The eyes only care about their own comfort and to ensure that, they’ll force the rest of the body to contort into unhealthy positions. You’ll really notice this after a few hours in front of the computer.

One way to create a win-win situation for both your eyes and your body is to move your monitor. Try bringing it closer, moving it away, and adjusting it up or down—of course a monitor arm makes this easier to do. We also recommend increasing the size of the on-screen font. Make your eyes comfortable and your body will thank you.

Want to learn more about feeling better at work? Check out our other ergonomic videos.

Consider the Embody office chair, designed by Bill Stumpf and Jeff Weber. More than 30 professionals, physicians, and PhDs in the fields of biomechanics, vision, physical therapy, and ergonomics worked with Stumpf and Weber to develop the instinctive back of the Embody Chair. Sit in it and you’ll feel the backrest automatically adjust as you move and shift positions. The result keeps your spine aligned and healthy.
When we say, “We’ve got your back,” we mean it.

Interested in the science of sitting? Check out Herman Miller’s research here.

With this in mind, our London office recently launched “The Freedom Movement,” a new citywide campaign for the SAYL Chair—which features a frameless backrest designed to move with you. If you’re in London and happen upon one of our new ads (like the one above), snap a picture and send it our way.

Good design solves a problem. But how does a designer know which problem to solve? For Jeff Weber, a personal experience related to a foot injury made it clear there was a problem with standard-issue crutches.

After just two days of hobbling around, Weber was suffering from “an all-out assault” on his body. Sore armpits, irritated skin, and numb hands, stemming from nerve compression and restricting blood flow, were impeding his recovery. Clearly a problem to be solved.

Familiar with ergonomics, Weber set out to design a crutch with mobility in mind. Looking to reduce secondary injuries, conserve physical energy, and improve the overall recovery experience, the final design of Mobilegs looks more like a distant cousin of the Aeron chair than a traditional crutch. (Weber worked alongside Aeron designer Bill Stumpf and co-designed the Embody work chair.)

One of the most striking differences is the under-arm saddle. A pliable membrane sling provides suspended support, not unlike the suspension seat of Aeron, and articulates on two pivot points to keep the saddle in constant contact with the underarm. The single-component structure of the shaft “facilitates a better hip-to-hand clearance,” explains Weber, and “allows the walker to move through doorways and narrow passages more easily.”

Had designer Jeff Weber never hurt his foot, the plight of crutch users around the world may have gone unnoticed.

Changing your posture as you work—from sitting to standing to sitting again—is the best way to keep your spine healthy and body happy. At first, it may take some practice to remember to keep moving, but once you do, it will become second nature. You’ll feel better and work better.

Check out our other ergonomic videos to learn more about feeling better at work.

Just as you were scolded for slouching at the dinner table as a kid, you should be warned against slouching in your chair at work. It’s bad for your back: distorting your spine into an unhealthy “C” shape that puts pressure on the intervertebral discs. This contributes to back pain and general discomfort.

How can you sit better? The first step is to sit back in your chair—all of the way back. Make sure that your back is making contact with the chair’s backrest. This better supports your spine and helps you receive the full benefits of an adjustable work chair. Give it a try, you’ll feel better.

Want to learn more about feeling better at work? Check out our other ergonomic videos.

Our bodies have a way of letting us know when they’re feeling uncomfortable. Stiff shoulders, sore neck, back pain, and eyestrain are all messages telling us that we’re are not working right.

Technology can be the culprit, forcing us into unhealthy postures. Laptops are wonderful; we’re untethered and free to work from anywhere. But that laptop screen is likely too low for everyday use. Before you know it, your neck is craning and your shoulders are hunched; you’ve become what Cynthia Roe Purvis, Ergonomics R&D Director at HP, calls the “Turtle.” You might even be sitting like a turtle right now and not even know it.

