What You Can Change and What You Can't: The Complete Guide to Successful Self-Improvement

From its beginning in the 1960s cognitive psychology has developed science/evidence based approaches that have proven more effective then drugs and other methods in treating people with depression, phobias, obsessions, addictions, eating disorders, and other life-disrupting problems. University of Pennsylvania professor of psychology, Martin Seligman, established a successful track record researching, developing, and documenting treatment techniques.In the late 1980s he and his colleagues began exploring how they could build a science-based wellness model to help people who are doing fine elevate their lives to a higher state of well-being. Seligman’s 1990 book, Learned Optimism (highly recommended), laid the foundation for the now fast-growing field of positive psychology.A cornerstone of positive psychology leading to higher well-being is building on our strengths. As we get ever deeper into helping our Clients implement strengths-based leadership development I’ve been tracing back the foundations of these powerful approaches.What You Can Change...And What You Can’t was published a few years before Seligman’s presidency of the American Psychology Association and his subsequent founding of the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Part of the book’s subtle is “learning to accept who you are.” This resonates very strongly with authentic leadership and playing to your strengths rather than fixing weaknesses. A key exception is a weakness that’s so large people can’t see past it to a leader’s strengths.Seligman cites research that half of our personality is genetic. He goes on to conclude, “the other half of personality comes from what you do and from what happens to you—and this opens the door for therapy and self-improvement.” That’s what this book focuses on.What You Can Change… covers a very wide swath of personal growth with focusing on changes to emotional life such as anger, depression, anxiety, and stress as well as changing habits like dieting (which he argues is largely useless) or alcohol, and shedding the skins of childhood. Seligman tells us that research shows “there are some things about ourselves that can be changed, others that cannot, and some that can be changed only with extreme difficulty.”I found the book very useful to understanding the origins of the closely aligned new fields of positive psychology and strengths-based leadership development. It’s an insightful book for readers interested in the history of these areas or struggling with the topics covered. Otherwise I’d recommend you skip this book and read Seligman’s other books, Learned Optimism, Authentic Happiness, or Flourish.

Psychologist Martin Seligman acknowledges that psychology sends us two contradictory messages about change. Psychotherapists and the self-improvement literature tout our ability to change ourselves for the better, whether with help from a trained professional or on our own. The biomedical model of psychology claims that mental illness is really a form of physical illness, emotion and mood are determined by brain chemistry, and personality is determined by genes. Neither view is true in the general sense--the things we struggle to change are either more or less changeable. The author cites research findings to help us see the difference.The author plays it straight. "This book walks a political tightrope. On one side is the racist segment of the right, fervently hoping that intelligence, femininity and criminality are all entirely genetic. On the other side are many aging 1960s liberals and their 'politically correct' campus heirs, condemning all who dare to speak ill of victims; failure, they say, results from poverty, racism, a bad upbringing, a malevolent system, underprivilege, deprivation--from anything but oneself." Examining therapy outcome research, Seligman finds that panic and sexual dysfunction can be easily unlearned, destructive moods can be controlled, depression can be cured by conscious changes in thinking patterns, and optimism can be learned. However, it is vanishingly difficult to make dieting work, change the gender orientation of children, shortcut the natural course of recovery from alcoholism, change homosexuality into heterosexuality, or fix adult personality problems by reliving childhood trauma. Seligman takes us through these and related issues examining what research tells us about realistic possibility for change.This book is recommended for those who want to understand personal change, to attempt it when it can be achieved and avoid frustration and unrealistic expectations when it cannot. Readers may also enjoy Seligman's  The Optimistic Child: A Proven Program to Safeguard Children Against Depression and BuildLifelong Resilience .

I just purchased the Kindle edition, (I already had a paperback copy.) Pages 303-317 (in small print) of the paperback is devoted to the Index. The Kindle edition OMITS the Index.I discovered this omission while correlating locations in paperback vs Kindle.My star rating is primarily related to this omission. While I found several interesting sections, I have not yet started significant reading.

This is a remarkable book because Martin Seligman manages to bring scientific research to life and write in a meaningful way to a mainstream audience. I read Flourish and wanted to know more about the field of Positive Psychology and having a personal and professional interest in self improvement the title of this book intrigued me."All Successful therapy has two things in common. It requires froward looking and assuming responsibility." Is the core message I took away, the ability to imagine and plan toward a better future by taking responsibility for our own actions resonates throughout. I also like the level of detail given in specific chapters on the main issues people face in life and what works for each of them.The book answered a lot of my questions about therapy and overcoming life issues, particularly the Inner Child healing in Chapter 14. I have seen many people have the big cathartic release type change experience and experienced a few myself on various self improvement courses. I often wondered why the change did not last. The research and the answers are in this book - catharsis feels good but there is no evidence that it works. I did find myself smiling at the evidence that catharsis has the same effect on imagined memories as real ones. Seligman's advice "Let the buyer beware" is one of the gems of this book.For anyone starting out on the self improvement/development journey this book would be a good place to start. Once you know what works and lasts, rather than just gives you a feel good high, you can select the appropriate intervention. From here forward I will be judging any future self development books and courses against the evidence in this book. Highly recommended.

I found this to be an excellent book. I feel I understand the human condition better for having read it. Many of the chapters focus on a single difficultly, e.g. Anxiety, Phobias, Depression, Anger, Weight, Alcohol. Seligman describes what is known about each, and considers the outcomes of various treatments based on scientific studies which he references (without this intruding on the main text's readability). He is honest about it when he goes beyond the evidence and ventures his own opinion. As an example of the kind of question he considers: In treating alcoholism, should the goal be total abstinence, or controlled moderate drinking?It's best to point out this is not a book about Positive Psychology, as that is what Seligman is probably best known for. And yet probably very relevant to Positive Psychology all the same - not much point in studying human strengths without some sort of primer on human weaknesses.I found the book very readable, comprehensive and enjoyable (for some reason I struggled with "Authentic Happiness" by the same author).Just in the chapter on dieting I would have liked more detail, or suggestions for further reading at the popular science level of this book (as I've already said, there are plenty unobtrusive references to original research). It's still a great chapter though, and in my view this stuff about dieting can't be repeated enough in our weight-obsessed culture:- You can lose weight in a month or two on almost any diet.- Most people gain almost all their weight back in four to five years, with perhaps 10 percent remaining thin (there are about a dozen well-executed long-term studies involving thousands of dieters, and all of them show basically the same dismal result).

Interesting point of views. Maybe a little outdated. Good groundwork for further discussions. Not a classical how-to manual in case look for one.

We all seek control of our lives, as humans. But the more we try to exercise control, is the more elusive life feels. That is because life will always please itself, regardless of what we want. Seligman spells out why lives become problematic when we try to control the uncontrollable, and gently shows us how to let go off certain things that are detrimental, while homing in on what really matters, and we really can control, to make our lives far more enriching and enjoyable. A great read from the master of Positive Thinking.

This is a fantastic book about behaviour modification, depression and anxiety. I read it about 7 years ago and was quite impressed with it. It touches on everything from addiction to other compulsive behaviours and the origins of it. For anyone struggling with the above this is a fantastic book. I was a program facilitator at the time I got the first version of this and I was influenced by it.