The 28 best psychology blogs on the internet, organised by topic - Generally Thinking - Psychology for students

The 28 best psychology blogs on the internet, organised by topic - Generally Thinking - Psychology for students

This is a great list

Why NLP Practitioners Freak Me Out

In my line of work (presenting and coaching) I run into a lot of people who are very enthusiastic about NLP and I have to admit that, although many of them are lovely people, some of them freak me out.  I feel uncomfortable when I am with them and I can't put my finger on why.

I have now figured it out.  NLP practitioners are taught a  range of strategies around body language:  

'We can mirror or match ones voice and posture, blinking and facial expression, words and gesturing, physiology and position. For example if a person tilts his head to the left, we should tilt the head to the right, just like a mirror. Align your posture similar to the curvature of the spine. When you sit across someone, you can assume a mirror position of the hands, legs, head etc. When a person talks, you can observe the gestures used and hand movements. You can use the same gestures when responding back.'

http://www.exforsys.com/tutorials/nlp/nlp-mirroring-and-matching-techniques.html

The problem with this is:

 “We have an exceptional capacity to track whether the timing and morphology of an emotion is correct.” Dr Gross quoted in NY Times

However proficient they are at mirroring my non-verbal's, if it is a conscious strategy (rather than something that comes naturally from genuinely liking me) the timing and morphology of their non-verbal's will be subtly 'off' and my subconscious mind will pick it up and signal to me to be wary.

I am often at a loss why people are so keen to learn NLP as it has little research evidence to support it and there are so many wonderful evidence based approaches to supporting clients in positive change.

Anxiety and Scapegoating

David Code: The Real Reason Couples Divorce

'Bestselling author and primatologist Frans de Waal describes our tendency to blame others as one of our least conscious, yet most powerful instincts. This displacement of blame happens so often, in so many animal species, that it must be hardwired in us, dating back thousands of years.'

Code suggests that:

'When we criticize our spouses, we tend to believe we are pointing out true, objective faults. But in fact, blaming our spouse may just be our anxiety talking. ....people with higher anxiety are more likely to overreact, so spouses with high anxiety will have a greater tendency to fight-or-flee each other, which may lead to a downward spiral that sours their marriage. When the going gets tough, rats, humans and many other species scapegoat.'

It sounds like it is a good idea to get good at noticing when I am blaming someone else and then pause and notice what is underneath.  What am I frightened of?  Is focusing on criticising the other person a strategy to deal with my fear?  Could I make some space for that fear and then choose to act in a way that is most likely to get me the outcome I want?

What if it wasn't really true?

The Middle and Upper Paleolithic may have been the most gender-equal time in human history.
http://www.answers.com/topic/paleolithic.


Can you imagine that - stone age humans, living 100,000 years ago may have been more gender equal than the world is now?


Why am I telling you this?  Because that probably isn't your view of stone age life. You probably have a different picture in your mind for what it was like to be a hunter gatherer.  It is unlikely that you remember where you learnt about how stone age humans lived but somehow those ideas found a way into your mind and got treated as 'truth'.  


What else have you learnt that you treat as 'true'?  Sometimes those 'truths' limit us - we get told who we are and how we should live and don't even think to question those idea's.


What if you were to consciously decide who you want to be in the world and what you want your life to stand for?  And then, moment by moment, choose your actions based on those values?

'We must be willing to let go of the life we have planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us.'  EM Forster

10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn

Scientific Mindfulness: 10 Life Lessons You Should Unlearn: Martha Beck's recent article in O Magazine suggests 10 life lessons you should unlearn:

1. Problems are bad.
2. It's important to stay happy.
3. I'm irreparably damaged by my past.
4. Working hard leads to success.
5. Success is the opposite of failure.
7. We should think rationally about our decisions.
8. The pretty girls get all the good stuff.
9. If all my wishes came true right now, life would be perfect.
10. Loss is terrible.

Great Stuff.

