives snaps, the whole fabric unravels. It comes down to this: People who make universal explanations for their failures give up on everything when a failure strikes in one area. People who make specific explanations may become helpless in that one part of their lives yet march stalwartly on in the others.

The work of Dr. Shelly Gable shows that when an individual responds actively and constructively (as opposed to passively and destructively) to someone sharing a positive experience, love and friendship increase. So we teach the four styles of responding: active constructive (authentic, enthusiastic support), passive constructive (understated support), passive destructive (ignoring the event), and active destructive (pointing out negative aspects of the event).

Nature has buffered out children not only physically — prepubescent children have the lowest death rate from all causes — but psychologically as well, by endowing them with hope, abundant and irrational.