to become an all-terrain four-wheel drive vehicle. The good news is that just as you learned to drive a vehicle and you earned a driving license, you can also learn positive thinking and have happier feelings. A positive mental attitude is a learned behaviour and happiness is a feeling that you can cultivate. Learning how to be a positive thinker will lead to greater happiness in your life no matter how rough and bumpy the road gets. Then you will be in the driver's seat of your thoughts and feelings.Positive Psychology or The Science of Happiness really gained momentum in 1998 fueled by the vision of American Psychological Association President Dr. Martin Seligman. For most of its history psychology had rarely left the dark realm of mental illness and all that ails the human mind: anxiety, depression, neurosis, paranoia, obsessions and delusion. Dr. Seligman had begun to explore the sunny land of the mentally hale and hearty in earlier work. He had discovered that optimism leads to improved physical health, less pain and a decreased risk of dementia, less depression and mental illness, an improved quality of and longer life, more happiness and success, and people who are optimistic are more altruistic than pessimistic people, are more curious, creative, energetic and engaged in life and have better relationships.Seligman thought that mental health could be more than the absence of mental illness; he didn't just want to help patients go from negative five to neutral normal, he wanted to discover the enabling conditions that make human beings flourish from zero to plus five. To discover what actively made people feel fulfilled, engaged and authentically happy.Seligman, along with a team of Psychologists from around the world and many different studies later, concluded that the failure to believe that our behaviour matters was the greatest obstacle to happiness. They discovered that once a person has their basic needs met that it is not circumstances such as wealth, education, youth, marriage or good weather that determines happiness. They concluded that happiness is 90% internal response and 10% external factors. They discovered that meaningful relationships with family and friends has the greatest affect on our happiness. However when it comes to religion it was not clear whether faith or community does the heavy lifting.Optimism and PessimismFive Myths about Optimism1. Negative thinking is more realistic.2. People with a positive mental attitude expect good things to happen simply by thinking positively about them. 3. Positive thinking doesn't change reality.4. Positive thinkers have no clue about the real world. 5. Positive people are always euphoric and idealistic.Pessimists may have a more realistic view of life at times because they expect undesirable outcomes and optimists may at times have an unrealistic view of life because they don't assume the worst. Pessimists believe that there are temporary, specific reasons for good events and universal explanations for bad events, while optimists believe that the reasons for bad events are temporary and specific. When something bad happens, pessimists feel that it is permanent and pervasive and it affects other areas of their lives, leaving