In Sickness and in Health

As a country GP, my father used to sometimes have the sad job of giving bad news.  He would sit at a kitchen table and tell a husband that his wife had been diagnosed with an incurable illness.  That she would become progressively more and more incapacitated - no longer able to care for the children or help with the chores,  eventually needing care herself.   My father noticed two types of response to this terrible news. One sort of husband would become anxious and immediately say, 'I can't do that doctor, If she gets too bad she'll have to go in a home' and the other sort would sit quietly and then say, 'Tell me what I have to do.'

Perhaps, like me, hearing that story, you are wondering how you would respond in that situation? Perhaps you feel compassion and understanding for the first response and admiration for the second?

My father's advice to me was: When you are considering making a commitment to a long term relationship with some one, imagine yourself in that situation, hearing that bad news.  What is your first response? If it is 'I couldn't do that' then be cautious about making the commitment.  If it is 'I would do my best to care for them' then you are on the right track.

And know that you are human, sometimes we do need to let an institution care for unwell loved ones, so that we can be there for them in other ways.

On doing, rather than thinking and talking about doing

'You could read every book in the world on swimming and still not know how to swim.  To learn to swim you have to get in the water' 

Kelly Wilson

What else is this true of......?  Creating, loving, arguing, being a good friend....

By all means read the instruction book and ask for advice and encouragement.  Absolutely, only risk yourself on endeavours that have meaning for you.
Definitely, start in the shallow end, with armbands (floaties/waterwings).
But know that, however scared you are, at some point, you have to get in the water.
Don't leave it too long - life is short.

My Aunt Mary was a Doctor.  Her journey to qualifying in medicine is pretty impressive.

Mary was a very bright lady. When she was in primary school her teacher told my grandmother that Mary was the cleverest child she had ever taught.  But academic success wasn't easy for Mary. She was a teenager in the 1940's, when my grandparents were very poor.  Mary had a single set of clothes which was her school uniform.  She had to wear it to go to school, work on the farm and play with her brother (my father). So she was usually grubby, and perhaps rather smelly at times. Most of her teachers looked upon her neglected state as a sign of idleness and were not encouraging towards her.  However her parents were very encouraging towards both of their children, my father describes his father calling out to his mother, on many occasions;

'Madge!  Come and look at what this child has done!  The child is a genius!'

My grandmother was a quiet but determined feminist.

When Mary was around 15, her grandmother, who lived with the family, had a stroke and became bedfast.  Mary had to stop her schooling to help her mother care for her sick grandmother.  But Mary was determined to pursue her studies. She got a copy of the curriculum and worked on her own at home.  She had to fight with the school in order to be allowed to take her 'O' levels (the exams UK children took when they were 16 years old).

She didn't hear from the school about her exam results and assumed that she must have failed. So she got a job as a telephonist to help support the family.  Some months later she bumped into a girl who had gone to school with her.  The young woman remarked to Mary 'You must have been so pleased to get all those prizes'.  Mary contacted the school and discovered that she had passed and had achieved some prizes.

She came home and told her parents that she wanted to become a doctor.  My father, Peter, who was 2 years younger than Mary but had left school early without any qualifications, thought that it was a great idea and decided he wanted to become a doctor as well. Mary was at first disconcerted because she thought Peter would help her financially.  My grandparents encouraged them - even though they had no money.  Mary and Peter went to night school and part time college to complete their high schooling and then Mary got a place at Belfast University and my father at Birmingham University.

My father told me this story quite recently.  I had never known how profoundly my Aunt had affected my life.  The example she set my father meant that I was brought up a middle class doctor's daughter, with all the financial, social and psychological privileges that go with that. I am very grateful to her.

Emotional Maturity

'The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function'  F. Scott Fitzgerald

I believe that the test of emotional maturity is to be able to sit with ambivalence; to feel two opposing feelings; to hold two contradictory ideas, and, rather than getting caught into thinking that you have to decide which is more true before you can act, to choose to act based on your values.

