Pathway 1 “Pleasure”

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.

Chronic stress has been linked to many health disorders, including depression, heart disease, cancers, and Alzheimer’s disease. But the stress response engages a number of adaptive, complementary systems fine-tuned to find a balance between stress and solace. Take pleasure seriously, and sow it generously.

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….

Dr. Barbara Fredrickson and Sharon Salzberg share the stage at the Rubin Museum in New York City talking about meditation practices as part of the Brainwave Series exploring the intersection of mind and matter. One of the most powerful practices is the loving kindness meditation that involves cultivating and sending out a sense of love and well-being to all sentient beings.

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.

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…”

You are in front of the traditional, very tempting Holiday buffet. If you choose self-regulation over temptation, chances are you will be satisfied and energetic. If you give in and pig out, you will experience a bloated and guilty feeling. So what do you do? Here are my top 10 strategies for healthy buffet-management.

Did you know that the average American puts on 10 pounds between Thanksgiving and Christmas? And how much do you figure the average Holiday shopper has spent per year for the past 10 years? Try $961! We are observing epidemics in obesity, inactivity, and indebtedness. But here’s the good news.

Sometimes I feel like I have this life-thing all figured out. The roof leaks: no problem. The dog pees on the Christmas presents: primo-fodder for our holiday letter! But then there are other days … I catch a glimpse of cockroaches scurrying away as I crack open the cabinet doors, and it DOES bother me. I stress about them all day.

What if research were to show that people can effect enormous positive changes in their lives and in the lives of others using a tool they have with them at…

A few weeks ago, my wife, Teresa, my younger son, Patrick, and I had the opportunity to go salmon fishing with Captain Wayne Michie on the Mickey Finn out of Horseshoe Bay, Vancouver, Canada. It was an overcast day, sprinkling rain now and then, and we didn’t get so much as a nibble. It was great fun, and I got a lesson in happiness from Wayne.

Have you ever noticed how food influences mood? What should you eat to be alert and persuasive for the big presentation? Or to be a divine conversationalist for the cocktail party? What, then, is the optimal brain food for good moods? Here are the four golden rules…

Today on the TED (technology, entertainment & design) website, I came across the twenty minute Seligman presentation. It dates from way back in 2004. In it Seligman outlines his three paths to happiness (pleasure, engagement and meaning), describing each one in some depth before summing up by comparing psychology’s problems to those which exist for technology, entertainment and design.

Here is what will happen to you when you read George Vaillant’s book, Spiritual Evolution: During the chapter “Joy,” you may cry. During the chapter “Love,” you will want to call home to say Hi. You will be inside a colossal head fake – a situation in which you’re learning but it seems like you’re playing.