Surprising connections between our well-being and giving, getting, and gratitude. Jan. 19, 2013 — We all know that getting a good night's sleep is good for our general health and well-being. But new research is highlighting a more surprising benefit of good sleep: more feelings of gratitude for relationships. "A plethora of research highlights the importance of getting a good night's sleep for physical and psychological well-being, yet in our society, people still seem to take pride in needing, and getting, little sleep," says Amie Gordon of the University of California, Berkeley. "And in the past, research has shown that gratitude promotes good sleep, but our research looks at the link in the other direction and, to our knowledge, is the first to show that everyday experiences of poor sleep are negatively associated with gratitude toward others -- an important emotion that helps form and maintain close social bonds.
" Sleeping to feel grateful A large body of research has documented that people who experience gratitude are happier and healthier. Story Source: Ed and Deb Shapiro: Why Spontaneous Kindness Makes You So Sexy. The Dalai Lama says kindness is his religion. Wikipedia says that a random act of kindness is: "... a selfless act performed by a person or persons wishing to either assist or cheer up an individual ... There will generally be no reason other than to make people smile or be happier.
" Being sexy means something is delicious, fun, delightful. It makes us feel good with a smile in our heart. Put that together with kindness, and we have the ultimate "ahh" feel good action! We first heard the saying practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty many years ago when we were at Findhorn, the renowned spiritual community in Scotland. Perhaps it is the use of the world random that is misleading, and that it would be easier if we used the word spontaneous instead. Be generous.
What stops us from acting this way? If we feel uncomfortable with generosity, we can get stuck in uncertainty, fear or unworthiness. Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. 6 Ways to Increase Testosterone With Exercise. Testosterone is a steroid hormone that helps you increase lean muscle mass and bone density – and beyond simply helping you have a nice body, it’s also crucial for good health! Low levels of testosterone, in both men and women, can lead to a number of serious health conditions, including increased risk of depression, low sex drive, obesity, and osteoporosis. Sponsor: Go to NoNoBen.com to try the NoNo and get a free $100 discount card, a $50 facial kit & travel case. That’s NoNoBen.com. Men with low testosterone tend to have higher rates of heart disease, depression, and even dementia – and a decrease in testosterone levels in women can lead to a loss of muscle mass and weight gain (especially when paired with the rising levels of estrogen that you learned about in my episode on Hormonal Imbalances and Weight Gain). 6 Ways to Increase Testosterone With Exercise Tip #1: Sprint Multiple studies have shown that you can boost your testosterone levels by sprinting.
Tip #2: Lift Heavy Stuff. Make Your People Happy, Like John Lewis Does - Happy Ltd. Charlie Mayfield, Chair of John Lewis I often ask groups where they have found the best customer service. Two companies stand out and always come up: Apple and John Lewis. And when lists are published of the UK’s most admired businesses you can be sure that John Lewis is at or near the top.
So I felt greatly honoured yesterday to be speaking alongside Charlie Mayfield, Chair of John Lewis (at Tomorrow’s Company “Tomorrow’s Value” event). The Ultimate Purpose And he did not disappoint, speaking about “Employment Ownership, Happiness and Business Success” he was clear that “what matters most to us at John Lewis is the happiness of our people.” Indeed this belief is enshrined in the founding principles of the company: “Our ultimate purpose is the happiness of partners through their worthwhile and satisfying employment in successful business” At John Lewis all 80,000 staff are partners. If focusing on making people happy works for John Lewis, would it work for your organisation? Democracy. Struggle For Smarts? How Eastern And Western Cultures Tackle Learning : Shots - Health News. Chinese schoolchildren during lessons at a classroom in Hefei, east China's Anhui province, in 2010.
STR/AFP/Getty Images hide caption itoggle caption STR/AFP/Getty Images Chinese schoolchildren during lessons at a classroom in Hefei, east China's Anhui province, in 2010. STR/AFP/Getty Images In 1979, when Jim Stigler was still a graduate student at the University of Michigan, he went to Japan to research teaching methods and found himself sitting in the back row of a crowded fourth-grade math class.
"The teacher was trying to teach the class how to draw three-dimensional cubes on paper," Stigler explains, "and one kid was just totally having trouble with it. Stigler knew that in American classrooms, it was usually the best kid in the class who was invited to the board. "I realized that I was sitting there starting to perspire," he says, "because I was really empathizing with this kid. But the kid didn't break into tears. 'Struggle' The mother and the son are discussing books.