Life is Better with a Co-pilot

In a delightful interaction in the movie 'Up In The Air', Ryan, played by George Clooney, is asked to speak to his niece's fiancé who is having cold feet about getting married. Ryan says:

 'If you think about it, your favourite memories, the most important moments in your life...were you alone?  Life's better with company, everybody needs a co-pilot'

He is of course, right.   Pavot,  Diener,  and  Fujita (1990) found that people experience more positive feelings on average when they are with others than when alone and married people report greater happiness than those who have never married or are divorced or widowed.
But some tips:

• The co-pilot doesn't have to be a romantic partner - they could be a dear friend or relative
• Sometimes a co-pilot isn't available, so it is important to be able to fly your plane alone
• Whether you do have a co-pilot to share your happy moments with or not, remember to savor them (Byant & Veroff 2007).  Savoring involves anticipating future pleasures (through planning and discussion with others); experiencing present pleasures (through mindfulness); and reminiscing about past pleasures (sharing stories and pictures). 

Approaching Arguments with Maturity

''There are rarely any winners in arguments, if winning is defined as another person accepting your truth and abandoning what he (or she) had originally believed" pg 101

''It is naive to believe that if only you can get the other person to understand, the argument will be settled'' pg 102

''If the subject of an argument is trivial, it is usually symbolic of bigger things. The universal agendas of love and power underlie nearly every argument'' pg 102

Teenagers and Freedom

'Only people who have been allowed to practise freedom can have the grown-up look in their eyes.'  EM Forster

This is such good advice for parents of teenagers - and so incredibly scary!  How much freedom do we give our children in order to both keep them safe and give them the space to grow up properly?  I think it is about doing it in steps - giving them a small amount of freedom and seeing how they handle it.  I also tend to adopt the attitude that if my teenage children can give me a thoughtful plan for how they will keep themselves safe in a particular situation, then they are mature enough to handle that situation.

For example, my daughter, Ellie, loves to ride.  She wanted to do some jumping. I was anxious about this - pictures of her falling and terribly injured in my mind.  Ellie knows I am anxious about this, so, when she asked me if she could jump her horse, she spoke to me about what she had in place to keep herself safe.  The plans where detailed and sensible - so I said 'Yes'.

Does Money Make Us Happy?

Wealth and happiness across the world: material pr... [J Pers Soc Psychol. 2010] - PubMed result

In this huge survey with 136,839 participants (who were a representative sample of the population of the world), Diener et al found.

'Satisfaction with standard of living was a significantly stronger predictor of life evaluation than of feelings, whereas psychological need fulfilment significantly more strongly predicted positive feelings than evaluations of life.'

Which means that the more money you earn, the higher you are likely to rate your current life on a 0-10 scale (where 0 = worst possible life and 10 = best possible life). However, income is only moderately linked to positive feelings. Positive feelings (whether you smiled or laughed yesterday or felt feelings of enjoyment) are much more influenced by 'psychological need fulfilment'.  Psychological need fulfilment is about whether you have family or friends you could count on in an emergency, and also, whether, when you think about yesterday, you:

• Felt you were treated with respect 
• Learned something new
• Did what you do best, and, 
• Chose how your time was spent. 

The Storytelling Mind

  My son Patrick has posted some photos he has titled: Stories that caught my eye strolling through Edinburgh.

If you are willing, go to http://patrickselfvisuals.blogspot.com/2010/07/edinburgh-city.html  and look at the pictures. Notice the stories your mind comes up with as you look at the pictures.  See if you can look at the pictures without creating a story about the people and places.  When most of us look at other humans, our mind gets busy creating a story.  If you watch your mind during the day, you may also notice it is busy creating stories about most of what you do (mine is telling me a number of stories about your response as you read this post).   


