Carol Craig is the Centre's Chief Executive. She is author of The Scots' Crisis of Confidence, Creating Confidence: A Handbook for Professionals Working with Young People and The Tears that Made the Clyde: Well-being in Glasgow. Carol blogs on confidence, well-being, inequality, every day life and some of the great challenges of our time. The views she expresses are her own unless she specifically states that they reflect the Centre's thinking.
18/01/2012 |
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One of the great delights of my job is to be invited to attend, or take part in, really interesting events.
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31/12/2011 |
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In between cleaning the house for the bells (an old Scottish custom) and going up to our local hall for a hogmanay party I thought I would write my personal reflections on 2011 and why for me it was truly an 'annus horribiles'.
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20/12/2011 |
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The journalist Jackie Kemp has an interesting piece in The Scottish Review today arguing that 'the agenda behind the anti-sectarian bill' is 'the feminisation of Scotland'.
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13/12/2011 |
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It is well known to those organising events that if it is free then expect at least 20 per cent 'no shows'.
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26/11/2011 |
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I had the good fortune to be invited to attend Thursday's Public Service Improvement Conference 2011 at the SECC and I really felt that things are beginning to turn in Scotland.
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21/11/2011 |
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One of the things that buoys me up and keeps me going is getting feedback from people when I give talks.
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17/11/2011 |
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A few years ago I met Tari Lang who has worked throughout the world, particularly in the middle east with corporations and individuals as a consultant, coach and mentor.
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25/10/2011 |
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A few weeks ago I was having a chat with a friend who recommended a recent book -The Master and His Emissary: the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.
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06/10/2011 |
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One of the things that incomers to Scotland often find baffling is that Scots don't simply deliver a message but we also 'go for the messages' (our basket of goods) when we go shopping.
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20/09/2011 |
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I've been fairly quiet of late on the website as I've been working on a revision of The Scots' Crisis of Confidence as Argyll Publishing are bringing out a new edition.
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19/08/2011 |
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One of the things I have found somewhat frustrating in a lot of the coverage of the riots is that while commentators often acknowledge the complexity of the issues at stake they then still adopt a one-dimensional approach or end up polarising.
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27/07/2011 |
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I'm delighted both by the publication today of the report into the probation service by the Justice Committee in the Westminster Government and the Minister Ken Clarke's response.
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21/07/2011 |
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My best friend Fran is in California on holiday at the moment and she has just emailed me to say: 'Saw this in a magazine at our Berkeley house and thought of you.
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08/07/2011 |
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I'm not that long back from a brilliant walking holiday in Piedmont, Northern Italy.
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17/05/2011 |
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It is over a week since Scotland's momentous election result and I've been deliberately keeping quiet to let the dust settle.
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03/05/2011 |
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Earlier in the year I read Professor Danny Dorling's book Injustice: Why social inequality persists and I had the pleasure of speaking on the same platform as him at the Aye Write book festival a few months ago.
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12/04/2011 |
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I have just given an interview with Radio Scotland and yesterday wrote a short piece for The Scotsman on the new Action for Happiness Project and I know that I am sounding like a typical Scot.
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05/04/2011 |
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The last time I paid attention to Scotland's enterprise figures was in 2002 when I was writing The Scots' Crisis of Confidence.
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19/03/2011 |
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Emily has just added an item on Emily's News reporting on the publication of a new book called The Longevity Project which reports the findings from a longitudinal project which started in 1921 and has tracked the lives of 1,500 people from their childhood until their death.
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07/03/2011 |
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I've been ill for a couple of weeks and the enforced leisure has allowed me to focus on a number of things which at first sight may not appear related yet follow a pattern.
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18/02/2011 |
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In a rather pressured week it was a great privilege to have an exploratory meeting with three firemen concerned about community safety.
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08/02/2011 |
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I have just read a deeply disturbing book by an American Pulitzer prize winning author, and ex-war correspondent, Chris Hedges called Empire of Illusion: The end of literacy and the triumph of spectacle.
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26/01/2011 |
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When I was on the internet the other day I stumbled upon something of interest.