Garden Stuff. Free at Last! Saying Good-Bye to 20 Years of Debt. Twenty years ago I was a freshman in college. I was a poor kid from a poor family, but my roommates came from wealth. In order to fit in, I went out and picked up a department store credit card. I bought some new clothes, an electric shaver, and a bottle of cologne. From that day on, I’ve been in debt. Getting hooked My debt grew slowly at first. By the time I graduated from college in 1991, I had acquired two additional credit cards. Deeper in debt To escape impending disaster, I went to work for my father, something I had vowed never to do. When my father died in 1995, I received a small life insurance settlement. Turning things around During the summer of 2004, Kris and I bought a new house. I began to feel overwhelmed. First, my friend Michael recommended that I read Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin.
The method to my madness Using the ideas I learned from personal finance books, I set out to eliminate my debt. I set goals. I read everything I could find.
Start. The Rx for Innovation. It’s not just a stale platitude. If you want to be at peak performance, you have simply got to get a handle on your eating, sleeping, and dietary habits. This applies to business managers as well as Olympic athletes. Innovation in the workplace is fueled by good neurochemical balance in the brain. And this requires doing the right thing for your body. The latest scientific research shows us that the brain operates along two different neural pathways. One pathway takes it from a state of high physiological arousal provoked by stress, where emotions like fear and anxiety abound, and attempts to move it to a place of comfort. Because these two pathways are instinctively wired in the brain, stress dampens the ability to be creative. In a typical night, you’ll dream only part of the time. So how do you know how much deep sleep you’re getting?
In my case, the culprit was the seemingly harmless screen on my iPad. Diet also affects your neuromoderators. Finally, a word about caffeine. » The Zen of Work. ‘When you do something, you should burn yourself up completely, like a good bonfire, leaving no trace of yourself.’ ~Shunryu Suzuki-roshi Post written by Leo Babauta. At work, we often face stressful situations, dreaded projects, irritating co-workers, frustrating bosses, an overwhelming number of tasks and messages, boring work we don’t enjoy. These problems have one simple cause: we’re holding on. The work itself isn’t stressful — it’s just action that’s taken or that needs to be taken. It’s our reaction to the work that causes the stress: our holding on to a wish that things were different. It’s not the constant stream of interruptions that is frustrating — they are just events that happen around us, like a leaf falling or a bird flying by.
Our co-workers and boss aren’t the problem either: they’re just other human beings trying to do the best they can in this world. So what’s the solution? This is the Zen of Work. Learning to Let Go Letting go allows the problems to disappear. Make an Appointment with Your Worries. You wake up at 2 AM worried about the next day and can't get back to sleep. The thoughts that are going through your head demand that you respond now and get the answer immediately. Later in the day, tired from losing sleep, you begin to worry about the next night, the next week, and the doom that seems to hang on the horizon. Wherever you are, whatever time of day---you worry. Because you respond to your intrusive thought with repetitive thoughts about how to handle the thought, you never quite get away from your worry. What can you do? Make an Appointment with Your Worries What if you decided that you would put off the worry until later? If a worry shows up before or after your WORRY TIME, you jot it down, put it in your pocket and get around to it later.
How will this help? You will learn that you can actually set aside a worry until later. Patients often tell me that they won't be able to do it. Try it now. You have set it aside. Do psychological wellbeing and caring for the environment go hand in hand? | Guardian Sustainable Business | Guardian Professional. Social and personal psychologists typically list a handful of key actions that can help improve personal wellbeing but would they really stand up to being tested for planet friendliness too? One of the most respected of such lists is the government's Five ways to wellbeing which came out of research co-ordinated by the New Economics foundation, as part of the Foresight report. The five actions are: 1. connect (with people, not technology)2. be active3. take notice 4. keep learning5. give Connect When we have good relationships with people, we frequently end up sharing resources such as houses, meals or lifts.
A house that keeps four people warm rather than one, or an oven that cooks a meal for a group, uses significantly less energy per person. "The evidence is absolutely clear," says Felicia Huppert, director of the Wellbeing Institute at Cambridge University, and a contributor to the Foresight report, "that social isolation increases ill health and death rates.
" Be active Take notice Give. A History of Happiness by Darrin M. McMahon, Ph.D. We've forgotten much of what older traditions knew about happiness. posted Oct 01, 2010 Agnolo Bronzino's 1564 painting, Allegorie des Glücks (Allegory of Happiness) depicts Happiness positioned between Justice and Prudence. The wheel of destiny lies at her feet. I think it is probably fair to assume that most Americans today consider happiness not only something that would be nice to have, but something that we really ought to have—and, moreover, something that’s within our power to bring about, if only we set our minds to it. We can be happy, we tell ourselves, teeth gritted. We should be happy. We will be happy. That is a modern article of faith. Roots of happiness Happiness has increasingly been thought to be more about getting little infusions of pleasure, about feeling good rather than being good, less about living the well-lived life than about experiencing the well-felt moment.
