Get Happy, Be Happy, Stay Happy

The study of success isn’t rocket science, it’s neuroscience!

On my travels around the blogosphere this morning I discovered SharpBrains. I immediately went to the Neuroscience Interview Series and read the interview with Dr. Brett Steenbarger, Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, SUNY Medical University, in which he discusses success and the importance of emotional management.

“Elite performers are distinguished by the structuring of their learning process… It is important to understand the role of emotions: they are not “bad”. They are very useful signals. It is important to become aware of them to avoid being engulfed by them, and learn how to manage them.”

The interviewer asked what differentiates elite performers from the rest. Dr. Steenbarger replied:

The elite performers are distinguished by the structuring of their learning process. From a relatively early age, they are engaged in an intensive learning process that builds upon their natural talents. They find a niche—a field that makes use of these talents—and become absorbed with a deliberative and systematic learning process that provides them with continuous feedback about their performance.

The recipe for success seems to be talent, skill, hard work, and opportunity. In contrast, many people who don’t end up performing at a high level were driven mostly by practical reasons to enter that field and are not motivated to follow the same level of intensive and systematic training. (What Brett is saying reminds me of the Learning Cycle that Professor Zull outlined a few weeks back).

Success isn’t a matter of lucky breaks or magical thinking. It may seem ludicrous to point this out, but lots of people riding the Law of Attraction Train believe otherwise and are on the track headed to disappointment.

(I noticed that this site promotes HeartMath products for stress management and emotional management. I recommend the emWave. See my related post.)

I’m up to one of my old tricks. I have a project that is about to go into the stage where I’ll be required to do a lot of things outside my comfort zone. I don’t know if the project will be worth the time and effort, so it’s hard to push through this stage.

When the going gets tough, the tough go blogging! (I don’t like to shop.)

What a great way to kill an hour, or two hours — shoot, sometimes an entire day.

Why do we procrastinate? It’s a way to avoid something unpleasant — usually emotions that are uncomfortable.

This About.com article asks, which style of procrastination fits you?

1. Organizing thoughts and actions and keeping on track with plans is difficult. (People with ADD/ADHD may fall into this category.)
2. Tasks seem overwhelming so it’s futile to even try.
3. Hostile feelings towards someone cause you to want to punish them by putting things off.
4. Routine and schedule causes you to feel rebellious.
5. You fear disapproval.

I’m hitting 4 out of 5. No wonder I’m sitting here blogging.

Tips for beating procrastination include managing your time, breaking up large projects into smaller tasks, pushing through and doing it now, scheduling reward time (and rewards like chocolate?), anxiety-busting exercises, and changing defeatist thinking.

Ya know what? All this reminds me to check in with my “will do” and “won’t do” profile (Kolbe A Index). What if I’m simply attempting to act against my natural grain? I’m a great researcher and problem solver, very flexible, and highly imaginative. My Kolbe report says that I have a knack for:

• seeing solutions in my mind
• visualizing possibilities
• conceptualizing what could be
• having discussions without having to be face-to-face
• making decisions without having tangible evidence

Ah hah. I think I know what’s causing me to hold back. I can see my project so clearly in my mind and know it’s a fantastic solution to a problem. My challenge, however, is getting others to see it. In fact, there’s a key person who needs to see the light in order for this thing to fly — and my experience so far with this person doesn’t give me much hope. So, perhaps I’m dealing with feelings of futility. Which I don’t have to give into, right?

If there’s a will there’s a way…

Thoughts are… things. They are sculptors of the brain. And, dare I say, they are sculptors of the body.

Eight Buddhist adepts and 10 volunteers who had had a crash course in meditation engaged in the form of meditation called nonreferential compassion. In this state, the meditator focuses on unlimited compassion and loving kindness toward all living beings.

As the volunteers began meditating, one kind of brain wave grew exceptionally strong: gamma waves. These, scientists believe, are a signature of neuronal activity that knits together far-flung circuits — consciousness, in a sense. Gamma waves appear when the brain brings together different features of an object, such as look, feel, sound and other attributes that lead the brain to its aha moment of, yup, that’s an armadillo.