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14/01/2011 |
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At our Creating Good Lives event Professor William Julius Wilson talked about the structural and cultural barriers which particularly affect poor black people in the USA.
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08/01/2011 |
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Yesterday morning I received in my email inbox a message from Avaaz asking me to sign a petition about bees.
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04/01/2011 |
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I have been giving around fifty talks a year for the past five years and have found that lots of people of all ages, not just in Scotland but throughout the UK, are looking for new values and an image of a different society.
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02/01/2011 |
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At this time of year there's a lot in the papers related to our agenda because this is the time for New Year Resolutions.
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18/12/2010 |
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I've been pondering on a news item I heard last week on the radio.
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12/12/2010 |
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I have been feeling on the verge of a big change for a while but I now find that I'm in the midst of it.
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28/11/2010 |
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I feel compelled to recommence writing about the new well-being indicators by saying just how tiresome, predictable and dispiriting much of the media's response was to the Prime Minister's announcement.
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25/11/2010 |
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In the autumn of 2004, before the Centre was fully operational, Professor Ed Diener – a world expert on happiness – was in Scotland.
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22/11/2010 |
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Given I wrote a book recently on why Glasgow's may have particular challenges on a range of health and social outcomes I read with interest a report which came out last week called 'The Scottish Health Survey: The Glasgow Effect'.
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13/11/2010 |
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Last weekend I was in the Ceilidh Place in Ullapool for one of their Changing Scotland weekends – an informal gathering, held twice a year in March and November, with sessions on culture and politics.
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03/11/2010 |
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Thursday and Friday last week were very special days for the Centre.
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18/10/2010 |
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I've been talking to a lot of people about my Glasgow book recently, both individually and at meetings of various kinds.
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02/10/2010 |
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Over the past few years I had heard the term "Mary's Meals" but I knew nothing of the organisation or its founder Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow.
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13/09/2010 |
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I read with great interest the newspaper coverage on the latest Ofsted report which claimed that half of special needs children are misdiagnosed as this is a topic which is fairly close to home.
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01/09/2010 |
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Following my last blog I was intrigued to read a piece in today's Scottish Review on-line by Andrew Guest on a current exercise the Scottish Government is funding on place-making.
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26/08/2010 |
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Yesterday I got up very early, drove to Dunkeld (a good hour and a half away) and from there took the train to Inverness to visit the Housing Expo.
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18/08/2010 |
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When I picked up last Friday's Scotsman I was delighted to find a feature by Jenny McBain on Tom Forsyth.
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26/07/2010 |
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One of the most influential books of 2009 was The Spirit Level by Professors Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, two epidemiologists.
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11/07/2010 |
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I rarely attend international conferences but I did go to the European Positive Psychology conference in Copenhagen as I was asked to give a talk .
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29/06/2010 |
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Hardly was I back in Scotland and I received a phone call from Newsnight Scotland.
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13/06/2010 |
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Although I'm still on holiday in Vancouver I have been trying to keep track of news back in Scotland and so I'm aware that health is a big issue.
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03/06/2010 |
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In 2003 the psychologist Gregg Easterbrook published a book called The Progress Paradox: How life gets better while people feel worse.
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24/05/2010 |
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I was asked to speak at a Sustainable Development Commission's conference the other day on creating the right mindset for sustainable development.
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01/05/2010 |
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Sometimes I like basing my blog simply on some of my latest activities as it gives an insight into the varied work of the Centre.
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23/04/2010 |
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Things are beginning to return to normal and I'm fully back in work mode planning our future activities and events.
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18/04/2010 |
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I know it has been ages since I blogged but - my partner Alf badly injured his hand, I came down with a bad cold, then we went on a much needed holiday, returned to the UK but I'm still in a caring role (ie a pair of working hands), now spending lots of time trying to fanthom out how my sons can get back from Russia.
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01/04/2010 |
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It has been another busy week for us at the Centre.
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25/03/2010 |
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One of the most popular features of many Centre events has been the contribution of Phil Hanlon - Professor of Public Health at Glasgow University and a member of the Centre's board.
