On well-being - An orgy of good energy last week in Madison, Wisconsin.

In spite of slightly flippant title for this post, I really do believe this is good stuff. The Dali Lama paid a two day visit to Madison Wisconsin last week, as part of his current world tour “Change Your Mind, Change The World,” speaking at a number of different venues (all under high security screening) under the sponsorship of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds and the Global Health Institute, both at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My colleague Richard Davidson, who was central in arranging his visit, is doing an amazing job of bringing to the general public neuroscientific and psychological insight into well-being and happiness. (side note: Davidson contributed to a brain imaging seminar I organized for the graduate Neuroscience program in the 1980’s.) An example his public outreach is this recent piece in The Huffington Post.

The point that I find most compelling, and it certainly resonates with my own experience, is the hard evidence that kindness and generosity are innate human predispositions whose exercise is more effective in promoting a sense of well being than explicitly self-serving behaviors. (Of course, this message has been a component of the major religious traditions for thousands of years.) There is accumulating evidence that kind and generous behavior reduces inflammatory chemistry in our bodies.

I have used the tag ‘happiness’ and 'mindfulness' (in the left column) to mark numerous posts on well-being over the past seven years. Right now my queue of potential posts in this area has more items that I will ever get to individually. So...I thought I would just list a few of them for MindBlog readers who might wish to check some of them out:

On happiness, from the New York Times Opinionator column.

A 75-year Harvard Study's finding on what it takes to live a happy life. 

A brief New York Times piece on mindfulness.

How your mind wandering robs you of happiness. (also, enter ‘mind wandering’ in the blog’s search box)

Is giving the secret to getting ahead.

On money and well being.