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6 Quick Tips for a Job Happiness Makeover

With approximately one-third of our waking hours spent at work—and another third presumably spent thinking about it—there’s no question that where, how and with whom we work plays a significant role in our overall well-being. “Being happy at work is key to being happy in life,” notes Shane Lopez, Ph.D., Gallup senior scientist and research director at Clifton Strengths Institute. “Lots of different domains in our life hinge on it. If that work domino doesn’t fall into place, it’s hard to make the most of your relationships or be your best self. So you have to make sure you’re as happy as possible at work.” Gallup’s numbers show that only 30 percent of U.S. workers are truly engaged and like their jobs. Of those, a mere 1 percent claim to love their jobs. Of the other 70 percent, about 40 percent say they are not engaged at work, and 30 percent are actively disengaged. Maybe you used to love your job, but the thrill is gone. Or maybe you never felt much love for it to begin with. Regardless, there are many ways to improve things. Kerry Hannon, author of the new book, Love Your Job: The New Rules for Career Happiness, columnist for The New York Times and AARP’s Job Expert, offers the following tips: Take a moment; take a breath Mindfulness and other forms of meditation have been found to be extremely effective in helping relieve stress and can change the way you feel about your situation. Read about the new movement in workplace wellness. Remove the toxins Avoid engaging in negative conversations, gossip and backbiting. Volunteer Doing something for someone else will make you more grateful for your own situation. Many companies offer volunteer opportunities, or you can look for a cause you feel particularly passionate about. Learn Keeping your brain stimulated can help improve your feelings about your job. Don’t have time for a class after work? Set Google alerts for your area of work so you can keep up with industry trends. It may give you new ideas for innovating on the job. Focus on the positive Keep a work journal, and each day write down one thing you did well or that went right. It will make for great reading on days when you’re feeling down. Laugh Gallup polls show that people who laugh and smile are more engaged at work. Read about how coworkers at Hallmark let loose and have fun together.

work

Know Your Pace

What makes people happy at work? Many things: a friend down the hall, a good boss, meaningful tasks, snazzy office supplies.We’re also affected by whether we feel in harmony with the speed and timing of work. People generally fall into two very different categories when it comes to thriving at work. I call these two categories “Marathoners” and “Sprinters.”Slow and steady workersMarathoners like to work steadily and slowly, over a longer period of time, and they dislike working against a deadline. I know this category well, because I’m a Marathoner myself. We Marathoners feel that working on projects at a steady pace ignites our creativity and keeps our productivity high. We get frustrated and uneasy without plenty of lead time.Find out about 8 Ways to Be Happier at Work.A rush of energyBy contrast, Sprinters prefer to work in bursts of intense effort, and they deliberately wait for the pressure of a deadline to sharpen their thinking. They love the adrenaline rush. A Sprinter told me, “I never prepare a speech until the people are in their seats, and I’m heading to the podium. It drives my staff crazy, but that’s when I get my ideas.”There’s no right way—each approach works well for that type of person. It’s a question of what works for you. Problems arise, however, when Marathoners and Sprinters must work together. Marathoners are driven nuts by the Sprinters’ reluctance to start working on a project. Sprinters are irritated when Marathoners want to tackle tasks before the hour is ripe.Read more about the new science of workplace well-being.Procrastinator—that's a different storyWhen we understand that people have different work styles, we can show more patience toward each other. Here’s something important to remember, however: A Sprinter is different from a Procrastinator. True, Procrastinators resemble Sprinters—like Sprinters, they finish in a rush, at the last possible minute. But they’re actually quite different.Procrastinators wish they could force themselves to start earlier. Also, unlike Sprinters, Procrastinators often agonize about work they’re not yet doing. Before they start, they’re not working, but they’re not having fun, either. Sprinters and Marathoners usually like their work style, but Procrastinators don’t. They’re happier when they change their work habits so they can work more steadily.Learn how to increase your productivity by tricking yourself into getting started.Find the pace that works for youFor all of us, we’re happier at work—and we’re more productive and creative—when we’re comfortable with the environment and pace. It can be surprisingly hard to put your finger on what feels right or wrong about a situation. So, if you find yourself clashing with other people about when and how a task should be completed, or you feel that the work pace is uncomfortable, consider the Marathoner and Sprinter distinction. That difference in work style might be at the heart of the conflict.What's your work pace? Let us know in the Comments section, below.Gretchen Rubin is the bestselling author ofThe Happiness Project,Happier at Home,andBetter than Before.She is considered one of the most influential writers on happiness today, and has become an in-demand speaker and keynoter.You can read about Gretchen's adventures atGretchenRubin.com.

