Finding well-being through travel and books. |
Hello and welcome! I have two great passions in life. The first one is travel. After a series of life-changing events, my husband and I decided to spend the kids’ inheritance and see as much of the world as possible (I’m still bitter about Damascus). Our bible? A Thousand Places to See Before You Die. Please join us on our adventures seeing new places, meeting fascinating people and trying new, exciting, and sometimes just plain weird, food. My second great passion is books. Reading expands my interior world in the same way travel expands my external one. And, books are a great way to armchair travel - not only through distance but through time as well. My tastes are eclectic, so we’ll be looking at a wide range of writing in a possibly haphazard fashion. Come along for the ride! My best, Kirsten ** Images For Use By Upgraded+ Only ** |
As I mentioned in my last post, the theme of this particular Chautauqua was Happiness and Freedom. Like many other people in the western world who have all of their basic needs met (food, clothing, shelter), I have the luxury of worrying about how happy (or not) I am. I became so interested in it, in fact, that a number of years ago I became fascinated with the Positive Psychology movement and returned to graduate school to do a masters in psychology. “The field [of Positive Psychology] is founded on the belief that people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play.” Positive Psychology Centre . The talks of each of the three presenters during the Chautauqua were fundamentally based on the research in Positive Psychology. Cheryl Reed gave a presentation on happiness based largely on the work of Marci Shimoff* , Sonja Lyubomirsky**, and the Sedona Method. Our experience of happiness can be broken down into three areas. Fifty percent of our ability to be happy is based on genetics, our fundamental make-up. Ten percent is governed by external events—whether we have enough food, adequate shelter, clothing, money, a job and so on. However, forty percent is entirely within our own hands. It is governed by our interior world—our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Even just tweaking this forty percent slightly can make an enormous difference in the level of happiness we experience. Read the rest here . |