At the end of our lives, what do we most wish for? For many, it's simply comfort, respect, love. BJ Miller is a hospice and palliative medicine physician who thinks deeply about how to create a dignified, graceful end of life for his patients. Take the time to savor this moving talk, which asks big questions about how we think on death and honor life.
We believe we should work hard in order to be happy, but could we be thinking about things backwards? In this fast-moving and very funny talk, psychologist Shawn Achor argues that, actually, happiness inspires us to be more productive.
Remember when wellness was as simple as losing weight with the latest fad diet and a session of "8 Minute Abs?" While health regimens like these used to be quite popular, they can seem a bit superficial compared to today’s routines, which might involve serving your spirit at Soul Cycle and replenishing your energy with local, organic beet juice. As millennials move the marketplace towards trends like these, the health and wellness industry’s focus is shifting beyond merely beautifying our bodies and onto activities that heal us more deeply. As a result, in 2019 our collective vision of health will expand towards total well-being. With total well-being, wellness isn’t just about healing our bodies. It's about nourishing our minds, spirits, communities and environment through holistic practices that uplift everyone involved. We will begin to see more and more employers moving to support a paradigm of total well-being for their employees as well.
In 2018, Scotland, Iceland and New Zealand established the network of Wellbeing Economy Governments to challenge the acceptance of GDP as the ultimate measure of a country's success. In this visionary talk, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon explains the far-reaching implications of a "well-being economy" -- which places factors like equal pay, childcare, mental health and access to green space at its heart -- and shows how this new focus could help build resolve to confront global challenges.
Finland has topped a global happiness ranking for the second year in a row.
It beat Nordic peers Denmark, Norway and Iceland in a ranking of 156 countries by the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
The ranking saw the U.S. drop one place, to 19th, while people in South Sudan were the least happy.
The results are based on an average of three years of surveys taken by Gallup between 2016 and 2018 and include factors such as gross domestic product, social support from friends and family, healthy life expectancy, freedom to make life choices, generosity, perceived corruption and recent emotions -- both happy and sad.
When GDP became the dominant measure of economies in the 1940s, the internet was still a half-century out. Today, the internet drives a major chunk of economic activity, but GDP misses much of it. This has widened the gap between the closely watched metric and actual economic health. Economists are working on alternative measures that they say will more correctly gauge national prosperity, accounting for relatively new industries, plus intangibles like income inequality and clean air and water. But the pace of technological advances may be enlarging the gap even as they work to close it.
MIQOLS
6020 Lyons Road
Dublin, VA 24084
office@miqols.org
