Does this look like you? It’s a very busy time of year for University students. Perhaps your stress levels are building. As I discussed in my first blog, stress occurs when we believe that the demands on us exceed the…
Do you suffer from baby elephant syndrome?
Have you heard of the baby elephant syndrome? Maybe you even suffer from it. The idea goes like this: An adult elephant is very large and very strong. It could easily uproot huge trees with its trunk. So how do…
Savouring the positive – where are you shining your flashlight?
Our lives are filled with many, many different experiences. At any given time, there can be many wonderful things going on in your life, at the same time as you are dealing with some “not-so-wonderful” things. What do you focus…
Very happy people
Psychologists have conducted a lot of research on unhappy people, but, until fairly recently, not much attention has been paid to the study of happy people. Since we know that the vast majority of people think that happiness is extremely…
It’s okay to talk to yourself, but, please, watch what you say.
We all talk to ourselves, sometimes out loud, most often in our heads, and that’s perfectly natural. In fact, self-talk can help us to understand and organize our experiences, to plan, to learn, to think through problems to find a…
An exercise to increase happiness
Everybody would like to be happy. Research has shown that, in nation after nation, university students rate being happy as extremely important and valuable (6.39 on a 7 point scale). Dr. Tal Ben Shahar, a very popular Harvard psychologist, has…
You need to plan for the planning fallacy!
We’re at the beginning of a new University year. Fresh start. You’ve got your course outlines; you (hopefully) have looked at tests, assignments and other due dates. This time, you plan on staying on top of things. Good for you!…