Caitlyn Jenner's transformation will pave the way for others

Self-Care

Transformation Can Bring Happiness

"I'm so happy after such a long struggle to be living my true self. Welcome to the world Caitlyn. Can't wait for you to get to know her/me," Caitlyn Jenner tweeted while revealing her Vanity Fair July cover photo by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. When Fran Fried read of the Olympian's transgender transition, she thought it sounded similar to another story—her own. Eight years earlier, Fran began what turned out to be a depression-lifting transition, experiencing a life-changing epiphany that “he” was in fact a “she” at age 46, while working as a newspaper editor in Fresno, CA. Everyone's experience is different, but both Fran and Caitlyn say they are happier after coming out as transgender to friends, family and eventually the world. "My smiles now are a hell of a lot more genuine; even my smiles looked sad before," Fran told Live Happy. Fran's story According to Fran, her transition added a new dimension to her life. "You feel much more the self you really are," she said. It's evident in talking to parents and friends. "I didn't trade in all my boy cards. Now I can talk to them about shoesandfootball." After years of struggling to hide that she felt like one of the girls despite being born a man, Fran began her transition in 2008 by coming out to close friends. In 2009, the newspaper where she worked laid her off in a staff reduction unrelated to her transition. After five months living full-time as a woman, she started therapy. In 2010, after undergoing psychological tests, a doctor gave Fran her first hormone treatment. "Two days later, my depression was gone," she said. Today, she says, she walks more confidently in heels, figuratively and literally. Now that Fran is well through her transformation, she describes herself as an "accidental human rights activist." "Just living is a political act sometimes. Just living out in the everyday world is my own little victory and my own little blow for civil rights. It took all the strength and the acceptance of people around me to help me become happier. You realize why were you hiding all these years. It's not a thunderclap." Tough transitions Psychologists and counselors say transitions are tough, but they usually have positive results despite challenges that remain. A study led by two University of Kentucky professors, Sharon Rostosky, Ph.D., and Ellen Riggle, Ph.D., revealed eight positive outcomes from identifying as transgender: Congruency of self Enhanced interpersonal relationships Personal growth and resiliency Increased empathy A unique perspective on both sexes Living beyond the sex binary Increased activism Connection toLGBTQcommunities "LGBTQ people clearly use their identities as opportunity to create positive meaning," Rostosky and Riggle wrote in their book, A Positive View of LGBTQ: Embracing Identity and Cultivating Well-Being. "Transgender people are happier in the sense they have less anxiety, less dysphoria and they feel better in their own skin," said Ami Kaplan, a New York-based licensed clinical social worker who counsels people about transition. How happy they are depends on how their transitions went, Ami says. People entering a stigmatized group face many land mines that could blow up relationships with family, friends and work, she said. "People come out pretty much as they were before, only in a new gender." Liberation, and discrimination "Coming out helps individuals reconcile conflicts and ambiguity," said JoAnne Keately, MSW, director of the Center of Excellence For Transgender Health at the University of California, San Francisco. "People not able to do that end up dealing with a lot of dysphoria and anguish and fear they will be found out. Coming out publicly is "liberating" because the "process eliminates fear of disclosure." Still, the process is fraught with danger. Regardless of socio-economic status, most trans people will experience stigma, bias and discrimination, JoAnne cautioned. Even Caitlyn, despite mostly friendly media coverage of her transition, has seen less-than-favorable responses, attempts at mockery and pushback on pronoun usage. "As celebrated an athlete as Caitlyn was before transition, as big a public figure as she's been, Caitlyn is not immune to bias many experience on a daily basis," JoAnne said. "However, Caitlyn's coming out won't hinder her ability to earn income," she said. "A lot of other trans people, if they are lucky enough to be employed, to come out would put them in danger of losing their employment." The more transgendered people rgar come out, the more likely acceptance and the waning of discrimination are to follow, JoAnne said. "Living in a closet builds a lot of self-doubt and lowers self-esteem. It eats at you if you can't be who you feel you are authentically. Living as your authentic self is a good thing for us all," she said. JoAnne credited Caitlyn with planning to use her position of privilege and her upcoming E! reality show to shed light on the conditions in which many of America's estimated 700,000 to 3 million transgendered live and on issues such as suicide. Getting a clear picture Transgender people are pretty common, Ami said, "We shouldn't think of it as people 'out there,' Hollywood celebrities or on society's fringe. "These are people in our lives, in our workplaces, who are gender variant. And never assume. Not everyone who is gender variant looks gender variant." Vanessa Fabbre, Ph.D., LCSW, professor at Brown School of Social Work at Washington University in St. Louis, focuses on late-life transitioners. "To really understand the experience, the magnitude and the implications of transitioning, you have to understand the social context of people making the decisions," Vanessa said. "We all have gender identity, a common connector. We all have gender expression." Her 2014 study, "Gender Transitions in Later Life: A Queer Perspective on Successful Aging," shows how transgender older adults experience challenges to their gender identities that put their emotional and physical well-being at risk. In the end, experts and people who have been through it all agree—transitions are incredible difficult. It may feel easier to sit it out and not rock the boat. But in the end, if you do not embrace who you really are, you may have trouble finding true, authentic happiness. Jim Gold is a veteran journalist who splits his time between Seattle and the Bay Area.