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22/03/2010 |
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Writing my new book The Tears that Made the Clyde hasn't been great for blogging and even since publication it has been the case since I've been busy with various launch events.
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07/03/2010 |
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Over the next few months if people review my new book or comment on it I plan to make it available on the site unless it is personally abusive.
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20/02/2010 |
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When we set up the Centre in 2004 we were based in the Glasgow Centre for Population Health which had been established effectively to find the cause of Glasgow's ill health.
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07/02/2010 |
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I haven't been much of a blogger of late: I've just been too preoccupied with writing my latest book on Glasgow to have time left over to write other things.
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07/01/2010 |
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In Bright-sided: how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America Barbara Ehrenreich includes a whole chapter called 'Positive Psychology; the Science of Happiness'.
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04/01/2010 |
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Those of you managing to break away from festivities in the last few weeks will be aware that the media have been giving a fair amount of attention to Barbara Ehrenreich's latest book - Bright Sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America.
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03/12/2009 |
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I met someone I knew on the train coming home tonight who is involved in the enterprise world.
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22/11/2009 |
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A word that just seems to come up everywhere at the moment is 'resilience': not only is it now common in programmes geared towards young people but also workplaces are also focusing on it.
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18/11/2009 |
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In the past few years I often use talks to warn people of the dangers of media and advertising and how consumerism, celebrity culture and television watching are undermining well-being.
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14/11/2009 |
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I go to a lot of events and what I’ve been noticing is the number of people who have been referring to Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book The Spirit Level.
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11/11/2009 |
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I'm literally just back from speaking at an event in Hartlepool on Teeside which was called Paths to Well-being.
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09/11/2009 |
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One of the things which has caught my attention recently is a piece by Ken Roy on his Scottish Review On-line.
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04/11/2009 |
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I've just realised that weeks have past since my last blog.
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12/10/2009 |
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Anyone who was at the event with Barry Schwartz in June will tell you how strong he was on how financial incentives don’t work.
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17/09/2009 |
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I was fairly certain that the Norman Doidge event on ‘the brain that changes itself’ would prove popular but in fact the interest exceed my expectations.
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31/08/2009 |
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A few weeks ago The Sunday Herald carried a big essay I had written for their opinion section which they called The Princess Syndrome – one of the lines in the piece.
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17/08/2009 |
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At the Centre we're delighted that Dr Norman Doidge, author of the international best-seller, The Brain that Changes Itself, is coming to Scotland and giving a multi-media presentation for us on the evening of 15th September.
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28/07/2009 |
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Last week the papers were full of the story that Britain is becoming even more unequal and that there’s less social mobility now than decades ago.
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07/07/2009 |
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In 1972 I had a job as a college lecturer out in Dalkeith.
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24/06/2009 |
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I went to hear Malcolm Gladwell at the Kings on Monday night.
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07/06/2009 |
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Malcolm Gladwell, of Tipping Point fame, makes the point that prior to the Berlin Wall coming down few people would have predicted this happening.
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19/05/2009 |
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In the first year of operation the Centre ran some action research training courses.
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28/04/2009 |
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The psychologist Theodore Roszac once pointed out that if you ask someone who is highly stressed to imagine a relaxing scene they are likely to think of being in nature – on the beach, in the hills, on the banks of a burn.
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21/04/2009 |
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I'm not a television fan but even I couldn't escape the sensational story of Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent.
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11/04/2009 |
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Over six months ago I wrote a blog explaining that the Centre wanted to broaden its agenda out beyond Positive Psychology.
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29/03/2009 |
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Our latest event took place on Thursday in Edinburgh.
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15/03/2009 |
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I spoke on Saturday in Birmingham at the annual conference of the Association of School and College Leaders – one of the main trade unions for head teachers.
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28/02/2009 |
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Years ago when I worked as a consultant in organisations I used to talk to a lot of people who had problems at work with a bullying and autocratic boss.
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31/01/2009 |
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I had a great morning yesterday at Bathgate Academy.
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11/01/2009 |
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I’ve been enjoying using some of the cards we’ve produced recently.
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18/12/2008 |
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I would have written a blog sooner but I’ve been laid low by one of the worst winter viruses I’ve ever been smitten by.
