A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Most Australian children are stuck at home due to the outbreak of COVID-19. They need to find ways to socialise, do their school work, exercise and entertain themselves. It’s not surprising parents may be hearing “I’m bored” a lot more than before. People hate being bored. So much so that in one study, one-quarter of [...]
Young people are demanding change. In the last few days, young Indigenous activists and their supporters blocked parliamentarians in Victoria, B.C., from accessing the provincial legislature and led waves of protest across the country. For some young people, climate change is urgent. For others, gun violence is a crisis. From truth and reconciliation to inclusion [...]
If you feel you consistently fail at your New Year’s resolutions, you are not alone. Despite our good intentions, we’re pretty poor at changing our own behaviour. We continue to smoke, eat or drink too much, and exercise too little, all of which affect our health and well-being. In trying to change behaviour (including our [...]
As a trainer, I consider it a personal failure if I'm unable to motivate a client to make important health and lifestyle changes. Sure, there are people who just don't care, but I can spot them from 100 metres away. I'm not talking about them. I'm referring to the clients who really want to lose [...]
Sometimes it feels that our culture has nearly reached a saturation point in its focus on the pursuit of happiness: thousands of books, blogs, and websites purport to help us get there, with techniques ranging from the empirically validated (exercise, mindfulness, gratitude) to the rather murky (which often involve paying someone something.) But more and more research is starting [...]
Sadness is not usually valued in our current culture. Self-help books promote the benefits of positive thinking, positive attitude, and positive behaviors, labeling sadness as a “problem emotion” that needs to be kept at bay or eliminated. With the advent of fMRI imaging and the proliferation of brain research, scientists have begun to find out [...]
As a new school year begins, your child will most likely have a new teacher. With a new teacher comes a new opportunity for your child to learn the academic and personal skills important for school - and beyond. From an educational psychology perspective, there are lots of ways teachers greatly influence children’s outcomes. These [...]
Flickr Images While the little things in life can certainly make your day, a growing body of research says keeping your eye on the long game can make a major difference in how much you enjoy your life. One recent study found that living your life with a sense of purpose could make you less [...]
Have you ever been to Enfield? I had never even heard of it until I was 23 and living in London for graduate school. One afternoon, I received notification that a package whose arrival I had been anticipating for days had been bogged down in customs and was now in a FedEx warehouse in Enfield, [...]
Pixabay Images Any dog owner will tell you that we can use a food reward as a motivation to change a dog’s behaviour. But humans are just as susceptible to rewards too. When we get a reward, special pathways in our brain become activated. Not only does this feel good, but the activation [...]
