CategoryWellbeing

Santa Monica’s Inaugural Wellbeing Summit On November 16, 2019, the small coastal city of Santa Monica, California held its inaugural Wellbeing Summit – a free and interactive community event that brought together nearly 900 residents, city leaders, local organizations, and members of the global wellbeing movement. The Summit was designed to engage a broad cross-section

(I want her to be well!) I took this photograph of my daughter this summer: we are in an alpine meadow about an hour outside Munich, hiking up to a hut where some friends would be married. These two girls were thrilled to be together, climbing the mountain and communing with cows, carrying all they

The “pursuit of happiness” is a phrase Americans know well. The United States Declaration of Independence established it in 1776 as an inalienable right for all citizens. Fast forward to 1955, and happiness becomes a national pastime, epitomized by Disney’s “Happiest Place on Earth.” Now in the first quarter of the 21stcentury, happiness is a

As I was writing the last post, How to Thrive: Specifying the Universal Elements of Wellbeing, I started thinking about a paper I had presented at the International Conference on “Happiness and Public Policy” in Bangkok several years ago. It elaborated a democratic procedure through which communities could create a list of capabilities they wanted

Although wellbeing can be subjective—the specifics of what makes a good life for one person surely differ from another’s—it seems safe to say that there are universally necessary elements. On a broad level, we must attend to all six dimensions of wellbeing: an individual’s mental/physical, material, social, and existential wellbeing, as well as that of

The Gross Domestic Product, or GDP measures economic growth on the national level, but it doesn’t actually measure the wellbeing that nation’s citizens. Fruitful discussions on better measures have been increasing,  not just on the fringes of public discourse but in initiatives sponsored by world leaders in government and premier global organizations like the United