Quick Update And Quote For The Week

Dear blog followers, 

As the year is slowly coming to an end, I thought that I give you a final quick update on what is going to happen on the blog in the next few weeks. 

This year has been a great experience and I have learnt a huge amount, and I hope that you have been enjoying it, too. However, as the saying goes, all nice things have an end; we have covered a huge amount of ground and looked into almost all aspects and factors influencing psychological well-being, and there are not many topics left. So here is an overview of the next few posts: 

• This and next week are going to look into the influence that nature and food have on our well-being. 
• A few people have been asking why I have not discussed the role of mental and physical diseases in more detail. The main reason is that these topics are very complex. As you can probably imagine, I have put quite a lot of time into the research of each post to ensure that the contents are correct and based on the current knowledge of experts in each field. Extending the blog to discuss all aspects of mental and physical conditions affecting well-being is simply beyond my capacity. However, I am pleased to announce that the last post in this year is going to provide an overview of these factors (the post is going to be a cooperation between my friend Josephine Spire and me). 
• Before it is time to say good-bye in the new year, there will be a post with my personal 'Top Tips' about happiness and well-being together with a 'Hit List' of my most favourite books and websites, and finally I will publish all posts of the blog in one collated downloadable PDF file. This will provide an easy way of reading previous posts once more (or catching up on posts that you may have missed), as well as being able to share it with others. 

As you all know by now, I am a bit of a quote nerd. So here is another quote for the week:

'The true wisdom of life consists in seeing the extraordinary in the common' - Pearl S Buck

This quote captures one of the essential foundations of contentment and happiness: By being prepared to keep our eyes open and continue to appreciate even the ordinary, everyday moments in life, we are able to prevent or at least slow down the effects of hedonic adaptation. I hope that this quote will serve you well even in the festive season. 

Have a good week until Friday and I hope that you will enjoy the final round of the blog!

Best wishes, 

Petra