Some of the novices “showed a slight but significant increase in the gamma signal,” Prof. Davidson explained to the Dalai Lama. But at the moment the monks switched on compassion meditation, the gamma signal began rising and kept rising. On its own, that is hardly astounding: Everything the mind does has a physical correlate, so the gamma waves (much more intense than in the novice meditators) might just have been the mark of compassion meditation.

Except for one thing. In between meditations, the gamma signal in the monks never died down. Even when they were not meditating, their brains were different from the novices’ brains, marked by waves associated with perception, problem solving and consciousness. Moreover, the more hours of meditation training a monk had had, the stronger and more enduring the gamma signal.

It was something Prof. Davidson had been seeking since he trekked into the hills above Dharamsala to study lamas and monks: evidence that mental training can create an enduring brain trait.

From LifeTrek Provision 11/11/07: Empathy Wiring

Enlightenment. It sounds so lofty, so full of promise. Who wouldn’t want to be full of light, wisdom and love? Who wouldn’t give their eye teeth to walk around in a perpetual state of bliss, no longer shackled by fear, anger, worry, and other unpleasant feelings?

Sign me up! As long as you don’t call that peaceful state Enlightenment. Or hook it up with a religious or spiritual system that I need to buy into.

The other day I read Bill Harris’ comments about human development (e.g., Integral theory), religion and spiritual states on his new blog. Bill is the director of Centerpointe Research Institute and developer of Holosync audio technology, which helps you to create deep states of meditation. (Bill appeared in The Secret, but don’t let that scare you. He’s one of the few who actually has the facts straight about how to create the life you want. It’s not magic.)

Here’s what he writes (in part) about human development:

Human development takes many forms–humans undergo moral, cognitive, ego (or self), interpersonal, emotional, values, and spiritual development–just to name a few areas of development. A thread running through all these streams of development is our ongoing attempts to discover meaning in our existence, to find some sort of significance.

I suspect that you’ve probably thought about this. Here we are: vulnerable, alone but also part of a larger whole. We’re here for a finite amount of time, and then we’re gone. On one hand, we have a certain amount of control over our existence, while in other ways we’re subject to forces we can’t predict or control. So we ask questions such as, Who am I? Why am I here? What it all about? Why do we die? Why is this happening? How do I know what to do next? How do I relate to the rest of the world, and to other people? What is Truth? How do I know what is right and what is wrong? Can I be happy? How? And so on.

In the beginning, of course, we aren’t asking such existentially complex questions. But from the moment we’re born we do start trying to make sense of our existence. How we do this changes and develops over and over as our environmental situation changes–hence the idea of developmental levels. These are levels of meaning-making, of understanding. You might even say that they are levels of wisdom. …

There are many ways to slice these developmental steps. One broad way would be to talk about four basic divisions: preconventional, conventional, postconventional, and transcendent. Let’s look at these. … <snip>

This fourth stage, or perspective, could be termed transcendent, or unitive. Those at this stage come to realize that all objects–including abstract ideas such as the self, the ego, and even the idea of three-dimensional space and time–are human-made constructs, based on layers upon layers of symbolic abstraction. There is an awareness that language presupposes many things that may not be true about reality, and traps us in a view that may not always serve us.

For instance, the whole idea of subject and object as separate things–one of the main premises in language–is seen by those at the unitive stage as constructed rather than actual and real. Subject and object, a unitive thinker would say, “go together.” They are actually one thing, not two. In fact, all polarities created by the mind (and language) arise together: up makes no sense without down, good makes no sense without bad, me makes no sense without not-me. All of these polarities, say unitive thinkers, are arbitrarily constructed.

At this transcendent stage what I and many others have called a witness perspective allows the person to stand aside and observe what is without adding meaning, without creating a mental map of what is being observed, or at least view things with a realization that all meaning being added is just something made-up. A person at this level realizes that the mental map we make of reality isn’t reality itself, that the map is not the territory it represents.

At this level the existential questions I’ve posed are seen from a very cosmic perspective, where the typical separate self-identity is no longer seen as the essence of the person. Instead, everything is seen from a universal or cosmic perspective–you might say, from an experience of being “one with” everything. Consciousness or rational awareness assumes either background or foreground status depending on one’s momentary attention. This stage is often spoken of as “enlightenment” or “self-realization.” It is estimated that less than 1% of people are at this level of development.

http://www.centerpointe.com/blog/?p=7#more-7

I liked most of his comments. But I found myself wanting to object to the Transcendent, or enlightenment, stage. For instance, I have no desire to be one with, say, my pencil or computer mouse. (I’ll make an exception for chocolate.)