Self-Care

Love Well to Live Well

People are living longer than ever. In fact, I just saw a TV news report about a woman celebrating her 116th birthday who, until recently, was still mowing her own lawn. Exuding more vitality than many folks half her age, she made me wonder: What contributes to healthy aging well into our golden years—and perhaps even our centenarian years? I decided to speak to Harvard psychiatrist George Vaillant, who has unveiled some of the determinants of aging well, having spent more than half of his life at the helm of the Grant Study of Adult Development. One of the longest-running studies on human development, the Grant Study has closely tracked the emotional and physical health of 268 Harvard men as they agedsince 1938. Habits, not heredity, are more important for health George has documented the findings of the Grant Study in three illuminating books. His first book, 1977’s Adaptation to Life, the now-classic tome on adult development, examined how the men were coping up to age 55 and identified various positive and negative outcomes. Aging Well followed 25 years later and showed that healthy physical and emotional aging from 55 to 80 is less dependent on genes and more on lifestyle choices, such as avoiding alcohol and tobacco abuse, engaging in regular light exercise, maintaining a healthy weight, exhibiting an adaptive coping style and having a loving marriage. Now, George's latest book, Triumphs of Experience: The Men of the Harvard Grant Study, published more than 75 years after the study’s start, follows a few dozen of the surviving men who are now in their 90s. Many of them, like the centenarian woman I mentioned earlier, are thriving far beyond conventional retirement. So what’s their secret? “Habits formed before age 50, not heredity, are more important for growing old gracefully, well into our 90s and beyond,” George says. All you need is love However, even more important for positive aging and coping with stress is having warm, nurturing relationships. “Relationships can help us recover from a damaging past such as the bleakest of childhoods even many decades later,” George says. What’s more, strong bonds formed early in life have a protective factor down the road. He’s found that positive emotions, namely love, is the key ingredient for healthy aging well into our golden years and beyond. “Having had a loving and stable marriage at 50 predicted mental and physical health at 80 better than did either exercise or weight,” he says. “Visceral things like the positive emotions of love, hope and joy affect our health.” In fact, the effect of positive emotion on our nervous system is similar to the relaxation response triggered through meditation. Positive emotions, like love, reduce our basal metabolism, blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate and muscle tension, all leading to better health. In other words, love can literally heal and strengthen our heart. One simple way of reaping heart health benefits and aging well is it to put ourselves into the loving embrace of others on a daily basis, George says, because not only does “heartfelt” love feel good, but also it's good for us. And, who knows, perhaps it'll lead us to be thriving at 116 as well! Read more about the power of love on our well-being here. Suzann Pileggi Pawelski, MAPP, is a freelance writer specializing in the science of happiness and its effects on relationships and health. She and her husband, James Pawelski, will be presenting their "Romance and Research" workshop at the 3rd Congress: Spaces of Thought and Action in Psychology in Graz, Austria, May 28-June 1, as well as at IPPA's 4th World Congress on Positive Psychology in Orlando, Florida, June 25-28.

