The Psychology of...

How do you spend your time? How do you spend your money? How do you spend your space? Judging by the stats on debt-to-service ratios, stress levels, and storage units I can safely predict that many of you reading this do not have a firm control over your expenses and perhaps more importantly you are not even sure why you spend your time, money , and space in the way that you do. Let me quickly answer the why question... To make you happy. We invest our time, our money, our effort, and our space with the hopes of gaining fulfillment, engagement, peace, and purpose. We want love and respect and rest and connection. To sum it up, for lack of a better term, we want happiness. And despite running deficits, financially and emotionally; despite having full schedules and full credit cards and even fuller houses (couldn't resist), we end up feeling less satisfied than ever. We are terrible investors when it comes to our most valuable resources. Enter the minimalist movement. Firs

            After spending the first few months of the school year teaching elementary students positive psychology I decided to assess their learning by having them apply the theory of flourishing to the Christmas break. Here is a compilation of the tips given by kids at Nicholas Sheran and General Stewart elementaries. 1) Eat mindfully - There is very little more exciting to me around Christmas time than planning out the holiday meals. Fish and pasta on Christmas Eve, Roast dinner on Christmas day, boxing day crepes, it's like overeating is a time honoured Christmas tradition. But why would I dishonour the most delicious meals of the year by eating it so mindlessly and rushed? Eating mindfully is about truly experiencing your food with all of your senses. Letting its deliciousness spark the reward centre of your brain and give you ultimate pleasure. Eating slowly and with intention will help you to not just enjoy your meal more than ever but to embed its sentimental