One of the Best I've Ever Read

I'm in the middle of reading through Learned Optimism by Dr. Martin Seligman, for what I think is the 3rd time. I find it amazing that such in-depth studies were conducted on how optimism affects health, longevity and lifetime achievement, back in the 1970s. It all comes down to the explanatory style we use when good and bad things happen to us, and there are 3 categories to measure: 1) personal, 2) permanence, 3) pervasive. Optimists strongly believe that misfortunes are not usually due to personal flaws, that they will not last long and that because a bad event came about in one area of life,it doesn't mean that the rest of their lives will also suffer the same fate. One interesting occurrence is that they correctly predicted and back-predicted the winner of every presidential election from 1900-1988 using rhetoric, campaign speeches and debate answers given by the candidates. This book is definitely worth the read to check out the studies.