B Corps are changing the way we do business

News & Trends

B the Change

Do you know the saying “You must be the change you wish to see in the world”? Well, a growing number of businesses are doing just that.Business as a force for goodBusinesses have a tremendous impact on our lives, as owners, employees, consumers and community members, and now B Corps are using that power to solve social and environmental problems.The B Corp designation is to business what Fair Trade certification is to coffee or USDA Organic certification is to milk. Today, 1,281 Certified B Corps from 41 countries and over 121 industries are working together toward a single unifying goal: to redefine success in business.Getting the B grade to redefine successA business interested in becoming a B Corp goes through an assessment process that measures the social and environmental performance of everything it does, including accountability and transparency. If the company scores well, then it’s eligible to obtain the B Corp certification from B Lab, the supporting nonprofit organization.All shapes and sizesB corps come in all shapes in sizes, from small firms with sole proprietors to global brands like Ben & Jerry’s. Rob Michalak, Ben & Jerry’s global director of social mission, led the company’s effort to obtain its B Corp certification. “At first, the whole idea of assessment can be intimidating, but then people realize the benefit of the tool,” he says.The certification process has helped the company affirm what it’s doing well and provided insight into opportunities for improvement. So far, Ben & Jerry’s management has benefited the most from the guidance provided by the assessment process. With its deep social mission, the company is committed to supporting the B Corp movement. “There is true power in movements—much stronger than any individual company,” Rob says.Aligned ValuesMany companies join because there is strong alignment between a company’s established values and that of the B Corp movement. That was the case for Founding B Corp member King Arthur Flour, an employee-owned business. King Arthur Flour Chief of Staff Carey Underwood says the existing employee engagement, management transparency and employee-owned culture all contributed to the company’s high social scores during the assessment.Sustainable, Inside and outFor Patagonia, taking care of the planet has always been a driving value, so the B Corp designation was a natural fit, says Elissa Loughman, the company’s manager of corporate responsibility.The company knows that examining its own business practices and the way it uses resources are essential to being a responsible company. The outdoor clothing company uses organic cotton, makes fleece jackets from recycled plastic bottles and traces all the down used in their products back to the geese farms to ensure humane animal practices. Patagonia also uses wool from sheep raised sustainably in the Patagonia region of South America.Patagonia is also a founding member of 1% for the Planet, through which companies donate 1 percent of sales to environmental nonprofits.What Members AppreciateBeing part of a community and movement with shared goals has its benefits. Because B Corp certification is so rigorous, it validates and values the good work member companies do and helps them identify opportunities to improve. Members benefit from a culture of collaboration and exchange that even includes the signing of a “Declaration of Interdependence.”Additionally, for companies like Cabot Creamery, the first dairy farmer cooperative to become a B Corp, building brand awareness has been very helpful. Cabot Creamery Director of Marketing Amy Levine says “being a member has helped educate and communicate to consumers how a co-op is a beneficial business model” for the broader community and their high-quality products. The company appreciates that the assessment recognizes its acts of gratitude and volunteerism.Just Getting StartedThough it’s growing quickly, the B Corp movement is just getting started. B Corps range across all types of businesses and industries, from food to finance, from clothes to consulting and from consumer products to waste management.“All these companies are united by one common goal: to be best for the world,” says Katie Kerr, B Lab’s director of communications. Certification helps companies differentiate themselves and improve, helps consumers align their purchases with their values and helps people find good places to work. Building the brand and movement go hand in hand—both increase well-being for all.Are you ready (consumers and businesses) to “B the change”? If so, check out bcorporation.net, watch the “We Have a Dream” short video, begin an assessment and find a B Corp to do business with.Contributor Brian Kaminer is the founder of Talgra, a certified B Corp and consulting firm, and the creator of Invest With Values, an education website for people looking to align their money and values.

