In this video, happier.com expert Dr. Todd Kashdan talks about “Tapping Into Your Brain” and his new research on positive psychology. Very interesting. Enjoy.
This is one of my favorite videos by Professor Todd Kashdan about “Uncharted Territory” in Positive Psychology research today. Professor Kashdan goes on to talk about our dynamic world and the unstudied spillover effects of positive experiences into other domains. He even poses the question: Could having a meaningful and fulfilling sexual experience help someone be more productive at work the next day? Pretty interesting stuff. Enjoy.
Marie was 64 when she contracted a rare form of cancer in the bile duct. Her prognosis was poor. We tried many interventions and had some success but, alas, only in the short term.
Marie was a teacher and had researched a new therapy based in, of course, California. It seemed to be a hybrid of unproven but promising new medical treatments with some alternative treatments added to the mix.
She had the money and an incredible, even refreshing, faith in this therapeutic cocktail, and wanted to try it while she was still relatively healthy. Tickets were bought and I wished her bonne chance .
She received a call the day before she was to leave to say there’d been a mistake, and she didn’t qualify for their program. Marie died the following week.
While the news about the health impact of optimism isn’t new, it’s a good reminder about the importance of becoming more optimistic.
We recently asked happier.con consultant Dr. Acacia Parks-Sheiner to define optimism from a scientific perspective: “The reason that we often talk in the research about optimism being more important is that… if you’re optimistic, you’re actually going to try, and you make it more likely that what you want to happen will [occur].”
We also asked Martin Seligman, the author of “Learned Optimism” to give an overview of the findings on optimism and physical health. The research shows that those who are optimistic have “much better” cardiovascular health than pessimists, with 1/4 the rate of cardiac deaths as the rest of the population.
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