This is a wonderful property of our minds - but it can be a problem if we don't recognise the stories for what they are - just stories, often based much more on conjecture than actual, observable fact.  When we get fused with our stories, treating them as true and important, we can get ourselves into a mess.  

Enjoy the stories but hold them lightly. 

Love as an Action

''A more helpful way to think about love...think of love as an action.  The feeling of love comes and goes on a whim, you can't control it.  But the action of love is something you can do regardless of how you are feeling.''
When you are annoyed with your partner ''reconnect with your values: remember the sort of partner you want to be and the sort of relationship you want to build. And then you need to take action.'' pg 13

Values v Winning Trophies

 'The very young,the uninitiated, the hungry, and the wounded have values that revolve around the finding and winning of trophies.  The very young truly do not know what they are seeking yet, the hungry seek sustenance, and the wounded seek consolation for previous losses.' pg 140

What is Your Calling?

Martin Seligman differentiates between a job, a career and a calling.
This list of questions is a useful frame of reference that can help identify a calling.
Integrity
Is this something I care about deeply?  Is it in line with my values? Would I be proud of doing this?
Who am I?
Service
How can I make this world a better place?
Enjoyment
What gives my talents full expression?
What do I love to do?
Excellence
What can I dedicate to enough to persist to excellence?


A calling doesn't have to be paid employment and it doesn't have to be prestigious work but it does have to have a zing of passion and energy about it.

Making Public Commitments

Yesterday I made vegetable soup. As you can see I am no Master Chef.  You may be wondering why I have decided to do 'show and tell' on my soup.

It is because the reason I made vegetable soup yesterday is important.

In a couple of recent blogposts I have mentioned the importance of eating 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day.  This public announcement about diet and health led me to notice that there was a difference between what I was saying and doing.  So soup got made.

If you want to motivate yourself to do something, make a public announcement and then let yourself notice how your behaviour is stacking up.

The Risk/Regret Tipping Point

 ''We are it seems, exquisitely wired to avoid taking risks, and we would prefer to preserve the pleasant status quo at all times rather than take the risk that we could make our circumstances worse...(however) there is a tipping point, after a few years, where we stop feeling regrets about what hasn't worked and instead have more regrets about the choices we haven't had the courage to pursue.  This point occurs somewhere between the third and seventh year after we've taken a risk that didn't work out and instead of being sad about the outcome, we become grateful that we had the nerve to go after something meaningful or hard''

When you have to make a scary decision, ask yourself ''Whether this goes right or wrong, which choice will I feel good about in seven years time?''

Self Compassion – A Trait More Powerful Than Self-Esteem

Self Compassion – A Trait More Powerful Than Self-Esteem:

This is a great article - here are the highlights:

'having high self-esteem is related to many positive benefits such as reduced instances of depression and anxiety and greater optimism.'' however "much research also shows that people high in self-esteem are often defensive in the face of negative feedback, can be narcissistic and may not always take responsibility for their actions'

Daut suggests 'another positive trait that has many of the benefits we seek from self-esteem but without the drawbacks: self-compassion.' 'Self-compassion is defined as “being kind toward oneself in instances of pain or failure; perceiving one’s experiences as part of the larger human experience; and holding painful thoughts and feelings in balanced awareness (mindfulness).'(Neff, Rude, Kirkpatrick)

'People high in self-compassion react to negative feedback with more acceptance and with an orientation towards growth and the development of mastery. People low in self-compassion react in opposite ways: they reject negative feedback and often fail to learn from it.

People high in self-compassion tend to have less negative emotions when distressing events occur and take more responsibility for these events. As a result, they are also more willing to make needed changes.'

He recommends building self compassion when dealing with painful events by using 'the following prompts each of which focuses on a component of self-compassion – (1) common humanity, (2) self-kindness, (3) mindfulness.'

This means:

1. Considering how others may suffer similar difficulties - it is part of being human.
2. Treat yourself as a kind friend would treat you.
3. Notice with openness and curiosity your thoughts and emotion

Is Guilt a Useless Emotion?