Why are less than 1 percent of humanity at this level? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? (Oops, I’m giving away my stage of development.) What exactly is enlightenment, and is it something every person should strive to attain? Is it even possible for every single person?

Sometimes the striving to reach “enlightenment” can be a terrible waste of time at best; tragic at worst.

From my perspective, enlightenment has nothing to do with being filled with light or gaining special insight or wisdom. It has nothing to do with being “spiritual” or “religious.” “Enlightenment” is simply a brain state — and it can be easily explained by neuroscience.

Today while googling “brain science AND enlightenment” I found these remarkable articles by Todd Murphy, a behavorial neuroscientist and psychologist.

Forgetting About Enlightenment
Enlightenment as a Neural process. A forensic look at the Buddha’s transformation

(Murphy does support meditation because it trains the mind to be aware of positive and negative emotions. Then you can choose which to cultivate and which to prune.)

The Spiritual Personality
The personalities of people who are involved with spiritual practices like prayer, meditation and ceremony are shaped by the altered-state experiences their spirituality creates. The part of the brain that manages our states of consciousness, the temporal lobes, is a little busier in these people than most, producing personality traits that appear over and over among spiritually oriented people.

This article is especially interesting to me. Not too long ago I encountered two lovely people who are on a spiritual path. Unfortunately, they lost touch with reality — big time. They divorced their mates and moved in together, causing their family and friends much pain and suffering. They had trouble carrying on a normal conversation with others, used spiritual lingo that their families couldn’t understand, and seemed spaced out. Their thinking was illogical. “Intuition” and “guidance” became the new rule. Personal hygiene went out the window.

Murphy may provide an explanation:

Another personality trait that spiritual practitioners almost always seem to show is a fascination with spirituality. It may seem to be too obvious to say, but what it less obvious is that spirituality dominates over other kinds of concerns more than other pursuits do. What seems to be happening is that the repeated experience of altered states is so novel, and infused with such a sense of meaningfulness that things which lack meaning in them lose their impact.

Another personality trait that can emerge after enough time in an altered state has two names. In medical terms, its called hyperemotionality. In spiritual terms, its called open-heartedness or more simply ‘being filled with love’. A psychologist might call it ‘extreme vulnerability.’

Most of the time, unusual states of consciousness invoke intense emotional states. TL seizures most often involve fear, terror or a sense of ‘impending doom.’ (Interestingly, there are also dissasociative seizures that seem to have no emotion at all.) Spiritual states are usually pleasant. Everything from simple calm or freedom from fear to bliss or ecstasy.

This extra input to the amygdala has an impact beyond just making for intense moments. It makes the person more emotionally sensitive at all other times as well. Among TL epileptics, it commonly makes for extra irritability. For spiritual practitioners, it seems to be more a matter of an extra need to feel safe. After a certain point in spiritual development or ‘growth’, the aspirant begins to be more careful about the ‘energies’ they connect with. Their own way of seeing it is a bit monastic. Monks and nuns withdraw from the world, avoiding socially intense situations. In more modern times, we hear of meditators ‘withdrawing into their own space’. The need to defend one’s self from verbal assaults, and to avoid those who aren’t like-minded gets more intense. Practitioners become more ‘open-hearted’, and along with it, more vulnerable. Few romantic relationships escape unscathed. If one partner begins spiritual practice, and the other doesn’t, they may soon find that the level of intimacy that’s comfortable for each is now different. Of course, the now-spiritual partner has a new set of interests, and that tends to divide two partners. The practitioner can feel that they’ve ‘outgrown’ the relationship, while the one who’s not doing practice might tend to blame the group their partner joined, or to feel that their partner has taken religion ‘too far’. In fact, one study of TL epileptics found that they were more likely than others to undergo multiple religious conversions. …

In order to go further with this topic, we need to talk about the amygdala again. What seems to be happening is that as the two amygdala get more active, the chances of their falling out of phase with one another increases. Normally, the left amygdala (remember language is on the left) is the dominant one. Normally people process their experiences by thinking about them; thinking in words.

