is passionate in articulating a vision that a city belongs to all its citizens. David Burwell—a strategic analyst with Project for Public Spaces who has long experience working on environmental, transportation, and community issues—calls Peñalosa, “One of the great public servants of our time. He views cities as being planned for a purpose—to create human well-being. He’s got a great sense of what a leader should do—to promote human happiness.” Bogota is now held up as an international model for sustainable innovation, even for cities in the developing world. Peñalosa of course, didn’t do this alone. Antana... posted on Aug 24 2012 (20,956 reads)

one part of the study, researchers induced feelings of awe in participants by showing them video clips of people encountering tremendous things like waterfalls and whales; among members of a comparison group, they induced by showing them video clips of people surrounded by confetti in a joyful parade. The results, published by Psychological Science, show that members of the awed group were more likely to report feeling like they had more time than those who felt happiness. “Awe-eliciting experiences might offer one effective solution to the feelings of time starvation that plague so many people in modern life,” write the researchers, who were ... posted on Dec 3 2012 (14,385 reads)

life things changed. If I didn’t eat, she wasn't interested in her food either, and when I did eat, she would then want to as well. It perplexed me, but mostly scared me when I noticed the times she wouldn’t eat. So, I began to eat and watch her eat beside me. AND sure enough, as I started putting on weight, soon there after so did she. She really did bring a lot of joy to my life back then (and still does) and I didn’t feel lonely and isolated when she was around. This happiness I realized then started flowing into other areas of my life then too. As I began to feel happier, I found myself talking to people again and met two elderly neighbors on my block. First I... posted on Oct 4 2013 (30,592 reads)

of other scientists suggests that the vagus nerve may be a physiological system that supports caretaking and altruism. We have found that activation of the vagus nerve is associated with feelings of compassion and the ethical intuition that humans from different social groups (even adversarial ones) share a common humanity.  People who have high vagus nerve activation in a resting state, we have found, are prone to feeling emotions that promote altruism—compassion, gratitude, love, happiness. Arizona State University psychologist Nancy Eisenberg has found that children with elevated vagal tone (high baseline vagus nerve activity) are more cooperative and likely to give. This are... posted on Oct 19 2013 (26,900 reads)

have never thought at that moment that I would be standing here as John Legend, speaking to you today. The reason I'm here, the reason I've had such a wonderful journey so far, is that I've found love. Yes, love. We were all made to love. And I've found that we live our best lives, we are at our most successful, not simply because we're smarter than everyone else, or because we hustle harder. Not because we become millionaires more quickly. The key to success, the key to happiness, is opening your mind and your heart to love. Spending your time doing things you love and with people you love. My life could have gone differently though. At first, I had a pretty good ... posted on Jun 29 2014 (29,772 reads)

fully pulled back into the power of me and my consciousness and my choice. TS: Now, once again, I want to ask you a question about this circuitry, because you talk about something like "gratitude circuitry." I'm curious: is that living in both the left and right part of my brain, or is gratitude circuitry only in the right hemisphere? JBT: That I cannot answer. I think that there are different kinds of gratitude that happen. There's a lot of research right now on happiness and where happiness is in the brain. I think that happiness is very different from the experience of gratitude. I cannot answer that question. The circuitry is not that clearly defined. W... posted on Aug 24 2014 (35,443 reads)

didn't give up their chairs," says the researcher. Of those who had received the compassion training, around half stood up to offer their chair to the woman, and for those who had not, the figure was just 15%. They concluded that our willingness to help strangers is flexible, and can be shaped by small changes in perception. 3: Kindness can help the bottom line: The single greatest advantage in the modern economy is a happy and engaged workforce. A decade of research proves that happiness raises nearly every business and educational outcome: raising sales by 37%, productivity by 31%, and accuracy on tasks by 19%, as well as a myriad of health and quality of life improvements.... posted on Sep 23 2014 (142,569 reads)

heard of “empathy marketing”? It’s the latest business buzzword. The idea is that if companies can look through their clients’ eyes and understand their desires, they will be better able to tailor their offerings and gain a competitive advantage. To me, this is stepping into someone else’s shoes just to sell them another pair. I believe that the best use of empathy is not in the commercial world but in the social one, where it allows us to challenge prejudices and create political change. And if you look through history, there are some extraordinary figures who have harnessed this power by engaging in what I think of as “experiential empa... posted on Jan 15 2015 (29,302 reads)

on vacation. And you should get to the point where you’re treating yourself whether you’re at work or at play in basically the same way. [music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoe Keating] KRISTA TIPPETT, HOST: Ellen Langer is a social psychologist who some have dubbed “the mother of mindfulness.” But she defines mindfulness with counterintuitive simplicity: the simple act of actively noticing things — with a result of increased health, competence, and happiness. Her take on mindfulness has never involved contemplation or meditation or yoga. It comes straight out of her provocative, unconventional studies, which have been suggesting for decades what... posted on Mar 28 2016 (25,348 reads)

and gratitude? Dacher: Very much so, and that's why, if you go to the Greater Good Science Center, there are now these science-tested practices that help you build up compassion, help you build up empathy, help you build up awe. Jonathan: I recently met a clinical psychologist, who was my Uber driver. He started telling me about his research at Yale on forgiveness, that he sees as a positive emotion. I wonder if you could comment on that. Dacher: It is, and when I teach human happiness at Berkeley, I do the usual evolutionary story. It's so remarkable. Frans de Waal is the one who made the paradigm-shifting discovery here. He was studying rhesus macaques and chimpanzee... posted on Nov 4 2016 (30,517 reads)

