.

Someone once famously said to Bill Shankly: 'To you, football is a matter of life or death!' To which he replied: 'Listen, it's more important than that.’ As we enter the business end of the World Cup, we have already seen a wide range of life-or-death emotions, both on and off the pitch. These have been from players, managers, supporters and...

Have you ever wondered what people think about you? In particular, what’s their first impression of you? The warm up exercise for Laughology’s Unconscious Bias session, asks the audience to answer some questions about the trainer, based purely on what the person delivering looks like and the few words that they have, thus far, uttered. When running a course last week,...

There were many enduring photos of the spectacle that was the Royal Wedding over the weekend. One memorable image was the miserable trout pout worn by Victoria Beckham who clearly missed the memo that explained it was not a funeral, but a day of celebration, happiness and joy. Mrs Beckham wandered around with a face devoid of any jubilation and looked...

‘Mini-beasts’ is a popular summer term topic in infant classes around the country. Young children will be learning about these amazingly resilient creatures and the fantastic things that they achieve. Mini-beasts show tremendous backbone, despite not having an actual backbone, being incredibly small and easily squishable. Currently, there are a lot of news headlines about the pressures on teachers and the...

“The world economy no longer pays you for what you know; Google knows everything. The world economy pays you for what you can do with what you know.” – Andreas Schleicher, Director for Education and Skills for the OECD. We are, it appears living in a world of unprecedented change, which is giving rise to a severe skills gap. According to inaugural...

We know that, if adults in homes and schools are happy, then the children around them are more likely to be happy too. Similarly, when children are happy, it rubs off on us grown-ups. Well, it does usually. I am writing this at 7am on Sunday morning, having come away for a leisurely weekend to a beautiful village in deepest, darkest...

You might think it's a bit odd that a happiness expert is writing about being unhappy? However the obsession the media and government seem to have with happiness has lead me to want to set the record straight. It’s OK to be unhappy - even on International Day of Happiness. Let me start by saying I am a firm believer in...

As we charge headfirst into February, hands up if a) you made a New Year’s Resolution a month or so ago, and b) you are still on track to achieve it. Mmmmm, I thought not! If you want to know the percentage of people who fail to keep their New Year’s Resolutions, there are various statistics at the push of an internet search...

At ten years old and in Year 6, my youngest of three is perched on the edge of childhood. Any parent with a child of the same age will recognise the time, where you start see the first indications of a transition. It is an inevitable rite of passage when a little girl or boy begins to leave a few of...