Guilt is an unpleasant emotion  - does it have a use?
I think  - sometimes.
Sometimes guilt signals to us that we haven't behaved in line with our values.  When I am functioning well, my response to a feeling of guilt is to realign my behaviour with my values and then work out how I can make amends.  It could be making a sincere apology; doing something to 'right the wrong', or, if it wouldn't be appropriate to address it directly with the person involved, then do something that I feel balances out my 'wrongdoing' - perhaps do a favour for someone else or give to a charity.  For me making amends is important - it means I find it easier not to buy the thoughts my mind will often scold me with when I have made a mistake.  When I am not functioning so well, I can get hooked by those thoughts and become anxious and frozen.
At other times, guilt signals to us that we have broken a internal rule that isn't relevant for us any more.  Something we were taught in childhood about how we should behave that doesn't align with our adult values.  It could be about what we wear; what we eat; who we sleep with; or even as simple as asking for what we want in a relationship. In those circumstances it is a pretty useless emotion.  The trick then is to notice it with curiosity and compassion. I don't recommend battling to get rid of it.  Just make some space for it. Acknowledge the child  within who was taught that rule and perhaps feel grateful that as adults we can choose our values.

Six Healthy Behaviours of the Slim

Choice magazine recently reported on a survey of readers of Consumer Reports magazine which explored the relationship between certain behaviours and Body Mass Index (BMI). They found that the following six behaviours were associated with a healthy BMI (i.e. being slim):

1. Carefully controlling portions at every meal
2. Limiting fat to less than one third of daily calorie intake
3. Eating fruit and vegetables at least five times a day - the more days per week respondents did this, the lower their average BMI
4. Eating wholegrain rather than processed grains
5. Avoiding eating out or eating take out
6. Exercising regularly - Cardio workouts at least four times a week and strength training at least once a week. 

Interestingly, low carb diets were linked to higher BMI's

This information needs to be taken with a pinch of salt - it is entirely based on self reports and is not prospective.  However, the six strategies do seem sensible, don't they?

Setting Goals

My father has a saying:

'If you don't know what you want, you'll get what you don't want'

Although not strictly true (Sometimes we do accidentally hit on something wonderful that we would never have  imagined we wanted - my first ipod was in that category!) he does make a valid point.  Having clarity about both what we want in our lives and who we want to be in the world, makes us much more likely to achieve what we want.
Here are some tips around goal setting

• Always link your goals to your values - pursuing a value-laden goal is full of vitality and purpose
• Know the difference between performance goals and outcome goals and focus your energy on performance goals
• Performance goals are actions that you have control over; for example - eating 5 servings of fruit and vegetables a day
• Outcome goals are what you are hoping to achieve, but you don't have complete control over whether you achieve them - being active and healthy at 80 would be an example
• Avoid 'dead men's' goals' - these are goals that a dead person could do better than a live person.  Russ Harris writes about this in The Happiness Trap.  For example a dead person is good at not smoking cigarettes, whereas a live person is better at noticing the craving for a cigarette and then drinking a glass of water instead.

Compassion for Ourselves

This is an interesting article that, for me, explores the importance of having compassion for ourselves

"Maybe you can be enlightened and broken too. Sometimes I feel like I understand so much, that I can be a lot of help to people. Other times my mind is blank and there is nothing in my mind or heart to say but “I’m so sorry.” I want to reach out but my hand is lying in my lap, still in a shape of warding off demons of fear and illness, financial terrors and loss, and I can’t do anything with it.

The broken Buddha says he knows how I feel. Our hearts beat together for a time, and we are both strengthened."

In my years as a therapist, I remember so many moments like that.  Having heard a story of terrible loss, I would sit, uncertain what to say, frightened of saying the wrong thing and angry at myself for not having an answer that could make all of the problems go away.  It is at moments like that when we need to lean towards ourselves with compassion.

