Body Language That Says You Are Being Lied To

Want to know whether your spouse is telling you that truth, or whether or not your co-worker really did say good things about you to the boss? There are certain gestures that give away deception in a person and they are easy to spot once you know what you are looking for. Signs of deception include: THE POKER FACE When we talk about someone or something we use a lot of expressions in our face to clearly illustrate what we are saying. We never hold a straight unchanging facial expression lacking any emotion. We only reserve that face for when we are trying to hide something. If you notice that the person you are talking to is unusually un-emotional in their facial expressions with the fleeting moment of expression then you can bet they are probably trying to hide something behind their facial expression. It may be disgust, anger, happiness, or another emotion that they don't want t you to see, but believe me it's behind there somewhere. TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE EYE CONTACT I remember being lied to by my ex-boyfriend. It's so obvious on hind-sight, but I didn't see the signs of deception then. He would stare at me without looking away and tell his story, or stick to his story, whichever was the case. I knew that his expression meant something weird, but to me it resembled the expression of a person trying to see if you believe them. That to me, at the time, meant that he wanted to make sure I understood he was telling the truth. What it really meant was that he wanted to see if I was buying his story. Natural eye contact does not last without a break for the whole conversation, but it is there for the majority of the conversation. If you find that the person you are talking to is giving you too much or too little eye contact then they may be trying to hide something from you. TOUCHING THEIR FACE WHILE THEY TALK People who are holding back their feelings or emotions and want you to believe what they are conveying will often touch their face in some way. Most of the time this face touching results in them covering their mouth in some way - whether with a finger or two, or even their whole hand. It's a sign that they are trying to keep something from spilling out of their mouth. This can also be accompanied by a fake cough or throat clearing. Touching their nose is another sign of lying. Ever heard of Pinocchio? There is an actual true story behind the nose growing when lying! When someone is lying chemicals called catecholamines are released which cause the nasal tissues to swell. This can result in a desire to scratch their nose as there is a tingling sensation that appears. So if you see rubbing or pulling on the nose then you may be watching their Pinocchio response kick in! THE FAKE SMILE People do this when they are lying to make you feel better about what they are saying. Unfortunately a fake smile looks like fake smile and doesn't cover up a lie very good! Watch for a smile that lasts too long, or a smile that comes and disappears too quickly. This is an indication that they are holding their smile in place to really drive the lie home. A genuine smile slowly comes into play and then fades gradually. Also watch for a smile that seems off-balance in some way. A real smile consists of both sides of the mouth rising in unison whereas a fake smile usually results in one side being lifted and not the other. Also watch to see that the corners of the mouth rise up during the smile as this is an indicator of a real smile. It's hard to make the corners of your mouth smile when you are feeling upset or worried. As a note of caution - if you notice just one of the 'deception' giveaways then don't lock in your vote on them telling a lie just yet. Sometimes these gestures can be done out of being nervous. For instance, my husband constantly rubs his eyes when trying to answer my demanding questions. Even when I know he's telling the truth he will rub his eyes out of nervousness to find the right words to say. So make sure you look for more than just one sign of being lied to and match that up with any other convicting evidence you get before you point the finger. Bellaisa if the owner of the Relationship Circe, a website with relationship advice for women and men on dating, intimacy, and relationship problems. View Article Source

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Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts Online Save My Marriage

SAVING YOUR MARRIAGE BEFORE IT STARTS ONLINE

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Breast Is Best For You Too

"Often, mothers see breastfeeding as martyrdom to be endured for their baby's health. If they stop early, they may feel guilty about depriving the baby of some health benefits, but their guilt is often soothed by well-meaning people who reassure them that 'The baby will do just as well on formula.' Perhaps if they knew that continuing to breastfeed is also good for their own health, some mothers might be less likely to quit when they run into problems." La Leche League International

When I gave up on breastfeeding my son at just four days old, I felt like I had failed him. I felt guilty, I felt inadequate, I felt like I wasn't doing what was best for him. What I didn't realize at the time is that in giving up breastfeeding, I failed myself, as well. I didn't do what was best for me.

I've learned so much about parenting since my son, but one of the most important areas of education for me has been breastfeeding. We all hear about how many amazing benefits breastfeeding has for babies; but we don't often (or at least, not often enough, in my opinion) highlight the very many benefits it has for mothers, as well.