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28/11/2008 |
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I’ve been down in Birmingham at a huge conference for secondary school head teachers run by the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust.
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11/11/2008 |
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Last week I had was given a huge treat: I was asked to give an evening lecture at the National Library of Scotland on Samuel Smiles’s classic Self-Help.
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24/10/2008 |
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Listening to the news over the last few days about how we are on the brink of recession has been dispiriting.
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09/10/2008 |
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When I give talks I regularly point out that psychologists don’t use the word confidence very much.
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29/09/2008 |
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Jonathan Sher from Children in Scotland introduced me at an event the other day.
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10/09/2008 |
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Over five years ago Malcolm Gladwell, of Tipping Point fame, wrote an interesting piece for The New Yorker, called ‘The Talent Myth – Are smart people overrated?’ Gladwell argues that “‘the talent mind-set’ is the new orthodoxy of American management’”.
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24/08/2008 |
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It is always great having visitors from another country because you really get a chance to see your own country through their eyes.
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11/08/2008 |
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I like Ken Wilber’s work and I particularly think he is right on track with one of his main observations about modern life: narcissism.
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04/08/2008 |
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I spent a terrific day last week at the
Summer School Christine Percival runs with her team at Strathclyde University.
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26/07/2008 |
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The press carried a story this week that more than 11,000 Scots young people (under 25s) are on incapacity benefit due to ‘stress’.
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20/07/2008 |
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I wrote my first book 'The Scots Crisis of Confidence' as I had become to believe that there was something inherent in Scottish culture which tended to undermine confidence.
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08/07/2008 |
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Felicia Huppert is a professor of psychology at Cambridge University.
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30/06/2008 |
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I have a friend whose teenage son was very keen on a girl he was going out with.
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21/06/2008 |
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I’ve never talked before a band before so the whole thing was a bit strange for me.
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11/06/2008 |
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I went to hear Oliver James give a lecture in Glasgow last week.
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28/05/2008 |
3 Comments 
The Centre is now mid-way through its fourth year.
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21/05/2008 |
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Think about families where the parents have little money and they don’t want to feel their children are missing out on toys, trainers, burgers or other things that other children have.
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19/05/2008 |
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One of the things I’ve become a wee bit allergic to is the well-worn phrase used by many educators that what they want to do is develop children’s ‘full potential’.
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12/05/2008 |
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There’s a story in the papers today about an all-party group of Christian MPs saying that the main cause of unhappiness in Britain is not about the lack of material wealth but an erosion of religious values.
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29/04/2008 |
3 Comments 
I was phoned last week by a Sunday paper and asked for my views on the SNP's first year in office.
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09/04/2008 |
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We're now in the process of getting lots of things ready for the new look website.
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24/03/2008 |
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When the Centre started up we wanted to help project leaders measure the impact their interventions were having on people’s confidence.
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13/03/2008 |
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When I was in Madeira last year I was shocked by my own attitude.
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08/03/2008 |
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I am constantly taken aback at how negative the talk about sport is in Scotland.
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28/02/2008 |
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I’m flying off for a few days tomorrow and one thing I know for certain: I won’t be buying a women’s magazine for the journey.
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19/02/2008 |
4 Comments 
I try not to write too many blogs on young people as it gives the impression that we are a charity working only in this area.
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05/02/2008 |
1 Comment 
The Netherlands has, unexpectedly, been in my thoughts this week.
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22/01/2008 |
3 Comments 
The Tal Ben Shahar events proved very popular with most of the people who came along – and there were lots of them.
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13/01/2008 |
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It's gratifying to run events which are so popular that they sell out.
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02/01/2008 |
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I was so pleased when Mick Jackson, of Wildhearts in Action, was voted Scot of the Year.
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06/12/2007 |
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I went along to Greenock the other night to an event organised by Columba 1400.
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26/11/2007 |
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One of the things I like about Martin Seligman’s approach to optimism is that it doesn’t encourage mindless positive thinking.
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16/11/2007 |
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I was phoned this afternoon and asked to write 500 words for a paper on how the Scots should prepare themselves for defeat in tomorrow’s game against Italy.