Language reveals ancient definitions of happiness. What does this linguistic pattern suggest? Darrin M. BBC Radio 4 - Four Thought, Series 3, Episode 22. Achieving Happiness: Parents need to let children make mistakes - CapitalGazette.com: Achieving Happiness. As another school year starts parents renew their annual efforts to help their children do well. This year they have some help from one of the country’s leading educational psychologists, Dr. Madeline Levine, who just published her latest book “Teach Your Children Well: Parenting for Authentic Success.” With debates raging on the best ways to help children succeed, the Stanford University professor offers insightful advice based on the research in best parenting practices. Dr. Levine has found that “the optimal parent is one who is involved and responsive, who sets high expectations but respects her child’s autonomy.” Her studies show that these “authoritative parents” are able to raise children who attain the best academic, psychological, and social outcomes.
Dr. It turns out that praising a child’s talents and capabilities shakes their self-confidence because it puts the child at risk of losing their “smart” status as the problems become increasingly difficult. What isn’t positive psychology? | LVS Consulting. It’s been a very busy summer with the CPPA conference and several other work-related events that filled many of the sunny days of June, July and August. With the arrival of September, stay tuned for a new announcement and offer from LVS Consulting! In the meantime, I’d like to use this space to write a response to an article that came through my inbox while I was on vacation.
Here’s a link to the article, and if there had been the ability to reply directly on the website, I surely would have done it (as I do elsewhere): In case you’re too busy to click through to the actual article, it starts like this: Visualise your goals. Think positive. Cut the word ”impossible” out of your life. Can you spot the problem with this opening? The author correctly states in the first paragraph that these examples are self-help and “positive thinking”. Positive Thinking vs. Positive Psychology. Photo Credit: rocket ship via Compfight “The Power of Positive Thinking” was a landmark book by Norman Vincent Peale that came out in 1952. The idea of positive thinking grew in the 70s and has continued to be a popular new age prescription as a way of handling whatever happens to be ailing you. The positive thinking movement continues to be strong today, culminating in recent years with the massive success of “The Secret” a book and movie which prescribes tapping into the “law of attraction” to attract good things in your life simply by thinking about them.
In the last decade, we have also seen the growth of positive psychology, a new branch of mental science which looks at the sunnier side of life (the study of human flourishing.) Positive psychology focuses on positive aspects of wellbeing including (but not limited to) positive emotions, happiness, hope, optimism and other constructs that relate to the idea of positive thinking. Photo Credit: Alexandre Normand via Compfight Peale, N. Positive Psychology in Sports: The Surprising History of the Paralympics. We Just Saw the Olympics The 2012 Olympic Games gifted the host nation with the feel-good factor and now that they’re over many of us have been experiencing withdrawal symptoms or POD – post-Olympic depression as it’s been called (to counteract this POD, see tomorrow’s PPND article on the 2012 Olympics by Bridget Grenville-Cleave).
Even if we are suffering from an optimism bias in the midst of a deep recession, there is no doubt that the Olympics has been a force for good and has already left a positive legacy. We now have athletes appearing in the media as role models, who show what can be achieved with effort, tenacity, and grit – rare qualities in an era that often favors instant gratification and fame based on personality rather than talent or achievement. Double gold medallist Mo Farah, speaking after his win in the 5000 metres, attributed his triumph to ‘hard work and grafting.’
This was no overnight success on a reality TV show. Paralympians and Goals Paralympians as Olympians. It's More Important to Be Kind than Clever - Bill Taylor. 12 Steps to Happiness. Dreamland: What Happens While You Sleep and How It Affects Your Every Waking Moment. How To Be Unhappy. Is Your Parenting Style Based On Faulty Thinking? First Steps in Regulating Your Emotions | The Emotionally Sensitive Person. Be More Productive. Shorten the Workweek. Dreaming of a Life Change? - The Huffington Post. You Probably Have Too Much Stuff. » An Intentional Life. The age of information overload. The Secret to Grace Under Pressure. Common reasons why small businesses fail. Manifesto-happiness-large.gif (1000×1415) How To Be Unhappy: 10 Surefire Ways To Be Unhappy in Life. How To Be Happy: 10 Timeless Principles for Lasting Happiness. Manifesto-unhappiness-large.gif (1000×1415) Welcome to A Good Week | A Good Week: 18-24 June 2012.
Pearltrees tips.