I recently watched the 2005 Stanford University Commencement Address by Steve Jobs. Perhaps you have already seen it - the website reports 1.4 million hits! - but it was new to me, and it contained some excellent points about the good life that I would like to mention here.
I know little about Steve Jobs, so I will focus on the message and not the messenger. That said, this particular message was also about the messenger. Specifically, his 15-minute talk consisted of three personal stories, and it is one of the best speeches I have ever heard, especially of the commencement address genre.
I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.- Martin Luther King, Jr. (August 28, 1963)
Today - January 18, 2010 - those of us in United States and elsewhere celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. In my own small way, I would like to celebrate by offering some comments on one of the best-known lines from his "I Have a Dream Speech."
Yes, we should judge people not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. Work by positive psychologists over the ...
This blog entry is about Scrabble, where one's "rack" is the seven tiles in front of you that you want to play in a way to produce a high score and/or to prevent your opponent from doing the same and/or to set yourself up for future high-scoring plays.
This blog entry is also about Scrabble as a metaphor for the good life, just in case you are not a dedicated Scrabble player like I am. But if you do play Scrabble, my advice here is useful. :)
Scrabble is deliciously middle-brow, which is why I like the game. When psychologists have studied complex problem-solving, they have often opted to
In a previous blog entry, I discussed recent criticisms of positive thinking and especially positive psychology. Is the United States being undermined by the tendency to look on the bright side? I concluded no, but maybe that was rash. It has just come to my attention that "optimism" has infiltrated the New York City subway system. Along with giant alligators and rats the size of terriers, yet another potential horror lurks beneath the unsuspecting streets of New York. Optimism!
And this is not an urban legend. You can read about it on the Internet, so it must be true. In what is obviously a ...
In recent months, I have received several inquiries from those in the popular media about what positive psychology has to say to people who have lost their jobs. I have by-and-large demurred, because I wasn't sure what to say other than to offer aphorisms about being optimistic and to conclude with "it's the economy, stupid." And none of that seemed very positive or very helpful.
My thinking has now changed, at least a bit, after reading a book written by European social psychologist Marie Jahoda (1907-2001).
As a positive psychologist, I was familiar with Jahoda through her 1958 book -
