Angus Skinner

The three blessings nomenclature has not always served Positive Psychology well. To some people, it can seem silly. Others are put off by the religious implications. Yet this exercise has lasting benefits, more reliably attached to reducing depression than stopping smoking is attached to reducing cancer.

We swim in the soup of constant discourse. The content and meaning of that discourse flavors our lives. Say you are driving your child to school, and I cut you…

Why start with spicy soup? Because it is easy? Because it is nutritious? Because it is warm and somehow enveloping without ever suffocating? Because it is global, utterly. Love isn?t spring-time. What brings a man to hit a baby? what brings a mother to ignore her own feelings of love to let it happen? If love ruled we would all have more courage, more hope. Hard stuff but remember fear, not hate nor indifference, undermines love. Love is all-time. […]

I am amongst other things the Secretary of the Howard League in Scotland. John Howard was the 18th century founder of the penal reform movement: between 1775 and 1790 he…

Rabbits are ancient symbols of fertility and so symbolize the return of spring. In thinking of them, of Easter, and of Sherri Fisher’s excellent article, Positive Psychology is more than…

Our brains are attics – they have to be, storing all our past stuff. But we live when we can in the dizzy day-room delights of children’s laughter, family chaos, and even work. Spring seems to arrive earlier each year. So we are tempted to spring-clean our brains: let’s not. Let’s leave the attic to gather what dust it will, and let’s freshen the day rooms – the present and the future of our lives.

Europeans generally don’t celebrate Thanksgiving; we have important, though quieter harvest festivals, and we wish you North Americans ease.  Sitting between Diwalli (Hindu) and Christmas (pagan in its timing), the…

Is it wrong for anyone to be happy in prison? Is there to be no redemption once banished? Should the exchanges between the guards and the prisoners be always suspicious,…

Hobbling down the stairs and across the street I realized too late that I had left my wallet in the office. This meant that I missed the bus, and later had to get the train which sensibly stopped at the train station some two miles from the bus station. So, that evening’s plan for Jess – a student driver – to drive us home from the bus station was abandoned, as was the car which was, of course, a vital player in the plans for the next morning travels. Jess had a party to enjoy. For recovering from my broken leg I had clear goals (well advised) which included starting to drive again ten days hence. But returning from the train station I recklessly then drove down with Shelagh to get the other car, and drove back. I have been driving since. Events and circumstance accelerated both the motivation and achievement of my goal. […]

Preparing for a workshop I was running last week, I e-mailed the 20 or so participants with briefing notes and added a PS to the warn them that I would be hobbling on crutches as I had “recently broken my leg whilst roller-blading in the Andes with a bunch of Brazilian dancers.”

Two delightful people initially believed my explanation to which I could only say, “I really wish I were the kind of guy that could be true of.” […]

Technology drives speed and anxiety.  We click to agree or even authorize an event or exchange, payment or information, and as soon as we click, we want the result delivered,…

Skiing for the first time in my life earlier this year, I was offered by my wonderful Italian ski instructor a new positive psychology construct I want to share with…

I write these thoughts in the news of the shooting rampage at Virginia Tech.  The science of positive psychology is-value free and as Shane Lopez writes, we still don’t know…

Angus Skinner, MAPP ’06, is back working in his beloved and beautiful Scotland. His mother was the first daughter and 8th child of a crofting family on Skye, born in…