Patty Onderko

Communicate Positively with the Most Challenging Person You Know

Whether it’s your friend, parent, co-worker or spouse, we all have someone in our lives with whom it seems nearly impossible to communicate well. Certain personalities can confound our best efforts to speak positively and have conversations that make us feel satisfied instead of strained. In her upcoming book, The Ecstasy of Surrender: 12 Surprising […]

Your Happiest Day Ever

Don’t go chasing waterfalls. You shouldn’t have to win the lottery, skydive or move to Hawaii to live your happiest life, either. You’ll find excitement in those adventures, for sure, but lasting joy comes from the habits you practice every day. If you’ve got a bucket list, by all means, go ahead and leap out […]

Happy Negotiating

There are two components to any negotiation: 1) The substance—whether you’re negotiating over how often you should visit the in-laws, cookies or a better contract with one of your partners; and 2) The people—from your spouse to your 5-year-old to your business competitors. Negotiation skills training has long focused on the substance of negotiation: How […]

Tipping Toward Happiness

You don’t need a doctorate to understand that it’s better to be more positive than negative. But in 2003 two Ph.D.s set out to determine exactly how much positivity is ideal. Psychologists Barbara Fredrickson (a pioneer of the Positive Psychology movement) and Marcial Losada used a mathematical model to discern the “tipping point” when it […]

Dr. Happiness Is In

Ed Diener, Ph.D., a psychology professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, is an award-winning author dubbed “Dr. Happiness” by admirers all over the world. Diener has spent a lifetime researching ways to measure and understand personal happiness, and was one of the first academics to seriously embrace a field that, in the early ’80s, […]

How to Create the Next Big Thing

Find inspiration outside your office. Great ideas don’t come from staring at a drawing board. Get out and look at things. When an idea comes, write it down and play with it until it works. Don’t sit and expect ideas to come. Think about the things you use every day. Although it is harder to […]

Liar, Liar, Pantsuit on Fire!

When I worked in an office as a magazine editor, the staff had weekly update meetings in which

Ordinary Person

In a letter she wrote home to her older brother in Quitman, Texas—the small town where Si

Overwhelmed with Choices?

“Choice is a wonderful freedom,” says Barry Schwartz, author of

Dream Maker

“Keep it small.” That’s the very un-Hollywood mantra of Hollywood exec Bill D