Sublime

Until recent years, the common belief among scientists was that every person has a mood set point that doesn’t change much over a life span. That explains why people who win the lottery or become paraplegic in an accident will (after some transitional time in elation or depression) return to their mood set point. There is also a relationship

This is our neuropsychological home base: to be calm, contented, and caring.

habitual open-mindedness from famed psychologist and friendship expert Dr. Marisa G. Franco,

I’d like to sketch out this theory of life tasks, which I’ve adapted from the developmental psychologists, especially from scholars like Erik Erikson, the author of “Life Cycle Completed,” and Robert Kegan, author of “The Evolving Self.”

exercise called gratitude letters developed by Martin Seligman, one of the fathers of positive psychology.

Positive psychology has offered an important corrective to the disease model by identifying the characteristics of happy people, such as gratitude, compassion, open-mindedness, and curiosity, but

The evidence suggests that tasks or activities that present more varied challenges, requiring more nimble thinking and processing, are more productive at building and maintaining cognitive reserve.

out of hundreds of people tested. The research question was obvious: Was this due to meditation practice, or some other difference such as lifestyle? To explore this, the team studied before-and-after brain images on participants who volunteered for an eight-week MBSR class. Davidson and colleagues demonstrated that meditation for forty-five