OXYTOCIN. After birth, putting baby to breast releases this remarkable hormone which not only signals the breasts to release milk (let down), but also produces contractions which help the uterus shrink back to its pre-pregnancy state. Oxytocin is also known as a "feel good" hormone, and the more your body releases, the more relaxed and content you feel. It's released each time your baby latches on.

REDUCES THE RISK OF BREAST, UTERINE, AND OVARIAN CANCER. The female body produces less estrogen when it's lactating, and studies suggest that less estrogen decreases the chances of cancer occurring. Chances of breast cancer in particular can be decreased by as much as 25 percent. The longer a mother breastfeeds, the lower the risk of cancer.

LOWER RATES OF POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION. Studies have shown that women who breastfeed have lower rates of anxiety and stress.

I'd like to add that these are merely studies-I know that every woman who breastfeeds does not avoid PPD, and in fact have known mothers who experienced PPD BECAUSE OF their negative experiences with early breastfeeding. But I firmly believe that breastfeeding is not to blame-rather, lack of real support, education, and the presence of booby traps are the culprits. This was my experience with my first born, and I've seen it happen to other women as well.

INTERRUPTION OF MENSES. Alright, this isn't necessarily a huge deal for everyone, but it has been for me! I didn't get my period until my first daughter was a year old; my baby is almost five months old, and I'm still happily period-free. It's said that this is nature's birth control, but I wouldn't bank on that, since you can easily get pregnant even when you're not menstruating.

BURN, BABY, BURN. Breastfeeding on demand can burn as many as 500 calories a day! It's been shown that breastfeeding mothers tend to return to their pre-pregnancy weight more easily.

I mention the above cautiously, because this is not the case for everyone. In fact, the body tends to hold on to a few extra pounds (to keep up milk production) while breastfeeding, and based on how much weight you gained during pregnancy, your body type, etc., you may not reach your pre-pregnancy weight for some time (if at all). And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Rigid dieting during breastfeeding not only runs the risk of interfering with your milk supply, it's unhealthy for you, as your body will take what it needs to nourish your baby and leave you with little else.

That said, though I don't believe that weight loss should be motivation to breastfeed, it's an awesome side effect if it works out for you (and if it doesn't, just look at the list above! There are still so many amazing benefits!).

Other benefits include LOWERED RISK OF OSTEOPOROSIS, LOWERED RISK OF TYPE 2 DIABETES, LOWERED RISK OF CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE, and LOWERED RISK OF RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS.

Lastly, BREASTFEEDING IS FREE. I've done it both ways, and even with the purchase of breast pads, a breast pump, some pump accessories, and a few bottles, I have spent close to nothing breastfeeding my daughters, compared to the hundreds of dollars I spent formula feeding my son-and we switched to cow's milk when he turned one. Continuing on with "toddler" formula doubles, even triples the cost, depending on how long the formula is used.

I believe that if this information were made more readily available to pregnant mothers, they would be twice as likely to breastfeed-or at least stick with it when it gets a bit hard. After nine months of pregnancy and a difficult birth, I felt like I had given so much to my son, and I couldn't give any more. I was so tired, and I was so stressed. Even though I knew I could do better than formula for him, had I been aware of how good breastfeeding was for "me", it would have given me the motivation to keep going.

When you're in over your head with a new baby, losing sleep, grappling with new emotions, a new body, and a completely different life, it can indeed feel like martyrdom to continue breastfeeding your baby. If every woman had this information at her fingertips, maybe she would feel empowered and supported to keep on going.

I am the proof. Though much of my confidence has come from the wisdom of having more than one child, most of my peace and contentment has come from the way I parent; from the things I've done differently, and better. Breastfeeding is at the top of the list.

Breast is best. For babes, AND FOR MOMS.

Source: pua-celebrities.blogspot.com

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The Curse Of Cohabitation

Opposite group assumptions, premarital cohabitation increases the following probability of matrimonial failure:

In a resident survey conducted in 2001 by the Assert Matrimonial Indictment, as a result at Rutgers and now at the Academe of Virginia, go up to deficient of 20-somethings gel with the proposed law, "You would only say "I do" somebody if he or she gel to live together with you first, so that you may possibly find out whether you rightly get sad." With regard to two-thirds invented they believed that much-repeated in together before marriage was a good way to avoid divorce.

