This post was written by Happy Brain Science intern Noah Jacobson, who has done great work with us on several occasions. Thanks, Noah! “All it takes is one minute for us to build resilience.” It’s that simple to build mindful resilience. At least according to psychotherapist and award-winning author Donald Altman. His 101 Mindful Ways read more…
Eudaimonia can be the difference between a fleeting good time and a lasting sense of fulfillment. What is eudaimonia, and why is it better than hedonism? Allow me to explain by describing a recent trip to Kauai. This summer, my family had an opportunity to use the frequent flier miles I earned traveling around the read more…
The app development project Adam was leading was getting intense. While the team was rapidly approaching beta, it was unclear if the app was performing well enough to release the beta version. The performance varied significantly from platform to platform, and phone to phone. The team was struggling to understand and fix the issues. With read more…
Do you struggle to let go of negativity? When you receive not-so-positive feedback, how do you feel? Are you the type of person to shrug it off and let it go, or do you end up having a bad day as a result? If you’re like most people, you probably gravitate towards the latter. Why read more…
Best Possible Future: A Story Adam was about eight months into his new job and about halfway through his main project (a new app). It was going pretty well. Despite many challenges, Adam and his boss, Chris, were both doing a good job of keeping the team focused and on track. But despite that, Adam read more…
Is it possible to find happiness during unemployment? Science can help us answer this tough question. For most of us, unemployment is not fun at all. I recently found myself out of a full-time job because of “business reasons.” Don’t get me wrong, I understood why I had to be let go–but it still didn’t read more…
Exciting, innovative, helpful, incomplete, frustrating, and thought-provoking: all these words describe Daniel Siegel‘s audiobook The Neurobiology of ‘We’: How Relationships, the Mind, and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. I usually try to boil down my book reviews to one helpful sentence for readers who are short on time. But as you can read more…
Why should you read this review of The Power of Moments by Chip and Dan Heath? Because as Vicki Corona said, “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” The Heath brothers would definitely agree with that quote. This pair of professors turned their attention read more…
A story illustrating the science of choice Juan needed Chris’s approval to choose a new software package. Chris asked Juan to come with several options. She wanted the advantages and disadvantages of each. Wanting to be thorough, Juan created a table with thirteen different packages. Chris felt overwhelmed. She struggled to hold the options in read more…
Brad Stevens’ coaching style works. As I type this, my beloved Celtics are up 2-0 against the Cleveland Caveliers in the NBA Eastern Conference Semi-Finals. Virtually nobody predicted this, especially after Boston lost not one, but two of their top stars (and suffered other injuries) before the playoffs. How does Stevens do it? Can the read more…