I have since learnt that, often, what people in pain really value, is a listener who is prepared to let them feel their pain and doesn't try to make it go away.

Choosing a Suitable Partner

'If you have had a string of bad relationships and have been hurt, it doesn't mean that you are hopeless at picking people...everybody gets taken in by other people's 'travel brochures'.  It's more likely to mean you haven't got rid of bad relationships fast enough'  pg 163 Julian Short

Fish Oil May Reduced Risk Of Psychotic Disorders In High Risk Individuals

 "A new study suggests that people at very high risk of developing psychotic disorders appear less likely to to do so after taking a daily dose of 1.2 g of omega-3 PUFA fish oil for three months."


For those of you who, like me, are worried about overfishing of the world's oceans, flaxseed oil is also a good source of Omega 3

Prolonged Cannabis Use Linked To Psychosis

"An Australian study found that prolonged use of cannabis or marijuana by young adults was linked to a higher risk of developing psychosis, with the highest risk affecting those who started using the substance in their teens, and continued using it for 6 years or more into adulthood: the risk of developing psychosis among these users was more than double that of never users."

When I worked as a psychiatrist I saw young men who were living with psychosis precipitated by cannabis use.  It was heartbreaking.

School Gardening Boosts Children's Wellbeing And Development

A new study suggests that incorporating gardening into the education children receive at school boosts their wellbeing, learning and development and helps equip them for many of the challenges of adult life.

Some of my happiest childhood memories are of spending Saturday afternoons gardening with my father - reading this study makes me think I should have been a little more persuasive about getting my own children to join me in the garden.

What Maids Teach Us About Physical Health and Life Longevity: A Lesson in Mindfulness | Psychology Today

What Maids Teach Us About Physical Health and Life Longevity: A Lesson in Mindfulness | Psychology Today

Can mindful awareness of our movements improve our physical health?

by Todd Kashdan

Hotel housekeepers who were encouraged to be mindful of how their work was a form of exercise lost weight and saw improvements in blood pressure.

This is a really interesting piece of research.

Think about the chores and activities you do each day that involve moving your body - cleaning the kitchen, running up stairs to get the jacket you left behind, taking out the rubbish etc. Try mindfully engaging with those activities, making them a mini-workout. Perhaps, like the hotel housekeepers, it will improve your health. Changing your relationship with the activity, seeing it as an opportunity to benefit your health rather than a chore has to be a good idea.

Psychological Health

Recent work in the area of psychological health suggests that 2 things are key to psychological health

• A willingness to experience unpleasant internal stuff (thoughts, memories, urges, emotions etc) in the service of doing what is important (the opposite of this is called experiential avoidance) and having the skills to not getting hooked by those experiences – Just letting them play in the background rather than focussing energy on them. 
• Psychological flexibility – having a range of possible responses to a situation and being able to choose your response rather than doing the same thing over and over again.

A Wise Relationship with Life

''The longing for love and the movement of love is underneath all of our activities.  The happiness we discover in life is not about possessing or owning or even understanding.  Instead, it is the discovery of this capacity to love, to have loving, free and wise relationship with all of life"

Jack Kornfield quoted in 'Calming your Anxious Mind'  pg 138

Learning from Experience

My grandfather had a saying

'Experience is a very good school but the fee's are terribly high'

We tend to remember best what we have learnt from experience but, as my Grandad was suggesting, there are a few problems with it. I think that he was referring to the pain of learning from mistakes and also  the time it takes to learn by trial and error.
I also want to suggest that what we learn from experience can be flawed.  When we learn from the events in our own lives we are dealing with a very small sample, of one. There isn't a control group for us to compare with.  The information we take in and remember about the circumstances is incomplete and distorted by our own expectations.  So we often come to flawed conclusions, which we then convert into rules for living:
'All men are *#@*!'
'If I don't allow myself to love completely then I will avoid being hurt"
'Rich people are selfish'
'All women are ^#*!'

