So you’re depressed. You know this because a health professional has told you so, or you’ve been depressed before and there is no mistaking the symptoms.

Which is better for a teen who can’t get the recommended amount of rest: just 6.5 hours of sleep at night, or 5 hours at night plus a nap in the afternoon?

How a focus on peace is helping this Central American country top the Happy Planet Index.

The pursuit of happiness and health is a popular endeavour, as the preponderance of self-help books would attest.

‘Freedom’ is a powerful word. We all respond positively to it, and under its banner revolutions have been started, wars have been fought, and political campaigns are continually being waged.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are loaded with pictures of people going to exotic places, looking like they are about to be on the cover of Vogue, and otherwise living a fairy-tale existence.

Do you think your mood difficulties are linked to your childhood, your first romantic relationship, your choice to study one subject in college rather than another, the city you settled in, or your career path? Spending time in the past may help you to answer the question why, but it won’t give you the tools to feel better in the present.

One of the more amazing and beautiful aspects of the internet is that it is becoming the most powerful tool ever to spread ideas instantaneously worldwide, including a growing sense of one world consciousness and our oneness with all life. Little by little, it is assisting us go beyond the old, tired dualistic vision of the world and to spread ever more widely and rapidly the non-dualist consciousness...

Non-material factors such as social supports, freedoms, and fairness may play a bigger role than money in future well-being, according to new research.

Whether you’re a morning person or love burning the midnight oil, we’re all controlled by so-called “body clocks”.

For decades now, GDP has been the standard measure of a nation’s well-being. But it is becoming clear that an economic boost may not be accompanied by a rise in individual happiness.

As a koan teaching tells us, “To touch the absolute is not yet enlightenment.” When these moments come, there is a tendency to think, “Aha, I’ve got it!” Yet, just as on one level this gratifying thought fills us with a sense of accomplishment and empowerment, on another level we can already feel it slipping away, as the moment passes...

A Course in Miracles urges us to remember, “A happy outcome to all things is sure.” What a powerful affirmation to hold in mind when things seem to be going wrong! We all struggle with some relationships, and wonder if...

I always found spirituality, the disciplines of meditation and silence, very simple. My challenge was between activity and stillness. I always got off on the adrenaline trip of being active. That's why I've traveled around so much.

Have your friends recently begun obsessively folding their t-shirts, or explaining how they have got rid of a book that no longer “brings them joy”?

We live in exciting times because Science—more specifically quantum physics—is proving what the Mystics and Metaphysicians throughout history have long proclaimed. We are bundles of information and energy, living in a swirling sea of infinite energy. We are in truth, Creatures of Light, as the Mystics long have described us.

Balance in all things is the correct way to live. So how do we balance our scales to get the correct perspective of life? We must weigh up each situation that comes into our lives and balance our minds to understand what feels good and what doesn't. 

Sydney’s first Muji store opened in 2015 and with it came attractive minimalism, simplicity, and functionality – a kind of consumption that was somehow about consuming less.

All living creatures possess an innate notion of self, a self that naturally desires happiness and wishes to avoid suffering. This natural instinct knows no boundaries, and pervades all forms of life in this universe, regardless of the...

Almost 50 years ago, Ram Dass published a book with the title "Be Here Now". It's still good advice. This reminder to be here now was brought to mind as I reflected on the general public's increased interest and acceptance of past-lives.

Virtually every aspect of your daily life is impacted by unhealthy beliefs. Unhealthy beliefs have the power to impact your body, your emotions and your life circumstances. Therefore, by healing your unhealthy beliefs it is possible to cause positive changes within your body, your emotions and your life.

People consume far less information than expected before making judgments and decisions, a new study finds.

The Life Path is a kind of connecting thread that each human being follows during the course of his or her life. We can compare it to the script for a film or the “route map” for present-day rally enthusiasts. We move forward on this path by making use of the vehicle that is our physical body.

One day during meditation, a year after Werner moved out, I received guidance to get a temporary job in a plant nursery. That seemed unusual to me but I had learned to listen to my Guides since they always led me to something valuable.