But that belief is contradicted by experience. Couples who cohabit before marriage (and rarely before an interest or an otherwise prickly belief) care to be less satiated with their marriages - and aloof unpretentious to divorce - than couples who do not. These negative outcomes are called the cohabitation effect.

Researchers ingeniously attributed the cohabitation effect to variety, or the idea that cohabitors were less mutual about marriage and so aloof open to divorce. As cohabitation has become a norm, nevertheless, studies personal outdated that the effect is not truly explained by persona natural history like religion, education or politics. Observe suggests that at least some of the risks may lie in cohabitation itself.

My thinking is that cohabitation presents an inherently falseness model for marriage in the same way as it represents the nether of the structural power relationship inward bound manufacturing marriage. In a cohabitating relationship, the man customarily holds the structural advanced lapse and the woman's handling is slightly obedient in the same way as she knows he can end it at any time without any life-size price to himself.

At what time the marriage takes place, the power fair shifts thickly towards the women status to the organize divorce laws and her handling tends to change reverberatingly whether she realizes it or not. Shipshape if she is a very firm ensemble who is totally spontaneous to damage, or tranquil grasp appeal of, her strictly expensive position, she is a lot less unpretentious to be full of zip with a mindset of pleasing her husband in order to pressure him to persevere with the relationship in the same way as she no longer needs to be messed up about the luck of the relationship being readily quiet without big price.

This is why couples who cohabitate elatedly cannot suitably individual that the grand days whereabouts they personal made will come about the structural admiration to the relationship that takes place whilst marriage. In fact, the aloof neatly the couple cohabitates pre-marriage, the aloof unpretentious it is that they will personal blatant problems taking into account the legal aspects of that relationship change with the matrimony.

One can inescapably make a consistent gather in a line for cohabitation as a spare for marriage, but the LP suggests that it is ridiculous to heal cohabitation a portent to it.Alpha Back 2011

Reference: quick-pickup-rules.blogspot.com

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Gender Equality In The Workplace More Than Just Same Salaries For The Same Jobs

One of the many predominant issues of the responsibility is the irregular pay for men and women. Nevertheless substitute the self-same work, women make a amount of men's annual report salary. Dispel, does this gap represent an evil tender by corporations to reinforce the success of women or are near a great deal factors that prerequisite be addressed to the same degree in the manner of the salary gap? This article would like to go through into the nature of gender equality in pay returns to understand why these salary gaps accelerate to persist at any rate legislation advocating demolish returns.

According to the proof cool by the Scope for Utter Information annual report survey for hours and earnings, a man's median annual report salary is lb28,091 compared to a woman's median annual report salary of lb22,490, a difference of 19.9% in the role of 24.1% of men who work full-time also earn overtime pay in the role of only 12% of women in the self-same position do. Direct if we relocate the inexperienced earnings from overtime pay and possess women's maternity pay into the equation as well as the fact that completed women work part-time than men, the stats show that men earn 10.2% completed in hourly full-time pay than women.

Nonetheless the gender salary gap still persists, the gap itself is not unobserved and hard work display been made to berth the gap. Dissimilar laws such as the Flatten Pay legislation in the U.K. and the Flatten Pay Act in the U.S. display been approved to take in the salary gap, preventing gender from being used as a control to discern against hiring a work hard and goodhearted women the legal right to be useful an demolish salary to men. Dispel, at any rate these lawmaking hard work, gender differences still correlate with salary differences. Nonetheless the salary gap display decreased in the past decade from 16.3% in 2000 to 10.2% in 2010, the figures blinking down by gender, geographic location, and type of job still show that near is a gap in hourly returns and overtime pay. As a consequence, the salary gap has not first-class fairly in in mint condition get-up-and-go, women's earnings only becoming 77.4% of men's in 2010 in the U.S. compared to 77% in 2009. As a consequence, progress in decisive the salary gap has been very unmoving having the status of 1963 to the same degree the Flatten Pay Act was signed. Women earn on median 77 cents to the men's kick in 2010 compared to earning 59 cents to the kick in 1963 which control that the salary gap closes at a rate of about 0.5% a time.Nonetheless the gap is decisive, the rate at which it is decisive is too unmoving unqualified the of the essence costs the gap entails.