Humans seem to have two senses of self. Left hemispheric, and right hemispheric. The pathways of the human sense of self on each side have been found to include the amygdala. When the two amygdala fall out of phase with one another, the ’self’ on the left can become aware of the activities on the right. The right-sided sense of self is experienced as an outer (ego-alien) ‘presence’. All of this is fairly well established. What I want to add to it, as an hypothesis, is that the two amygdala are out of phase whenever we’re relating to another. (I’ve designed a study that should put it to the test, but lack of funding at present makes it difficult to carry out.) As a person experiences altered states more often, they find that the way they relate to ‘the other’ is changed.

Another obvious effect is that as the left ’self’ begins to lose its mastery over the individual, the person is more and more likely to ‘feel’ their way through situations, rather than thinking about them. One study found that people who experienced altered states frequently were unable to follow scientific, ‘linear’ reasoning.

Still another effect is that, because each time the right-self intrudes on the left, the left-self loses a bit of its control, and because the left is normally dominant, the effect is that the person’s self esteem (while they are in normal states) goes down. As near as I can tell, it stays that way until the person’s normal states are adjusted so that they then have a permanent ‘baseline’ state that allows their right-sided ’self’ to emerge in all circumstances.

Until this happens the person can suffer from ‘the dark night of the soul’, which can come as moments when they doubt their self-worth, or as long periods of melancholy. More often in my experience, such people respond with a specific coping strategy. They become ‘holier than thou.’ In these cases, spiritual practitioners will respond to comments from others with ’spiritual’ interpretations.

You missed your bus? You weren’t ‘meant’ to be on it. How have you been lately? There is no lately: there is only this moment. The person you were attracted to isn’t interested in you? Give your love to Jesus. I seem insensitive? I’m only sharing my truth in this moment. You’re angry about something? It just shows how are attached you are. You’re offended by something? That’s just your ego coming out.

In extreme cases, such people have an answer for everything they don’t care to hear, and each answer shows how ’spiritual’ they are, and subtly ‘puts down’ the other. Its just not possible, for one who is ‘holier than thou’, to feel beneath others. This type of person won’t be free of the inner turbulence that an extra-active amygdala creates, they just won’t feel that they are lower than others. Because we are such linguistic beings, we are very sensitive to words that we don’t like. An easy way to cope is to have a stock of things to say that invalidates whatever the ‘other’ has to say, and to do so in a spiritual-seeming way. If they are successful, they can become gurus or teachers in their own right.

Now, gurus (or masters or satgurus, sufus, tzaddiks, roshis, growth group or workshop leaders, priests, or a ministers) often don’t like to be ‘defined’ or ‘labeled’ or ‘categorized’, but there a category that seems to invite them in. Its a term from primatology, the study of our closest living evolutionary cousins, the primates. You know. Monkeys and chimpanzees. Gurus are dominant or alpha individuals. Within their community, the guru is the boss. He (forgive the sexist pronoun) usually calls the shots. He disperses the donated resources, and if the tradition doesn’t include celibacy, to be his romantic partner is a ‘position’ of some prestige. All other conditions being equal, the guru will be more successful at passing on his genetic material than the disciple. If you become a guru, your self-esteem will automatically rise. You’ve become the alpha person.

In one study of seratonin levels in monkeys, it was found that the seratonin level of the alpha male in the troupe was higher than that of the betas. When he was removed from the group, one of the betas took his place. When his seratonin levels were taken again, it was found that they had risen to the level of the previous alpha. Becoming a guru works against low self-esteem, just as becoming a leader of any kind will bring a person ‘up’.

We’ve been talking about gurus and ‘wannabe’ gurus. Another type we need to look at is the ‘perfect disciple’.

Another way of responding to low-self esteem is to lower your self. The perfect disciple will always see the guru as being higher. Devotion to the guru allows a context where low-self esteem can be acted out in a constructive way. Being subordinate is rewarded in communities gathered around a spiritual master. The Buddhist and Hindu practice of prostrations or pranam allows a person to behave submissively without actually taking on a position of inferiority for those around them. Only the master (and the ‘inner circle’ of senior disciples) is worthy of these gestures. For day-to-day living in the ashram, the slogan seems to be ‘we’re all bozos on this bus’. Outside of their community, their having found the path allows them to discount what others say. They don’t know the truth. Such a believer need not pay any heed to slights or challenging remarks from others.