We humans are circadian creatures. Like the moon overhead and the ocean tides it governs, we live day-to-day on regular circuits of ebb and flow, departure and return. When we’re resolved to establish new habits of body and mind, the brain’s predisposition toward dailiness becomes a great ally.

You have probably seen the cartoon sketch that depicts stress as 'the overwhelming urge to choke the living #@*% out of someone who desperately deserves it'. While that depiction may be true, it certainly is not the only form of stress.

Decision-making is a complex process. As individuals, working through our daily lives, we often take a number of shortcuts that may not always serve us well.

Life is a challenge. Utilizing your capabilities, pushing to become all you might be, is a relentless dare. But when you are alive, that is the homework that has been assigned to you. Regardless of the variety of "wings on your heart," the issue is the same for everyone. Push to...

The unexamined life is not worth living, wrote the Greek philosopher Socrates. He was reflecting on the expression “Know Thyself” – an aphorism inscribed on the temple of Apollo at Delphi and one of the ultimate achievements in ancient Greece.

The future or the unknown isn’t “out there” but already alive within us – pre-existing in our bodies, our senses, our feelings, our thoughts, our spirits or our consciousness. In other words, the answers we are seeking and the amazing future we hope for is already there within us waiting for us to just “see” it.

At times, we experience steady progress as we move in the direction of fulfilling our goals and thriving along the way. Then, there are those times when we approach what is before us with discernment and preparation, but lo and behold, right in the pathway of successful completion of our worthy goal stands an obstacle.

The first step is to decide if you want to give change a try. That’s because change is a choice that requires commitment and has consequences. (Of course, not changing is also a choice, with its own set of consequences.)

A mark on a page, an online meme, a fleeting sound. How can these seemingly insignificant stimuli lead to acts as momentous as participation in a racist rally or the massacre of innocent worshippers?

We live in challenging and exciting times. Because the old gods are crumbling, and our old models are failing us, we can explore new ways of living, understanding ourselves, and growing that may result in opportunities that are more unique, personal, fulfilling, and loving than ever before.

If, like many, you are searching for your calling in life – perhaps you are still unsure which profession aligns with what you most care about – here are five recent research findings worth taking into consideration.

No rational person would ever enter the lottery. The chance of picking the right six numbers and hitting the jackpot in the UK’s Lotto is approximately one in 14m.

Humans are creatures of habit, and sometimes we get stuck in a rut. Sometimes we're overwhelmed. We face a simple daily task and spin into panic or just plain freeze. Neither opens up our hearts or minds to the real challenges or pleasures at hand. We need to snap out of it and get back into living again. But how?

When we neglect ourselves in the mad rush to make a living, take care of business and raise our families, we die a little with each passing day. What have you done lately to nurture yourself, enhance your creativity and honor your soul?

Much of the advice about getting rid of clutter seems to start with the cheerfully abrupt command to “Just do it!” But when you can’t identify the underlying beliefs that are causing you to become buried in clut­ter, that’s almost impossible. So I’ve listed a few tough-love strategies to initiate change...

When we have to give a talk to a group of people, we feel anxious and experience the bodily fear responses that do not make sense now: The system is not meant to function in this safe context.

In early December, The Wall Street Journal published a feature titled “The Loneliest Generation.” “Baby boomers,” the article notes, “are aging alone more than any generation in U.S. history, and the resulting loneliness is a looming public health threat.”

I wish you, and all of us, a perfect new year. Yes, perfect! Perhaps this definition of perfection will help clarify my wish for you: "Perfection, in God's eyes, is being incapable of choosing deeds that are not based solely in love..."

We must take responsibility for ourselves in life. It is unfair to throw blame for what happens to us onto our parents, our spouse or life's circumstances. Whether or not we believe that creative visualization will work for us, the fact is, we are already using it.

There’s a science to happiness, says Tim Bono, the author of a recent book on the subject.

