Americans’ happiness score – latimes.com

We’re a lot happier as a nation than I was otherwise led to believe. Um, go us? We’re No. 6! That’s according to new data from the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development , which on Tuesday released results of a survey measuring quality of life in 36 industrialized nations. For the last three years, […]

OpenIDEO – How might we create healthy communities within and beyond the workplace?

Wow, OpenIDEO is on a role lately with their challenges that get my creative juices rolling and my passions up, in a good way! This latest challenge is about wellness in the workplace: Together with Bupa and the International Diabetes Federation, we’re asking our global community to help us explore how people can best be […]

A happy view, thanks to your window glass

From Co.Design: Scientists at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research in Germany have invented a new type of window that is conceived to improve concentration, regulate sleep, and even make you happier. The so-called “feel-good glass” has a special .1-micrometer-thick inorganic coating that is optimized to transmit wavelengths between 450 and 500 nanometers, where the […]

The UN Embraces the Economics of Happiness — YES! Magazine

Should happiness and well being be considered a metric to measure overall success of a country? The UN just voted yes: Imagine you open the paper tomorrow, and the headlines are not about the “sluggish economy,” but our nation’s quality of life. You turn to the business section, and find not just information about a […]

Can cities promote happiness?

A nice article from The Atlantic about how urban designers can do things to make living in the city a truly happier place to live: I’ve been looking at some research reports, and confirming that some of the qualities associated with great urbanism – good public transit; easy access to cultural activities, recreation and shops; […]

Mappiness: Mapping Happiness

From the blog How Do you Landscape; a group from the UK has created an app that can be used to measure our happiness based on our surroundings, and using maps to look at the data: “People feel better outside than inside”. “People feel better in the park/woods/nature than in the city”. These are some […]

It really is the journey rather than destination

Nice interview from Salon with scientist Shimon Edelman about how scientists are discovering neural patterns to the behaviors and activities that make humans happy; turns out the act of learning is often more rewarding than what we learn: Shimon Edelman, a cognitive expert and professor of psychology at Cornell University, offers some insight in “The […]

How being grateful for the little things makes a big difference

I received this newsletter post from financial advice blog LearnVest. It provided some interesting insight into another reason why practicing how to be grateful in itty-bitty ways (see my earlier post) is actually better for you in the long run. — Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about gratefulness and what really makes us happy. […]

Moods on Twitter Follow Biological Rhythms, Study Finds – NYTimes.com

It’s Friday, and I’m looking forward to the weekend, and apparently so is the rest of the online world. A team of sociologists measured the amount of “happy” tweets people put out around the world, and found it matched previously known patterns of happiness trends: Drawing on messages posted by more than two million people […]