Today is the launch day for the eBook of Kathryn Britton’s new must-read guide to writing:Sit Write Share This book should be a resource in your personal library like a great cookbook is a staple in your kitchen. Kathryn suggests that people approach writing with an experimental mindset. Likely some of her 55 experiments will become favorite go-to staples that appear frequently on your writing menu, while others will help you think holistically about planning a dinner party — presumably the book or long-form piece that you want to write.
Aren Cohen
Aren Cohen
Aren Cohen is a learning coach working with students in New York City. Aren is also writing a book on the positive psychology of fathers and daughters based on her MAPP capstone research with the longitudinal Harvard Grant Study of Adult Development.
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AllAweBook AnnouncementBook ReviewOverall view of Pos PsychTaking Action
Mud and Dreams (Book Review)
by Aren Cohenby Aren CohenMud and Dreams is a book to be savored completely and often. In this day and age, it is a welcome reminder that not only are we “hybrid creatures, both mud and dreams,” but also that our dual nature is something to celebrate and rejoice in, as it is our very gift of humanity that lets us fall deeply in love with life and all it has to offer.
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AllMoralityMovieOpen-mindedness
Open-mindedness and Judgment: Paragons In Action
by Aren Cohenby Aren CohenAll of us can learn from paragons of strengths. The film, Selma, about Martin Luther King Jr. and the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965, is an opportunity to reflect upon and celebrate the virtue of open-mindedness and judgment.
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AllOpen-mindednessParenting & Schools
Open-mindedness and Judgment: A Character Strength on the Fence
by Aren Cohenby Aren CohenThe character strength of Open-mindedness or Judgment becomes a sticky one precisely because it straddles a boundary between character and questioning ethics. Open-mindedness seems to stem from compassion and a sense of tolerance and receptivity. Conversely, judgment implies logic and rationality, as well as a determination that one option is superior to another.
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In the second article in her series on comfort, Aren Cohen considers the expression “creature comforts.” A phrase originally intended to highlight the material possessions and luxuries that provide us with comfort, Aren explores how it works the other way around. Comfort can make us fully realized beings. Comfort can make us happy and brave creatures.
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The first of a series of articles, Aren Cohen investigates the notion of Comfort and why it is a complex and relatively under-examined idea in positive psychology. Does experiencing comfort open the way to contentment, interest, and love? How does offering comfort soothe or console? Does comfort stem from attachment? What role does comfort play for children learning new things? Come explore this multi-faceted word.
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AllPositive FeelingsSavoring / In-the-MomentStrengths
How Vacations Support our Strengths
by Aren Cohenby Aren CohenRecently, I took a wonderful vacation with my husband to Argentina and Brazil. Since I had been busy before our departure, I had done only minimal research on site-seeing or dining. I happily entrusted myself to Andre and embraced his “go with the flow” approach to travel. I would like to share some thoughts on the VIA Strengths I found amplified on our trip. For the sake of brevity and relevance I will focus on the following eight.
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One of my favorite YouTube videos, called “Free Hugs,” shows a young man, then a group of people, standing in a mall in Australia offering free hugs. Why did I wake up this morning thinking about “Free Hugs?” First, I read an op-ed piece in the New York Times with the fact that “more people live alone now than at any other time in history.” Second, I watched the amazing HBO movie about a woman named Temple Grandin who invented a “squeeze machine” for herself.
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AllChangeConferencesParenting & Schools
News from “Down-Under” – What’s Happening at Geelong School?
by Aren Cohenby Aren CohenAs an educator, one of the talks I was most eager to hear at the IPPA World Congress was the presentation titled Geelong Grammar School’s Journey with Positive Education. The Geelong Grammar School is Australia’s largest co-educational boarding school, and as its website now says, it is the world leader in Positive Education.
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Is music positive psychology? Music is not a solitary thing. Musical tastes not only become a mark of personal identity, but they also help create social bonding and cohesion. Music is indeed both primal and powerful, thus the potential it has to serve positive psychology is awesome.
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All of us have this constant monologue of chatter running in our head. How do our perspectives and languages habituate our inner monologue? This inner monologue sometimes is great and sometimes it is lousy. How best can we train our inner voices to be more loving, more supportive, more friendly, more forgiving, and more productive?
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“Thou Shalt Not Envy” is the 10th commandment Moses brought down from Mount Sinai. Envy certainly gets a bad name everywhere you look. Nonetheless, it is part of the human condition. Does envy have a place in the world of Positive Psychology? Are there ways that can envy can benefit humanity?
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AllCommunicationPositive FeelingsRelationships
I like the way you walk, I like the way you talk: Lovers’ Communication
by Aren Cohenby Aren CohenBut if men and women communicate so differently, how do we ever find the words to fall in love? And, more importantly, what makes one person’s words seems so right to us? What makes us “like the way he/she talks,” so that we click and fall in love?
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AllBusinessSelf regulation
Expansive Posture: When You’ve Got It, Flaunt It!
by Aren Cohenby Aren CohenRecent research shows that good posture is important for reasons besides a healthy spine. Researchers at the Kellogg School of Management and Stanford Graduate School of Business found that our posture has a significant effect on our behavior. They found that posture, more than a person’s actual rank or hierarchical role in an organization (i.e. job title), is likely to dictate how a person will think and act.
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Thanksgiving is a great positive psychology holiday. In fact, thanksgiving, not as a holiday but as a phenomenon, is part of positive psychology lingo, appearing in Fred Bryant and Joseph Veroff’s model of savoring. Thanksgiving is a reflection on what the world has to offer us and why we should celebrate it.
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Our choice of words reveals a lot about us. Tal Yarkoni from the University of Colorado published the results of an extensive study looking at what bloggers write. The article examined correlations between personality traits and word use, using a sample of almost 700 bloggers who had written an average of over 115,000 words over almost two years.
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AllConferencesMindfulnessParenting & Schools
Empathy and What It Teaches Us
by Aren Cohenby Aren CohenWe all know that a guiding principle of positive psychology is that “Other people matter.” What is it that makes other people matter to us? Empathy. Empathy is commonly defined…
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AllBook Review
(Book Review) Invitation to Positive Psychology by Robert Biswas-Diener
by Aren Cohenby Aren CohenInvitation to Positive Psychology: Research and Tool for the Professional by Robert-Biswas-Diener is a workbook that allows a student to study a six-week self-directed course that touches on the main…
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I think I can, I think I can.” That was the motto of the Little Engine that Could. In the fable, a long train with many cars tries to find…
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As an undergraduate, I studied Art History. My favorite painters were the Impressionists. I loved their work because their pictures captured moments, places and feelings so beautifully, whether it was…
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