The Hope Circuit: A Psychologist's Journey from Helplessness to Optimism

Though all Dr. Marty Sel​igman's books are exceptional, his newest book, "The Hope Circuit" blew my socks off! Truly, I have never read a book packed with so much warmth, sincerity and self-disclosure. Autobiographical wisdom, depth, and so much more.​​This is not an ordinary book. It is a rare, exceptional treasure chest of learning from a man whose creative, diverse brilliance will inspire you to ignite your own person growth and well-being. A colorfully textured, multifarious, uniquely readable book​, this gem​​invites you to open your own heart and soul to ​peek inside the mind of ​a ​talented, gifted​​ genius. To​ ​​explore​ his roller coaster path through life. His humanity and ​​humility, despite his life-long scholarly achievements, will fascinate you.Seligman's personal​, ​professional​,​ ​and often poignant ​journey will amaze​ and delight​ you​. He writes with true blue​, edgy honesty and integrity. From a distance, I thought I ​"​knew​​" and cherished this role-model-man. Was I in for a fantastic ​pleasant ​surprise!​While ​reading ​his​ engaging book, this treasure chest of ​truth and ​vulnerable​ openness, I realized I had only "known" him from his acclaimed academic writings​, his tell-it-like-it-is morph from learned helplessness to learned optimism tenure as President of the American Psychological Association, and his forward-thinking creation of the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) degree at the University of Pennsylvania. ​​But his writing and academic acumen only scratch the surface of the real-deal Seligman, the man, you are inspired by in his new book.This shining star book gave me astonishing answers to questions I would never have thought to ask. Truly illuminating. Raw. Pithy. This book is a masterpiece of his memories. And not all of them are success stories. Seligman gifts you with survival strategies from which you ​will undoubtedly ​learn. His rocky road to fame came with many scrapes​, ​bruises​ and few nasty, undeserved slashes.​ People who unfairly tried to knock him off a positive psychology pedestal he never wanted to be on in the first place. But this is a man who never quit his life's mission to make a difference. To say he has thrived regardless of his opponents is an understatement.Humor​, ​pathos and love. ​R​iveting​, too, this book is a tapestry of story-telling at its best!​ I especially loved his family stories. His love ​for ​his wife​ and children.​ ​H​is ​daughter ​Nikki stor​y is my favorite.​​ A very famous man pausing to listen to his little girl, really listen...and then to commit to changing his entire life. And he did! He purposefully transformed his identity as a self-proclaimed grouch to one as a positive thinker. Guts, not glory. It doesn't get better than that in my book.​This book also blesses you with more easily recognizable positive emotions, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and accomplishment (PERMA). Add a great big dollops of overall flourishing and well-being, too!When I closed the book, I enthusiastically yelled, "Wow!" I had pre-ordered ​it ​with great anticipation, but never in my wildest dreams did I think this book would be such a richly personal as well as professional jaw-dropping, eye-opening blissful read. I took two days to read it​.​ I swear I wore out the underlining feature on my ipad2. I kept re-reading the underling and had to use my self-regulation character strength to keep reading forward. I enjoyed it as much, if not more, the second reading.As a ​Positive Psychology coach a​nd clinical psychologist​,​ I​ have especially enjoyed and appreciated following Renaissance ​M​an Seligman's phenomenal reputation as the primary Father of​ ​Positive Psychology​.​ My psychology book shelves proudly hold every book Seligman has written throughout his brilliant virtuous career. ​I have happily read his books, and I treasure them all. He has long been my north star ​for helping my clients as well as myself joyfully learn how to live The​ Good Life.​But his latest book has rocked my world!"The Hope Circuit" receives my gold medal. Make that platinum. Seligman's ​candidly cool ​book, I wholeheartedly believe, will become an enjoyable must-read milestone in the history of psychology. ​His writing artistry makes psychology come alive. ​What a powerful academic and personally remarkable legacy! Gift this book to yourself and everyone you love. I bet it will blow your mind the way it did mine.An A+++ read!

