Exchange “Shy” for “Shine” A Quick Trick to Deepening Happiness When it is Already There In the past two days I’ve gotten to connect with two people who exhibited shyness over feeling positive emotions. I am fairly certain everyone has had this experience before. Rationally this does not make too much sense, especially when the […]
What A Little Known, 12-Year-Old Public Health Success Says About Our Daily Happiness Saving Lives in the Slums of Pakistan Over four million people live in crowded slums on the outskirts of Karachi—the largest city in Pakistan. In the early 2000s, one in ten children living in these poor neighborhoods died before the age of […]
Optimism is the Rational Choice The Science Behind Positive Thinking When it comes to happiness, the value of optimism is pretty obvious. If you have a positive outlook on life, you are, by definition, more happy. At least in the moment. But that sort of self-referential logic is a little incomplete, and it ignores the […]
How Increased Life Expectancy Could Lead all the way to Enlightenment The quest for immortality is as old as death, but scientists and futurists are saying that we are closer than ever. According to the World Health Organization, life expectancy grew 8 hours a day, every day, for the past twenty years, [1] and it shows […]
(photo by Erin Trieb Spending the Night in the Dallas Airport DFW shut down for hours thanks to some statewide Texas thunderstorms, pinning me in Southern California’s John Wayne airport. After a couple hours of waiting, I started to get a little worried that I wouldn’t make the transfer in Dallas to get back to […]
The idea that we don’t have enough space and resources on our planet for the growth of our population is not only unfounded, it produces unnecessary unhappiness. Replacing this myth with a more optimistic view is a more realistic view of the future, is more pragmatic, and can lead to a brighter day. Like most […]
It’s our best bet, and it’s already happening I believe that large businesses have the greatest leverage for worldwide transformation. Over half of the world’s largest economic entities are multi-national corporations(1); Wal-Mart alone employs more people than the population of Qatar (2). The global value we place on money and work means these entities have […]
The Power of Consuming Good News I propose that we live in the most loving, compassionate, and aware time in the history of humanity. I believe that the average person is far better off right now than the average person was even a very short time ago, even looking at objective things that almost everyone […]
This article originally posted on DailyHap.com It is better to trust in the LORD than to put confidence in man. Psalms 118:8 What makes you happy? Spending an evening with a close friend? Dancing? A nice craft beer? Going shopping? Winning a game of volleyball? Watching a favorite TV show? Cooking a delicious meal?
There are many studies that show attending religious services can lead to longer, happier lives. The funny thing is, our most revered religious figures don’t promise happiness. Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword,” and Buddha’s second noble truth essentially says that happiness inevitably leads to sadness because it never sticks around. Even modern spiritual teachers like Adyashanti say, “Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier.”
What would the world be like if people had a tendency to witness experience, rather than label and judge it? What if politicians made decisions with deep empathy, tolerance, and compassion for beings at all stages of development and all manifestations of life? What if the people writing our textbooks operated within an expansive time frame […]