Here's a really fun lecture by psychologist Dan Gilbert of Stumbling on Happiness
Time and time again research on gaining or losing romantic partners, passing or failing exams, winning or losing elections has found they have little effect on our long-term happiness. In fact, Gilbert quotes a recent study finding that almost anything that happened more than three months ago has no effect on our current levels of happiness.
Entertainingly, Dan Gilbert proposes the following secrets of happiness:
- Accrue wealth, power and prestige then lose it.
- Spend as much of your life in prison as you possibly can.
- Make someone else really, really rich.
- Never, ever join the Beatles
Find out what he's on about in this video of a presentation he gave at the Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) Conference.
» Check out why too much choice is bad for us.
» Discover more insights from positive psychology.
How to Be Creative
If we can all be creative, why is it so hard to come up with truly original ideas?
It's because creativity is mysterious. Just ask any scientist, artist, writer or other highly creative person to explain how they come up with brilliant ideas and, if they're honest, they don't really know.
But over the decades psychologists have given ordinary participants countless tests, forms and tasks and conducted hundreds of hours of interviews. From these emerge the psychological conditions of creativity.
Not what you should do, but how you should be...
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