The reviews of Dr. Martin Seligman's newest book, The Hope Circuit, have largely gotten it wrong. They regard it a memoir and review it as such. Yes, on one level it is it is a memoir, one of a fascinating life lived amidst tectonic shifts in the field of psychology and psychiatry. The problems with memoirs are they are valedictory by definition. This is a forward-looking work. Far greater than just an individual's recollections of a life well lived, it makes the compelling argument that the human race is hot-wired for hope. Seligman doesn't merely make such a claim and move on. He patiently explains in language laymen can understand (although he instructs the reader at some technical junctures to re-read preceding paragraphs to aid in comprehension) that humans are driven by framing possibilities about the future, not haunted by memories or past events. Those who can successfully frame the future in positive and hopeful terms enjoy the greatest happiness and outcomes in life. This is an incredibly powerful message: hope is not just Pollyannaish wishful thinking, but a function that is critical for well being (I strongly recommend Homo Prospectus: Oxford Press for those interested in a deeper dive into the science and theories behind this claim). This is a fine book, deep, thoughtful and eminently readable. Seligman is a wonderful essayist, one who can make a psychology text read like a thriller. However, some reviews of the book are negative, reflective of the fact Seligman has long attracted a number of enemies throughout his career, private and public. Some of Seligman's critics are fair to the extent they challenge the science (this is how science moves forward, Seligman notes) and not the person. Most are not. The criticisms come from different sources. Some are from entrenched academic mandarins, jealous of the funding dollars shifting away from the disease model of psychology that Seligman describes in passages of the book; others are left-wing polemicists like Barbara Ehrenreich who somehow view positive psychology, the field Seligman "founded," as a stalking horse for religious or social conservatism. Some are annoyed by his first person narrative style, where he places himself at the center of a revolution in psychology (ignoring the inconvenient fact that he actually was. I find the personal anecdotes among the best parts of The Hope Circuit). Others criticisms, including those accusing Seligman of aiding and abetting torture by the U.S. military after 9/11, border on libelous. Seligman addresses the criticisms, fairly and without acrimony in a chapter of the book (and a bit mildly in my opinion; I will save my deconstruction of their errors and biases in an article to come). I strongly recommend The Hope Circuit for anyone interested in the history of psychology or the life of one of its giants. I also recommend it to anyone interested in living life better and with more hope.

If you're interested in how to build optimism, leverage strengths, or apply positive psychology -- and reading an interesting memoir about a pioneering thinker -- I highly recommend The Hope Circuit.I've been following Seligman's work on optimism, happiness, and strength-building since the mid-eighties. This book filled in gaps and connected many dots in tracing how Seligman's thinking and psychology research evolved. He's at the center of a major shift from focusing on what's wrong to strengthening and building on what's right.Seligman first made his mark with pioneering research on learned helplessness. He writes, "I and many of the practitioners and scientists in positive psychology came right out of work on misery and suffering. I devoted thirty-five years of my life to undoing depression and helplessness. I found that merely getting rid of the bad stuff was not enough, and so I advocated working on what makes life worth living as well...it is the presence of positive emotion, engagement, good relations, meaning, and accomplishment (PERMA)...getting what is good in life entails a lot more than just eliminating what is bad."Seligman's work is grounded in rigorous academic research. He's one of the most cited psychologists of our time. However, his books are highly engaging, very readable, and practical. This book is a unique blend of personal memoir and history of positive psychology's evolution. Here, Seligman's own life is an open book. When Seligman began his career in the 1960s he was "always negative" and focused on "helplessness, hopelessness, trauma, fear, and depression" and was "anxious and grumpy a lot." Today he reports "I am no longer negative. I am actually quite positive. I now ask questions about what is best in life: positive emotion, meaning, human progress, virtue, and the long future of flourishing. My critical antennae are still up, but I pay much less attention to their tantrums."There are powerful lessons we can draw from The Hope Circuit for leadership development and coaching. It's not the absence of weaknesses that define highly effective leaders. It's the presence of a few overshadowing strengths that elevate and set positive perceptions -- and responses -- to powerful leaders. Development plans aimed at reducing what's wrong or closing gaps are much less energizing and effective than leveraging what's right.Current personal and leadership development approaches are badly broken and ineffective. Seligman could have been writing about leadership development when he observed, "the tongue's default mode is to swish around the mouth until it finds a cavity and then to worry the defective tooth. The tongue does not look for a perfect tooth and then savor its flawlessness. The tongue is there not to celebrate what is right but to detect what is wrong and hidden. The default mode of your mind is to swish around your life until it discovers a problem that just might explode into real trouble. It then hones in and plans how to avoid it."