Practice

6 Steps to Mindfulness Meditation

1. Get Comfortable Find a quiet place where you won't be disturbed. Ideally this would be a room in your house where you can be alone and at peace. 2. Get in position You might try sitting cross-legged on a low cushion on the floor, or upright in a chair. Some people prefer to meditate lying down. 3. Get relaxed Close your eyes, set a timer for five minutes if you are just starting out, and begin by taking a few deep, cleansing breaths. Breath in deeply (but naturally) through your nose, and out through either your nose or mouth—whichever feels more comfortable to you. Let the breaths flow all the way down into your abdomen. 4. Focus on your breaths Become aware of the sound of your breaths as you inhale and exhale. As you inhale, you breathe in all the peaceful and joyful things around you. As you exhale, you rid your mind and body of all the stress and toxins that have been bothering you. Let your mind become mesmerized by the rhythmic pattern of your breathing. 5. Bring your thoughts back to center Your mind will wander. When you notice your thoughts wandering off from your breath, don't chastise yourself—it's totally normal. Simply acknowledge it and bring your focus back to the center, back to your breaths. Take in your immediate surroundings. What do you hear? What do you feel right now, at this moment? Try not to ruminate on the past or worry about the future, but be present in this pure moment. 6. Make a commitment Like exercise, meditation takes practice. And the more we practice, the better we get and the stronger that mindfulness muscle becomes. Even just five to ten minutes per day has been shown to make an enormous difference to well-being after just eight weeks of meditation practice. Let us know about your own mindfulness practice in the Comments section, below.

Arianna Huffington: Balanced Media Mogul

People

Arianna Huffington is Redefining Success

Arianna Huffington is passionate about success. And while success has been a focal point throughout her life, she sees it much differently now than she did even a few years ago. Today, her view of success is tied closely to happy living: “Well-being is now going to be in the center of my life, not on the edges.”Speaking at the International Symposium of Contemplative Studies in Boston in November, Arianna shares how she has accomplished the far-reaching goals she set for herself and did it in a way that helped define many of the major topics of our lifetime: women’s roles in the workplace and the world, the changing nature of political leadership and 21st-century innovations in media. Now, she has turned her attention to living a good and happy life.Playing the game of life“We have, if we’re lucky, about 30,000 days to play the game of life,” Arianna says in a recent interview. “How we play it will be determined by what we value. A huge part of that is our relationship with time. So for me, a well-lived life is one where there is ample time for the people in my life who truly matter, time to pause and wonder at the world, and time to delight in the mysteries of the universe, as well as the everyday occurrences and small miracles that fill our lives.”In her 2014 best-selling book, Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder, she asks us to consider redefining success beyond the timeworn standards of money and power: “To live the lives we truly want and deserve, and not just the lives we settle for, we need a third metric, a third measure of success that goes beyond the two metrics of money and power, and consists of four pillars: well-being, wisdom, wonder and giving.”The value of failingArianna credits her mother with instilling optimism and resilience. “My mother taught us that failure is not the opposite of success, it is the stepping stone to success.”She lives that life philosophy firsthand. After graduating from Cambridge, she wrote a successful book, The Female Woman. But 36 publishers rejected her second book, and a seven-year relationship ended shortly after that.“By about rejection 25, you would have thought I might have said, ‘Hey, you know, there’s something wrong here. Maybe I should be looking at a different career.’ ” Instead she walked into a bank in London where she was living at the time and asked for a loan. “Even though I didn’t have any assets, the banker—whose name was Ian Bell—gave me a loan. It changed my life, because it meant I could keep things together for another 13 rejections and finally, an acceptance.Getting up one more time“In fairy tales there are helpful animals that come out of nowhere to help the hero or heroine through a dark and difficult time, often helping them find a way out of the forest. Well, in life, too, there are helpful animals disguised as human beings, as bank managers like Ian Bell, to whom I still send a Christmas card every year. So, very often, the difference between success and failure is perseverance. It’s how long we can keep going until success happens. It’s getting up one more time than we fall down.”Arianna moved to New York, where she continued writing books and magazine articles. After weathering ups and downs in love, career and even politics, Arianna co-founded The Huffington Post in 2005.The site was not an immediate success; it faced a storm of negative reviews, including one particularly harsh but memorable criticism from LA Weekly’s Nikki Finke, who called it “the movie equivalent of Gigli, Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate rolled into one.”Yet Arianna refused to be diverted by the criticism. Today, she says that backlash gave her the incentive to persevere. The truth is, we are always going toget bad reviews, she says. The answer is to rely on our personal resilience and continue our journey. In her case, the critics may remain, but the site has gained respect, credibility and worldwide recognition.The most powerful blog in the worldIn 2012, The Huffington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for a 10-part series on wounded veterans, becoming the first commercially run digital site in the United States to win the prize. It also has been ranked No. 1 on the Most Popular Political Sites by eBizMBA Rank, and The Observer, a British newspaper, named it the most powerful blog in the world.“At some point, I learned not to dread failure,” she says. “I strongly believe that we are not put on this earth just to accumulate victories and trophies and avoid failures but rather to be whittled and sand-papered down until what’s left is who we truly are.“My advice to those facing critics or challenging times is to refrain from adding our own self-criticism into the mix. This means dealing with the voice I call the obnoxious roommate living in our head, the voice that feeds on putting us down and strengthening our insecurities and doubts.”Refocusing attentionArianna now uses her media platform to showcase her happiness discoveries. The Huffington Post regularly includes news on happiness and how to achieve it. It’s a journey she embarked on after receiving a serious wake-up call in 2007.Exhausted from the relentless hustle of running a booming media enterprise, Arianna collapsed while at her computer in her home office. As her head hit the desk, she injured her eye, broke her cheekbone and ultimately realized she needed to find a new approach to her hectic life. She returned to the meditation and yoga exercises her mother had shown her as a child. She says now, “I wish they had just told me, ‘You have civilization disease.’ ”That’s how she sees it today, she explained at the Boston symposium: If you are driven to focus only on wealth and power, you, too, might have civilization disease. “Our society is made of highly educated good people making bad decisions. It’s not that they’re not smart, it’s that they’re not wise. We all have that wisdom in us,” she says. “I would never again congratulate someone for working 24/7. It’s like coming to work drunk.”Arianna is using her resources—such as books, speaking engagements and her media company—to help others learn how to adopt a lifestyle that encompasses well-being and wonder, wisdom and giving. She sees mindfulness as an important element in redefining success, in slowing down or even stopping the busyness of our lives, if only for a few important moments to begin each day.“The fact that there is now so much scientific exploration that builds on ancient wisdom is cause for great optimism,” she says. “It doesn’t matter why we start on this journey…at some point we’ll all realize that we’re bigger than our jobs.“However great your job is, you are more marvelous! Getting in touch with that magnificence is part of your journey.”Jan Stanley is a writer, coach and speaker who has worked with Fortune 500 companies to develop leaders and with many people to help them find meaning and joy in work and life.

