06. Nov 2008
Yesterday was the day of the 1st Dutch Positive Psychology symposium. At Thoughts on Happiness thought leaders from science and business gathered to talk about the meaning of life and how that affects your happines. Arjen Haring did a tremendous job in getting all these fascinating people together, all day.
1. Happiness and the Brain
Dick Swaab [...]
31. Oct 2008 
Hooray! We saw a big spike in the number of visitors on this website. And guess what.. we were featured on the Stumbleupon website!
If you don’t know this website, you could be in for a real treat. Stumbleupon let’s you discover websites that people-like-you came across and shared.
28. Oct 2008
‘Afstand scheidt enkel de lichamen, niet de geesten’ (Erasmus)
Desiderius Erasmus, the well known Dutch Renaissance humanist, once said that:
“Distance only separates our bodies, our minds are always connected”.
Which is a remarkable contribution to the Virtual Happiness Hypothesis. Especially when you think of the fact that Erasmus lived from 1469 - 1536.
And no, he didn’t [...]
19. Oct 2008
My good friend Maarten Lens-Fritzgerald is on an amazing journey. You should definitely check out his weblog about his fight against a tumor named Theo.
But the reason that I mention him here, is that he shared a book by Alain de Botton with me that is titled “The Architecture of Happiness“.
A little preview on the [...]
18. Oct 2008
Today I received a very nice email from Linda Stone, who I met during at the PicNic Conference.
She’s was enthousiastic about our project and called it “ambitious” Also she asked if we were familiar with the “internet makes me sad”-research, which was done in 1998.
I’ve been receiving a lot of these [...]
12. Oct 2008
Tara Hunt is a fantastic speaker on conferences that are on the verge of marketing and digital media. A few months ago she also did a workshop at Thinking Digital UK: “Happiness as your business model”.
Here are her slides:
You can also follow Tara on Twitter.
29. Sep 2008
Many people have tried to come up with a definition for “happiness”.
Amongst others:
Dr. Benjamin Spock:
Happiness is mostly a by-product of doing what makes us feel fulfilled.
David Lee Roth:
Happiness is … a bathing suit.
Brigitte Bardot:
There is a French proverb: To live happy, live hidden. Where can Brigitte Bardot hide?
We would like to invite you to [...]
27. Sep 2008
A few days after our launch at the PicNic Conference the website Slideshare decided to put us at the frontpage.
Virtual Happines Project
Very nice, and a perfect way to share our project with your friends.
26. Sep 2008
Today we launch the first global survey for our research project. It is the short form of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire, a well known and respected tool to measure happiness.
Please read the introduction to the questionnaire carefully because some statements are phrased positively and others negatively.
If you would like to take part in the longer [...]