Recebi ontem a autobiografia de Martin E. P. Seligman, publicada em Abril deste ano (2018), que tem o título de “The Hope Circuit” e o sub-título de “A Psychologist’s Journey from Helplessness to Optismism”.Seligman, que é um ano mais velho do que eu (nasceu em Agosto de 1942), recebe crédito por ter inventado a chamada “Psicologia Positiva”. Encheu-se de ver a Psicologia tradicional ocupar-se apenas de “Doenças Mentais” e pressupor que, eliminadas as doenças, a pessoa alcança “Saúde Mental”.Assim, propôs-se a investigar o Bem-Estar individual, a Felicidade, a Realização, o Flourishing, a Eudaimonia como agenda para Psicologia (e também para a Educação e, fantástico, para a Religião.Criou um critério para determinar o grau de bem-estar ou felicidade de uma pessoa, a que chamou de PERMA:1 – Positivity in Emotions and Attitudes2 – Engagement in Life Mission or Calling3 – Rich Relationships4 – Meaning in Life5 – Accomplishments as LegacyAlcança Saúde Mental quem tem um score elevado no PERMA — não quem simplesmente não tem (ou se livra de) Doenças Mentais como, por exemplo, esquizofrenia, depressão, pânico, ansiedade, etc. (ou mesmo está livre de todas as mais de 300 “desordens mentais” [!!!] listadas no Diagnostic and Statistical Manual da American Psychiatric Association) [p.168].Leitura fantástica. Uma lição de vida.Eduardo CHAVESec@chv.im

One of the best books period. life changing.

The hope circuit is Martin "Marty" Seligman's autobiography. This is not a book I would normally read but it cropped up on a few reading lists on LinkedIn so I gave it a try. If you didn't know (I didn't), Marty is a professor of Psychology and did a lot of work in the past on "helplessness". He went onto create "positive psychology" that I guess is the antidote to helplessness. He writes in an interesting why, lived an interesting life, you also learn a little bit about psychology, which is kind of useful. I certainly enjoyed the book, but at nearly 400 pages it is a bit of an investment.

In discussing his own life Martin Seligman provides readers with a painless way of informing themselves about major developments in psychology over the last century.Marty, as just about everyone seems to call him, played an important role - as a researcher, author of popular books, and transformational leader - in helping to bring about important changes in his profession. He made major contributions in encouraging the profession to study cognition, recognise evolution, embrace positive psychology, and give greater attention to prospection.I was particularly interested in the story of learned helplessness, learned optimism and the hope circuit.Marty, made his name as a researcher in the 1960s for his work, with Steve Maier, on learned helplessness. Marty and Steve observed that when dogs were unable to avoid electric shocks by changing their behaviour, they subsequently tended to remain passive when they did have the opportunity to avoid shocks. The dogs appeared to have learned that nothing they did mattered.Marty saw the potential implications of this research for understanding of mental illness among humans and developed the helplessness theory of depression on that basis. That theory was subsequently reformulated, with assistance from John Teasdale, to take account of the way people think about the causes of their feelings of helplessness. For example, those who see their current problems as likely to last forever and to undermine everything they do are likely to feel helpless long into the future. Pessimism leads to helplessness.Marty’s popular book, Learned Optimism, published in 1990, integrated research findings on learned helplessness and explanatory style. It advocated disputing pessimistic thoughts as the central skill of learned optimism.Marty coined the term “hope circuit” in 2015 to describe the MPFC-DRN circuit of brain activity discovered by Steve Maier, who had retrained as a neuroscientist. Marty explains that Steve’s discoveries turned learned helplessness on its head:“He showed that the arrow of causality that we had postulated was wrong and that it was not helplessness but control and mastery that were learned".One of the implications of this research is that therapy that “creates end runs” around trauma and helps people to plan a better future is likely to be more helpful than therapy that tries to undo trauma by confronting the past.The book is a pleasure to read.