Ever since 2012, March 20 is UN´s International Happiness Day. All around the world, people will celebrate and host events to educate their fellow human beings on all things happiness, well-being, and flourishing. And I´m in as well – as part of a Virtual Happiness Conference. 32 fellow Penn Mappsters were interviewed on their favorite Positive Psychology subject, among them a lot of people you might already know because they have done webinars for Positive Business DC.  All in all, there´s more than 24 hours of video material available. All content will be online for free until March 26. After that, you can purchase the videos. Every cent will go to the Christopher Peterson Memorial Fellowship which helps future students to afford attending Penn´s MAPPprogram. As for my part: I was interviewed by the fabulous Jamie Cundy on the role of Positive Psychology in presenting.  This is the link to… …

I was stunned when I first read Kristin Neff’s book, Self Compassion.  After having recently taken her assessment online, I realized that I am abysmal in regards to self-compassion.  But I’m going to be compassionate about my low score! I had the pleasure of hearing Dr. Neff on Wake Up Happy from Live Happy magazine this week.  She had some great things to reiterate from her book. As Kristin said, self compassion is not contingent on success.  You must relate to yourself kindly.  This is available when we succeed or when we fail.  If self worth contingent on success we start becoming afraid of failure. We don’t really want to even try because the consequences are too devastating.  The myth that most of us believe is that self criticism motivates us. I was having this conversation with my writer brother… …

Frequently we like to alert our readers of great opportunities to learn about positive psychology and positive business.  Here is one of those opportunities. It’s local to DC and it has a great lineup of speakers! The Leading to Well-Being Conference: Facilitating Leadership for a Well-Lived Life at George Mason University on Friday, April 12, 2013 at the Mason Inn & Conference Center. The conference is co-sponsored by MasonLeads and the Center for Consciousness and Transformation.  The conference format includes featured keynote speakers and interactive breakout sessions. Since conference enrollment is limited to 375 attendees, early registration is recommended. Keynote Speakers   Dr. Daniel Goleman is an internationally known psychologist who lectures frequently to professional groups, business and professional audiences, and higher education institutions.  Dr. Goleman is the author of numerous best-selling books including Emotional Intelligence and Leadership: The Power of Emotional Intelligence.  His most recent book, The Brain and Emotional Intelligence:… …

If you want to learn the basics of Positive Psychology directly from one of the most eminent researchers in the field, 2015 is your time. Barbara Fredrickson is offering a massive open online course (MOOC) via the platform Coursera for free. The course is scheduled from February 9 to March 27. You´ll have to put in roughly 2-4 hours of work. This is the course´s syllabus: Week 1: Positive Emotions: The Tiny Engines of Positive Psychology. Look “under the hood” to discover the powerful drivers of growth, well-being, and health. Week 2: The Mindscapes and Outcomes of Positivity. Discover the roots of flexibility, creativity, and resilience. Week 3: The Delicate Art of Pursuing Happiness. Discover the ratios and priorities that best promote flourishing and learn common pitfalls to avoid. Week 4: Positivity Resonance and Loving-Kindness. Unveil the force of co-experienced positive emotions and practice… …

*This article first appeared on www.positivepsychologynews.com In my other teamwork article, I set the stage with reflections on the teamwork character strength and then explored one way to build this strength. Today I’ll follow up with three more approaches.   Approach Two: Invoke Connections to the Larger Group Another way to build the strength of teamwork is to remind people that thinking about group membership best serves the whole team. Ford and colleagues describe a study of airline flight attendants based domestically or overseas. They received a manipulation designed to prime either their social identities in terms of being employees of the airline or their personal identities in terms of self evaluations and feelings. Then they read a brief outline of an in-flight event before completing a teamwork questionnaire. Those who received a social identity prime indicated increased willingness to engage… …

PBDC is thrilled to announce a new global organization, the International  Positive Education Network (IPEN). IPEN has launched to campaign for a shift in how young people are educated. The aim of IPEN is ” to bring together teachers, parents, academics, students, schools, colleges, universities, charities, companies and governments to promote positive education.”  Click here to learn more about the International Positive Education Network. IPEN is calling on like-minded individuals and organizations to sign their Manifesto for Positive Education. Click here to join the movement.

