Need to Lose a Few Pounds? Get Happier
About a decade and a half ago, I lost 50 pounds over the course of two years. People frequently asked me how I’d done it and were uniformly dismayed to hear that I hadn’t tried to. They wanted calorie-reducing tips, yoga-class recommendations and diet endorsements. Some of them probably wanted to hear how I suffered, sacrificing dinners […]
Heard of International Day of Happiness?
While some may deem happiness the silly, featherweight dominion of pop songs and animated movies—grumps may even criticize the quest for it as selfish—joy and well-being are serious business. “Happiness is not a frivolity or a luxury,” says Ban Ki-moon, secretary-general for the United Nations. Research has shown that happy people are healthier, live longer, […]
8 New Rules of Innovative Leadership
Historically, we’ve thought of leaders and innovators as belonging in two distinct categories. George Washington, Winston Churchill and Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Those are leaders. And legends such as Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison and Albert Einstein go in the innovators group, right? Well, maybe. But in today’s world, we can’t afford to separate the two, […]
The Bright Side of Our Darkest Instincts
“Happiness is pleasant, but it is problematic as an objective in life,” said Todd Kashdan, Ph.D., professor of psychology and senior scientist at the Center for the Advancement of Well-Being at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. “We should all stop trying to be so positive.” As someone who writes regularly about the science of happiness […]
5 Ways to Amplify the Good Life
“Just because you’re not down doesn’t mean you’re up,” says Fred Bryant, Ph.D., professor of psychology at Loyola University Chicago. You might be able to shake off stress and take disappointments in stride, but, Bryant asks, how do you deal with the good things that happen to you? He says your ability to cope with negative […]
Flow Makes Life Better—So Go with It (Here’s How)
The first time I experienced flow occurred during my high school geometry final exam. I’d never been a math person, but something about the tangible shapes, lines and corners made sense to me. I remember steadily writing the formulas, finishing problem after problem, flipping the page to start the next set, and repeating. The test […]
Bored? 6 Ideas to Embrace Your Curious Side
Being curious can bring a part of you—the excited, anything-is-possible part—back to life. Todd Kashdan, Ph.D., professor of psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va., and the author of Curious? Discover the Missing Ingredient to a Fulfilling Life and The Upside of Your Dark Side, calls curiosity the “engine of growth.” After all, curiosity […]
‘Help Desk’: Bringing Spiritual Wisdom to the Streets
Filmmaker and producer Gotham Chopra has been listening to his dad—the best-selling author of over 80 books on mind-body medicine, Deepak Chopra—give advice his whole life. So you’d think he’d be more than a little bored of the whole self-help field. But after dealing with much of his own skepticism about his father’s line of […]
Talk Your Way to a Better Mood
You go to the town parade on Sunday and want to share your weekend plans on Facebook. Which of the following is more likely to be your status update? A. “I’m loving the marching bands! So blessed to live in this wonderful town!” B. “Drinking a bottle of beer at the parade. Damn, I hate […]
The Science of Being Happy
When the Positive Psychology movement took shape only 15 years ago, some considered it a lark or even a vanity project of the man who led it: Martin Seligman, Ph.D., author of Authentic Happiness, Learned Optimism and the then-newly elected president of the American Psychological Association. He wanted to switch the centuries-old direction of his profession […]
Meditation—Your Way
Sting does it through yoga. Eddie Van Halen plays guitar to do it. Lou Reed counted beads. The poet Ted Hughes fished. Gisele Bündchen does it on the beach, and Oprah Winfrey does it every morning. Michelle Obama thinks all kids should learn how to do it. What is it? Meditation, and you should do […]
The Happy Office
Our personal workspace is shrinking. According to new data, the average square foot per person in the workplace dropped from to 225 in 2010 to 176 in 2012. Globally, more than half of companies expect each worker will have less than 100 square feet to call their own by 2017; North American workers were projected […]