Pathway 2 “Engagement / Flow”

So you have some extra cash in your pocket. Do you spend it on the latest gizmo or on going to a restaurant with friends? How does your choice affect…

Are your employees eager to work for you each and every day? Few leaders can answer this question with a confident yes. Here’s a tip to help you be one of them. This technique enables you to adjust your practices so they support the leader you want to be and helps you reinforce the behaviors you want to see. Equally important, it keeps you accountable for the behaviors you are encouraging in others.

Last month, a reader commented on a PPND article “research has shown that pleasure, engagement and meaning contribute equally to life satisfaction for Americans whereas engagement was only important for…

Word count: 795; Reading Time: 3.5 minutes. A good friend of mine could be the next Martha Stewart. In fact, let’s call her Martha. Martha loves to cook and does…

If changing just one of your daily habits was enough to make you more alert, efficient, energetic, productive and motivated, would you implement that change? According to William Dement, illustrious discoverer of REM sleep, “Sleep deprivation is the most common brain impairment.”

Something happens to many people when they hit adulthood. Life becomes serious. It loses that lightness and freedom it had during childhood. It is a choice (conscious or unconscious) that adults make based on how they interpret what happens to them and the actions they take.

Laughter is a powerful way to bring that lightness of being back into one’s life.

It was not an easy decision for his parents to let Blake leave high school and it continues to be a hard choice. They are attacked by critics —most of whom they’ve never met. If the Peebles had taken the expected path and insisted that their son stay in school, no one would be giving them flack – even if their son was bored, depressed or learning less. Many would tell them they were doing the right thing.

In February, PPND announced our first ever contest. We asked readers to submit a photograph that captured the meaning of love. Dave further inspired our contest by offering the top three contestants a copy of Positivity by Barbara Fredrickson! And the winners are….

As a kid, did you love taking a bath every day? I didn’t. Fast forward 25 years later, taking a shower is so ingrained in my habits that I couldn’t possibly fathom the idea of going to work without a prior healthy dose of body wash. …When a man at least ten years older than my Dad raced by me effortlessly in a 3-mile run, I realized that physical activity is an important part of personal hygiene. Why did I resist a practice I know is good for me, and then how did I break out of the resistance?

When did we start calling kids “self-motivated” if they responded to someone or something outside themselves? Doesn’t the word “self” mean that it comes from the individual himself? Is someone truly self-motivated if they are doing something to get a reward from someone else? Teens who are not top students may appear to be unmotivated when we look only at their school performance.

I have had the good fortune of being born into a large, Italian family, for which I am utterly and completely grateful…. Communitas is a ritual-building process that inspires and revitalizes while reaffirming relationships within a community, state University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues. According to Anthropologist Victor Turner, building communitas is an essential step to activating a community to healthy family functioning, healthy child development, and other dimensions of well-being.

If you met Denni Chipollini before one of his speaking engagements, you’d see his communicative smile and feel his positive attitude. But you’d never guess what the story behind his energy is.

How do you want to feel in your life? In your work? Doug Newburg interviewed hundreds of world-class performers, including athletes, business leaders, artists, and surgeons, to find out what made them tick. A consistent pattern emerged from their stories.

In 1845, Thoreau went to live for three months in the woods near Walden Pond. When asked why, he responded, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived… I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life…”

Why is it that we are so fearful to talk about love at the office? Let’s explore love at the office as a good thing for a minute, and before you lift your brow, no, I’m not talking about having a love affair at the office. I am rather suggesting that those who experience care and companionship in their work environment have a sustainable, competitive advantage over those who don’t.

Think about the leaders you’ve followed in the past. Which one has had the most positive influence in your life? What three words best describe what this person contributes to your life? In a recent study bringing more clarity on this complex topic, Gallup interviewed over 10,000 people and asked them the two questions you’ve just answered.

The vast majority of people, particularly, working parents, struggle to combine work and family. They report feeling guilty, rushed for time, and overloaded. The work-family balance concept assumes a scarcity model.

This holiday season I’d like to give you something meaningful. Since I am a teacher at heart I want it to be something that offers a practical and engaging learning experience. With that in mind, this month my gift to you is an article that presents four of MAPP’s favorite lecturers speaking about applications of some of their signature research.