News & Trends

Happier Students Make the Grade

If you want your kids to get good grades in school, a Harvard researcher says, make sure they're happy.It helps, too, if you keep teachers happy, British researchers say.Happy students tend to get better grades, says Christina Hinton, Ed.D., a Harvard Graduate School of Education neuroscientist and lecturer. She says her study also found what makes students happy: school culture and relationships that students form with their teachers and peers.Happiness doesn't cause students to earn higher grades, Christina told the Deseret News. "Some students could be unhappy and still do well," she says. On average, "if you're happy you're more likely to do well."Christina collaborated with the K-12 St. Andrew's Episcopal School, near Washington, D.C., where students took surveys about happiness and motivation. She compared result with data on students' grade point averages.Among key findings:Happiness is positively associated with intrinsic motivation (a personal drive to learn) for all students, and also with extrinsic motivation (outside sources like rewards, praise, or avoiding punishment) for students in grades K–3.Happiness and standardized test scores did not seem to be related.Happiness is positively associated with GPA for students in grades 4–12.Teacher well-being also has a positive effect, helping send exam grades up 8 percent, according to a 2014 study from the Work Foundation at Lancaster University in England."Unlike other factors, such as the social class of students, the rate of pupil absence and the number of children with special educational needs, teacher health and well-being may be more amenable to intervention and change," researchers said."If schools want to support student well-being and achievement, they should take seriously nurturing positive relationships among teachers and students."Jim Gold is a veteran journalist who splits his time between Seattle and the Bay Area.

