Positive Feelings

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

As the calendar bends towards Valentine’s Day, Happy Together is a wonderful book for you and the important people in your life. It provides a dazzling array of easy-to-implement exercises to keep your relationships strong and energetic. The Pawelskis demonstrate that relationships can get better with age, like fine bottles of wine.

Our family’s last Thanksgiving celebration was the final holiday we shared with my beloved father nine days before he died. I never know when I will experience a pang or a sobbing bout or a joyful wave of hilarious memories. The only constant is that there are no rules. I appreciate Claire Ansberry’s helpful guidance for people wondering how to say and do helpful things gracefully for people who are grieving.

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.

Welcome back to part 2 of the active learning studies done by my students this fall.

The students in Positive Psychology: The Science of Optimal Human Functioning did not just read books, listen to my mini-lectures, and write papers. They conducted class-based research projects to contribute to our collective knowledge.

Now in its 8th year, I’m happy to share my observations of the best movies using the science of positive psychology as a lens. In other words, if researchers/practitioners in positive psychology were the ones to give out Oscars for the best films, this is what they might say.

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

Margaret Greenberg has more than 10 years experience bringing positive psychology to business. In this interview, she explains how to speak the language of business professionals and help them pick up simple but profound tools that benefit employees and the business simultaneously. She closes with the offer of a discount valid through April 12 for the next cohort of the Profit from the Positive Certificate Program starting April 17, 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.

Like any business leader, I wanted to be informed of what my employees were up to, so I requested that all of us write status reports. But status reports can become boring and sometimes feel pointless. What does science tell us about making them both a joy to write and a joy to read?

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.

“If you could do only one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?” This question, posed by Greg McKeown stopped me in my tracks. Applying it specifically to work, I wondered what one thing I could happily do for the rest of my life. The answer, strangely enough, arrived in my head as a diagram.

This is part 2 of the 2015 annual holiday gift article, supplementing part 1 published yesterday that listed books and things. Today’s suggestions are about experiences and actions that can contribute to well-being, as well as ways to think about giving.

Since 2008, we have published an annual article with ideas for gifts for the holiday season. This year we collected enough ideas for two articles. Today’s includes ideas that you may want to order because we know time is getting short. Later this week the second article will include actions and experiences that don’t take quite so much forethought.

To feel truly happy, loving, joyous, confident, peaceful, grateful, loving,and all the other positive feelings, you have to allow yourself to feel the negative feelings (within a healthy range). I call this the sad and happy irresolvable dilemma. From my observation, this is a necessary lesson to get the full benefit from all other happiness lessons.

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.

Savoring what we’ve accomplished helps us experience gratitude for the good things in our lives, which puts us in a better frame of mind than just grinding it out. Then we can invest in the six areas that we know have value for us in the long run. These areas fuel us with the sustenance we need to make life worth living. When we do that, we change our to-do’s into ta-da’s.