Relationships

It seems that every year around Thanksgiving, people like to quote Dr. Robert Emmons’ work on gratitude. It becomes de rigeur to count your blessings and enumerate what you are grateful for. But I’d like to propose something a little different this year.

Can love affect our health? Answering this question is no small undertaking, but I think the Grant study has managed it.

I wasn’t sure about reading this book, but I’m ever so glad that I did. I want to read it again with my highlighter firmly in hand and note all the wisdom again. this book This book has definitely equipped me to be more compassionate when someone close to me is suffering from a tragic loss. I feel that I know better what to say, what to do, and how to be a meaningful support with less fear and trepidation, and more confidence.

Joanna Thompson recently published A to Z: Your Navigator to Success, a clear, readable guide to actions leading to greater well-being and career success. For each letter of the alphabet, there is a topic that she has seen work either in her successful career working in financial markets or in her work with people in talent development and coaching. As she told me in our interview, “My book is essentially a distillation of tips I wish I had known earlier. In this sense it offers some short cuts to the top.”

Including psychological well-being in a company’s health promotion effort can take you from basic wellness to greater overall well-being. It helps us do more, and do it better.

It’s time to break the silence about suffering at work. Suffering happens everywhere. From page 11 in this book, “Without compassion, workplaces can become powerful amplifiers of human suffering.” Read on to explore the alternative, where organizations and the people in them awaken compassion at work.

Should companies concern themselves with the psychological well-being of their employees? If so, what does that mean for workplace leadership practices?

Positive Psychology News has a tradition of pulling together thoughts for the New Year, remembering that many people are taking stock and making resolutions. As you look ahead, perhaps the ideas below will help you find ways to make your life more happy and healthy. We also recommend that you follow Alicia’s lead and look back at 2016. What worked especially well then? What do you want to make sure you do more of in 2017?

I made a more gentle resolution for 2016, because I am a parent in a world where “mom guilt” is the trend. I want to do the best I can for the kids I love, but sometimes more is unproductive and better is unrealistic. By pairing my natural urges to be perfect with the remorse I carried following my son’s burn injury, I was on a one-way trip to martyrdom. For this reason, 2016 was the year of self-compassion. My year-end reflection reveals a happier, more resilient version of myself so I think this resolution is one I will keep.

Yes there are crowds, more on the to-do list, and the flu season is upon us. But there are also more connections, sparkle, and cheer. Since I am (somewhat gracefully) surviving this holiday season with the support of the concepts I understand from positive psychology, I am compelled to spread my cheer by sharing my holiday survival list.

My rainbow baby writer’s block serves as a reminder that sometimes we need to sit back and let life unfold while maintaining self-compassion in our passive state.

I confess I have not always been a fan of saving the best for last. I certainly would have failed the famous marshmallow test. With time, I have come to recognize and value this conventional wisdom in practice. In sports, in business, or in our relationships, the winners are declared only at the end.

Is it possible that understanding the concepts of joy and well-being from other cultures can help us give a new shape to our own? According to Lomas, the study of emotional vocabulary of a culture may provide a window into how its people see the world: the things they value, their traditions, the way they build happiness or things they recognize as important.

Dear reader, let’s think together: What would happen if you are disconnected from your job or studies right now? Who would you be then, and how would you spend your time? How would you see your roles in life beyond the context of work/study, and who are the important people to you?

Perhaps I don’t need to fear the world I leave behind for my children. Perhaps technology is paving the way for them to come together as a common humanity.

Every little bit helps to understand what’s really going on and how your perspective, thoughts, words, and emotions can change, for better or for worse, the final outcome of negotiation with regards to both value and relationship.

The latest buzz in leadership is all about empathy, with many calling for more of it in our leadership style. The theory goes that if leaders were more empathetic, we wouldn’t have situations like the no-holds-barred culture that Kantor and Streitfeld described at Amazon. But is a lack of empathy really the problem?

The twins had been studying the last ice age in class, and on this particular day, had watched a short video clip about a large asteroid hitting our planet unexpectedly. As we discussed it over lunch, my daughter threw me an unexpected question.

“What would you do if you knew that an asteroid was going to hit our planet in two years time?”

At some point or another we all wrestle with questions around why we are here and how to find purpose in life. Being Called is a great introduction to what we can glean from these experiences in the modern world. Sometimes it is a powerful vision of a possible future that pulls us along, pushing us in a new direction, with no regard whatsoever for how we got where we are.

This kind of selfless love requires that we sit with our uncertainties and fears and yet assure our children that they are not alone. It requires that we refrain from fixing the cracks and fissures in the urge of making their lives perfect. It requires that we contain our impulses and desires and live in the hope of creating something far more beautiful than perfection.