Sonja Lyubomirsky
Sonja Lyubomirsky is a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside and author of The How of Happiness, a book of strategies backed by scientific research that can be used to increase happiness.[1] She is often quoted in news articles about positive psychology and happiness.[2][3][4] In the book The Only Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need, a criticism of self-help books, Lyubomirsky's The How of Happiness is praised as a self-help book that has claims backed by empirical data.[5] Lyubomirsky is also an associate editor of the Journal of Positive Psychology.
11 Amazing Thank You Notes From Famous People
After a short stint in the New York theater world, comedienne Carol Burnett landed a job as a regular on The Garry Moore Show in 1959. She caught the attention of CBS executives, who offered her her own series in 1967. With her husband Joe Hamilton at the helm, Burnett broke new ground as the first female host of a TV variety show. The Carol Burnett Show ran for 11 seasons and earned a handful of Emmy Awards in the process.
There Are Two Kinds of People In The World: Those Who Think There Are Two Kinds of People In The World and Those Who Don’t
This page is dedicated to Robert Benchley’s Law of Distinction, namely, that “There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don’t.” Purpose: To provide a completist-like scrapbook for this oft-quoted expression of duality. Methodology: This page is periodically updated with new “there are two kinds of people” statements. Where a statement is attributed source, it’s shown in quotations. Some of the statements are clustered by themes, but mostly, it’s a random assortment. The page also includes sayings that deviate from the strict “there are two types of people” formula, in order to keep things interesting.
The Anatomy Of A Thank You Note – Krrb’s Guide To Expressing Gratitude With Style ~ Krrb Blog
First off, if you can get your hands on a kid who is just learning to write and then convince said kid to write (or make a good go at writing) "Thanks" on a piece of paper that you can put into an envelope and send, you are golden. Your job is done. Who is not going to be touched by a child's early attempts at writing? Nothing says thank you like a note written by a 4 year old.
What It's Like on the Autism Spectrum - James Hamblin
Intense stories of family with autism spectrum disorder, as submitted by Atlantic readers barockschloss/flickr In our print magazine this month, Hanna Rosin tells the story of her son Jacob's diagnosis with Asperger syndrome, in the context of the psychiatric community's recent change in the definition of the disorder to part of what's now known as autism spectrum disorder.
Money <em>can</em> buy happiness… if you spend it on other people
“This planet has – or rather had – a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn’t the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.” – Douglas Adams In this pithy paragraph, the sorely missed Douglas Adams sums up a puzzling paradox of modern life – we often link happiness to money and the spending of it, even though both proverbs and psychological surveys suggest that the two are unrelated. Across and within countries, income has an incredibly weak effect on happiness once people have enough to secure basic needs and standards of living. Once people are lifted out of abject poverty and thrown into the middle class, any extra earnings do little to improve their joie de vivre.
5 examples of how the languages we speak can affect the way we think
Keith Chen (TED Talk: Could your language affect your ability to save money?) might be an economist, but he wants to talk about language. For instance, he points out, in Chinese, saying “this is my uncle” is not as straightforward as you might think. In Chinese, you have no choice but to encode more information about said uncle. The language requires that you denote the side the uncle is on, whether he’s related by marriage or birth and, if it’s your father’s brother, whether he’s older or younger. “All of this information is obligatory.
To predict what will make you happy, ask a stranger rather than guessing yourself
Want to know how much you’d enjoy an experience? You’re better off asking someone who has been through it, even if they’re a complete stranger, than to find out information for yourself. This advice comes from Daniel Gilbert from Harvard University, who espoused it in his superb book Stumbling on Happiness.
Why we should rethink what we've been told about consciousness
Consciousness is one of the great mysteries of science – perhaps the greatest mystery. We all know we have it, when we think, when we dream, when we savour tastes and aromas, when we hear a great symphony, when we fall in love: it is surely the most intimate, the most sapient, the most personal part of ourselves. Yet no one can claim to have understood and explained it completely. There’s no doubt it’s associated with the brain in some way but the nature of that association is far from clear.
The Glee Club
My first assignment was the gratitude visit. It goes like this: Pick a person in your life whom you'd like to thank, someone who has meant a lot to you. Write this person a letter. After you've written it, call the person and ask to visit.
Uncanny valley
In an experiment involving the human lookalike robot Repliee Q2 (pictured above), the uncovered robotic structure underneath Repliee, and the actual human who was the model for Repliee, the human lookalike triggered the highest level of mirror neuron activity.[1] Etymology[edit] The term was coined by the robotics professor Masahiro Mori as Bukimi no Tani Genshō (不気味の谷現象) in 1970.[5] The hypothesis has been linked to Ernst Jentsch's concept of the "uncanny" identified in a 1906 essay "On the Psychology of the Uncanny".[6][7][8] Jentsch's conception was elaborated by Sigmund Freud in a 1919 essay entitled "The Uncanny" ("Das Unheimliche").[9]
Using the new Positive Psychology
Ben’s Top 11 Positive Psychology Internet ResourcesBy Ben Dean, Ph.D. 1. Website for Reflective Happiness The most interesting new website in Positive Psychology is Marty Seligman's "Reflective Happiness" site at www.reflectivehappiness.com.
This pearl shows the difference between real and fake happiness and how it affects your wellbeing. This is a good source when considering the differenct between long term and short term happiness. by c.gallagher595 Dec 13