Alden Tan is a young rockstar blogger (26 years old) who reached out to me interested to share his thoughts on The Psychology of Wellbeing. After getting to know him a bit, I found his passion for life infectious and was inspired by his commitment to chase his dreams. If you like what he shares below, then check out the raw, unedited version of Alden on his blog or sign [...]
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Dear Mom, You Were Right, I Was Wrong
Dear Mom, It is hard to fully appreciate your parents until you become one yourself. Although I consider myself to be a relatively mature, well-adjusted and even wise adult in my 40s, I did not fully understand nor appreciate your contribution to my life until having my own children in the past two years. Having a child is life-changing—certainly one of the most impactful things to have ever happened to [...]
You Too Can Become a Musician: The Psychology of Talent
Do you have musical talent? Do you wish you did? A small percentage of us seem to have the gift of music but most (if not all) of us wish we had it. Whatever our favorite musical genre is, there is a natural tendency to admire our favorite musicians, listen raptly to the incredible sounds they are able to produce with their voice or their instrument, and to wish or [...]
Why First Impressions Don’t Matter Much
A great article by Andrea Petersen appeared in the Wall Street Journal Travel section last week outlining the “Hidden Ways Hotels Court Guests Faster.” The article focused on all the ways that different hotel brands are trying to dazzle their guests with an excellent first impression. Hotel industry executives (myself included) were likely to be very interested in this article as we often talk in this business about the importance [...]
Anxiety: It’s Not What You Have, It’s What You Do
“If we don’t recognize what is going on in our heads we find it easy to assume that somehow our anxieties come to us ready made from the outside. It can feel as though they are happening to us and that they are caused by something outside of us.” According to Charles Merrett, clinical psychology as a treatment for anxiety doesn’t really work the way we’d like it to. And [...]
An Angel and a Hero: Courage Personified
A few weeks back, I wrote an article called, “You Could Lose it All,” about confronting the risk of tremendous loss. Coincidentally, the week I wrote that article, my mother almost “lost it all” in a freak car accident on a stormy night. She was driving home from San Francisco to San Jose on a Friday night at 9:30 p.m. in the fast lane on I-280 in a torrential downpour. [...]
The Opportunity Cost of Television
Television is awesome. Compared to fifty years ago, there is such a diversity of programming that there is literally something on TV to appeal to just about everyone at almost every hour of the day. Not only does it serve as the perfect “idiot box,” the place to tune out the mind after a busy day at the office, but the programming has gotten more clever, with shows that engage [...]
Are You Afraid of the Pain?
People often ask me how I do everything that I do. Writer, blogger, teacher, father, spa industry leader . . . I wear many hats (and try to wear them well.) I usually don’t know how to respond when someone asks me what my secret is, but I think I’ve finally figured it out: I’m not afraid of the pain. I was thinking about this last week when I went [...]
Filling the Limbic Void: On the Evolution of Love
It’s Valentine’s Day and love is in the air! I thought today would be a good day to explain why there is a heart in the middle of The Psychology of Wellbeing logo. The atom symbol, of course, represents science, to convey the fact that this blog is generally based on a spirit of scientific inquiry towards wellbeing (i.e. not just about sharing personal beliefs and stories but rather considering [...]
Finding Wellbeing on Facebook
“If we only wanted to be happy it would be easy; but we want to be happier than other people, which is almost always difficult, since we think them happier than they are.” –Montesquieu (from “The Anti-Social Network” on Slate.com) Recent research out of Stanford University’s psychology department has stimulated a lot of theories that Facebook could be making us all miserable. The reason? Facebook makes us victims of social [...]
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