This is a guest post by Jane Bongato As a child, I was always a bit of a loner, although not necessarily by choice. I was tall for my age and a bit awkward and uncoordinated when it came to taking part in sports at school. This meant that I…
Martin E. P. Seligman is known as the father of the positive psychology movement. In positive psychology, the idea is to focus on helping people to be happier rather than solely focusing on treating conditions. Helping people to be happier is a huge driver for me and because I’m not…
As discussed in my book and many posts on this site, it takes 21 days to form a habit—and breaking down large goals into manageable pieces, implemented over 21-day periods, is the way to real, lasting change. Last May, we created a worksheet to help you to track your progress…
I was pleased to recently have a piece I wrote published on the Pick the Brain web site. Pick the Brain publishes a lot of terrific articles and I highly recommend that you check it out. Here's an introduction to the piece I wrote, and a link to the full…
Last week I wrote about the importance of celebrating your progress. I encouraged you to celebrate the New Year by celebrating your 2012 progress. And I promised that this week I would share a list of some of my 2012 areas of progress. If you’ve been reflecting on your progress on…
New Year’s Day is a time when many people make resolutions. If you’ve read my book or my blog posts, you know that I’m a positive person. So, it’s with a bit of difficulty that I put in writing this negative point: If you’re like most people who make New…
When I started to write this post I was going to talk about what I read this year. Then I found myself thinking that I might have read more if I hadn’t watched much more TV than I have in many, many years. That led me to start thinking about…
This week, a post I wrote was published on the terrific web site, The Bridge Maker. Here’s the first part of the piece, with a link to the rest… As a blogger, it occurred to me as I approached the day when my youngest would be going off to college…
Steve Mankoff and I met during our freshman year of college, 32 years ago. On and off, for years, I’ve suggested that Steve kick his habit of drinking a huge amount of diet soda. Last year, he finally decided to try. I asked Steve if he wanted to share his…
I listed things that made me smile for several weeks, then things on my gratitude list for three weeks. Now I'm shifting to another happiness strategy: listing accomplishments. Human nature causes us to be more inclined to reflect on negatives than positives. To counter that natural tendency, be sure to…
I’m a big sports fan and have always enjoyed the Olympics. I remember the unbeatable Cuban boxer Teófilo Stevenson, the Russian weightlifter Vasily Alekseyev, and the Michael Phelps of my childhood, U.S.A. swimmer Mark Spitz. (I actually wore the same Speedo bathing suit that Mark Spitz did, with its U.S.A. flag-design.)…
If you've read my book or my "Welcome" post and other blog posts, you know that it takes 21 days to form a habit, and that breaking down large goals into manageable pieces, implemented over 21-day periods, is how to make real, lasting change. In addition to the worksheet for your…