In the middle of his bar routine – having flung himself into the air with style and skill – Dutch gymnast Epke Zonderland missed the bar at the last grasp and face-planted into the mat.

We’re more likely to take on unpleasant but necessary tasks—taxes, bills, and housework—when in a good mood, new research shows.

Stories are like boxes we build around ourselves to give structure, identity, security and familiarity. We are attached to them even when they are traumatic and painful, because they feel so much part of us... However, stories also limit us...

In the 1990s, a psychologist named Martin Seligman led the positive psychology movement, which placed the study of human happiness squarely at the center of psychology research and theory.

Philosophy has been a favorite whipping boy in the culture wars since 399 B.C., when an Athenian jury sentenced Socrates to death. Nowadays, philosophers are no longer accused of “corrupting the youth.”

Despite the fact that we have a good chance of reaching one hundred (whether we like it or not), many of us fear the unknown landscape of aging. We fear illness, not having enough money, losing our mental abilities, being dependent on others, and becoming a burden to our families. Truth is...

Observing a pianist at a recital – converting musical notations into precisely timed finger movements on a piano – can be a powerful emotional experience.

As a young adult in college, I decided to learn Japanese. My father’s family is from Japan, and I wanted to travel there someday. However, many of my classmates and I found it difficult to learn a language in adulthood. We struggled...

For the past five years, I haven’t lived anywhere for more than six months. I spent 28 days in Lisbon, three months in Bali, and a random half-year in downtown Las Vegas.

When we were children, the summer holidays seemed to last forever, and the wait between Christmases felt like an eternity. So why is that when we get older, the time just seems to zip by, with weeks, months and entire seasons disappearing from a blurred calendar at dizzying speed?

It may seem that wise, strong people typically have gone through a few hard times in their lives. By comparison, those who have led a very sheltered and privileged life often appear to crack more easily under pressure

Here’s some wonderful advice for being miserable: Ignore all the good and decent things that surround you in the course of an ordinary day. Here’s more: Complain about the things you can’t change, and even complain about those things you can change. The list could go on...

A new study finds that early-career doctors—and the rest of us—can be better at our jobs if we simply set aside as little as 30 minutes a day for some “me time.”

Researchers at King’s College London say they are able to predict educational achievement from DNA alone. Using a new type of analysis called a “genome-wide polygenic score”, or GPS, they analysed DNA samples from 3,497 people in the ongoing Twins Early Development Study.

Large swaths of the American public want Donald J. Trump to be their president – maybe even a majority, according to an analysis from Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight in late July.

I’m tempted by efficiency. My overactive brain craves the order of a predictable routine, a color-by-numbers life, the safety of no surprises. But I also crave enchantment. My heart craves the unpredictable, the spontaneous, the magical. In many ways, the two are...

Pretend, for a minute, that we’ve all come to Earth to learn something. Since we may not care for little boxy classrooms, instead we have a whole planet for our current lessons. Now pretend that there’s not one of us who isn’t in the test of some major challenge.

The Binewskis are no ordinary family. Arty has flippers instead of limbs; Iphy and Elly are Siamese twins; Chick has telekinetic powers. These traveling circus performers see their differences as talents, but others consider them freaks with “no values or morals.”

What the most confident-seeming people have is not brazen ballsiness, impressive bravery, courage or any of that elusive stuff really...it’s PASSION. It’s enthusiasm. It’s WILLINGNESS. It’s RESILIENCE and FLEXIBILITY.

Each of us has a Default Mechanism, a subconscious pattern of returning to memories of previous experiences in your mind to find a response to a current experience. Your default powers your very first, almost automatic, reaction in response to the events of your life.

We live in an increasingly competitive world where we are always looking to gain an advantage over our rivals, sometimes even our own colleagues. In some cases, it can push people to extreme, unethical and illegitimate methods – something we’ve seen recently in the doping scandal that has hit the athletics world.

"You are at your very best when things are worst.”  In celebration of the release of my new book The Grace Factor, I would like to cite some acts of grace that ultimately affected many people...

The limits of our language are said to define the boundaries of our world. This is because in our everyday lives, we can only really register and make sense of what we can name. We are restricted by the words we know, which shape what we can and cannot experience.