The Psychology of Wellbeing Best of 2011

These were some of my favorite articles of the year (in case you missed ’em!)

The First Rule of Happiness: You Do Not Talk About Happiness

If you saw the movie Fight Club, you may remember Brad Pitt as the colorful Tyler Durden, sharing the rules of Fight Club: “The first rule of Fight Club is you do not talk about Fight Club.”  (The second rule, by the way, is “you DO NOT talk about Fight Club.”)  Similarly, the first rule of happiness seems to be:  You do not talk about happiness.
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Science and Spirituality in the Spa

Science and spirituality.  These are two ideas that seem to live at opposite ends of the spectrum.  All of us in the spa industry have to find our places on this continuum, with medical spas on the scientific side all the way to meditation retreats and ashrams on the spiritual end of the spectrum.
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Dissecting the Spirit in Body, Mind, Spirit

In a previous article, I wrote about “Science and Spirituality in the Spa.”  I recognized the trend in the spa industry to become more scientific and evidence-based, but I cautioned that spas should perhaps move towards spirituality and not towards science.  After all, we already have a massive health care industry that is looking at health care scientifically, but we have very few entities in our society that look at wellness holistically, across body, mind and spirit.
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The Positive Psychology of Zombies: The Power of Perseverance

Everybody loves zombies.  Or at least it sometimes seems that way considering the strong foothold they have taken on popular American culture.  Zombies have been a staple of popular films (Wikipedia offers a comprehensive list of them here.)  Jonathan Coulton had a great song about corporate zombies that had some viral popularity (chorus: “all we want to do is eat your brains; we’re not unreasonable, I mean, no one’s going to eat your eyes.”) And zombies seem to be replacing vampires and werewolves as the popular subject of books.  One (surprisingly) successful book, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” (a liberally modified adaptation to an old classic,) has been translated into a video game, a graphic novel and soon to be a major motion picture.
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When Baby Comes First

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby in the baby carriage.”  From the time we are ten years old, we learn that this is the way things are supposed to go.  But it doesn’t always work out that way.  For some people, the baby comes first.
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(This last one is particularly relevant, as we are expecting our second son any day now!)

Which were your favorites?

Happy New Year everybody.

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