06 Jun 3 very interesting stories about happiness and positive psychology
3 very interesting stories about happiness and positive psychology
Happiness is…spending time in nature
Being outside in nature makes people feel more alive, finds a series of studies published in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of Environmental Psychology. And that sense of increased vitality exists above and beyond the energizing effects of physical activity and social interaction that are often associated with our forays into the natural world, the studies show.
“Nature is fuel for the soul, ” says Richard Ryan, lead author and a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester. “Often when we feel depleted we reach for a cup of coffee, but research suggests a better way to get energized is to connect with nature,” he says.
The findings, adds Ryan, are important for both mental and physical health. “Research has shown that people with a greater sense of vitality don’t just have more energy for things they want to do, they are also more resilient to physical illnesses. One of the pathways to health may be to spend more time in natural settings,” says Ryan.
Read more about finding happiness in nature – here
Finding happiness through loss
Kathryn Britton recently wrote (for Positive Psychology News Daily) about using positive psychology to deal with a sudden loss as she mourned her dear friend Linda. Grieving is an individual process, but while no two people have an identical experience of losing a loved one, there are several patterns that emerge. I_ã_d like to offer some observations about how Positive Psychology is at work while people heal after a loss, even in the long term.
Today, Sherri Fisher writes about “Healing Loss through Positive Psychology”. Happiness is not just about enjoying the good times; it’s also about getting through and learning from the tough times. Read more here
Happiness is…about $60,000 per year!
Money can’t buy happiness — but lack of it can certainly make you progressively miserable, says one Nobel Prize-winning economist.
Daniel Kahneman, one of the founders of the now-popular field of behavior economics, delivered a fascinating TED talk earlier this year entitled “The Riddle of Experience vs. Memory,” and got into an interesting discussion with TED host and curator Chris Anderson.
Arguing that experience is essentially divided into the “experiencing self” and the “remembering self,” Kahnemen suggests that happiness is essentially an act of deftly balancing the two. (They don’t always match up, it turns out.) Here’s Kahneman:
We know something about what controls satisfaction of the happiness self. We know that money is very important, goals are very important. We know that happiness is mainly being satisfied with people that we like, spending time with people that we like. There are other pleasures, but this is dominant. So if you want to maximize the happiness of the two selves, you are going to end up doing very different things. The bottom line of what I’ve said here is that we really should not think of happiness as a substitute for well-being. It is a completely different notion.
Read more from the Huffington Post…here
And that’s about it for now…enjoy your Sunday which I hope is full of health and happiness!