A social enterprise providing education and information to protect and enhance the mental health of young people
Pixabay Images All we can ever hope to do, Sigmund Freud once wrote, is “to change neurotic misery into common unhappiness.” This pessimistic statement from arguably the most influential psychological theorist of modern times captured the mood that prevailed in psychology through most of the 20th century. That is, most psychologists, psychiatrists, and [...]
Pixabay Images Happiness is a state we all want to achieve, but it often seems elusive. Have you ever felt happy one moment and then thought that it won’t last, which makes you feel less happy in the next moment? How frustrating is that? What is happiness? Is it a state of mind, a mood, or a way [...]
Giuseppe Lami/EPA On this day in 1930, the Mother Superior of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, sent a letter asking every member of the sisterhood to write an autobiography. She offered few further instructions, and so left it up to each member of the order to decide how to [...]
Images: MichaelBlann/Getty Everyone has heard “Just look on the bright side!” or “Happiness is a choice—so choose to be happy!” Countless self-help books on choosing happiness line the shelves of bookstores; You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero has been on the New York Times best-seller list for 32 weeks; and The Power of [...]
Flickr Images 1. Comparing yourself to others. Comparison has been called the thief of joy and for good reason — every minute you spend wishing you were someone else is a minute of your own life wasted. Comparing yourself to others also misses the whole point of your life — to be you, [...]
Pixabay Images So many of us have been raised to believe we can’t show any weaknesses; so many of us have learned to hide any and all of our shortcomings believing that if they were known to and seen by others we’d be judged negatively. Yet we all have them (i.e., weaknesses and [...]
Flickr Images In the 1990s, a psychologist named Martin Seligman led the positive psychology movement, which placed the study of human happiness squarely at the centre of psychology research and theory. It continued a trend that began in the 1960s with humanistic and existential psychology, which emphasized the importance of reaching one’s innate [...]
Pixabay Images Meditation is just one strand of new “positive education” methods starting to build momentum and gravitas in schools. The key idea is to teach good practices such as mindfulness and gratitude that will promote resilience and, it is thought, help children lead healthier psychological lives. Until recently, these might have been [...]
Google Images Schools have great intentions with regard to wellbeing, but how often do they measure their own effectiveness at developing it? How well do schools consistently teach and develop targeted areas of wellbeing with the goal that when a student leaves their care, he or she is more skilled in specific life [...]
Pixabay Images On a recent sodden weekend walk, I tried to cheer myself up by thinking: it’s not so bad. Not the slugs or the sky or the rain making its way down a gap between neck and waterproof. But I couldn’t do it. Losing heart, I turned back. Glump, glump, glump through the [...]
