Bristol Happiness Lectures 2010

You may recall my post on the Happiness Lectures a couple of years ago. I wrote about sustainability-happiness connections. Many people are overloaded and stressed due to fast, urban lifestyles and long hours of work. They are often in debt, anxious and depressed, wasteful and polluting because of their dogged pursuit of more and more. People try to ‘keep up with the Joneses’ but gain no fulfillment from this as they go around the unsustainable viscious circle of consumption. Yet politicians in the big parties still say we need more consumption to get us out of recession!

I've written on happiness and related topics a fair amount (published in date order here). Thought I'd mention this year's Bristol Happiness Lectures taking place at St George's Hall on the Tuesday evening, of May 18th (see picture, click to enlarge). The lectures also mark the launch of the new improved edition of the book Find Your Power, now subtitled 'a toolkit for resilience and positive change' by Dr Chris Johnstone from Bristol University, a key thinker on happiness and related issues. Pity the lectures are not happening during the election campaign, to encourage discussion on wellbeing.

The new edition of Find Your Power has a forward from Rob Hopkins, of the Transition Movement. It has been updated to look more into our current context of economic uncertainty and climate challenge, and has new material on resilience, recovery from depression and addressing global issues. This is a book that can be applied to any kind of change - and it addresses both personal and planetary issues (including climate change and peak oil). I'll be reviewing Chris Johnstone's updated book in full on this blog later in May/June.

For more on the link between tackling depression and addressing global issues, see the article 'Resilience, Recovery and the Self-help SSRI' which can be downloaded from the writing page on Chris Johnstone's website at http://www.chrisjohnstone.info/writing.htm