The key to comfort is listening to our bodies. Don’t stay in one posture for too long: sit, stand, and stretch, move around throughout the day. Combined with an ergonomic support tool like a Lapjack to lift your laptop’s screen to the proper height and an external keyboard, and in no time you’ll be feeling better. Your body will thank you for it.

Visit our Thrive Portfolio of ergonomic solutions to learn more.

At Herman Miller this philosophy began with Gilbert Rohde’s belief that design was the only honest way to make furniture that served people. Charles and Ray Eames agreed: imparting their molded plywood chairs with contours mimicking those of the human body.

In the 1970’s, designer Bill Stumpf sculpted foam to comfortably support people while they work—creating the first ergonomic task chair. He introduced ergonomics to our industry.

Since then, Herman Miller and its designers have continued to find innovative solutions, but have never forgotten that design begins with people. Not just their physical attributes, but their behaviors as well. We study the purpose of their work and their postures and movements. Design follows.

Our approach must be working, as Herman Miller was recently recognized as the number one brand for ergonomic seating by Contract magazine.

Where he’s all about moving on the set, Billy Wilder, a director from an earlier generation who did films such as Sunset Boulevard and Some Like It Hot, opted for catnaps on set. In 1955, while filming The Spirit of St. Louis, he started taking naps on a narrow plank held up by sawhorses. Wilder later told his friends Charles and Ray Eames he needed something similar—but a bit more comfortable—for his office.

They came up with a slender, armless chaise with a built-in wakeup call. It required Wilder to lie on his back with his arms folded over his chest. Once he dozed off, his arms relaxed, dropped to his side, and gently awakened him. We began making the chaise in 1968, and it’s been in the line ever since.

We’ve added other pieces in the ensuing years. And Sonnenfeld puts three of them through their paces in his search for the right furniture for working in the editing room: the Embody and Aeron chairs and the Envelop desk. Get his read on them, and then check them out for yourself.

Photo: Barry Sonnenfeld is an Emmy-winning television director and the director of Get Shorty and the upcoming Men in Black 3.

A “new” trend is emerging among workers in Silicon Valley: the standing desk. We know sitting all day is not ideal for the human body. The low physical workload and rearward rotated pelvis puts you at risk for back pain. Not to mention, excessive sitting slows your metabolism and can even negatively affect cholesterol levels.
But the truth is, standing all day isn’t any better. In fact, the high workload placed on the body while standing is equally as harmful as the inactivity in sitting.
What the body wants is movement. Alternating from sitting to standing several times throughout the day reduces the chance of back pain and improves circulation. Both are essential to productivity.
The standing desk is far from a new concept. In the 1960s, designer George Nelson developed the first stand-up, roll-top desk for the Action Office line. We continue to encourage movement in all our furniture. Everywhere and Envelop tables enable multiple height-adjustments. Paired with a work chair, you can sit, stand, and move, all of which will help you feel better and work better.

That may be because work daily gives us access to other predictors of happiness. Events like staff meetings and birthday cake breaks provide social connection, which is a major predictor of happiness. 

Work can also provide a sense of purpose and an opportunity to help others. And, if you have work that challenges you but is still within your capabilities, work offers flow experiences—those stretches when you’re so engrossed in an activity that you lose track of time.

“The most satisfied workers find their skills tested, their work varied, their tasks significant,” writes psychologist David Myers in The Pursuit of Happiness. A lot of that has to do with how a person frames his work more than what kind of work he does. An 18-year-old brick maker in Pakistan who makes $3.50 a day working alongside his siblings told NPR, “I’m happy because we are builders of the nation. If we don’t make bricks, people can’t build anything. Pakistan is going to develop every day because of us.” Knowing how you contribute to the bigger picture—whether as a member of a work team, a sports team, or the human race—boosts feelings of wellbeing.

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who coined the term “flow,” has some suggestions for how to increase enjoyment and opportunities to experience flow, whether at work or at play. Set goals and measure your progress, immerse yourself in the activity, and focus on that moment in time, rather than worrying about tomorrow.