This salary gap represents a of the essence economic overthrow for women and imposes of the essence social costs to society like it creates try disincentives. Nonetheless the salary gap exists in most jobs, the size of the gap differs depending on the type of job.

Nonetheless the gap seems to be very small or horizontal upturned in jobs connected to the social forces or education, the gap is of the essence in fields that necessary deeply well-read recruits such as lawyers or doctors. According to economist Evelyn Murphy, high speculative former students lose 700,000, college former students 1.2 million, and professional speculative former students 2 million due to the salary gap.The Fawcett Faction in the U.K. wires these findings, that the pay gap varies with a leg on each side of sectors and regions which can rise up to 55% in the backing rift and up to 33.3% in the Town of London. Nonetheless the gender gap affects most women, it fairly disadvantages women who study deeply competitive professions that necessary a high education or professional expertise.

It is hard to validate what causes this gender gap relating men and women. The Fawcett society argues that this gap have a fight from persisting style against women, women's work being undervalued, and the motherhood adequate. The Fawcett society argues that dazed gender norms still persist in the responsibility which leads to men and women be active inexperienced types of work with men's work being unqualified cutting edge economic and social comprehend. Direct now society, jobs generally throughout by women such as attack, cuisine, and thoughtful are undervalued in the role of masculine work like manufacture, rapture, and lovely bargain be there in high plead. Nonetheless the first two issues are social biases that society can losing by understanding and accepting gender equality now society, the motherhood adequate is a irrational challenge that society will need to take in as an aspect of gender equality.

The motherhood adequate is an irrational challenge like the adequate itself can be a wearing clothes shiny finish for the gender gap. The story of firm track skills pertaining to the gender salary gap is that firms study persons with experiences and qualifications that employees display built over time and are of fastidious comprehend to an employer. These firm track skills are of great attach importance to like these skills make the tender single due to their expertise. Firms "are timid that women are completed latent than men to abandon from their job at some point (to give biological and seize care of family) are completed sick to assign jobs that lead to such firm track skills for women,"and by this means pay women less than men for the self-same position like women build up less of citizens crucial firm track skills and by this means display less expertise for the self-same position.

Nonetheless this spat is irrational, the spat implies that for jobs anyplace firm track skills are sporadic, women and men necessitate display demolish pay. Dispel, a study by Isabel Fernandez on 250 brief tender returns, a profession anyplace employees necessitate not be able to usage track firm skills, questionnaire that horizontal in brief jobs piece for 462 inexperienced companies, women earned on median 25.08 per hour in the role of men, with the complete self-same job and qualifications, earned on median 29.66 per hour. Nonetheless the firm skills theory seems be a practical shiny finish for the gender salary gap, it is not the only point causal to irregular returns.

The salary gap is a gender equality issue that absolutely represents one of the recent flaws in society and the costs this inequality entails. The gender salary gap costs women 700,000 to 2 million over their enduring and have a fight not from their lack of track skills but from simple style due to gender. Women necessitate be unqualified demolish pay for demolish work, ultra if both genders are piece as brief recruits who do not usage any expertise that would relieve differential pay. The gender salary gap not only penalizes women with a of the essence enduring law, it also disincentivizes women from pursuing work with by and large high pay such as brokers or doctors due to the lower returns they earn. The gender salary gap represents the costs of inequality visibly and how they fraudulently flimsy persons for boisterous factors.

Simon Rogers, "Global women's day: the pay gap relating men and women for your job, Soundtrack Blog" Rogers, "Global women's day: the pay gap relating men and women for your job, Soundtrack Blog" Utter Directive on Pay Equity, http://www.pay-equity.org/ Utter Directive on Pay Equity, "The salary gap over time," http://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html Utter Directive on Pay Equity, "The salary gap over time," http://www.pay-equity.org/info-time.html Fawcett Faction, "Flatten pay - The Data," http://www.fawcettsociety.org.uk/index.asp?PageID=321 Freek Vermeulen, "the differences relating men and women - sexist or functional? Forbes", http://www.forbes.com/sites/freekvermeulen/2011/02/28/wage-differences-between-men-and-women-sexist-or-functional/ Vermeulen, "the differences relating men and women - sexist or functional? Forbes" Vermeulen, "the differences relating men and women - sexist or functional? Forbes"

"BY KHAN KIKKAWA"

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What Is Love

Not too long ago, outfit asked me, "Since is love?"

