Authentic Happiness

I've been reading a lot about strengths and talents lately. I read StrengthsQuest by Donald O. Clifton and Edward "Chip" Anderson. I'm reading Authentic Happiness by Martin E. P. Seligman. What I've learned so far is that everyone of us has certain talents or predispositions, such as a love of learning new things or physical ability, that we may develop into strengths. Most folks intuitively know this but some of us seem unable or unwilling to do the work it takes to move from potential to mastery(Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours anyone?).

For example, I've always loved to read and learn new things. I am able to organize information so that it may be more easily used. But I've never worked at reading, writing, and organizing so that I can work as a librarian instead of as a library assistant. I've always explained my failure to do so as fear of success, lack of social and study skills, laziness, etc. But I was struck by this passage in Authentic Happiness:

It is not just positive feelings we want, we want to be entitled to our positive feelings. Yet we have invented myriad shortcuts to feeling good; drugs, chocolate, loveless sex, shopping, masturbation, and television are all examples...The belief that we can rely on shortcuts to happiness, joy, rapture, comfort, and ecstasy, rather than be entitled to these feelings by the exercise of personal strengths and virtues, leads to legions of people who in the middle of great wealth are starving spiritually. Positive emotion alienated from the exercise of character leads to emptiness, to inauthenticity, to depression, and, as we age, to the gnawing realization that we are fidgeting until we die.

So I guess for me it is about laziness, i.e. wanting to take a shortcut to professionalism so that I don't have to do the hard work!