How to get your voice heard

The Happiness Project- toss and organize

How to foil a bank robbery

Foiling a Bankrobbery

When in Highly Charged Situations.....

The Happiness Project - More Exercise

The Happiness Project- more exercise

Heart Attacks explained

Heart attack

The Happiness Project - Energy- More Sleep

This lady has a very practical approach to enhancing happiness.

Victor Frankl

Victor Frankl – Why we should believe in Others.


This man was a survivor of a Nazi concentration camp who became a profound thinker and teacher in psychology. His optimism about people and about life are inspiring. His assertion is that we can endure almost anything if we can find some meaning in it.

Angiogenesis- The key to cancer

Angiogenesis is a revolutionary find for our understanding of disease. This man is working to reconceptualize over 70 diseases in terms of the way capilliaries feed disease. He also gives us insight into how to eat to fight cancer.

Personal Lift off

When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.Henry Ford

Why we are not winning the war on Cancer

How do you procrastinate?

Procrastination





Procrastination from Johnny Kelly on Vimeo.

Crying - Roy Orbison and KD Lang

NonVerbal Communication

This video features clips from movies that make nonverbal communication clear.

Hallelujiah!

Daniel Goleman speaks of Compassion

When and why are we willing to help another? What prevents us from doing so? Just listen to Daniel Goleman as he helps us understand.

Brain and Emotion

Brain and Emotion (5 minutes)

Grief: A Universal Language

A Good Outline and Definition of Grief

Grief

Grief - more than just a human experience

Grief is a deep and human emotion. Loss affects our mental systems of attachment and can take the foundation of our lives out from under us. I was surprised to learn that we are not the only creatures on the planet who grieve.

Elephants Grieving

Can it be this EASY?

Erikson's 8 Stages of Life

Erikson’s 8 stages of life outline the decisions and the growth processes that occur at each point of life. Can you pinpoint the fork in the road that your life took you down? How did those choices shape you?

You are Like Stained Glass

You are like Stained Glass

“People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross



Beautiful Stained Glass work by artist Eileen McGann

Self Actualization

Another Youtube find. This man, Eldon Taylor expressed life's purpose better than I have ever heard it expressed before. I hope it is helpful to you too.

Emotions in the Brain

Rumination and the Work of James W. Pennebaker

What is Rumination?


When we do not talk to others about our problems we can almost wear a groove into our brain processes so that we automatically go over the same ground again and again. This is called ruminating.

ru•mi•nate
ˈru məˌneɪt Show Spelled  [roo-muh-neyt] Show IPA verb,-nat•ed, -nat•ing.

verb (used without object)
1. to chew the cud, as a ruminant.
2. to meditate or muse; ponder.
–verb (used with object)
3. to chew again or over and over.
4. to meditate on; ponder. (dictionary.com)
______________________________________

When we start to chew on a problem or issue or event and replay it and its outcome or possible alternatives over and over we use up our sources of inspiration and our resources for resolution. We even use up neurtransmitters. Work by James W. Pennebaker, a well respected Psychologist and author demonstrates that we can break the exhausting cycle of rumination by taking a new approach to our problems. He is the guy who put a lot of credibility into the idea of journaling. Journaling is recommended by many helping professionals because it sends the information, like the building blocks of a solution, down a different path in our brain inviting new ways of thinking about the issues which can then lead to better possibilities and perhaps solutions.

Pennebaker demonstrated that journaling a secret than you have been unable to tell others about or telling the secret or problem to an anonymous other can result in improved immune function. To clarify, his work demonstrated improvements in health when a long standing problem was expressed in a new way. That work is one of the reasons that I started this blog.

Katharine's Advice

Life can be wildly tragic at times, and I've had my share. But whatever happens to you, you have to keep a slightly comic attitude. In the final analysis, you have got not to forget to laugh.