The International Positive Psychology Association (IPPA) is seeking proposals for presentations at the Fourth World Congress on Positive Psychology, which will be held June 25 – 28, 2015 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Historically, the World Congress has been the largest gathering of positive psychology researchers, practitioners and students, offering an unparalleled opportunity to share your work with colleagues from around the globe! IPPA is seeking proposals for presentations and posters that will introduce research, ideas, applications, and insights to our field. The submission deadline is January 15, 2015. For submission guidelines and other details visit: http://www.ippanetwork.org/wcpp2015/cfp

In a fascinating research study, Dr Daniel Kirschenbaum from the University of Wisconsin took a group of bowlers and asked them to review their performance after each bowling session.  He divided the group into two groups.     Group 1 reviewed only what they did well and were asked to remind themselves to engage more of the proper behavior.     Group 2 was asked to review their performance and indicate what they had done poorly and remind themselves to avoid making the same mistakes in the following rounds.       Which group of bowlers do you think improved their bowling performance? It probably won’t surprise you that the people shown the “positive” video feedback performed better. But you might be surprised by how much better they did! Amazingly, the bowlers who focused on what they did well showed… …

George Bernard Shaw once said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.  Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.  With this quote the authors of The Power of Being Unreasonable bring us into the world of social entrepreneurship and the men and women who state that this profession chooses them.  It is their calling.  In reading their stories, it becomes clear that in order to be great leaders these entrepreneurs must develop or express almost all of the strengths and virtues listed in Peterson and Seligman’s seminal work in order to be successful in a very risky field.  Some researchers define virtue as “any psychological process that enables a person to think and act so as to benefit both him – or herself and society” and… …

Have you ever been asked to do something at work that was so far beyond your abilities that you felt like Sisyphus pushing that rock up a mountain?  But you think that this time it’s different?  If I just analyze how the rock goes up the mountain, if I lift weights, if I push REALLY hard – I’ll be the one to make it up there? Well, a few years ago I was asked to facilitate a full day session on Negotiation Skills.  So I said yes.  And then I panicked.  I know nothing about negotiation skills.  I have never really negotiated for anything.  I lived in New York City so I didn’t own a car.  My broker took care of our apartment.  And in discussions with my husband, I usually win! I was terrified of facilitating something I really… …

            Where does happiness reside?  Happiness resides in groups, dyads and individuals.  In fact, I believe that we cannot be completely happy if we are unhappy in any one of these relationships.  Someone who has many friends and is the ‘life of the party’ but drinks themselves into a stupor when they go home cannot be truly happy.  Likewise, an introvert who is content to sit alone and read for hours but despises being with other human beings cannot be truly happy.  Why?  We all spend a part of our lives alone and with others.  We must find balance.  Happiness can be found everywhere, if you cultivate it. Get Happy in Groups As Csikszentmihalyi points out, the phrase “being alive” in Latin literally means “to be among men” (1990, p. 165).  Human beings are happier… …

93%.  Any corporate communications trainer worth their salt knows (and tells their clients at the beginning of a session) that 93% of what people convey to others are non-verbal.  Participants usually audibly gasp when they learn that only 7% of what they convey is through content, 38% tone of voice, and 55% gestures and body language.  This statistic even appears in a recent article on About.com.  After returning to the original study, Inference of Attitudes from Nonverbal Communication in Two Channels (Mehrabian and Ferris, 1967), I found that the reporting of these statistics is inaccurate and broadly over generalized. In the article, the author, Susan Heathfield, wrote:  “One study at UCLA indicated that up to 93 percent of communication effectiveness is determined by nonverbal cues. Another study indicated that the impact of a performance was determined 7 percent by the… …

Have you ever tried speaking to a tough crowd?  How about teaching positive psychology to engineers? Jocelyn Davis, of Nelson Hart LLC (@nelsonhartllc) has done just that at the University of Maryland for the last eight years.  So she knows a tough audience.  She shared the example on our webinar that often moves her students.  Imagine that you had a high performance automobile and you ran it for weeks or months in the red zone.  (At this point she says her students have their eyes wide open.)  What would happen to the car?  At some point it would no longer be a high performance car.   You’d have to take it off the track.  Students quickly grasp the analogy that you cannot burn yourself out at work – long hours with no breaks or no vacations, and still be ‘high performance’… …

 *Note:  Dr. Chris Peterson was a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and one of the founders of the field.  In addition to being a beloved teacher, he was also one of the 100 most cited psychologists in the world.  He passed away in October of 2012.  His birthday was today. I loved the way Chris’ voice rumbled in the back of his throat like an oncoming train.  I loved the way he would look up and to the left and say ‘um’ at the end of every phrase, as if searching for the perfect way to convey his thought.  And I loved the way he would lean back against the chalkboard, rest his hands on his stomach and consider every question from a student as if it was a brilliant one. He was a moral compass as… …