Kathryn Britton recently wrote about using positive psychology to deal with a sudden loss as she mourned her dear friend Linda. Grieving is an individual process, but while no two people have an identical experience of losing a loved one, there are several patterns that emerge. I’d like to offer some observations about how Positive Psychology is at work while people heal after a loss, even in the long term.

Let’s assume you were just promoted into a management job. You know that you got the promotion because you were an excellent performer on your previous assignment, but it used your technical skills. You are worried that you do not have all the skills you need to be an excellent manager. How do you go about learning them? Where’s the best place to start?

It’s summer here in New Zealand and we’re still in holiday mode so I asked my ten year old what she thought I should write about. “Family”, she said, and offered some advice on what …

This semester I taught positive psychology at North Carolina State University.  After our studies of, and exercises on, “savoring” one student lost 20 pounds by changing her relationship with food. Another, who reported she …

“People who post smiley photos on Facebook/Frowners attract happy friends.” (Nature, 2008)
Social Networks and Happiness
Would you be surprised to read the above finding from Nature, one of the most prominent science journals in the world? …

One of the main principles of social psychology and positive psychology is that we are social creatures.  On the other hand, I see a big discrepancy when I hear of research by Dutch organizational researcher …

Schools are complex environments with many factors and relationships, as well as people with different values, purposes, and ways of making meaning. The Appreciative Inquiry process is a positive way to incorporate change in schools. It focuses on the “high moments” of people and values the complexity. AI can help people develop healthy relationships by mobilizing and building high quality connections between students and students, teachers and teachers, teachers and students, parents and students, and teachers and parents.

For a 25th strength, I propose a meta-strength built on global awareness that I call Enlightened Action. This new strength can be aligned among or above the six virtues of wisdom, courage, humanity, temperance, and …

If your teen is in the bottom 80% of the class, you may have been told – or thought– that she is “an underachiever” (a polite way of saying lazy or dumb). Underachiever compared to what? Compared to the narrowly-defined measures of school performance or compared to the abilities that will help her to thrive in life?

In my opinion, your child is not under-achieving. I think your child is under-appreciated.

While walking to join a few friends yesterday evening at dusk, I passed through a lush green park in the center of Philadelphia. I was lost in my own head, contemplating the many interesting topics presented at the First World Congress of the International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA). As I stepped softly through the grass in the approaching darkness of the evening sky, a light suddenly caught my eye. Waist-level beside me, hovering in the summer air, was a firefly.