Is it better for your happiness and health to belong to an organized religion or to be more generically “spiritual”? Does it matter? Being religious generally refers to believing in a specific deity (or group of deities) and the regulations of a particular religion and tends to take place in a relatively formal, organized context. […]

How can you tell when you meet a truly happy person? What signs do you look for? What indicates to you that someone is truly content with their life and themselves? Genuinely happy people: Feel gratitude. Happy people appreciate all of the good things in their lives, rather than focusing on what they perceive they lack. […]

For many of us, there comes a time when it becomes clear to us that our pursuit of happiness through amassing material wealth and power does not do the trick. Whether or not we’ve attained some level of external security, that inner peace and contentment we’ve sought feels tenuous and overly reliance on situations that […]

Whether or not you set resolutions for the New Year, you probably would like to maintain or increase your happiness quotient. If so, the following tips may prove to be helpful: Write down three positive things that happened to you each day and think about how and why they occurred. Maybe they seemed to happen […]

When asked to name their number one priority, people tend to list personal relationships, good physical health, meaningful employment, wealth, a comfortable home, sufficient leisure time… the list goes on and on. However, just about everyone would agree that they want to be happy. At the same time, many of us are concerned that we […]

So many definitions and opinions exist about what constitutes happiness. Is it a feeling? A mood? An attitude? A way of life? Let’s turn to the definition of happiness from Sonia Lyubomirsky, researcher and author of The How of Happiness and The Myths of Happiness. Lyubomirsky states that happiness is “the experience of joy, contentment, […]

Whether you consider yourself a social butterfly, more inclined to one-on-one interactions, or prefer solitude, there’s no denying that the quality of your personal relationships affect your levels of happiness, well-being, and physical health. We are wired for connection. As the saying goes, “No man is an island”. Consider research done on over 200 undergraduate […]

What if you could increase your happiness by doing a simple daily five-minute exercise? And if all you needed was a piece of paper and pen or your laptop computer? And what if you could feel the benefits of this exercise within a week or two? Research by Dr. Martin Seligman, the renowned psychologist known […]

“I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.” (Albert Schweitzer) It turns out that those who serve are a whole lot more likely to be physically healthy, too, down to […]

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face… You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”  Eleanor Roosevelt Stress has been getting a bad name. Almost daily, we read about another research study demonstrating the destructive effects of stress on our […]