Recently online, I’ve noticed lots of talk about “Toxic Positivity” – so what is it, why is it bad for you, and how do we avoid it? What is Toxic Positivity and why is it bad for you? Toxic positivity can be defined as portraying a positive attitude or...
A personal perspective When I gave birth to my twins some 25 years ago, I told my husband “I want at least a year off before I think about going back to work”, and somehow that one year stretched into three. Then my third child arrived and the “going back to work” in...
Kindness 2.0: going beyond the feel-good factor to true compassion. As an associate lecturer at Buckinghamshire New University one of my favourite parts of the job is marking one of the first assignments on the Masters of Applied Positive Psychology course. Students...
When I was a new mother some 20+ years ago, Gina Ford published ‘The contented Little Baby Book” outlining her strict daily routines for parents and babies to follow, based on her experience as a maternity nurse. Opinions on the book split the world of new parents....
Character Strengths An important topic in the field of positive psychology is the study of strengths. The basic idea is that we are all different and have different strengths – thoughts, feelings or behaviours that come naturally to us and give us energy and a sense...
The question of how to be happy, and how to live a good life has been kicking around for aeons. Back to when the Ancient Greeks were shooting the breeze in Athens, debating what type of happiness was best, there are written records of people discussing happiness and...
New Year’s resolutions. It’s traditional on New Year’s Eve to make New Year’s resolutions. People promise themselves they will lose weight, drink less, quit smoking or start exercising. If they are lucky, they might keep up their new year’s...
When life deals you Lemons… Positive Psychology has sometimes been described as what takes us from OK to great – but what happens when something knocks us sideways and we are finding it hard to cope? There are times when things just aren’t going right for us and no...
Racing for gold Imagine yourself performing your favourite sport in the Tokyo Olympics – maybe a running event. You’ve worked hard, trained for it, you’re ready for the big day. On the day, it gets off to a good start, you race hard, and it goes better than expected....
What is gratitude journaling? In the last couple of decades, research into happiness and wellbeing has shown that consciously choosing to participate in certain activities (sometimes called positive psychology interventions) can have a positive effect on our mood,...