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The Keys to Happiness: Partly Genetic, But You Control the Rest Custodian cleans up for classics degree at Columbia Atheists more generous than religious when helping others: study The secret to happiness is how to cope with stress Relationships: Your act of generosity can help you as much as it helps others The Neurogenics of Niceness Caine Is Einstein on Kindness, Our Shared Existence, and Life Relationships: Your act of generosity can help you as much as it helps others How To Be Happy Anywhere
 

The Keys to Happiness: Partly Genetic, But You Control the Rest

Is there a “set point” that determines your level of happiness, regardless of your status in life? Is it something you have little power to change? For several decades psychologists have wrestled with that question, and in recent years many, if not most, have embraced the idea that we are born with a tendency to be happy, [...]

Custodian cleans up for classics degree at Columbia

IT TOOK ALMOST 20 years, but this weekend a Columbia University custodian will put down his broom and dustpan just long enough to collect his sheepskin. Gac Filipaj, 52, an immigrant from the former Yugoslavia, toiled day and night to earn a bachelor’s degree in classics — with honors, no less. And even though he [...]

Atheists more generous than religious when helping others: study

A University of California, Berkeley, report suggests less religious people are driven by emotion, which spurs compassion. Atheists may not believe in God, but they may be better at loving thy neighbor than churchgoing folk. A new study by the University of California, Berkeley, suggests athiests and agnostics are more willing to help other people [...]

The secret to happiness is how to cope with stress

We usually think of stress as a bad thing. Every week, family doctors see patients-anxious, angry, exhausted, burnt out or depressed-asking for a “stress leave” from work. When we tell people at home or at work that they’re causing you a lot of stress, it’s not a compliment and we’re not asking them to lay [...]

Relationships: Your act of generosity can help you as much as it helps others

There are good things happening in our community that sometimes are not given much publicity, because sometimes the kindness and generous acts are not done for show. I recently caught up with Bruce Findley and Emily Kletzian who, as a couple, are injecting their time and talents into a charitable foundation. Acronymed LEAF Limited, this [...]

The Neurogenics of Niceness

It turns out that the milk of human kindness is evoked by something besides mom’s good example. Research by psychologists at the University at Buffalo and the University of California, Irvine, has found that at least part of the reason some people are kind and generous is because their genes nudge them toward it. Michel [...]

Caine’s Arcade

A 9 year old boy – who built an elaborate cardboard arcade inside his dad’s used auto part store – is about to have the best day of his life. Help Caine’s Scholarship Fund: cainesarcade.com Caine’s Arcade Online: facebook.com/cainesarcade twitter.com/cainesarcade Credits: Directed by Nirvan twitter.com/nirvan

Is ‘Gross National Happiness’ a Better Measurement Than GDP?

On Monday, in Manhattan’s bustling midtown, senior level officials came together at the United Nations to discuss a new economic paradigm at the High Level Meeting on Well-Being and Happiness, an event organized by Bhutan, a country that knows a little bit about happiness. Meanwhile in Phnom Penh, at the sleepy confluence of the Mekong and Tonle Sap [...]

Einstein on Kindness, Our Shared Existence, and Life’s Highest Ideals

In times of turmoil, I often turn to one of my existential pillars of comfort: Albert Einstein’s Ideas and Opinions – the definitive collection of the great thinker’s essays on everything from science and religion to government to human nature, gathered under the supervision of Einstein himself. It’s been a challenging week, one that’s reminded me with [...]

Relationships: Your act of generosity can help you as much as it helps others

There are good things happening in our community that sometimes are not given much publicity, because sometimes the kindness and generous acts are not done for show. I recently caught up with Bruce Findley and Emily Kletzian who, as a couple, are injecting their time and talents into a charitable foundation. Acronymed LEAF Limited, this [...]

How To Be Happy Anywhere

The other day, as I took a taxi ride across Manhattan, the driver was pondering the state of the world. “I can’t believe all these disasters happening everywhere,” he said. “If it’s not a flood, it’s a tsunami. There are fires and hurricanes and earthquakes… then there are riots and bombs and wars and shootings.” [...]

Happiness encounter with Stefan Sagemeister in Philadelphia

11 April 2012

Some of the PSFK team visited a new exhibition by design pioneer Stefan Sagmeister over the weekend. His new show at the ICA Philadelphia is a reflection on happiness, his pursuit of it and his learnings about the subject. While the Happy Show features the culmination of years of work, Sagmeister’s art seems to be very connected with the current infographic [...]

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Achieving Happiness: Benefits of a loving relationship

29 March 2012

Psychologists have spent decades studying how to have loving relationships, and that’s helpful when teaching people all of the component skills they need to have in order to love and be loved. But love is an emotion — more powerful than all the other positive emotions combined — and being in a loving relationship is [...]

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Tiny Miracles: 5 Little Things To Notice So You Can Feel Better

20 March 2012

We frequently have opportunities to increase what I like to call everyday resilience. It’s the stuff we need to get us through the ups and downs of our daily lives and just plain make us feel better. They can be easy to miss, though. Let me illustrate with this story: The other day I was walking along [...]

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Four steps to having the best life ever

16 March 2012

You know those nights where you get home late from work and you’re already in a bad mood because there was traffic and before that someone in the office did something that was annoying and even earlier still you woke up late and accidently had that decaf you keep for guests and pretty much everything [...]

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10 steps to spread kindness, stay happy and healthy as 2012 unravels

15 March 2012

There is no way to deny that college life can be incredibly stressful. While balancing academics, extracurriculars, jobs, social lives, volunteering and countless other obligations, one very important person often falls to the wayside: ourselves. There is no quick fix for our hectic lives, but there are several ways to slowly eliminate the stress and [...]

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Achieving Happiness: 5 steps to improving happiness

14 March 2012

Most people are aware that their best chance to have a healthy body is to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables every day. But do you know that there are five daily actions you could take to have a happy life? There is strong scientific evidence demonstrating that 5 easily accomplished actions can significantly [...]

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Achieving Happiness: Principles of happy, successful marriage

12 March 2012

Psychologists know so much about how relationships work that it’s sad to see so many people struggling to establish and maintain a loving connection in their life. The world’s foremost relationship researcher is John Gottman, who has identified “Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work.” Couples who are able to live by all seven principles, Gottman’s [...]

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Shayne Looper: The surprising path to happiness

07 March 2012

By Shayne Looper GateHouse News Service Oatmeal. It’s funny: my wife and I eat it almost every day to keep my cholesterol in check. But when we were first married we ate it (sometimes even for supper) because it was a cheap meal and we were trying to save money to pay off college loans. Just [...]

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Turning 50 brings insights on kindness

06 March 2012

As my 50th birthday nears, I finally know the kind of woman I want to be. It’s odd to think that it’s taken me this long to figure out such a thing. But it seems that I have spent so much of my life thinking about all the things I wanted to do that I [...]

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How Kindness and Generosity Made My Businesses More Profitable

05 March 2012

You know it’s profitable to be socially-conscious and charitable when big companies make ‘corporate responsibility’ a priority. Does that sound cynical? Actually, I couldn’t be happier about this development: we all benefit when companies make a sincere effort to contribute more. If you’re a small business owner, it might seem more difficult to dole out [...]

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Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary. — Steve Jobs

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