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04/11/2007 |
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Just finished reading ‘The High Price of Materialism’ by Tim Kasser.
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18/10/2007 |
6 Comments 
One of the big news stories from the Washington Summit on Positive Psychology came from Martin Seligman.
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13/10/2007 |
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‘The thing about sport is that it is a metaphor for life - it really lets us see what is going on culturally.
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03/10/2007 |
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I'm off to the Positive Psychology Summit in Washington tomorrow.
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27/09/2007 |
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I’ve been called many things in my life but puritan was a new one on me.
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13/09/2007 |
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'My life's dedicated to feeding a monster of my own creation’.
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26/08/2007 |
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I was very pleased to see that our new book made the front page splash in the Times Educational Supplement.
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02/08/2007 |
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The book I’ve been writing has now been sent off to the printers and it will due out on the 27th August.
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13/07/2007 |
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When I went into the office yesterday Emily, the Centre’s great psychology researcher, handed me a sheaf of such fascinating articles that it has got me blogging again.
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18/06/2007 |
2 Comments 
I couldn’t help thinking about Bill Duncan’s Wee Book of Calivin last Thursday during the Carol Dweck event.
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07/06/2007 |
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Some of the most interesting articles I have read recently have been published by a social psychologist called Dan Wegner on what he calls ‘ironic processes of mental control’.
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21/05/2007 |
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I watched the film Rob Roy on DVD the other night.
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07/05/2007 |
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I know I have been silent for a while but it’s because I’ve been up to my elbows in writing.
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16/04/2007 |
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A few weeks ago I met a very inspirational Scottish entrepeneur at an event in Inverness.
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01/04/2007 |
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I haven’t been blogging much recently as I’m too busy writing other material.
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15/03/2007 |
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I went along last night to hear a presentation from Lord Layard – the economics professor from the LSE who recently published a book on happiness.
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04/03/2007 |
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I’ve been thinking a lot about Malcolm Gladwell’s Tipping Point recently.
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21/02/2007 |
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I’m glad to see that the UNICEF report on child well-being has attracted so much attention.
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11/02/2007 |
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For decades now Scotland has benefited from inward investment from the United States.
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29/01/2007 |
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I was sitting next to someone at a dinner the other night who had been senior in health in Scotland.
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25/01/2007 |
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When I was involved in setting up the Centre I was always keen for it to provide the opportunity for people to meet up informally and discuss matters of mutual interest.
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18/01/2007 |
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With all the debate and talk about the Union of Scotland and England, I’ve been pondering issues of Scottish confidence yet again.
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03/01/2007 |
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I’ve been arguing for a while that the research behind Positive Psychology has the capacity to spawn a new Enlightenment.
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19/12/2006 |
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Those of you who didn’t get a chance to come to the morning event on education we held at the Hub recently really missed yourselves.
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10/12/2006 |
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When I was in France a few months ago I was surprised to see two teenage boys kiss each other when they met up in the street.
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23/11/2006 |
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In Britain on the Couch the clinical psychologist Oliver James recounts research which shows how exposure to media images and television is very undermining for people's sense of themselves.
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19/11/2006 |
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I’ve been doing a lot of reading recently for a book I’m writing on confidence and young people.
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05/11/2006 |
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For decades now I’ve felt a real aversion for going into shops in the run up to Christmas.
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29/10/2006 |
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Frequent visitors to the site will know that the name we’ve given to what we’re doing with Positive Psychology in Scotland is the Vanguard.
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18/10/2006 |
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I try to write a blog at least once a week and so I was surprised to see that a fortnight has gone past since my last entry.
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06/10/2006 |
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I gave a talk on Positive Psychology last week at a CIPFA conference in Northern Ireland.
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30/09/2006 |
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It is good to see that the 100 signatories to the letter about the dangers facing young people’s physical and mental health in modern times is causing a debate.
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23/09/2006 |
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Readers of last week’s Sunday papers in Scotland must have felt confused.
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06/09/2006 |
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So the Scottish football team is finally on a winning streak.
