Happiness, Well-Being, and Positive Psychology Resources

Self Help Resources >>Happiness & Well Being

  • Prezi on "Happiness and Well-Being"
    • Once in the presentation, click on the "more" button and expand to "full screen." The presentation is self-paced; just click on the play button to move forward each time you are ready for a new section. Make sure to watch all the youtube clips-- they are great and inspirational!
    • If preferred, click here for an accessible Power Point that contains this material.

Websites

  • Biology of Joy

    Article based on the brain science work of Richardson and others

  • Brain Rules

    What we know about the brain in relation to well-being

  • Brene Brown's Blog

    A website addressing happiness, authenticity, shame resilience, and self-compassion (among other things)

  • Gratitude Website

    A link to a a neat website explaining how gratitude can help make you happy.

  • Greater Good Science Center

    This center is run out of UCB. The center studies the psychology, sociology, and neuroscience of well-being and teaches skills of compassion

  • Happiness

    A YouTube Clip from “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown?”

  • Happy At Work

    Found at Positivesharing.com, a group called Improv Everywhere set up a podium and a megaphone on a New York street corner on 8/24/11 at 2:13 p.m. with a plaque that said simply “Say something nice.” And people do:  Say something nice… and say it loud

  • Relaxation

    Webpage at the Counseling Center of Loyola University Maryland which has a lot of good resources and links for various relaxation and meditation techniques

  • Road to Well Being

    This is a  great collection of research by Canadian public health professionals presented in a fun format

  • Self-Compassion

    A website by Kristin Neff that provides information about self-compassion and is intended for students, researchers, and the general public

  • TED.com

    Type in "Happiness" in a topic search and find a host of wonderful TED talks on the subject. You'll find talks by Shawn Achor, Philip Zimbardo, Mihaly Csikszentsmihalyi, Dan Gilbert, Martin Seligman, Matthieu Ricard, and many others.

  • Website of Ruut Veenhoven

    Ruut Veenhoven is Emeritus-professor of “social conditions for human happiness” at Erasmus University Rotterdam

Work-Related Happiness

Positive work outcomes are associated with:

  • Positive work orientation  (seeing work as job, career, or calling):  Employees who identify a sense of meaningfulness in their work are happier  (Pratt and Ashforth, 2003).
  • Positive climate (psychological experience of work environment):  A positive work climate has been found to enhance decision making, productivity, creativity, social integration and prosocial behaviors (Staw and Barsade, 1993).
  • Positive communication:  “Single most important factor in predicting team performance, which was more than twice as powerful as any other factor, was the ratio of positive comments to negative comments” (Losada and Heaphy, 2004).

Gratitude Journals

Research has shown that students who kept gratitude journals experienced:

  • Fewer physical symptoms such as headaches and colds
  • Felt better about their lives and were more optimistic about the coming week
  • Had higher states of alertness, attentiveness, determination and energy
  • Reported fewer hassles in their lives
  • Engaged in more helping behavior towards other people and had a sense of being more connected to others
  • Experienced better sleep quality
  • Were absent and tardy less
  • Had higher GPAs. (Emmons)

Scholarly Articles

In the Journal Psychological Science, check out these AUTHORS: Csicksentmihalyi; Diener; Seligman; Fredrickson; Peterson; Steen; Niemac; Deci; Ryan; Lyubomirsky; Isen; Park; Reschly; Gable; Furlong; Snyder; Lopex; McCullough; Richardson; Taylor; Park; Hu; Luskin; Ben-Shahar

Books on Happiness & Positive Psychology

Apps for iPhone/iPad (iOS) or Android

Self Help Resources >>Happiness & Well Being