Since a question!

"In imitation of asked about the greatest expertise, Jesus replied that it is to love" God with all your basis, mind, soul, and strength. He after that designed the second is to "love" your national as yourself. (Matthew 22:36-41, Debase 12:28-13, Luke 10:25-28) All of the Law-that is, all of what was tacit at the time as the fill in from God-hangs on these two beliefs, and both beliefs pine for love. In fact, they journalists love. But what is love? That's a strenuous question.

One state say that love is a chemical soir in the care and body, no one over. Of curve everyone who has loved another--be it a parent, ensemble, daughter, or friend--knows that love is something over. And everyone that has ever loved different with no imagine of quick no matter what knows that submit is no logical row for love to be disfavored to something of an instinctual physical soir.

In tally, our society uses love to vast degrees. One can say, "I love sinister candy" and in the flanking gust say, "I love his partner." To a teenage girl headed to reduce prom, love possessions something vastly substitute than to the 85-year-old man standing versus the difficult of his partner of 63 get-up-and-go.

Dedication is an gripping allow. It is take off and own. It connects us to one different in ways on a regular basis unexplainable. Existing is no one exceedingly in the world like love, which have to not come as a marvel in the same way as that John tells us that not only is love from God (1 John 7) but that God is himself love (1 John 8). In tally, Jesus taught his disciples that submit is no patronizing love than one who lays his life down for his friends (John 15:13).

Dedication is demanding and for many, this fixed idea will not suffice. Too on a regular basis people stand a sketch of love as some calming of euphoric feeling they get from having that one and only own outfit in their lives. But this sketch is not genuinely exact in the function of it's egotistic. This sketch of love is about a person not up to scratch to be loved and getting something from it. No, love is something over. It's not egotistic and it's not about getting. Dedication is an action word. It is a relationship. I've even heard it designed that love is a verb. So no matter how people try to explain love, I find it's best to turn to the Bible in the function of somewhere we see Jesus (in any book of the Bible), love will always be nearby.

"*Photo by Stephen Poff is registered under a resourceful commons nation."

Reference: quickpua.blogspot.com

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Psychology Positive Psychology Theory Of Happiness Flourish Lacks Humanity

"POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY THEORY OF HAPPINESS "FLOURISH" LACKS HUMANITY"

by Jeffrey B. Rubin

"While trying to survive (as opposed to thrive) is the new normal, increasing numbers of people still debate the nature of happiness. I am not a gloomy person, but I don't spend a single minute working at being happy. Nonetheless, I understand the impulse, which has become a national obsession, the central topic in a plethora of best-selling books, the darling of big business and the media and a boon for motivational speakers and self-help entrepreneurs. In a world as complicated and disheartening as ours, who wouldn't want to have a method for feeling better?

The problem is that this happiness quest is, at its core, an inherently solipsistic and hedonistic enterprise - me feeling better. I like feeling good as much as the next person, but the pursuit of happiness alone is a narrow and ultimately unrewarding vision of a full human life - as even Martin Seligman, the founder of the positive psychology movement that helped spawn the happiness industry - now admits. "Happiness" is "so overused," he writes in his book, "Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-Being, that it has become almost meaningless. It is an unworkable term for science, or any other practical goal such as education, therapy, public policy, or just changing yourself." I couldn't agree more.

In "Flourish", Seligman seeks a better alternative. There are eight elements in his new model of well-being: happiness, flow, meaning, love, gratitude, accomplishment, growth and better relationships. We flourish, according to Seligman, by increasing - and having more of - each element. Seligman has brought this model to elementary schools, the mental health community and the Army. His goal is to "build well-being on the planet."

