Where It All Began

Thirty years ago, I was an undergraduate at the University of Kent in the UK. I was majoring in social anthropology but had chosen a social psychology class to fulfill a requirement. I remember exactly where I was sitting.

I was barely awake when I suddenly heard the term “Learned Helplessness.” Bells went off in my head. To say I was all ears would be an understatement. It felt as if the Universe was calling to me, and I was listening. Something about Learned Helplessness resonated deeply with my soul. I decided then and there to become a psychologist, to go to America, and to work with the genius who came up with the idea: Martin Seligman.

Three years later, I was a graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania, having dinner with my class and sitting across from Seligman. Fast forward many years, and we were married with five children.

From Helplessness to Hope

But let’s back up. Seligman began with Learned Helplessness in the late 1960s as an animal model for depression. The idea was that helplessness, or depression, occurs when a person or creature learns that nothing they do makes a difference. Whether good or bad events happen, if someone feels no control over outcomes, they become helpless. Eventually, they give up trying. Hope is lost.

His research then turned to the attributions people made about life events. An optimistic attributional style encouraged a sense of control, mastery, and hope. A pessimistic style encouraged helplessness and hopelessness. These styles were found to have far-reaching consequences and were not dependent on the number or severity of negative events someone experienced. They were deep-seated. The good news was that optimism could be taught.

From these beginnings, Positive Psychology was born. When Seligman became President of the American Psychological Association, he brought together all the leading well-being researchers under one banner: Positive Psychology. These included Chris Peterson, Ed Diener, Mike Csikszentmihalyi, George Vaillant, and the next generation of rising stars like Barbara Fredrickson, Sonja Lyubomirsky, and Jon Haidt, among many others.

The golden age of Positive Psychology began. The research was generously funded, and scientific insights flourished.

At the same time, revelations emerged about the original helplessness experiments. It turns out that what must be learned is not helplessness, but mastery. Helplessness and hopelessness are actually the default response to a lack of control. What must be taught is where we do have control, mastery, and hope.

The implications are vast. This matters for parenting, for aging, and for everyone navigating the in-between years.

Bringing the Science Home

In the past thirty years, we’ve learned a lot:

• Optimism helps us weather life’s ups and downs. It is the foundation of resilience, and it is teachable.
• Good personal relationships are the foundation for flourishing.
• Mattering matters.
• Seeing the world as beautiful, good, and trustworthy reduces anxiety and improves well-being.
• The arts and humanities improve life quality and reduce loneliness.
• Creativity supports happiness.
• Flow feeds our soul.

I took what I was learning from the science and applied it to my own life and to homeschooling our five children.

But I always knew this information wasn’t reaching everyone. We needed a simple, accessible way to share key principles that could help people live better lives. That question stayed with me.

The Birth of SeeingHappy

Then came COVID.

During the pandemic, I spent a lot of time outside, photographing anything that caught my eye and made me happy. It was a reminder that beauty and goodness were still out there, if we looked for them. I noticed others doing the same, and the idea arose: why not share our happy photos?

SeeingHappy was born. Conceived in January 2021 and launched that May, it started as a way to spotlight the positive in the midst of everything going wrong.

A Movement to See the Good

But over time, it became a vehicle for spreading Positive Psychology. I wondered if we could build well-being exercises into the website. We did. We included science-backed practices shown to increase happiness.

Then we asked: could photography be a tool for learning to see differently? Could it help people see the positive?

We partnered with students from the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at the University of Pennsylvania to create the Phlourish Program: Flourishing through Photography.

This program blends the art and science of photography to help people see the world in new ways. We believe we can choose to focus on the positive or the negative, and that choice carries consequences.

We are not trying to convert everyone to Pollyannahood. Instead, we aim to inform, and to show rather than tell the benefits of positivity.

In the past four years, we have built a global community. Thousands of subscribers from around the world use whatever camera they have to capture and share what brings them joy. We now have a collection of over 10,000 photos.

Our Happy Feed inspires us every day.

We use our Phlourish Program to teach Positive Psychology to people of all ages.
We host workshops.
We run contests and curate exhibitions.
We published a book of Hope.
We bring people together, one photo at a time, and teach positivity for free.

That was always the aim.

Mandy Seliman
Founder, SeeingHappy