disaster, there’s virtue that arises, and that there’s a joy, there’s a hope and a joy, and I was thinking about that phrase of hers, “the duty of delight.” Right? So it’s not — so yes, there’s — she makes sacrifices that seem — that would seem extreme in the context of most of our lives. But that joy was also something she claimed and hung onto. MS. SOLNIT: Joy is such an interesting term, because we hear constantly about happiness, “Are you happy?” And it’s — emotions are mutable, and this notion that happiness should be a steady state seems destined to make people miserable. And joy is so much... posted on Jun 25 2016 (10,672 reads)

few years ago, illustrator and editorial cartoonist Sarah Lazarovic felt like she was buying too much junk. So she stopped shopping for a year, then documented her withdrawals and, eventually, all the lessons and tips and tricks she learned about not buying things. Instead of buying the items she coveted, she made paintings of them. During that time, instead of buying the items she coveted, she made paintings of them. That led to the illustrated book calledA Bunch of Pretty Things I Did Not Buy. It also led to doing that same “covet counseling” for others. She calls her project the “Office of Divestment.” She will draw the thing you want to buy. You get t... posted on Sep 9 2016 (18,610 reads)

nature depends on two things: special places and special people. As parents and educators, we can spend more time with children in nature. We can go there with them. Taking time to do that can be quite a challenge. Getting kids outside needs to be a conscious act on the part of parents or caregivers. We need to schedule nature time. This proactive approach is simply part of today’s reality. My new book, Vitamin N, includes 500 actions that people can take to enrich the health and happiness of their families and communities—and to help create a future that we’ll all want to go to. Richard Louv's new book is Vitamin N: 500 Ways to Enrich the Health & ... posted on Nov 23 2016 (15,869 reads)

of the great tragedies of modern life is that we live in a culture of death denial. The advertising industry tells us we are forever young, and we retire elders away to care homes, out of sight and mind. As a Western culture, we’ve lost the connection with our mortality our forebears had, when dancing skeletons decorated medieval church walls and people wore skull brooch memento mori (Latin for ‘remember you must die’) as a reminder that death could take them at any moment.  We are constantly dying. The proximity of death propelled our ancestors to live with a radical aliveness that we can hardly imagine in our tech-saturated sedentary present, as we check o... posted on Sep 9 2017 (15,508 reads)

you should get to the point where you’re treating yourself, whether you’re at work or at play, in basically the same way. [music: “Seven League Boots” by Zoe Keating] Krista Tippett, host: Ellen Langer is a social psychologist who some have dubbed “the mother of mindfulness.” But she defines mindfulness with counterintuitive simplicity — “the simple act of actively noticing things,” with the result of increased health, competence, and happiness. Her take on mindfulness has never involved contemplation or meditation or yoga. It comes straight out of her provocative, unconventional studies, which have been suggesting for decades what... posted on Apr 2 2018 (17,317 reads)

research findings like these provide useful food for thought throughout the book. By learning this fascinating science, we can all become better influencers—and we can also guard against manipulation from others. The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, by Florence Williams Florence Williams chronicles our intricate connection to the natural world and nature’s impact on our health, creativity, and happiness. She makes a strong case for incorporating more green spaces into our lives to improve personal and societal well-being. Williams has traveled around the world to collect research finding... posted on Nov 27 2018 (14,799 reads)

looking for help in rewriting your story, Tris Thorp of the Chopra Center suggests that you frame your future in the positive. You have a choice in how you interpret your life’s circumstances. “You can choose to focus on the negative by looking at all that is wrong, which leads to more pain and suffering,” Thorp writes, “or you can choose to look for what's right – to find the gifts or the opportunities – which leads to more potential, and more joy, happiness, and fulfillment.” As you shift the way you think about your future, you begin to reimagine and rewrite your past. We all have a story within us, that is continually reshaped by... posted on Mar 1 2018 (39,146 reads)

right? ‘Cause I might think, Alright, I’m going to put this one hour walk into my day now so that I will have the great thought for my work, but the great thought doesn’t come because I’m expecting it to come! Such a good point. Expectations always defeat themselves. And if you go on retreat and say, “I’m going to come back with the answers to my life,” you probably won’t. Or if you go to Tibet and say “I’m going to find happiness and enlightenment,” you’ve all but ensured you won’t. So what you said is really wise in reminding us that we don’t want to be too focused on results. I also note ... posted on May 11 2018 (12,113 reads)

long-term storage. This is not about holding on to experiences. The stream of consciousness is constantly changing, so trying to cling to anything in it is both doomed and painful. But you cangently encourage whatever is beneficial to arise and stick around and sink in—even as you are letting go of it. Happiness is like a beautiful wild animal watching from the edge of a forest. If you try to grab it, it will run away. But if you sit by your campfire and add some sticks to it, happiness will come to you, and stay. 4. Link it In Linking, you are simply conscious of both “negative” and “positive” material at the same time. For example, off to the... posted on Apr 24 2018 (26,079 reads)

of the unexpected pleasures of getting older is learning to cultivate and harvest gratitude more readily. Maybe it’s the fact that we recognize that wanting what we have (gratitude) creates more happiness than having what we want (gratification). After two dozen years running my own boutique hotel company, Joie de Vivre Hospitality, I sold it at the bottom of the Great Recession in 2010 and didn’t know what was next for me. I did appreciate having space in my life to experience “collective effervescence” at religious pilgrimages from the Hindu Maha Kumbh Mela in India to the Sufi Mevlana Whirling Dervish Festival in Turke... posted on Nov 14 2018 (6,200 reads)