We're all carrying around such incredibly heavy loads of excess baggage, stuff we don't need, stuff that's weighing us down and preventing our Good from manifesting. One of the best ways to feel better is to release. When you release, you become lighter. Releasing is a good way to raise your energy.

As we enter the New Year, we all hope this year will be better than the last one, and new and wonderful things will come to us. We seek to improve our worldly situations and become better people. But what if the most wonderful thing that could happen would be to realize...

Whatever you think about Christmas – wonderful, a tyranny, excessive, irrelevant – the chances are that at some point during festivities, you will have to unwrap a present in front of the person who chose it for you.

All of us are created in a fashion to learn through our mistakes. Making mistakes is part of our makeup, as natural as drinking water and breathing air.

Boredom is not a condition; it is an attitude. Anything can be boring if you bring a closed mind to it. Anything can be fascinating if you bring an open mind to it. You can make anything out of anything.

People who cohabited had less wealth compared to those who never lived together before marriage, a new study finds.

It is generally accepted that underlying neurological aspects, such as slight differences in brain structure, can change the way that dyslexic people process information, and this affects the behaviour they might display.

Sometimes your thoughts can drive you crazy, blocking clear thinking and impeding response flexibility. Sometimes your thoughts trigger further thoughts, evaluations, judgments, and condemnations that reduce your resilience. These thought patterns are ways of filtering reality that can be counterproductive.

It seems to me that our ongoing quest to secure material wealth—often to the point of excess, and with little regard for the harm we may do while in blind pursuit of money—reflects the fact that, as a species, we’ve never really come to grips with what we’re living for.

Almost everyone has something they fear – maybe it’s spiders, enclosed spaces, or heights. When we encounter these “threats,” our hearts might begin to race, or our hands may become sweaty.

An interactive therapy involving parents and their depressed children can reduce rates of depression and lower the severity of children’s symptoms, research finds.

Two years ago, I came into work on December 1 to find a bag on my desk labelled “Karen’s Christmas Intervention”. It contained many Christmas themed gifts and challenges...

Thoughts don't exist just between our ears with total privacy. They are quite public. Our thoughts exist as tiny packets of energy called thought forms. Thought forms are real. And, they exist to carry out the intent of the thinker.

Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success. Today, we are going to talk about creative visualization, that is, the technique of using your imagination to create what you want in your life. There is nothing new, strange, or unusual about creative visualization. You are already using it every day.

Each year it seems our travel gets more and more out of control. Between the multiple holidays, family we need to visit distributed all around the country and the rounds of parties for work and with friends

The story of Canadian speed skater and cyclist Clara Hughes, the first ever Olympian to win multiple medals in both the summer and winter games, is a story of triumph over adversity.

Have you ever felt awe and exhilaration while contemplating a vista of jagged, snow-capped mountains?

"I have a dream!" Most of us are familiar with this now famous line of Martin Luther King as he spoke of his vision for the United States and for mankind in general. He had faith in his dream, in his vision. What was your dream, your vision of your future when you were younger?

One of the most potent teachings is "non-attachment". No matter which way we turn in life these days, we are being asked to let go of what we know, to be able to step into the vast unknown. Surrender and non-attachment work hand in hand. To live in non-attachment is to surrender in every moment; to "let go and let God".

When we look within ourselves for sources of power and qualities such as fearlessness and resilience, our heart is not the first or most immediate place that comes to mind. Indeed, the mind--the seat of our mental and logical reasoning--tells us that relying on the heart’s energies might make us weaker...

NBA players who use Twitter or other forms of social media late at night don’t perform as well on the court the next day, a new study shows. A player’s shooting percentage was 1.7 percentage points lower following a night during which he tweeted during typical sleeping hours. Late-night tweeting was also associated with approximately 1.1 fewer points scored and 0.5 fewer rebounds in the next day’s game.

As Bear sang his song the darkness began to shrink down into nothing and very soon it was gone as quickly as it arrived. Creator stood in front of Bear and said, “I am happy you have found the answer to the darkness. I have always been with you. My energy flows through the top of your head down to your heart and meets the Earth’s energy fusing together to create light. This light, combined with your voice, is like a tapestry woven together as a protection from all evil.”

