Yearly Archives: 2013

Mindfulness: The most relaxing sound ever recorded

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At least, according to science sponsored by a soap company. 

The research, conducted by Dr David Lewis-Hodgson of Mindlab International tested various songs on 40 adult women. This one. The following presents a great playlist to sleep meditate by:

1. Marconi Union – Weightless 
2. Airstream – Electra 
3. DJ Shah – Mellomaniac (Chill Out Mix) 
4. Enya – Watermark
5. Coldplay – Strawberry Swing
6. Barcelona – Please Don’t Go 
7. All Saints – Pure Shores 
8. Adelev Someone Like You 
9. Mozart – Canzonetta Sull’aria 
10. Cafe Del Mar – We Can Fly



Check out your emotional reading skills.

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The New York Times if offering up a face reading emotions test. “Curious to see how you do on a test of emotional perception?”

You can take the test here. Readers comments note that all the women are young and several have “sexy” type eyes–Flirtaticous, Fantasizing or interested, whereas none such eyes exist in the men. Moreover, the men include ones that are old.

1 day training opportunity

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I will be giving a pre-conference 1 day training in Bangkok for teachers, counselors and administrators in March 2014:

Title: Flourishing in Schools: Utilizing groundbreaking research and tools from positive psychology to improve student’s wellbeing. 

There has been a quiet transformation happening in some schools around the world as they focus on the conditions under which students, parents and faculty flourish? How do we improve student engagement? How can we better address our communities well-being? What is positive education and how does it impact student learning? Deep questions, but with some very compelling and surprisingly simple ideas to address them. In this workshop, we will look into the current research from positive psychology and its implications for teachers, counselors and administrators. The day will have lots of interactive activities and demonstration giving participants tools that they can use in their own communities.

1 day training opportunity

Posted on by

I will be giving a pre-conference 1 day training in Bangkok for teachers, counselors and administrators in March 2014:

Title: Flourishing in Schools: Utilizing groundbreaking research and tools from positive psychology to improve student’s wellbeing. 

There has been a quiet transformation happening in some schools around the world as they focus on the conditions under which students, parents and faculty flourish? How do we improve student engagement? How can we better address our communities well-being? What is positive education and how does it impact student learning? Deep questions, but with some very compelling and surprisingly simple ideas to address them. In this workshop, we will look into the current research from positive psychology and its implications for teachers, counselors and administrators. The day will have lots of interactive activities and demonstration giving participants tools that they can use in their own communities.

Loye typs and character strengths.

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Dr. Helen Fisher has been researching and writing about love for years. Such is her wisdom and understanding, she is the Chief Scientific Advisor for Match.com, one of the internet’s leading online dating service. She gives a fascinating  and fun interview with The Greater Good contrasting poetry and song lyrics with the scientific lyrics. 

She identified four basic personality types identified in her research:

You can take the test here to see which are your dominant types. I hypothesize the strengths that possibly exist in each personality type:

  • Explorers (creative and dominated by dopamine). Known for being Highly curious, creative, energetic, spontaneous.  ‘Adventure’ is the word most often used by Explorers as they describe themselves and what they are looking for in a mate.  The other nine of their top ten most-used words (in descending order) are: venture, spontaneity/ spontaneous, energy, new, fun, travelling, outgoing, passion and active.  
  • Director (reasoning and ruled by testosterone). Known for Analytical and logical, straightforward, decisive, tough minded, and focused.  Intelligent and intelligence together top the list of words used by Directors.  Also intellectual, debate, geek, nerd/nerdy, ambition/ ambitious, driven, politics, challenge/challenging and real. 

Book Recommendations

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These POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY books are available from Amazon China

Quiet By Susan Cain

In Chinese:
安静:内向性格的竞争力

In English

Flourish by Martin Seligman

In Chinese

In English

 

The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Ken Robinson

Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life

Positivity by Barbara Fredrickson

In Chinese

In English

Achiever is the number 1!

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With nearly 9 million people having taken the Gallup Strenthsfinder, it is kind of fun to see how your top five stack up. Below is the list occurance of the 34 themes as revealed in people’s top 5 reports. 

 

Strengthfiner Theme # of respondants % of all top 5
1. Achiever 2727101 6.31%
2. Responsibility 2485170 5.75%
3. Learner 2458134 5.68%
4. Relator 2424607 5.61%
5. Strategic 1974885 4.57%
6. Input 1751998 4.05%
7. Harmony 1663252 3.85%
8. Empathy 1557007 3.60%
9. Adaptability 1488933 3.44%
10. Maximizer 1383488 3.20%
11. Restorative 1369954 3.17%
12. Positivity 1340062 3.10%
13. Developer 1308294 3.03%
14. Arranger 1200009 2.77%
15. Ideation 1183739 2.74%
16. Individualization 1166626 2.70%
17. Woo 1122719 2.60%
18. Communication 1117881 2.59%
19. Connectedness 1049037 2.43%
20. Analytical 1033470 2.39%
21. Includer 1023751 2.37%
22. Intellection 1017291 2.35%
23. Focus 1008332 2.33%
24. Belief 988026 2.28%
25. Futuristic 949322 2.20%
26. Consistency 945318 2.19%
27. Competition 940947 2.18%
28. Deliberative 914366 2.11%
29. Activator 891557 2.06%
30. Context 755097 1.75%
31. Discipline 576140 1.33%
32. Significance 551990 1.28%
33. Self-Assurance 458361 1.06%
34. Command 416971 0.96%