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30/08/2006 |
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In case you missed it, there was a really interesting open letter in this Sunday’s Sunday Herald.
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18/08/2006 |
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Guenter Grass, the Nobel prize-winning German author, has recently admitted that he served in Hitler’s elite Waffen SS.
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08/08/2006 |
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I’ve been doing a lot of reading on self-esteem recently and was amused when someone sent me a copy of an over the top promotional leaflet.
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26/07/2006 |
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I’ve been very irritated recently by an email site I use from time to time as it has been carrying a huge ad of a glamorous woman which wouldn’t look out of place in a lad’s magazine.
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18/07/2006 |
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All the talk recently about how wonderful it is to have a reasonably long spell of hot sunshine has got me thinking again about how the weather connects with the Centre’s agenda.
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10/07/2006 |
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The conference in Portugal organised by the European Positive Psychology network (ENPP) was, as I suspected, a great success.
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01/07/2006 |
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I’m leaving tomorrow to attend the European Positive Psychology conference in Portugal.
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27/06/2006 |
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I’ve been thinking about tattoos a lot recently.
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18/06/2006 |
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When I was undertaking research for my book I particularly enjoyed reading about Robert Louis Stevenson so it was with great pleasure that I visited the Robert Louis Stevenson park in California today.
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13/06/2006 |
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I had a conversation the other day with someone who had run a variety of focus groups with young people.
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04/06/2006 |
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I think Mark Easton’s Happiness Formula on BBC 2 is great.
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23/05/2006 |
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As you enter Scottish airports from an international destination these days you are told that you are now in ‘the best small country in the world.
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18/05/2006 |
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I'm currently in Ann Arbor, Michigan as I'm on a course on Leading the Positive Organisation run by the Positive Organisational Scholarship Department at the University of Michigan.
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11/05/2006 |
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Spent this morning training on a confidence-building course and I found myself going into material I haven’t used for ages but which seemed very relevant to what people were talking about.
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30/04/2006 |
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Recently I’ve had several very similar conversations with women about their children.
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19/04/2006 |
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I’ve not managed to write a blog for what seems like ages as I’ve been too involved with other things – particularly with reading and writing for the new Positive Psychology section on our website.
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31/03/2006 |
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A woman who was on secondment to the Scottish Executive from California told me recently that one of the things that struck her about Scotland is how good some of our initiatives are yet we give them very little attention, let alone praise.
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20/03/2006 |
1 Comment 
When people hear about the big vision the Centre has for helping to bring about a transformation in Scottish culture to make it more supportive of confidence and positive attitudes they often ask if I don’t feel daunted by the task.
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10/03/2006 |
1 Comment 
I’ve been thinking a lot recently about university education for young
people as my son has just unexpectedly quit his course and gone off to
Australia for three months.
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09/03/2006 |
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I’ve undertaken lots of training with teachers and in the past couple of years I’ve given a large number of talks to education staff.
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13/02/2006 |
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Being optimistic isn’t just about how we handle bad events.
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17/01/2006 |
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I’ve been able to read much more in the past week as the much improved train service means means I’m now going to commute into Glasgow by train rather than by car.
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08/01/2006 |
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I’ve just read the article on page 4 of Sunday Times Scotland and I feel speechless at the cynicism of Kathleen Nutt, their supposed ‘news’ journalist.
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15/12/2005 |
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I’ve just given my last talk of this year to a group of managers in a local authority department.
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05/12/2005 |
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There was an interview with Margaret Thatcher on tv the other night and she looked scary – a horrendous wicked witch with a twisted mouth and face of stone.
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24/11/2005 |
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We’ve just finished the fourth of our action research courses.
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10/11/2005 |
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I’ve been so busy recently with our office move and talking at conferences that I’ve hardly had time to think about blogging let alone write one.
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27/10/2005 |
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Before leaving work today we recorded the latest in the Vanguard Distance learning lectures.
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12/10/2005 |
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I am conscious that I haven’t written a blog for the past week and the reasons are a combination of being overly busy and then falling ill as a result of eating a tuna fish salad.