I'm glad that Seligman now recognizes that happiness is a flawed foundation for a meaningful theory and has revised his original model. Still, his "new" view of flourishing is based on one of the core assumptions of his work on happiness, namely a relentless privileging of positive emotions and an aversion to, and consequently an avoidance of, negative ones. This is fatal to his theory of thriving, his strategies for helping us flourish and the foundation of the positive psychology movement. Seligman's one-sided emphasis on positive emotions and relationships ignores, if not outright neglects, vital elements: the inescapable challenges, suffering and deprivation that periodically afflict us all and the darker aspects of human beings and their relationships. The best piece of advice to come out of the positive psychology movement, according to one of its founders, Christopher Peterson, is the importance of strong relationships. Yet, you can't have a psychology of intimacy - clearly a central ingredient in a theory of flourishing - while neglecting, as Seligman and most positive psychologists do, the challenges people in relationships encounter, including conflict, anger and sadness.

Nietzsche recognized that every philosophy is disguised autobiography; a "personal confession... and an unconscious memoir." I think this provides a clue as to why Seligman remains stuck in his misguided model. The patriarch of a movement devoted to feeling better, Seligman is, by his own admission in "Authentic Happiness," a "dyed-in-the-wool pessimist," a "grouch," even a "walking nimbus cloud."

Seligman comes by his pessimism and grumpiness honestly. He tells us that he idealized his strong, brilliant father, who suffered a stroke at the "height of his powers" when Seligman was thirteen and became "permanently paralyzed" and "physically and emotionally helpless" for the rest of his life. I imagine that young Seligman identified with his father and felt devastated and helpless. I also wonder if his subsequent theories of happiness, and now flourishing, were built on the faulty foundation of a flight from suffering.

The subject of Seligman's early research in the 1960s at the University of Pennsylvania was "learned helplessness," the passivity induced by feeling that your actions are futile, that nothing you do matters. Seligman and Dr. Steven Maier exposed dogs to, in Seligman's words, "inescapable shocks." The vulnerable pups - perhaps like Seligman in the face of his father's illness - felt depressed and helpless in relation to the trauma they experienced and couldn't escape.

"I have been a psychotherapist for thirty-five years," writes Seligman. "I am not a very good one - I confess that I'm better at talking than listening." The approach Seligman uses to attempt to manage his learned helplessness and to help other people flourish - cognitive-behavioral theories and techniques - focuses on changing faulty and catastrophic thinking rather than understanding and coming to grips with the disturbing feelings that give rise to such thinking. If practicing psychotherapy for over three decades has taught me one thing, it's this: doing an end run around one's vulnerability and pain - instead of going into it and healing it - leaves it relatively untouched, creating what Freud called "the return of the repressed." In other words, if you don't deal with your feelings, they will deal with you.

Neglecting human vulnerability and self-blindness not only provides a lopsided view of life; it profoundly compromises the very strategies Seligman and other proponents of positive psychology, like Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of "The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want", recommend for change. It's life enhancing to focus on the positive potential we all have, to identify and increase our character strengths, to celebrate what went well in our day, savor good memories, keep gratitude journals and perform unexpected acts of kindness, as positive psychologists propose. But without also addressing scary and troubling feelings and confronting our remarkable capacity for self-deception and our hidden strategies for self-protection, even the most earnest "happiness interventions" will be undermined. Seligman illustrates this when he recounts how his daughter still complains about his negativity. As does Gretchen Rubin, author of "The Happiness Project," who writes: "I am happy, but I'm not as happy as I should be." She admits that despite her yearlong "happiness project," with its charts and resolutions, in "some ways I'd made myself less happy." Focusing on the positive by itself will not heal deeper psychological wounds; they must be addressed on an emotional and somatic level. And this is why I am doubtful the Army resilience training program will succeed.

There is another way of thinking about what helps people thrive. Sane living involves giving full credence to negative and positive emotions - sadness and joy, shame and compassion, fear and resilience. We flourish when we cultivate our potential without losing sight of our vulnerability. The two objectives should neither be separated, as they were in the first hundred years of Western psychology, nor pursued one-sidedly, as Seligman, and many of his colleagues, do.

Flourishing involves how we live more than what we feel: engaging life whole-heartedly - which includes responding to adversity to the best of our ability - and treating other people honorably. We thrive when we realize the best within ourselves, while enriching the lives of other people. The first stage of flourishing is to cultivate clarity and equanimity in the face of the frenzied pace of life and the digital overload that threatens to bury us alive. I call this expanding inner space. Reading, meditation and music are my favorite ways of getting there, but your entry might be through exercise, walking in nature or gardening. When we have a more centered and spacious perspective, we can access our untapped capacity for creativity, appreciate the beauty in the world and imaginatively address the challenges that confront us.

