Mindfulness

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.

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.

How does positive psychology bring together ecopsychology and transpersonal psychology? What can we do to use this convergence to enhance well-being and connection?

Mindfulness X was developed in the Netherlands by Hugo Alberts, psychologist, researcher, and entrepreneur. The program combines the practice and psychology of mindfulness for trainers looking to apply a science-based mindfulness approach to their client bases.

Mindfulness, hypnosis, and flow all involve states of deep attention, but each has a key differentiator.

Our suggestions are mainly things you can do for others (the gift of a free evening of babysitting, being present, writing down your memories of any period in your life), things you can do for yourself (a starter yoyo, the feeling of helping someone else), and books we’ve really loved.

LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® (LSP) is a strong tool for exploring the past, enhancing mindfulness in the present, and imagining the future.

Infatuation with speed is a characteristic of our times. We live in the fastest phase of human history. That can lead to what Larry Dossey in 1982 termed time-sickness, as we become fearful of missing out. The ability to stay with the discomfort of life’s paradoxes and our own ignorance and to remain patient and still while questions and answers grow in never-ending cycles, requires a certain mental toughness that seems to be on its way out in a world in a hurry.

We all have our own little bubbles of fear resting deep within us. Our relationships with our children take us back to these bubbles. I am beginning to recognize my reactions as based on these fears and to forgive myself for being human, so I can embark on the journey to change. I am reconnecting to my own goodness and beginning to embrace the parts of me that want to love unconditionally and accept non-judgmentally.

Self-compassion is a way of relating to ourselves kindly, as we truly are, flaws and all.

This article contains an invitation to the Saturday party at IPPA on June 27 to benefit programs for hospitalized children by Soaring Words.

In practice, people find it surprisingly challenging to come up with new ways to use their signature strengths. Perhaps that’s because we often use our signature strengths without much awareness. For example, have you paid much attention to your use of self-regulation as you brush your teeth? Your level of prudence or kindness while driving?

Here are three tips for using your signature strengths in mindful ways.

At a recent workshop at Esalen in Big Sur, experts from UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center “explored the roots of personal happiness and offered concrete, science-based approaches to boosting happiness in one’s self and others.“

Now I turn my attention to the practice side of the International Symposium on Contemplative Studies. Here’s a practice that I experienced at the conference and how it affected my well-being. I include step-by-step instructions for trying it out at home.

Of the 470 presenters at ISCS, none had a message more compelling than that of Tania Singer, a social neuroscientist from The Max Planck Institute. Singer seems vitally alive as she presents her work, a scientist who has clearly found her calling and is excited to share her findings. She is also studying a neglected type of motivation, Affiliation Motivation. Like many others there, she is embarked on the quest described by the Dalai Lama in the closing speech, “How can we take knowledge from science and apply it in the service of humanity?”

The Mind & Life International Symposium on Contemplative Studies was a beautiful mix of opportunities to learn about the scientific study of contemplative practices and to experience the practices themselves. In this first article on the conference, I explore why this area of study is booming and why it matters that aging brains are more plastic than once thought.

My twins’ busy schedules had become a source of worry for me. Rare were the moments when I saw them relax with a storybook, while the afternoon away with friends, or unwind by throwing hoops in the basketball net.

So I made taking time out a priority.

I interviewed positive psychology pioneer Barbara Fredrickson on her views of psychology as a science, why it’s important to study positive psychology, what are her favorite topics to study, and what are her primary sources of positive emotion.

The world needs peace right now. The world needs you to increase your mindfulness. So, thank you for practicing and building your mindfulness muscle. When the alarm goes off tomorrow morning, take a slow and low cleansing breath and remember to express gratitude for another day to be alive.

Having recently completed the dissertation for my MAPP program, I can now reflect on the final few weeks before my submission. I felt pressured, had a drop in overall well-being, and struggled to get into flow. Worse still, I wasn’t great company to be around. I thought to myself, as a student and researcher of positive psychology, how could I be unhappy and not flourishing? But at least I wasn’t languishing. What kept me from dipping into languishing?

Emotions evolved over millennia to ensure our survival. Each one has a purpose. It reminds us to call attention, take action, avoid the situation, reach out to others, give back, feel connected, and a myriad of other thought-action repertoires that ensure not only our survival but also our well-being in life. Compassion meditation helps us to acknowledge the message in our emotions. Think of the subconscious mind as the captain of our ship under the seas. We would do well to be attentive to his call, hear his message and then guide him from our vantage point above the waters.