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Jaime’s idea of practical self-reliance serves up a welcome, encouraging balm for my weary heart. Jaime gives us hope and inspiration to celebrate the simple and good. In the spirit of thanksgiving wherever you are, I’m happy to share some resources to help you boost your practical self-reliance.

While feeling stressed may be an appropriate reaction to the pandemic, fight for racial justice, and contentious election, the fact that we have powerful inner resources called character strengths can help us cope with these adversity. Here are three constructive actions your strengths can help us do in the face of today’s challenges. Strengths can be a source of hope.

Since you can’t escape yourself, it would serve you better to learn how to be a better friend to yourself, to become someone you don’t need to escape from.

Add positivity, healthy awareness, and joy to your life with a free online resource sponsored by the Penn Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) Alumni Association. Along with the goal of helping people find more joy in the moment, the team also wants to help people apply positivity in order to fight infection, thereby lessening the risk of disease and enhancing the ability to thrive.

When I became self-employed, I found myself being the meanest boss I had ever had. Here’s how I switched to self-compassion and what happened as a result.

In the face of the sadness and worry of the coronavirus pandemic, I encourage you to create a digital Positive Portfolio on your smartphone: This is a folder attached to your home screen where you consciously assemble artifacts, such as photos, videos, and music, that evoke memories of special positive valence.

Instead of trying to maintain a beautiful veneer and optimize our performance under the current circumstances, I would like to recommend to open-minded readers something entirely different: cultivate a stance of self-compassion. We don´t need to pretend we have everything under control. We don´t have to be perfect.

Exploring and applying character strengths can help us improve relationships, buffer against negative feelings, and manage problems as well as enhance our well-being during this challenging time. We offer some simple suggestions for activating different character strengths while dealing with this international pandemic.

Studies have revealed that not only are physical, mental, and social well-being important components for total health, but they are tightly interrelated. The evidence also shows that a happy, engaged, and fulfilling psychological and social life is not just a consequence of good health. It leads people to live a healthy and long life. Medical providers, patients and their families need positive medicine.

Whether you’re bringing your expressive medium to the side of a creek, having a collaborative meeting while on a mountain hike, or simply taking some time by yourself to sit and breath in the forest, the natural outdoors can be a huge benefit to the creative person, process, and lifestyle.

This is the second part of an interview of Henry Edwards about his book, The Daily Better. Today we dig a little deeper. We talk about better ways of making decisions than being driven by fear. We also discuss the impact he has had on the world views of his high school students and explore his plans for a future book targeted for them and their age peers.

In 2019, Henry Edwards published The Daily Better: 365 Reasons for Optimism. I interviewed him on December 12 about why he wrote the book. I learned that he personally changed his world view to be more open and hopeful and that he hopes his book will help others do the same.

To sum up: When people do not perceive their jobs to deliver fun on regular basis, they are probably going to jump ship soon. Now, it´s clear that a job can´t be fun all the time. It´s called work, after all. But my data suggests that top managers and human resources professionals should not take this seemingly light factor too lightly.

The three studies by Crum, Salovey, and Achor suggest that our stress mindset is malleable, and that adopting a stress-is-enhancing mindset can help us handle the pressures that come our way.

I was shocked when I read that US workplaces may be responsible for 120,000 excess deaths per year, making the workplace the 5th leading cause of death in the country. What’s going on? As a way of celebrating World Heart Day, let’s think about what we can do about it.

If you are a Positive Psychology News reader, then you likely not only have an interest in positive psychology, but you might also be growing a business that has to do with positive psychology. We share 7 ideas for making your business flourish.

I highly recommend this book to project managers, agile practitioners, team leaders, business leaders, and anyone that wants to learn how to pull greatness from themselves and their teams.

What really stays with me is that this book – and “book” seems like such an impoverished word for this treasure – is really a love letter to all women everywhere. It is uplifting, inspiring, empowering, and energizing. It speaks of hope and possibility and the creation of a wonderful future for everyone through the recognition and appreciation of women.

Jane Strunk Anderson’s book, 30 Days of Character Strengths: A Guided Practice to Ignite Your Best lays out a month-long series of practices to help people intentionally develop their own character strengths. I did the 30-day practice with a group of friends. We realized that the book also allowed each of us to customize strengths practices to our own personalities.

There was much in this book that caused me to be more reflective and introspective. When you’re in a life-long relationship with someone else, that’s probably a good practice. Since it takes two to tango, couples may want to buy two copies of this book, one for each to read, make notes in, and reflect on. Then they might want to do a few date book club nights to share their ideas and move forward together.