European positive psychology conference in Amsterdam: what proportion of well-being is genetically determined? (3rd post)
4th July 2014
I have already written a couple of blog posts about this 7th European Conference on Positive Psychology - the first on pre-conference workshops about supervision & about relationships and the second on love, national happiness league tables, and life satisfaction assessment. After the coffee break I went on to, what …
European positive psychology conference: love, national happiness comparison tables, & life satisfaction assessment (2nd post)
3rd July 2014
I wrote yesterday about the two pre-European Conference on Positive Psychology (ECPP) workshops I went to on "Positive supervision" and on "Positive relationships". Then in mid-afternoon on Tuesday, the conference proper began. It was heralded by Taiko drummers and a cluster of brief welcoming speeches. Apparently there are 920 people …
European positive psychology conference in Amsterdam: workshops on supervision and on relationships (1st post)
2nd July 2014
The 7th biennial European Conference on Positive Psychology (ECPP) began here in Amsterdam yesterday. Four years ago, I went to the 5th European Conference in Copenhagen. It was pretty special and I wrote extensively about it in this blog - see, for example "European positive psychology conference in Copenhagen: arriving, …
Five 'prescriptions' for flourishing more fully
25th May 2014
(this blog post is downloadable as a handout both in Word doc and in PDF format) Professor Ken Sheldon is a bit of a hero of mine. I've followed his research for many years and have great respect for his work and what I've gleaned about the way he leads …
The importance of 'emotional' not just 'rational' empathy
12th May 2014
I'm just back from four days away with friends down in Cumbria. I have been going to these long residential Spring weekends on the edge of the Lake District for well over twenty years and have written a lot about them too ... see for example the sequence of posts …
Ten ways of coping now my heart's constricted with fear: introduction (1st post)
3rd May 2014
It’s about six in the morning. A cuckoo is calling repeatedly and I’ve just woken. I’m warm in my sleeping bag, but it’s quite cold in the tent. How am I feeling? Frightened! Externally I’m fine, but when I look inside there’s a constriction. When I explore it more awarely …
"With singing and banners": trauma, conflict, resilience and poetry
7th April 2014
It's coming up to the two year anniversary of one of the major potential traumas of my life - see "Walking in Skye & Kintail: mountain rescue, helicopter winches, and avoiding death & PTSD." I felt there was so much to learn from this experience that I try to re-read …
Emotional intelligence: the potential value (and potential cost) of identifying and naming what we're feeling
17th March 2014
"Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” Rainer Maria Rilke "Letters to a young poet". I'm a member …
Improving therapeutic success rates: how to generate personal practice data to rate oneself using the UK IAPT targets
9th March 2014
I wrote a blog post yesterday about recently published IAPT psychotherapy data and how it provides a fascinating set of targets which one can use to assess the effectiveness of one's own therapeutic practice. When one gets down to the nitty-gritty of what data from one's own practice to collect …