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03/10/2005 |
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There’s an excellent article on happiness and the rise of positive psychology in the magazine of the latest Sunday Times.
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21/09/2005 |
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Having plenty time to think when I´m on holiday I’ve kept going back over in my head a line from the lecture Professor Tom Devine gave at the Vanguard Programme.
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16/09/2005 |
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On holiday in Spain I´ve been pondering the subject of kitsch.
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12/09/2005 |
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So that's the Vanguard up and and running now.
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25/08/2005 |
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Not being a great fan of TV, I haven’t bought a Radio Times for years but with all the fuss about Michael Buerk’s comments I decided to get one and read for myself.
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16/08/2005 |
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I went down to Dumfries the other day to talk to a group of people from various agencies about the Vanguard Programme.
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05/08/2005 |
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One of the criticisms a few academic social scientists have made about my book is that it isn’t based on hard evidence.
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24/07/2005 |
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When we were asked to take part in the npower/SFA summer schools initiative I knew we were bound to get a lot of publicity.
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17/07/2005 |
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Of all the cities in the world Glasgow is the one I know best.
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12/07/2005 |
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Other than reading the Broons and Oor Willie avidly as a child, Dundee has never featured much in my life – until recently.
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07/07/2005 |
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I know it is trite to say that the bombings in London today put everything in perspective but they do.
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04/07/2005 |
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So that’s us now been in existence for six months.
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28/06/2005 |
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‘Everything works better with numbers’ is the line from an advert running currently on radio.
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24/06/2005 |
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We had another networking event this afternoon.
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21/06/2005 |
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I’m just back from doing a workshop with a group of women entrepreneurs on assertiveness.
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16/06/2005 |
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I tend to write my blog late at night as I’m what my mother would call ‘a hoolet’ – someone who is more alive at night than in the morning.
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09/06/2005 |
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Apparently the word for self-confidence in Russian does not have positive connotations and is almost synonymous with arrogance.
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06/06/2005 |
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I used to live in Edinburgh and still have a real attachment to the city.
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01/06/2005 |
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I met Marc Lambert of the Scottish Book Trust a few weeks ago when we were both asked to take part in a talk in Borders bookshop.
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31/05/2005 |
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When the Centre was launched a few months ago I was asked on to John Beattie’s Saturday morning programme for Radio Scotland and during the discussion he insisted in calling me ‘Scotland’s Confidence Tzar’.
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27/05/2005 |
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One of the things I argue in my book which is slightly at odds with the mainstream cultural analysis of Scotland is that the problem with Scottish identity isn’t that it is too weak but that it is too strong.
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23/05/2005 |
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In the course of my life I’ve been described in various odd, or derogatory terms, but I’ve never been likened before to a ‘brain-destroying fungus’.
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20/05/2005 |
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I spend my life meeting lots of new people and I’m regularly asked if I’m a psychologist.
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18/05/2005 |
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I was at Darwin College in Cambridge at the beginning of the week at a briefing meeting about the Centre with some interested people.
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13/05/2005 |
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The Centre’s flagship event this year is the Vanguard Programme and I’m heavily involved in finalising some of the arrangements for it.
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10/05/2005 |
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There’s a further irony for me in my attitudes to America.
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09/05/2005 |
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When I’m giving talks about Scotland and confidence I often make it clear that I’m not holding America up as an example of what we should become.
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06/05/2005 |
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With wall to wall coverage of the general election I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my disenchantment with politics.
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04/05/2005 |
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At a seminar a few months ago on changes to public services someone said: “the future is already here, it is just unevenly distributed.
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03/05/2005 |
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One of the big themes for me at the moment is ‘feedback’.
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29/04/2005 |
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Today was the second of the Centre's network meetings.
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27/04/2005 |
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Jack Perry, the Chief Executive of Scottish Enterprise chose to devote his speech at the Press Awards dinner last Thursday night to the subject of confidence.
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26/04/2005 |
1 Comment 
There’s nothing particularly Scottish about the idea that ‘resilience’ is in decline.
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The views contained in the Guest Blog are those of the individuals' and do not necessarily represent those of the Centre or sponsoring organisations.