Dear readers of Psychology of Wellbeing: Thank you for being a reader of my blog over the years. This blog has been an amazing place for me to process things that I have learned (or wrestled with) in understanding the science of human wellbeing. But those of you who have been with me for a […]
Technology Detox in Kitzbuhel
The Hills are Alive . . . with the Sound of Wellness I am just arriving to Cesena Italy for this year’s Global Wellness Summit and I find myself reminiscing about the summit from two years ago in Kitzbuhel, Austria. Kitzbuhel, a small town in the Austrian countryside, was the perfect setting for a […]
Facebook and Mental Health
Today’s guest post is by Michael Kaplan, a video essayist with a YouTube channel called OneHandClap dedicated to original ideas on interesting topics. In an ironic turn, the recent controversy surrounding Facebook and Cambridge Analytica eclipsed another controversy brewing months before. As 2017 came to close, the million-dollar question surrounding the company was, Does Facebook make us […]
Raising Digital Natives
Warning: this post is at least twice as long as the typical articles on this blog. I hope you find it is worth your time . . . As a father of two boys, now 6 and 7 years old, I’m thinking a lot about what it means to be raising digital natives in the […]
Do Digital Detoxes Really Work?
Jocelyn Brewer, a psychologist who specializes in issues with technology, recently published a provocative article suggesting that “digital detoxing is the tech equivalent of a juice cleanse—and neither of them work.” I happen to be a long-time fan of Jocelyn’s (I’m taking the liberty of using her first name as I feel I know her—she […]
Why The Gun Debate Will Never Be Resolved
Do you remember the Sneetches? In one of Dr. Seuss’s most popular books, he told about a society with Star-Belly Sneetches who had “bellies with stars” and Plain-Belly Sneetches who had “none upon thars.” The Star-Belly Sneetches were the privileged elite and the Plain-Belly Sneetches were discriminated against, not being invited to “frankfurter roasts, or […]
Yoga on a Plane: Moving in a Sedentary World
The internet seems to be pointing its moral outrage this week at a woman on a plane who was captured on video doing yoga <<gasp!>> in the aisle on a plane. Another passenger took a video of the “incident” and it has gone viral, raising a discussion about what kind of behavior is appropriate […]
Anxiety Girl to the Rescue
They say that people fear public speaking more than they fear death, and I can kind of see why. Perhaps one of the most stressful, panic-inducing experiences of my life was agreeing to emcee my company’s holiday party shortly after I had joined the group. Being a somewhat experienced public speaker, I wasn’t all that […]
Happy Together: Love and Positive Psychology
I fell in love with my wife while I was studying Applied Positive Psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. It may be that these two events occurring simultaneously were a coincidence, but I actually think they are related in a deep way. I was studying things like the importance of positive relationships to health and […]
The Truth about Life on Facebook
A friend I hadn’t talked to in a few years called me out of the blue the other day. “So,” she asked, “is your life as good as it seems on Facebook?” I smiled, because my life does look pretty good on Facebook. I have a beautiful family, I travel to exotic locations, I’m active […]