Source: www.spiritualbrain.com. Reproduced by permission.

Fascinating, isn’t it?

I’m a very happy consumer of energy psychology. But as a skeptic, I’m still waiting for research that proves how these techniques work. Is there really such a thing as subtle energy? Does it run through the body? Can it get stuck? I don’t know.

Yesterday I speculated about why energy psychology techniques may work in light of research that suggests that putting negative emotions into words calms the brain’s emotion center. What if the main ingredient in energy psychology is the enhanced labeling (through repeating the negative emotion while tapping on the body)? The more specific you can be, the better.

If you’re not familiar with energy psychology, watch this clear demonstration of Emotional Freedom Techniques (one of the better EFT videos on YouTube).

The key may be labeling plus the intention to “let go” or “clear” the emotion. Some people really like tapping and find that it keeps them focused. Others prefer EP techniques that don’t use tapping — and they work too, perhaps because of the labeling and intention aspects.

According to the LiveScience.com article “Brain Scans Reveal Why Meditation Works,” new research suggests that if you name your negative emotions — put them into words — activity in the amygdala, a brain region involved in emotional processing, is calmed.

Apparently, people who meditate often label their negative emotions in an effort to “let them go.”

That is very interesting. Several mind-body and energy psychology techniques include finding and labeling negative emotions. The more specific, the better. Perhaps it’s the specificity and clarity that these techniques bring to labeling emotion and its context that makes them so effective. And maybe the other mechanisms used in popular EP techniques, such as tapping spots on the body, moving the eyes, and so forth, serve to reinforce or enhance the labeling.

Another interesting point is that meditators hold the intention to “let go” of the negative emotion. I don’t know if the researchers consider that as significant, but it may be a main part of the equation. We know from personal experience that we can label and talk and journal endlessly about our negative emotions, and sometimes it only makes us worse. We also know that talk-it-out therapies often fail. So intention and belief about our ability to “let it go” should be looked at as well.

Read the article

A video introducing energy psychology technique Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) is now available. According to Gary Craig, the developer of EFT, the high-quality film was several months in the making. Numerous EFT clients and practitioners contributed.

You can watch it here and at Gary Craig’s site. A free EFT training manual is also available at the site.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nRY3UtTHvo[/youtube]

Events like yesterday’s massacre at Virginia Tech university can trigger anxiety and fear not only in those closely involved but also in the public at large. Those who have experienced similar trauma are particularly at risk for experiencing flashbacks and high levels of anxiety.

The following tips for dealing with trauma are from a licensed clinical social worker and trauma specialist in New York who has treated 9/11 survivors.

Ten Tips for Trauma Recovery
By Mary Sise, LCSW

It is helpful to begin by understanding that your body reacted normally to an abnormal, frightening event. All of the systems of the body went into fight-flight-freeze mode, and your brain released a cascade of chemicals to help you to survive.

Sometimes when that happens the brain can’t do its other jobs, like processing the trauma so that the body knows the event is over. Sometimes the trauma gets stuck. Images might stay intense, smells might trigger panic, sounds might also trigger panic as if things are frozen in time and you aren’t safe anywhere.

Research shows that most people (85 percent) will heal by themselves. In other cases, especially if the body was hurt in the trauma, you might need the help of a therapist. Although it will take some time, there are certain things you can do to aid your own recovery.

Here are some ideas to help:

1. Use all of your senses to help you. Play soothing music, light a candle, take a bubble bath, get out in the sunshine. Seek safe physical contact. Hug each other. Talk to your body/mind. Tell it is safe now.

2. Exercise helps to release endorphins in the body. Walk, move the body, swing your arms back and forth.

3. Breathe deeply, sending oxygen all the way to the bottom of the lungs. That brings more oxygen up to the brain, which sends a signal that you are safe again. In the trauma, many people hold their breath without realizing it. Deep breathing restores the feeling of safety.

4. Eat healthy. Your body has been in a shock. It needs help to recover.

5. Sleep may be disturbed. Your brain is trying to process the trauma to help you know that it is over. However, sometimes you wake up having nightmares interrupting the processing. If you sleep through the nightmare and wake up in the morning, that is a good sign the brain is better able to do its job. If you wake up in the middle of it very afraid, then the processing is interrupted. At that point it might be helpful to use some of the Energy Psychology techniques to calm the body down, and help you to sleep.

