"Love makes labour light.  Love alone gives value to all things.  "


Posts tagged with 'positive psychology'

Writing (& speaking) for resilience & wellbeing 3: personal growth

24th January 2010

They taught me more about, in the midst of all this trauma and suffering and uncertainty - of remaining true to who you are, and what love can be about in those moments. And there are three or four of those that really stand out very strongly, whose lives were …

Berlin weekend: approaches to happiness

12th December 2009

Berlin, Saturday morning. We flew in from Edinburgh pretty early yesterday. Direct flight. Easy. Guilt over air travel a little allayed by buying carbon offsets through ClimateCare. We're staying in a Miniloft, one of the really nice set of self-catering apartments designed by Matthew Griffin & Brita Jurgens, an architect …

Assessing and encouraging enjoyable activities

25th October 2009

What we've seen in our work is that most people don't give themselves permission to live until they've been given a terminal diagnosis. Stephen Levine I came across an interesting research study recently: Pressman, S. D., K. A. Matthews, et al. (2009). "Association of Enjoyable Leisure Activities With Psychological and …

Some upcoming conferences in CBT & in Positive Psychology

20th October 2009

The autumn edition of the BABCP magazine CBT Today carries information about a wealth of courses & conferences. Here are half a dozen that look interesting, including three - children & families and a couple of European conferences - that aren't mentioned in CBT Today: ACAMH-BABCP Conference, Croydon, London. Cognitive …

Goal renewal boosts wellbeing: third post

30th August 2009

In a series of linked blog posts over the course of this month, I've discussed writing for health and wellbeing, assessment of one's own level of wellbeing, and using a broadened Best Possible Selves exercise. In today's post I take these ideas a step further by linking them to the …

Goal renewal boosts wellbeing: second post

23rd August 2009

I wrote a week ago about assessing one's wellbeing level. It makes sense to do this before exploring how much the following goal renewal suggestions boost your sense of wellbeing and associated life satisfaction. How might we renew our goals? Obviously there are many options here. One effective one is …

Goal renewal boosts wellbeing: first post

16th August 2009

Here's a method that's exceptionally likely to both boost our overall level of wellbeing and move us towards the goals we feel our most important in our lives. It will take a bit of effort and commitment - so don't fall into the trap highlighted by Thomas Edison's comment: "Opportunity …

Recent research: six articles on wellbeing – meaning in life, reappraisal, positive emotions, and neighbourliness

23rd July 2009

Here are six research articles (see below for abstracts and links) loosely falling into the overall area of wellbeing. Boyle, Barnes et al report on the association between purpose in life and mortality in older people. They found that greater purpose in life was associated with considerably reduced mortality even …

Exeter conference day 3: positive psychology, imagery symposium, compassion lecture, & closing remarks

18th July 2009

Third and last day of the full conference. In fact we finish at lunch time today. Up, then an interesting conversation about bipolar disorder at breakfast. It's fun how I can chat with almost any of the well over 1,000 conference participants and almost certainly we'll have a whole lot …

“Smile intensity in photographs predicts divorce later in life”

5th July 2009

I do think that Matt Hertenstein and colleagues came up with an eye catching title here: Hertenstein, M., C. Hansel, et al. (2009). "Smile intensity in photographs predicts divorce later in life." Motivation and Emotion 33(2): 99-105. [Abstract/Full Text] [Free Full Text] Abstract: Based on social-functional accounts of emotion, we …