I had to share this - it's very quick and a bit interesting to compare your results with the rest of your country. A happiness test on Scientific American called "How Happy Are You?" with a table for you to see how your happiness compares with other people in your country and the rest of the world.Positive and negative feelings are measured. I share my results with you too. How did you go and what country are you from? Read full article
Interviews with children about how they view their lives and the world around them. Elizabeth Gould, conducted wide-ranging interviews and now tells the children's stories and reveals four distinct patterns of how these happy children think. Even though these happy children face all the usual ups and downs of childhood, including bullying and family issues, they have found a way to be happy and stay happy. Read full article
I’m sitting at the dining table with a cool breeze blowing on to my face from the lake and ocean. It’s the new year, 2011, and I’m feeling like I always feel on 1 January: expectant, inexplicably and irrationally optimistic about anything that’s been troubling me and suddenly more grateful than usual for the good things in my life. New Year’s Eve does not hold much attraction for me unless it happens to be a great meal with friends but I do look forward to New Year with a magical belief that all things good can happen in the following year. No idea why. Read full article
In an article published in the Journal of Happiness Studies, it was concluded that happiness prolongs the life of healthy people and may even protect against us falling ill. Scientists have known for some time that stress can have a negative effect on our immune systems. Probably I am slightly more paranoid that the average parent but I often think about my kids’ health throughout the day – have they brushed their teeth, did they have enough vegetables at dinner, why aren’t they eating lunch at school, did they do enough physical exercise this week? Read full article