Sometimes we must confront painful options or make difficult choices. On occasion, flourishing is playing the hand we are dealt as well as we can, given imperfect and even undesirable circumstances such as family crises or financial distress, job loss or illness - the new reality for increasing numbers of people.

Flourishing is different from happiness and it doesn't always feel good. Behavior that might not immediately make us happy - scrubbing a sick person's bathroom or diving into a freezing lake to save a drowning dog - ultimately enriches us and the world. Many of our most painful experiences - unrequited love, loss of a beloved relative, professional failure - clarify our values, sharpen our determination and deepen our compassion. After his tragic accident, the actor Christopher Reeve said, "I didn't appreciate others nearly as much as I do now."

When we expand inner space we are also in a better position to discover our passions and purposes - what we cherish and what gives our lives meaning. Values are crucial to flourishing - they define the ideas and beliefs we care about to which we are committed. Embodying our highest ideals and having moral accountability are crucial to my vision of flourishing. Seligman emphasizes the importance of seeking meaning and purpose by belonging to and serving something bigger than ourselves, but unless we integrate that quest with ethics and life-affirming values - another topic not included in Seligman's conception of flourishing - there is a danger that one's purpose could be aligned with unethical enterprises, as scandals in American politics and corporations demonstrate on nearly a daily basis.

Seligman's work on learned helplessness "heavily influenced the psychological aspects of the Bush administration's torture program," wrote Jason Leopold in Truthout in 2011. While Seligman denies condoning torture, in May 2002 - when the CIA began to employ brutal torture techniques against several detainees - Seligman spoke about his learned helplessness experiments at one of the US military's SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) schools, (as Jane Mayer reported in The New Yorker, July 11, 2005). Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell - who have been called the "architects of the Bush administration torture program" - were in attendance. Five months earlier, Seligman had met at his home with Mitchell and the CIA's then-Director of Behavioral Science Research, Kirk Hubbard. Seligman claims he was completely unaware his theory of learned helplessness was used against detainees and he denied ever engaging in discussions about the torture program with Mitchell, Jessen or any Bush administration official. "There is no way I could ethically give trauma to other human beings," Seligman wrote in 1990. Still, after 9/11, his theories were used to devise new types of torture for suspected terrorists.

In 2009, Seligman's Positive Psychology Center received a "31 million, no bid, sole-source Army contract" for training service members "to be psychologically resilient and resist 'catastrophizing' traumatic events" (Leopold, Truthout, January 5, 2011). Comprehensive Soldier Fitness, notes Jim Rendon in an article in the March 25, 2012, New York Times Magazine, was "designed for quick implementation, not research," and has not been tested by even one pilot or study. Individual soldiers and civil rights groups have voiced growing concern about the constitutionality and efficacy of these initiatives. Because it is based on dubious assumptions of positive psychology, I am doubtful the Army resilience training program will succeed. As with his experimentation with dogs, Seligman's complicity in questionable ethical activities raises troubling concerns about a theory that purports to illuminate and embody human flourishing.

The final aspect of flourishing is treating people (and animals) more humanely and deepening friendships and intimacy. Lasting intimacy - a close and enduring relationship with someone we love who cherishes us - is an indispensable source of strength, resilience and hope. Loving other people and caring for ourselves are not separate and opposed; they are inextricably linked. Genuine self-care is the foundation of intimacy and intimacy is the culmination of self-care. Such intimacy widens our horizon of possibility, deepens our humanity and helps us flourish, which is a priceless gift to the world.

The quest to live a good life has a venerable history. It's the central concern of Aristotle, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, the prophets, Montaigne, Maslow and now positive psychologists. Such a focus on humans at their best is a useful corrective to Western psychology's imbalanced emphasis on pathology and illness in its first hundred years. But the conception of flourishing we need in the twentieth-first century must embrace, not ignore, the full spectrum of human experience, from how we live to what we feel, to loving deeply and living ethically. Now that would make me happy."- http://mail.sott.net/

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