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. […]

What constitutes trauma or adversity? Essentially anything that causes physical or psychological pain or injury. This includes personal illness or injury, witnessing the same in someone else, natural disasters, enduring abuse, the death of someone close to us, job loss, addiction, financial problems, relationship difficulties, and incarceration. The range and magnitude of trauma is vast. […]

With mindfulness meditation gaining so much popularity over the past few decades, and seemingly even more so in the past ten or 15 years, it can seem as if just about everyone has taken up the practice. According to a recent research article (Burke et al, 2017) based on data from the 2012 National Health […]