Positive Psychology Founder: How To Stop Your Negative Thoughts - Martin Seligman - #1167

Seligman argues trainable agency (efficacy, optimism, imagination), not fixed temperament, drives both individual flourishing and civilizational progress or stagnation.

• Agency has three parts: Seligman defines agency as efficacy (belief you can meet goals now), optimism (belief you can meet them in the future), and imagination (the range of achievable goals)—calling this his new, broader framework beyond optimism alone.
• Learned helplessness to learned hopefulness: Decades of research found inescapable shock made most subjects passive and "stupid," but roughly three in eight resisted—traced to optimistic explanatory style, which Seligman says can be trained via disputing catastrophic thoughts.

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