6. Avoid alcohol or illegal drugs. While they may initially put you to sleep, they will disturb the processing that the brain can do at night. Use regular medicines under the direction of a physician.

7. Limit how much trauma you watch on TV. Distract yourself with more hopeful things.

8. Be active. Don’t sit around. Do something that empowers you, rebuild something, take action in a positive direction.

9. Count your blessings, even though it may be hard at first.

10. Learn some simple Energy Psychology techniques to help the body calm down. Seek the help of a therapist or a trusted friend if needed.

Mary Sise is a past president of the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology. Energy psychology techniques are very effective for calming the mind and body. Mary is one of many mental health professionals who use energy psychology to treat trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Visit her site.

Learning an energy psychology technique

You can learn the popular Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) for free. EFT is based on concepts from acupuncture. You’ll learn to lightly tap on acupuncture points. This technique may look strange, but it works. I don’t use EFT as often now that other techniques have been developed that don’t involve tapping. I recommend visiting the EFT website and reading about the amazing results people routinely experience from using EFT.

Another easy-to-learn technique is Zensight Process. This technique does not involve tapping, which appeals to those who think tapping is just plain weird The developer of Zensight Process, Carol Ann Rowland, MSW, also specializes in treating trauma.

Carol Ann offers a low-cost manual and other products to learn Zensight Process. She also provides the convenience of telephone sessions. Visit her site to learn more.

I’ve mentioned several times on this blog that energy psychology is controversial. Some think it’s bogus. Obviously I don’t agree. If you are interested in energy psychology research, read articles available at the ACEP website.

While visiting Candace Pert’s site, I discovered the EQ Planet podcast episode, The Physics of Emotion with Candace Pert.

The podcast is hosted by EQ (emotional intelligence) development expert Joshua Freedman of Six Seconds EQ Network.

Former chief of brain biochemistry at the National Institutes of Health and professor at Georgetown Medical Center, Dr. Candace Pert is the pioneering scientist who discovered the opiate receptor mechanism — unlocking a new perspective on neurotransmitters and emotion (her bio is on candacepert.com).

In this episode of EQ Planet, Dr. Pert explains “emotional resonance” and the way emotions change every cell in the human body to literally change the frequencies of nonverbal communication. With profound implications for leadership, parenting, education and personal mastery, Pert’s perspective is on the cutting edge on neurobiology and neurophysics.

Listen to the podcast. It’s good stuff!

What are the elements of a good life? What makes people happy? Grab a pen and write down the essential ingredients.

What did you write? Having lots of money? Shaking riches out of the cosmos à la The Secret?

Now hang on to your hat, because among the biggest findings in happiness research is that once a person’s income is above poverty level, money doesn’t buy happiness. And that altruism makes people happier than does endulging the self. And that the strongest determiner of happiness is, drumroll please, meaningful relationships. (Where have we read this before?)

I love what is coming out of positive psychology and the strengths movement. It’s empirical validation of what many have known all along. And it hasn’t been a secret.

Though not denying humanity’s flaws, the new tack of positive psychologists recommends focusing on people’s strengths and virtues as a point of departure. Rather than analyze the psychopathology underlying alcoholism, for example, positive psychologists might study the resilience of those who have managed a successful recovery—for example, through Alcoholics Anonymous. Instead of viewing religion as a delusion and a crutch, as did Freud, they might identify the mechanisms through which a spiritual practice like meditation enhances mental and physical health. Their lab experiments might seek to define not the conditions that induce depraved behavior, but those that foster generosity, courage, creativity, and laughter….

The field’s roots go back at least to 1962, when Brandeis psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote about what a human life could be at its greatest in Toward a Psychology of Being. His “humanistic psychology” became the discipline’s “third force,” following psychoanalysis and behaviorism. “The fundamental difference between humanistic psychology and positive psychology is in their relationship to research, epistemology, and methodology,” says Ben-Shahar. “Many who joined the ‘Third Wave’ were not rigorous. Humanistic psychology gave birth to the self-help movement, and lots of self-help books have come out with concepts grounded in emotion and intuition. Positive psychology combines those things with reason and research.”

Read the entire article, The Science of Happiness, Harvard Magazine.

May the research continue in full force!