Katharine Hepburn

Tony Robbins- Needs of the Personality and of the Spririt

Tony Robbins – needs of the personality and the needs of the spirit

Inspirational Speech

This was a random find on Youtube. I loved the story of the love his parents shared and the spunk his mother showed. Not really sure who this man is but I liked the story and thought you might too.

A Poem with a Message

Helen Fisher Tells Us Why We Love and Why People Cheat

Fisher describes love as a universal human drive (stronger than the sex drive; stronger than thirst or hunger; stronger perhaps than the will to live), and her many areas of inquiry shed light on timeless human mysteries, like why we choose one partner over another. Almost unique among scientists, Fisher explores the science of love without losing a sense of romance: Her work frequently invokes poetry, literature and art -- along with scientific findings -- helping us appreciate our love affair with love itself. In her research, and in books such as Anatomy of Love and 2004's Why We Love, Fisher looks at questions with real impact on modern life. Her latest research raises serious concerns about the widespread, long-term use of antidepressants, which may undermine our natural process of attachment by tampering with hormone levels in the brain.

"In hands as skilled and sensitive as Fisher's, scientific analysis of love only adds to its magic."
Scientific American

Thoughts of my Son on Mother's Day

Giving life to another person is an awesome privilege.

For Brendan


My son’s first word was ‘dee’
For ‘birdie’
A tiny boy standing at the window
In rapt attention, holding his breath
to hold the moment still and fixed.
The hopping, bopping bit of life before him
Suddenly started, lifted into the air
And flew to the sky and away
And he called after his fascination
‘Dee!” and looked to me to bring it back.
His first word meant come back, I want you
Come back! I need you, I am not finished,
I have not understood enough,
I have not learned enough,
I have not given all I could
And the wide blue eyes turned to me
“Dee” and I held my breathe at this miracle
Of speech and at the moment of discovery
but could not grant his wish.
As he held his breath for the transitory bird
That had captured his heart and mind
I now exhale at the window,
With echoing word, last words,
‘Bren’ come back. “Bren’
A man, now grown, now flown.
A moment of life that did not last long enough
But that was never meant to be caged
or Delayed.
He cannot, should not grant my wish.

The Miracle of Childbirth

Animation of child birth (one minute)

What Would You do If You were Invisible??

Excercise and Depression

Studies indicate that exercise clearly benefits those who are depressed. I know, you are already asking yourself: Where will I get the energy? Its just one of those unexplainable phenomena, you move and it moves you to a better place. Exercise and depression research shows almost anybody can benefit from exercise. Studies have shown it works with children, university students, women and the elderly (all among the toughest cases to solve).


The benefits which were experienced by the participants in these exercise and depression studies included...
• increased positive mood
• decreased negative mood
• improved vigor
• less anxiety
• less depression
• less anger
• less fatigue
• less confusion
• less stress
• improved motivation
• improved self-esteem
• less cynical distrust
• increased feelings of coherence
• increased feelings of social integration
• improved mental functioning

So try! Get moving- even just a little and you will find things a bit brighter, a bit more hopeful and a bit more doable. So walk your way out of depression!

A Promise

Do you feel this way?


"I like living. I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable, racked with sorrow, but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive is a grand thing." Agatha Christie

The human journey of life is so changeable. No matter what you are feeling right now, the one thing that I can promise is that things will change. It seems as though the human mind is incapable of sustaining raw emotion forever. Our synapses of our brains fire and then they need a rest - from sorrow or from bliss.

Alain de Botton -A kinder gentler philosophy of success

Alain de Botton examines our ideas of success and failure. He encourages us to move beyond snobbery to find true pleasure in our work. His books take on some of the fundamental worries of modern life (am I happy? where exactly do I stand?), informed by his deep reading in philosophy and by a novelist's eye for small, perfect moments. His newest book is The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work.  His goal is (through any of his mediums) to help clients learn "how to live wisely and well."

A Whole Lot of Inspiration

19 Inspriational speeches in 2 minutes

Hope and Sherwin Nuland

Hope and Sherwin Nuland 12 minutes