Authentic Happiness: Signature Strengths

There was a good forum address at BYU today. Martin Saligman, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist in positive psychology, spoke on the importance of optimism and focusing on mental health. One of his points was particularly interesting to me. He said that a way to achieve a greater sense of fulfillment and optimism in life was to identify our greatest strengths and consciously employ them into any professional or everyday endeavor. He has a website, authentichappiness.org, with lots of professionally validated quizzes and surveys. He reccommended taking the "Signature Strengths" test. 240 questions, but I was interested, so I did it! It took me about twenty minutes. The results seemed pretty much dead on, and they were very informative. I would reccomend it to anyone else interested.

The 5 Browns

Last night I got to see The 5 Browns perform live in the De Jong Concert Hall! It was an AMAZING experience. I can't believe how in sync they are with each other. Getting 5 pianos to sound like one is surely no easy task! They played one of my FAVORITE classical pieces, Rachmaninoff's 18th Variation on a theme by Paganini. It's in "Somewhere in Time" if that helps. I'm so lucky to be at BYU and have the chance to experience all of these wonderful performances and other opportunities.

Kinda freaky how they all look the same, huh?

SO CUTE

I love vintage swimwear. I REALLY REALLY want to buy this suit. I've wanted one in this style for a long time, and I finally found it online! Only thing is it's 65.00 $ and looks like it's distributed from a home-run company type...thing. So I don't know if I can trust it or how well it would fit upon being delivered. I want it red with white polka dots. Man oh man, it is just so adorable! And my three-year-old walmart suit is just about ready to be retired.

Child Prodigy

Okay, so I haven't blogged in a while but that is mostly because I didn't feel like reacharging my camera and uploading pictures. Today, however, I rediscovered the story of child prodigy Akiane. Her parents were atheists, but one night Akiane claimed she had a vision and painted a picture of Christ. Ever since she has tried to create works that will bring people closer to their families, a true knowledge of themselves, and, most importantly, a knowledge of the Savior. Her paintings are often religious or whimsical. Below are a few of my favorites.

"Father Forgive Them" Age 9


"Love" Age 13, Akiane next to the painting.
"Search For Truth" Age 12


"The Dreams" Age 10

"The Journey" Age 9

You can learn more about her here.

Early Christmas Celebration

My group of friends and I had a gift exchange today. Check out our tiny little Christmas tree.

Christmas Shopping Woes

Okay, I'm grateful for our family's tradition of drawing names so that we only have to buy for one person. It makes the shopping easier on my creative juices and wallet. But I always seem to be stuck with the hardest people to shop for. This year is NO exception. Not only that, but I have had boys as my people for the last 4 years. Joel, Dan, Adam, and then Aaron. Isn't that funny? ;) Some say boys are easier to shop for because they are more easily contented, but I find it easier to give gifts to girls because I relate to them better.

I was thinking back to past Christmases and some of my favorite gifts that have come as a result of the name-drawing. I came up with a few classics:

*Michelle's leather pants from Aaron-the subsequent tears that resulted
*When Dan had me and gave me ONE SHOE.
*When Dan had Michelle and gave her a can of applesauce from the food storage. (I believe he gave her a real gift later.)
*When Dan had me (wow, dan! you've made the classics three times) and gave me a box of dollar-tree treasures, including a baseball calendar, a rubber mallet, those stones you stick in fishtanks, and a huge plastic doorbell in the shape of red lips. I took those to spanish 1 class with senior landers and they were confiscated.
*When I gave Aaron a rugby ball last year but he didn't read the nametag so he assumed it was from our parents and said "Thanks, Mom and Dad!". Kind of awkward, because I didn't want to say "umm...actually..."
*That Christmas when Marie and Adam were first married and exchanged a great plenty of gifts
*Joel's cute cardboard constructions...tender!

Can't think of any more at the moment...does anyone else have input?

Quotes

Recently I've been introduced to the quotes of a stand-up comedian named Mitch Hedberg. Disclaimer: My friends have only told me his good jokes and I believe the rest of his stuff is full of language, but I would like to share some of my favorite squeaky-clean quotes with you! (Sorry to Celeste, Jen, Nathan, and Michelle, they've heard these possibly a million times.)

"Once I had a parrot that talked, but it did not say 'I am hungry,' so it died."

"I was walking by a dry cleaner at 3 a.m., and it said "Sorry, we're closed." You don't have to be sorry. It's 3 a.m., and you're a dry cleaner. It would be ridiculous for me to expect you to be open. I'm not gonna walk by at ten and say, "Hey, I walked by at three, you guys were closed. Someone owes me an apology. This jacket would be halfway done!"

"Vending machines are big part of my life, I like when you reach into the vending machine to grab your candy bar and that flap goes up to block you from reaching up, that's a good invention, before that it was hard times for the vending machine owners, "What candy bar are you getting?", "That one, and every one on the bottom row!"

"When I was a boy I used to lay in my twin sized bed at night, wondering where my brother was."

"I got a king sized bed. I don't know any kings, but if one came over, I guess he'd be comfortable. "Oh, you're a king, you say? Well you won't believe what I have in store for you! It's to your exact specifications!"

"I think Bigfoot is blurry, that's the problem. It's not the photographer's fault. Bigfoot is blurry, and that's extra scary to me. There's a large out of focus monster roaming the countryside. Look out, he's fuzzy, let's get out of here."

"I order the club sandwich all the time, but I'm not even a member, man. I don't know how I get away with it."

"The worst way to get killed would be with an arrow. Think about it, the cops would walk by, see the arrow sticking out of my chest, and say 'Hey look at that dead guy. Let's go this way.' "

Again, these are the few quotes of his that are clean, but I sure think they're funny.

:)