I suggest 2 approaches to improving what we learn from experience.
Firstly, get information from other peoples experience.  My preference is for information from careful research studies. Then try it out in your own life and see if it works for you.
Secondly, keep a double entry journal.  When you make a decision write down:

• what you are going to do
• what you are hoping to achieve
• the factors that shaped your decision.

Leave some  blank space after each entry, and a few months later come back and write down:

• what outcome you did achieve
• new information about the situation that you now know
• what you have learnt

And then test your new hypothesis.

The Genealogy of Success | Brass Tack Thinking

The Genealogy of Success | Brass Tack Thinking: "You are the product of all who’ve come before—and all that you’ve done since."

It is good to pause occassionally and think about who has influenced you and how.

You might also want to write them a gratitude letter (Seligman and Peterson) - writing a letter to someone who has helped you and delivering it in person has been shown to increase happiness for about a month.


Seligman, M.E.P., Steen, T.A., Park, N.,& Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60, 410-421.

The Downside of Trying to Control our Emotions

Everyday Strivings in War Veterans With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Suffering From a Hyper-Focus on Avoidance and Emotion Regulation by Todd Kashdan, William Breen and Terri Julian
This article is part of some developing evidence suggesting that focussing on controlling our emotions is counter-productive.  They found that in veterans:

"devoting finite time and energy in daily life to regulating emotions was associated with less purpose,  meaning, and joy"'

It seems that focussing on who we want to be and what we want our life to stand for, is much more likely to lead to a joyful life than trying to avoid painful emotions.

Focussing on Doing Good

My Dad recently gave me the following advice.

'You have to focus your attention outside yourself. If you focus internally too much then you send yourself crazy.  Focus on what you can do to help people.  What you can do to make the world a better place.' 

Dad was a family doctor in a rural area in the UK.  Whenever I go home, people still come up to me and say: 'You are Dr Collis's daughter aren't you? He was such a wonderful doctor.  He was so kind to me when...'

I think that is a pretty good testament to a life well-lived.

Evidence Based Strategies to Build Well Being

Here is a list of some evidence based interventions for improving well being

• Behavioural Activation – doing things that are fun, meaningful and/or give a sense of achievement even if you don't much feel like it! 
• Exercise – especially outside in nature
• Positive psychology – there is nice research on how positive psychology interventions (3 good things, expressing gratitude, using strengths, acts of kindness, savouring pleasures etc) work to build levels of happiness and even get rid of depression. A nice place to start with that is the live happy app. Be aware that ‘positive thinking’ isn’t positive psychology
• Mindfulness Meditation
• Loving kindness Meditation
• Identifying and acting on values. (The brief bullseye is good activity to do to start thinking about your values)
• Building relationship skills – happy relationships are a very important factor in determining happiness
• Setting and working towards meaningful goals

Love and Pain

My two favourite men have left me for a while. My partner is off in South Africa watching the world cup and my son is going to England to meet our extended family.
I love them both and because I love them I miss them.  There is a small pain in my heart caused by their absence.
I notice that I interact with that pain in several ways.
Some days the pain is a sweet pain, I make space for it, as I know that it is a necessary part of love. It signals to me how important they both are to me and I feel lucky to have that love in my life.  Making that space also means there is space for my feelings of joy that they are off doing what is important to them.

Other days, I don't want to accept the situation, I get hooked by painful thoughts (Yesterday it was, 'If Albert was here I wouldn't be struggling to put these IKEA chairs in the car on my own''), I lose contact with the present and start counting the days until he is home.
And sometimes I manage to be in the present.  Enjoying that I have more time to hang out with my gorgeous daughter; potter in the garden; write this blog.
Kelly Wilson encourages us to compassionately 'lean in' towards ourselves when we feel pain. That is such a good move.  Next time you feel some emotional pain try it - let go of judging yourself for feeling the pain and just lean in with compassion.