Taking responsibility for ourselves includes taking a look at what is really bothering us, why we feel blasé about life, and choosing to make changes in our attitudes and our actions. Ask yourself the following questions: Am I enthusiastic about life? Do I wake up excited to face another day?

There are certain critical turning points when grief and despair begin to transform into acceptance, contentment, and Love. I have seen three common ingredients that seem to signal the moment when the weight of depression and disappointment starts to lift...

I know some of you, myself included, feel that lessons must be painful to be appreciated or remembered. Contrary to popular belief, not all lessons have to be painful. Some can even be fun. It's all in the 'moral to the story'. Life gives us wonderful examples to follow ... allow me to illustrate.

In the world that we live in now, with ecological destruction for the sake of material possessions and with the divisions among humanity, a return to our wu-wei nature is imperative, or we will face the dire consequences of our ignorant actions.

This advice is for you if you resonate with one of the following sayings and want a different perspective on a problem you’re facing NOW. I obtained the advice by imagining myself in the future when I was no longer setback in the way described by each of the sayings. I then asked myself what advice I would give that younger and stuck me.

In every interaction with other people, we are always making choices consciously or unconsciously as to what we dwell upon. We can make a conscious choice to focus on the positive in people or situations, no matter what. In other words, we can choose to concentrate on the exciting potential of the moment and of the people involved.

You have probably never heard of William Kingdon Clifford. He is not in the pantheon of great philosophers – perhaps because his life was cut short at the age of 33 – but I cannot think of anyone whose ideas are more relevant for our interconnected, AI-driven, digital age.

Who’s happier, men or women? Research shows it’s a complicated question and that asking whether males or females are happier isn’t really that helpful, because essentially, happiness is different for women and men.

Memories and responses to living are passed through your genes from one generation to another. Limited thinking, encouraged and taught to your ancestors, is imprinted in the cells of your body. Everything you deal with in daily living is recorded and stored in your physical body, and just because you do not consciously remember your experiences does not mean the cells of your body forget.

When we’re in severe or chronic pain, our normal life is not available to us in the way it used to be. Instead, living in pain feels like being taken out of life. Our normal life recedes to a distance at the same time that the feeling world of pain becomes incredibly close, imme­diate, and demanding. Pain becomes our experience of life.

We live in a world of extremes. Extreme wealth, extreme poverty. Extreme hedonism and joy, and extreme fear and pain. Extreme religious devotion, and extreme hatred. And as with everything, the microcosm and the macrocosm are reflections of each other. In each one of us there resides these extremes, or at least a presence of these realities -- though maybe not in the extreme.

It seems that to some extent, we really are as young as we feel. But how do we know which is the chicken and the egg? Are people who feel younger simply healthier to start with or are they so keen on being young that they actually take better care of themselves and therefore live longer?

Ultimately, the most effective ways to increase happiness, optimism, and resilience depend on each unique individual and each particular situation. Paths to greater wellness are varied. It’s a lot like musical tastes. Different people may prefer Bee­thoven, Bach, the Beach Boys, Beyoncé, or Bobby Lewis, but the joy each person feels while listening is the same.

The current approach today is essentially we’ve entered into a culture of freneticism—that’s a Big Think word, and that means we’re really busy. But I believe we’ve created the business on ourselves.

Consensus reality occurs when others agree with our dominant conframes and we all forget that we're only dealing with our habitual interpretations and not reality itself. Even if others share our conframes and agree with our interpretations, that still doesn't make them real. It merely means that we're all sharing the same illusion.

At this time of year, many of us delight in the extra hour of sleep that comes with turning the clocks back. However, when spring rolls around, we invariably curse the loss of sleep that accompanies setting the clocks forward.

For decades, personality psychologists have noticed a striking, consistent pattern: extroverts are happier more of the time than introverts. For anyone interested in promoting wellbeing, this has raised the question of whether it might be beneficial to encourage people to act more extroverted. Evidence to date has suggested it might.