relationships

Dinner With Rev Run

Countless studies show that sitting down with your family for a meal is good for your well-being. It’s good for your brain, it’s good for your health and it’s good for your soul. If science doesn’t convince you to make the time to break bread with the ones you love, then maybe listen to a man of the cloth. Rev Run, known to many as frontman of the legendary hip-hop group Run DMC, is showing the rest of the world how to get families back to the dinner table with his Cooking Channel show, Rev Run’s Sunday Suppers. Sunday Suppers “I was just trying to put something together where we can have a good time together and keep the tradition alive with sitting down with family and eating,” Rev Run says. “That’s the point of Sunday Suppers. For me, it’s to find that one day that we can enjoy each other, and I don’t have to feel like my whole week is just an empty house.” When the Cooking Channel approached him about doing a cooking show, Rev told them he wanted to do something different. With his six kids getting older and starting to live their lives outside of the house, Rev and his wife, Justine, wanted to give them a reason to come back to the nest, even if it was for only one day a week. From there Sunday Suppers was born; the second season is underway. Family recipes Each episode of the show features recipes designed with purpose, mixing new twists on passed-down family favorites, such as Aunt Chelle’s Three Cheese Macaroni and Cheese and Grandma Simmons’ Savory Shrimp and Rice. The show also allows Rev to do something nice for the people close to him, like creating a special gumbo dish for his older brother, Danny. “So I had to get myself a beautiful recipe and put in my special ingredients,” Rev says. “He loved it. So those are some of the highlights for me.” As he juggles multiple TV shows, DJ gigs and preaching the good word, Rev Run knows that lives can get busy and hectic. If you can do anything to bring your loved ones closer together, that can only strengthen the health of the family, he says. It's all about togetherness “The key to a happy family is being together,” Rev says. “At the end of the day, it’s not the food that makes it fun. It’s good to have food, but there’s something about getting together. There’s something about knowing that everyone is coming over, the hours leading up to and after: football games, the music, people ringing the bell, smelling the food. It’s all about the togetherness."

Positive Psychology

The Power of Passion

I can't live If living is without you I can't live I can't give anymore —"Without You" I remember the first time I heard these lyrics, sung by Mariah Carey—a cover of adesperately emotional ballad that equates intense longing with an ideal form of romantic passion. From Billboard music charts to blockbuster films, popular culture perpetuates this notion that true love is an uncontrollable feeling of being “swept away.” Though this kind of unbridled passion has an enormous appeal, both in popular culture and in life, “it can be harmful to our well-being and relationships,” says Robert (Bob) Vallerand, Ph.D., past president of the Canadian Psychological Association and the International Positive Psychology Association. In his new book, The Psychology of Passion,the social psychologist reports an all-consuming or "obsessive passion" is associated with not trusting one's partner. Those who are obsessively passionate toward their lovers are insecure and preoccupied with protecting their egos rather than being attuned to their partners, he says. They tend to be defensive, controlling and have to win all the time. Not exactly the stuff of Prince Charming. Obsessive passion is as detrimental to a relationship as having no passion at all. In fact, women in relationships with obsessively passionate men reported feeling less satisfied sexually and overall, Bob says, despite what popular culture would have you think. Of course, in the throes of early romance we may feel distracted and focus on our partners at the exclusion of everything else. We might while away time daydreaming at our desks instead of drafting those important memos, or mentally replaying every word from our most recent conversations. And we feel butterflies in our stomachs just thinking of our partners. What would life be without these exhilarating experiences? It's healthy to savor these moments. However, problems arise when we are stuck at this stage and don't develop. Our relationship stagnates and often falls apart, research finds. Cultivating a healthy passion Relationships with a "healthy," or what Bob calls a "harmonious passion," are those in which we are in control of our emotions. We retain our identity, maintain balance, experience greater intimacy, and handle conflict better—all of which leads to a more mature relationship, according to Bob’s research. Fortunately, we can learn to cultivate harmonious passion. Instead of losing yourself in a new relationship, maintain the friends and interests you had before the relationship began. It’s tempting to dive into a new love and forget about everything else in your life, but certainly not healthy for your sense of identity. And when the intensity of an early love dissipates (or disappears), you’ll need the rest of your life to fall back on! In order to maintain your identity, reflect upon your unique strengths and interests, Bob says. Find something you both enjoy and share it with your partner. Research shows that engaging in exciting activities together increases attraction. And of course, you should try to avoid serious competition, which may be destructive to the relationship, Bob says. The point is to have fun together, not to win. So, if you’re a chess wizard or your partner is a competitive swimmer, you might want to avoid those activities. This is about connecting, not winning! Finally, find time to share something good that you experience with your partner every day. This is another simple way to build a healthy passion, Bob says. And when it comes to those dramatic love songs, perhaps you can look to them for entertainment, not emulation. Suzann Pileggi Pawelski is a freelance writer specializing in the science of happiness and its effects on relationships and health. She and her husband James Pawelski will present their "Romance and Research" workshop at the 3rd Congress: Spaces of Thought and Action in Psychology in Graz, Austria, as well as at IPPA's 4th World Congressin Orlando, Florida.