Empowering people to make strengthening choices
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” Oscar Wilde In the mid-1980s, a number of psychologists and cardiologists studied 120 men from San Francisco who had recently had a first heart attack. The researchers provided training to change the personalities of these men from type A (aggressive, […]
The following excerpt from my book, The Hero’s Choice, tells the story of when Hal (main character) started thinking about his guiding principles. Donald, Hal’s coach and mentor had taken him up a mountain trail and left him with a task of pondering his life in an old, forgotten cemetery.
Moments after Air Florida’s Flight 90 left the runway at Washington’s National Airport, it was clear that the Boeing 737 was not going to fly. As it shuddered and stalled, the co-pilot said, “We’re going down,” and the pilot answered grimly, “I know it.” With a deafening crash it slammed into the Fourteenth Street Bridge […]
Harvard Men’s Study In the late 1930s, researchers at Harvard University conceived of a project to understand happiness and personal success. Known as one of the longest running studies of all time, they began following the lives of 268 men who entered Harvard in the late 1930s up to the present day (most of them […]
You have a hundred million receptors in your eyes to enjoy the magic of a leaf, a snowflake, pond, child, cloud, star, rose. Twenty four thousand fibers in each ear vibrate at the laugh of a baby, sound of the wind, the waves upon a rock, the call of a robin, children at play. You […]
For years people assumed that IQ was more predictive of life and occupational success than any other variable. After all, doesn’t it stand to reason that the smartest people will outperform others most of the time? It’s logical, but not true. In fact, recent research has found that people of average IQ will outperform those […]
Life involves stress, even heartache, for all of us. Furthermore, studies of people who are happier than average show that they experience the same number of failures, disappointments and pain as anyone. They are happier not because life treats them differently, but because they use different strategies for dealing with their difficulties, strategies that can […]
I’ve been writing, recently, about the theme of gratitude as a key to happiness. Not only research but personal experience attest to its value and transforming power. And best of all, it is available to all of us in abundance. All we need to do is train our minds to see the goodness of life. […]
