I am way, way, way behind in my book reviews. Fortunately (sadly?), no one has mentioned missing them. ;-)

Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, is a fascinating look into the shortcuts our minds take which we're largely unaware of. It's very eye-opening and more than a little frightening to see how much our judgments, thoughts, and ( Read more... )

much_ado just made an interesting post about forgiveness that includes a thought-provoking book excerpt. Well worth reading!

(Cross-posted from G+, for those of you having deja-vu ( Read more... )

Remember Flourish, that book I recommended so highly on the basis of the first chapter alone? Well, it turned out that the first chapter was significantly better than the rest of it, in my opinion. I still think everyone should read the first chapter, but I can't recommend reading the rest of it unless you have a particular interest in the field of ( Read more... )

A week or two ago redheadedmuse tweeted a link to an article on why we shouldn't call Weiner's behaviour "sex addiction" or his treatment "rehab". It's an excellent piece, and, for the most part, I agree with it ( Read more... )

I read this on the commute this morning, and it elucidates much more clearly than I did a distinction I was talking about with Ben the Philosopher last night (emphasis mine):

If Jerry's analysis was right, and the downturn was caused by mathematical wizards and greedy salespeople who profited hugely in the short run by selling derivatives that ( Read more... )

The book I'm reading, Flourish, has a companion website at http://authentichappiness.org. There are a slew of tests available there if you're willing to register; the four categories of test are emotions (positive and negative), engagement (character strengths, grit, gratitude), meaning ( Read more... )

Something Seligman talked about that I didn't directly quote is the idea that positive psychology describes what people do, not what they should do. The five elements of well-being are the five things that, as he puts it, one can observe people choosing to invest their energies in when they are able to make a free choice. He uses the word " ( Read more... )

I'm not even done the first chapter of Flourish (by Seligman, the founder positive psychology) yet and I already want to *highly* recommend it to everyone I know. And also everyone else. Seriously, even if you don't want to read the whole thing, or can't afford to buy it, just download the free first chapter from Amazon (and the Kindle app for ( Read more... )

This is the third in what is rapidly becoming a daisy chain of posts about "hungry eyes", using non-verbal signals, and desperation. As someone mentioned in comments on the last post, sometimes the people guilty of "hungry eyes" are the ones who are in the catch-22 of desperation*: being without the attention and affection they need makes them ( Read more... )