Susanna Halonen returns to the podcast with this conversation which is a meandering happiness buffet with lots of different bits to choose from.

• The poet Hafiz
• Evidence based theories versus interesting ideas
• What can poetry and philosophy contribute to a good life?
• The average scientific paper is read two or seven times (Susanna and I heard different numbers)
• Intuition
• Susanna's discomfort with how technology is shaping our lives and the voluntary limitations she puts on herself to ensure that she takes time for important things
• A sin against adulthood
• Happiness is Here, her new book
• A controversial relationship tip
• The happiest country in the world is where Susanna is from. She'll give us some insight into why that may be.

Learn more about Susanna and her new book Happiness is Here

Parapsychology investigates some pretty incredible phenomena including extra-sensory perception, telekinesis and even reincarnation. Jeffrey Mishlove and I discuss what parapsychology does, its relationship with mainstream psychology and how challenging our own assumptions can help us learn things, we otherwise wouldn't have known.

If you want to dive deeper into the research he talks about you can check out his youTube channel.

We talk a lot about the things that make us happy and are supposed to change our life. Some of us try out a bit of advice here and there but most of us don't go about it fully. Tal Gur gave himself 10 years to achieve 100 goals. Today we hear from a doer, someone who decided that he was ready to dedicate himself fully to explore and experience what a fulfilled life really means.

This episode is mostly for professionals and students in positive psychology, HR or management. We can produce the best research in the world but if we don't go where the majority of the worlds' attention is heading, it will not matter how good we are. Whenever something new comes along, like say the internet, smartphones or even the teabag people always repeat the same reasons why it's stupid, irrelevant or dangerous (There is actually a fantastic podcast that covers this topic called The Pessimists' Archive). Then once mass adoption hits they play catch up and try to be seen in a sea of millions (Good luck starting an app in the Appstore in 2018).

That's why I hugely respect what CAPP has done. They have combined the technology of virtual reality with their expertise of personality assessment to come up with a novel product that I believe a lot of HR people will start to use in the near future. Even if you are not interested in virtual reality in itself this episode is worth listening to, as Jamie Betts explains not only, how this assessment works and why virtual reality is important, but how these kind of innovations get rolling in the first place. It's very possible that you as a researcher, executive or tech geek might get some cool ideas how to implement the ideas we talk about in your own work.

If you are a positive psychology professional or researcher I implore you to invest 5-10% of your attention to understand where the future is going and how you can get your message across in that environment. This episode is a good starting point for that.

https://gumroad.com/l/brainwash

Certain ideas keep coming up again and again, no matter what topic we cover in the podcast. These seven concepts let you take a step back and focus on the meta ideas which help you leverage whatever kind of personal growth you are aspiring to.

If you have tried a few times to change your thoughts, but have lacked the structure and recurring practice to do it, check out Brainwash.

Kelly McGonigal's book the Upside of your Stress challenges everything we believe to know about stress. We discuss how previous research has been misunderstood, some surprising truths about stress and how we can develop a healthy stress response.

Find more episodes here:

http://strengthsphoenix.com/listen

This ain't no typo. There are some violations that we tremendously enjoy. Don't worry it's not as dangerous as it sounds. Listen in to learn more about an integral part of happiness and well-being and how you can get more of it in your own life.

http://strengthsphoenix.com/listen

Imagine yoga for a second: was it a white, slender and well-off hetero-sexual woman? Well what about tattooed, black, fat and queer folks? Is it not for them? Jessamyn Stanley is an inspiring yoga teacher who doesn't just not fit the mould but demonstrates that these moulds are unnecessary altogether. We discuss how yoga can be a vehicle for body positivity, mindfulness and a constructive kind of comfort during hard times. Also it's important that we don't mistake the postures for yoga. The practice is about so much more.

Watch Jessamyn doing some poses that I as an overweight woman thought would squash my brain.

Listen to my own yoga journey and check out Positive Psychology on the Go.

Jessamyn mentioned this online resource for classes: https://www.yogaglo.com/

Parents and non-parents want to know how to see and grow the best in the (young) people around them. Lea Waters is here to talk about how to turn on the Strengths Switch, how our own challenges shape how we see our children and what actually happens once we dedicate ourselves to strengths in daily life.

You can take a test to see how you score in strengths-based parenting on her website http://www.strengthswitch.com/ (scroll down past the videos to find the resources).

Emotion differentiation is a the closest thing to a psychological superpower. Having it gives you all kinds of benefits and protection while the absence of it has lots of drawbacks. The good news is that it is a very straight-forward skill to learn.

http://strengthsphoenix.com/listen