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The article Are You Unhappy? Is It Because of Consumer Addiction? asks Americans a very important question, one that each and every one of us needs to pay attention to. Are we a nation of addicts? Read the article and then answer the question.
In his wonderful and straight forward book, The Five Secrets You Must Discover Before You Die author John Izzo suggests that readers ask themselves several questions including:
1) Am I following my heart and being true to myself?
2) Is my life focused on the things that really matter to me?
3) Am I being the person that I want to be in the world?
If yes, good for you! If not, what specifically would need to change in order to answer yes? What would need to happen? What stands in your way?
I sat with a lovely and very special young woman today who will be spending Easter without family or friends for the first time. This made her understandably sad. When I asked her what Easter meant to her she shared that she associated it with family and services at the church she attended while growing up. This Easter she will be far away from family and church and it will follow some excruciating losses. We explored these losses for a time, how they felt, what they had cost her, and what they would continue to cost. It was a painful process, this tallying up. And it was far too soon to acknowledge the gifts that might appear as she moved further along this new and lonely leg of her journey. Like the seeds of spring that eventually deliver summer flowers, they would remain invisible for now. And then we began to explore the deeper and more personal meanings of Easter, those that went beyond the sentimental memories of Easter dresses, Easter baskets, egg hunts and the big breakfast at church. In addition to celebrating the resurrection of Jesus with family, friends, and spiritual community, she realized that there was another universal and yet very personal message that she would acknowledge and even celebrate this Easter – that beginnings follow endings, new life involves the release of the old, and even in the inhospitable midst of despair, hope can live.
We are hearing more and more about our troubled economy lately and I listen to the concerns of ordinary people each and every day about job insecurity, overwork, falling house prices, the escalating cost of living... And as I listen, I'm begining to ask questions that I haven't asked in far too long. Questions like, "how does the economy impact quality of life?" "How do we measure quality of life anyway?" "How do we maintain a healthy economy while sustaining families and the environment?" Eventually I discovered that I was asking many of the same questions that "The Center for Communication and Civic Engagement" was asking on their website, "What's the Economy for anyway?" And here's a question that they ask that has really gotten me thinking, "What's the economy for? Is it about the biggest GDP (Gross Domestic Product) or for the greatest good for the greatest number over the longest run."
And what is the responsibility of each and every one of us in regards to the answer to these questions?
What brings happiness? Alan Chalmers offered that the essentials of happiness consist of, "something to do, something to love, and something to hope for." Anne Frank believed that we were most likely to find it in nature. While Roosevelt suggested that happiness required creativity, Sophocles asserted that the essential ingredient was wisdom, and George Sand was quite certain that happiness could not exist without love. And then there was George Burns who observed that happiness was "having a large, loving, caring close-knit family in another city."
The Psyblog has a wonderful grouping of articles pertaining to happiness - how we find it, maintain it, and nurture it You can find the articles here
According to a study conducted by Frederick Zimmerman and colleagues, those DVD's that I've been considering buying Skylar for Christmas that are designed to both educate and entertain babies are actually linked to poorer vocabulary development. To read more about this study you can read the article published in the Psychologist here
My clothes closet is overflowing, my mother's clothes closet is overflowing, and I strongly suspect that 99% of my friend's and neighbor's closets are overflowing as well. I could interpret this as a wonderful sign of abundance, but the alternative explanation feels far more true and much more daunting...
The heading for an article written by Stan Cox reads, "Americans' out-of-control clothing shopping is causing an ecological plague, humanitarian nightmare and the need for some really, really big closets." If your closet is overflowing, I strongly urge you to read the rest of the article here
A recent study conducted by Harvard Medical School, Group Health Cooperative's Center for health Studies, and OptumHealth Behavioral Solutions published in the Journal of the American Medical Association demonstrated once again that when employers assist depressed employees in obtaining treatment the results are very often an increase in productivity, a decrease in employee absences, and higher job retention.
To read more:
Depression Lowers Productivity
What to Do When an Employee is Depressed
Lovelle Svart shares her experiences, thoughts, and feelings about her impending death from lung cancer through a series of 27 videos entitled, Living to the End I highly recommend these videos to anyone dealing either personally or professionally with death and dying.
If you haven't already, take nine minutes and watch Randy Pauch's interview on Good Morning America. Randy is a 47 year old professor of Computer Science and father of three who has pancreatic cancer and who is expected to die soon. Once you have listened to his interview I am hoping that you might be willing to invest even more time and listen to his wise and wonderful lecture.
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