Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
At his Stanford University commencement speech in 2005, Steve Jobs, CEO and co-founder of Apple and Pixar, tells a heart-warming tale of some of pivotal moments in his life. Told in three stories – the first about ‘connecting the dots’, second on ‘love and loss’ and the third about death, Steve urges us to pursue […]
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This Emotional Life
This Emotional Life is a three-part series that explores improving our social relationships, learning to cope with depression and anxiety, and becoming more positive, resilient individuals. Harvard psychologist and best-selling author of Stumbling on Happiness, Professor Daniel Gilbert, talks with experts about the latest science on what makes us “tick” and how we can find […]
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Exercise Builds a Calmer Brain
We’ve known for a long time that exercise reduces stress … but new research on rats described in The New York Times is showing that exercise actually builds calmer brains. “It looks more and more like the positive stress of exercise prepares cells and structures and pathways within the brain so that they’re more equipped to […]
Continue reading A curious mind is an active mind
Curiosity means being open to the unfamiliar, and to whatever emotions may result, then arguably any strategy for achieving happiness – for guaranteeing happy feelings, rather than sad ones – is intrinsically incurious. Train yourself to be curious and seek the unfamiliar.
Continue reading Get well in the garden
We’ve always known that fresh air does you good, but now it seems that getting up close and personal with gardening can improve your overall well being. Studies from the University of Bristol indicate that simply touching “friendly bacteria” in soil may alter behaviour in a way similar to that of taking antidepressants. Meanwhile, research […]
Continue reading Relationships are the only things that matter
For the first time, a journalist, Joshua Wolshenk, has been given access to the archives of one of the most comprehensive longitutudinal studies in history. For 72 years, researchers at Harvard have been following 268 men who entered college in the late 1930s through war, career, marriage and divorce, parenthood and grandparenthood, and old age. […]
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Sing your way to happiness
Singing is not only fun, it offers an antitode to stress, illness and depression. “When you sing, you breathe in a different way so you use more of your total lung volume. This means there’s a tendency to increase the airflow so your blood is more oxygenated. When that happens, you are more alert. Singing […]
Continue reading Understanding men’s mental health
“Men’s mental health is a particularly salient issue in these troubled times. Worldwide, more than one million people kill themselves each year. In the UK, men are four times more likely than women to kill themselves and there have been over 6,500 male suicides in the past six years. Incidence data from the last century […]
Continue reading Happy Tapper
Happy Tapper have launched an iphone application which is a Gratitude Journal. Gratitude keeps coming up in studies as a major source of long-term wellbeing and happiness. The application just gives you another way to keep track of the good things, people and events in your life on a daily basis. A new study shows […]
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