Everyone knows what it’s like to be knocked off center, to lose their inner sense of balance and groundedness, at least temporarily, when faced with life’s unwanted curve balls. Whether it’s a troubling health diagnosis, the death of a loved one, a serious car accident, a layoff, or a natural disaster, life can intensely challenge our resilience.

Do you believe that the universe operates at random, or is there a higher intelligence that orchestrates encounters, events, and a stream of destiny? After observing many uncanny synchronicities, I have a firm belief that, despite appearances of haphazardness, a brilliant and loving hand guides us to our right place at the right time for the right purpose.

Let's imagine our minds as being filled with rows of cubbyholes. Each cubbyhole represents a particular relationship in our lives. Some of these cubbyholes contain largely benevolent thoughts. Others are filled with grievances and other dark thoughts. As I begin to think of those people, I may find a significant amount of resentment or anger stored away...

The path with heart has no set of predictable moves to ensure success. It is not a set of routines or a prescription of step-by-step actions; it is a philosophy, a way of seeing and being in the world that leads you to your life task, the contribution that spirit asks you to make.

Contemplate how a person’s life would be changed by starting to hear or see things others can’t. Now imagine it could offer something good. Clinical psychologist Lily Dixon and her team detail the experiences of seven people who have lived with verbal or auditory hallucinations; amid the struggles, the researchers report, their journeys have also taken them to some positive places.

Heaven and hell both exist on this planet today. This day. There is not some day in the future where our free agency to make any choices that we want will be locked down. Where there will be a judgment made, and some eternal status assigned to us. We will not be “assigned” a heaven or hell experience. It is us, the human beings, who decide the fate of humanity.

Talk to high-school students preparing for their science exams, and you’ll probably hear two things: that they’re scared of physics, and relatively comfortable with biology. Strangely, this is contrary to the view of most researchers.

At the time of this writing, I am entering my 73rd year, and I am extremely healthy. Just because the years are passing does not mean that the quality of our lives must automatically go downhill. Think about what you would really love to do with the next portion of your life...

Being passive developed as a pattern for a really good reason -- we were avoiding feeling our emotions (especially sadness) and had to find some place to channel the sensations we were experiencing. Maybe dad was a tyrant and we felt like we had no choice but to be quiet and duck. Maybe our classmates laughed at us when we made a mistake, and we decided being shy was safer.

I am not some enlightened being trying to guide you on a journey he has already completed. That is an old model, partaking of a kind of spiritual hierarchy based on a linear conception of the evolution of consciousness. In the present transition, each of us is pioneering a unique part of the territory of Reunion. In keeping with that, I must offer you my doubt and conflict along with my insight.

It may surprise you to learn that your ego doesn't believe that love really exists, but it's true. Just think! When you allow your ego to direct your search for love, you are actually asking the only thing in the universe that doesn't know what love is, to find it for you.

Every now and then I come across an affirmation that really 'hits home'. One of these is "I think and speak only words of love". I found this one in Louise Hay's book "Heal Your Body." When I started using this affirmation, I immediately saw and felt its power-full effects.

Every single thought you have can be assessed in terms of whether it strengthens or weakens you. Authentic wisdom is the ability to monitor yourself at all times to determine your relative state of weakness or strength, and to shift out of those thoughts that weaken you.

I believe that the primary goals of consciousness are to keep us alive and to stave off trauma or potential future trauma. Now if I am correct (and I may not be), then self-harm or the extreme of self-harm — self-annihilation — would be extremely difficult. Consider the statistics...

Success and failure only have to do with ego. The soul is busy taking a journey and having experiences from which it will learn. It knows nothing of success and failure. The soul only knows truth, honesty, and integrity...

Whether you were born in December, January, August or September can have a significant and long-lasting impact on your life. Our new research shows your birthday month may also contribute to shaping your personality. In particular, we found people’s self-confidence can significantly differ because of their month of birth.

The structured nature of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and its clearly defined principles (based on the links between thoughts, feelings and behaviours) make it relatively easy to train practitioners, ensure standardised delivery and measure outcomes.