What are your favorite holiday memories? Does a certain Christmas carol send you back to your parents’ living room, eyeing presents under the tree? Does a dreidel in your hand take you back to the childhood pleasure of games with family and friends? Is it the taste of homemade pumpkin pie? Or is it the pastiche of warm feelings from years of family gatherings?
Nostalgia gets a bad rap. It’s often dismissed as an escape into the past or a species of infirmity (the term dates to 1688, when a Swiss physician coined it for what he saw as a physical disease). Modern science tells a very different story, however: We now know that nostalgia is a restorative and even motivational resource.
In fact, the best gift you can give yourself this holiday season may be sowing the seeds of future nostalgia.
Continue reading at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Clay Routledge, PhD, is the Vice President of Research and Director of the Human Flourishing Lab at the Archbridge Institute. As a leading expert in existential psychology, his work focuses on helping people reach their full potential and build meaningful lives. Follow his work @clayroutledge and subscribe to his newsletter, Flourishing Fridays.
Will Johnson is the CEO of The Harris Poll.
Psychology of Flourishing
What are your favorite holiday memories? Does a certain Christmas carol send you back to your parents’ living room, eyeing presents under the tree? Does a dreidel in your hand take you back to the childhood pleasure of games with family and friends? Is it the taste of homemade pumpkin pie? Or is it the pastiche of warm feelings from years of family gatherings?
Nostalgia gets a bad rap. It’s often dismissed as an escape into the past or a species of infirmity (the term dates to 1688, when a Swiss physician coined it for what he saw as a physical disease). Modern science tells a very different story, however: We now know that nostalgia is a restorative and even motivational resource.
In fact, the best gift you can give yourself this holiday season may be sowing the seeds of future nostalgia.
Continue reading at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Clay Routledge
Clay Routledge, PhD, is the Vice President of Research and Director of the Human Flourishing Lab at the Archbridge Institute. As a leading expert in existential psychology, his work focuses on helping people reach their full potential and build meaningful lives. Follow his work @clayroutledge and subscribe to his newsletter, Flourishing Fridays.
Will Johnson
Will Johnson is the CEO of The Harris Poll.
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