The Reality of “Reality”

I have a friend who is inclined to be negative.  This person always sees the glass as half-empty (GHE).  Being a glass-half-full (GHF) type, I often point out the upside to whatever situation is being discussed, only to be told that I’m not being realistic.  Which brings me to today’s topics – that pessimism and…

The Gratitude Experiment

The pursuit of happiness through the experience of gratitude is one of my pet projects. Gratitude not only improves your level of happiness, it makes a difference in your physical health too. I recently came upon this youtube video by SoulPancake called An Experiment in Gratitude that illustrates how gratitude influences feelings of happiness. It…

Worried Sick: Healing Anxiety

It is often said that everything we feel originates from two basic emotions: love and fear. On an everyday basis, fear tends to manifest as worry.  We medicalize this in the condition of anxiety. When you consider the number of people whose lives will be limited by anxiety at some point, the personal and social…

Celebrities, Addiction, Gratitude and Health

Cory Monteith’s death from a drug overdose has resulted in a stew of sadness inside me as I think about the role celebrities play in our society as symbols of things with which we all struggle. In the case of Mr. Monteith, the struggle was with the health issue of addiction and the knots of…

Count Your Blessings

Research on the connection between gratitude and health goes back decades now. Abraham Maslow is a famous psychologist who is known for his theories regarding the so-called “Hierarchy of Needs“. In the late 1960’s/early 1970’s, he put forward the position that the experience of gratitude has a big impact on psychological health.  At the bottom…