This week and next, children of all ages will be sharpening their pencils (or I guess nowadays this should be “powering up their ipads”) and heading back to school. You can almost hear the groans of agony, as the joy of summer becomes a faded memory and students set aside their personal passions and social [...]
I have a confession to make: I’ve never been a big believer in specific goals. My “anti-goal” philosophy is not one I’ve shared on the blog previously, in part for fear of rejection or ridicule. I mean, everyone knows how important goals are, and there’s tons of research on goal theory to prove it. But [...]
Each year participants at the Global Spa and Wellness Summit are asked to submit some answers to questions about the biggest trends facing the spa and wellness industry. Here were my responses . . . What are the most significant global issues facing us today? 1. Planetary wellbeing: Whether we cause global warming or not, the planet has [...]
“Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.” ― George Carlin Researchers from the University of Switzerland, Fabian Gander, Rene Proyer and Tobias Wyss shared a poster presentation at the last world congress of the International Positive Psychology Association. They noted that while humor as a character strength has been observed to be “robustly [...]
For most of my life, I have lived near the ocean. Being near the shore has always had a calming and even spiritual effect on me. (see my recent article on “Spirituality, Wellbeing, and Maui Moments.”) There is something about the vastness of the ocean, and in particular the sky over the ocean (especially at [...]
In a previous article (see “Innovation Lessons from the Idea Factory,”) I wrote about Jon Gertner’s book about the quest for innovation by Bell Labs. Up until the 1980s, Bell Labs was the research and development wing of AT&T and was a huge driver of modern innovation including the transistor, the laser, digital communications and the [...]
Our minds don’t work as well as we think they do. Don’t get me wrong–our minds are incredible. Every day we make hundreds of decisions, process tons of sensory information, and perform complex analyses and calculations. It is easy to be so amazed by the complex accomplishments of our grey matter that we overlook many [...]
Yesterday was the launch of my new book on The Psychology of Spas & Wellbeing. For those who don’t know, I work in the spa industry and a lot of my research in psychology is driven by trying to understand how we can create holistic wellbeing experiences for guests in a spa setting. In a [...]
My new book on The Psychology of Spas & Wellbeing is now available! It is currently available as an e-book in Kindle or PDF versions but I am also looking into a print version in the future. This book evolved out of my capstone thesis project in the Master of Applied Positive Psychology program at [...]
Some of the best years of my life were spent living on the island paradise of Maui, Hawaii. It is hard to explain what it feels like to be constantly exposed to so many experiences of transcendent beauty. For the islanders, they are so commonplace that they have a name: “Maui moments.” Anyone who has [...]