Money, by the way, doesn’t buy happiness, once basic needs are met. But happiness may bring more money. According to Myers, in recent research “Today’s happiness predicted tomorrow’s income better than today’s income predicted tomorrow’s happiness.”

Photo via: NPR

You might think that my idea of an office is different than my parents’ idea. Not so. It turns out that they, like a lot of Baby Boomers, are really good at adapting to what’s becoming more common for all of us—working anywhere. That can mean working from home, a coffee shop, or a “campsite” at headquarters. Mobile work is becoming a reality for many people and businesses.

Here I am working in the coffee bar at Herman Miller. (Got my portable mouse and separate keyboard, got my laptop support so I can elevate the display and get it to a good viewing angle.) Studies show that the simple addition of a portable mouse and separate keyboard dramatically increases comfort for mobile workers.

Ask anyone—like me—who’s really into mobile working, and she’ll tell you that portable technology is a must, and the fewer things to carry, the better. While mobile working may be the preferred work style for many now and most of us in the future, it doesn’t mean we can ignore our health while we do it. If I’ve learned anything from working anywhere it’s that being on the move feels better when I bring some good ergonomic support along with me.

A research summary published by Herman Miller ranks the option to position a computer in a suitable location as one of the most important attributes of a comfortable workspace.

I saw this need addressed during a recent visit to a trading floor located in New York’s World Financial Center. The Herman Miller company Colebrook Bosson Saunders supplied this particular floor with Wishbone monitor arms and posts that can support up to four monitors. Most people on a trading floor work with at least two screens, although many work from four and sometimes six.

The Wishbone monitor arm fits well in this environment because anyone can reconfigure it to support a variety of needs. In fact, the monitor arms on this trading floor are reconfigured up to three times a week.

Monitor arms also carry ergonomic benefits. They allow the technology to move with the user, while contributing to an ergonomic posture and reducing eyestrain.

Unfortunately, from 2008-2009, an estimated 9.3 million working days were lost to work-related musculoskeletal disorders. Having proper ergonomic support, however, creates safer, healthier environments that help to prevent these disorders.

Whether you work on a trading floor or in an office like mine, the appropriate technology support, such as a monitor arm, is a smart investment.

This last option fits in with our Health Management Program, which includes bicycle commuting, fitness programs, and flu shots. Why just the other day, as I was walking to lunch, I was nearly run over by the group in this picture. As I rounded a corner, they came barreling along, talking away, and intent on doing their noon-time walk. We all smiled, said hello, and I thought, “That’s one of the things I like about this place—work is part of life, and not the other way round.”

Remember your dorm room? Yuck. (Or maybe you can’t remember, but that’s another story.) The opposite of “yuck” is the trend today.

Take the William Jessup University in Rocklin, California, for example. It recently won an American Institute of Architects chapter award for its new student apartment building. Beyond being a great place to reside, the 192-bed, 24-apartment project preserved “the original conversion of the Herman Miller furniture factory, designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry.”

So, the place has the look, but does it deliver the good life? You bet. Each apartment has a full kitchen, wireless Internet, cable TV, central air, a two-story parking garage, laundry facilities, and a courtyard big enough for community gatherings and barbeques. “Boola, Boola.”

This is a big deal because there’s a positive correlation between comfort and productivity. Unfortunately, it’s tough to keep everybody happy and comfortable all the time. As any facility manager will tell you, often the person complaining about the office being too hot is sitting right next to the person complaining about it being too cold.

Facility managers do the best they can, but when it’s not enough, people do what they have to do. They use space heaters (frowned upon because of the fire hazard), heating pads, personal fans, supplemental clothing and, in one case reported in the research, a small wading pool under the desk in which the worker could “paddle” his feet to cool them off.

Herman Miller has a sweet and sensible alternative that uses 90% less energy than space heaters. C2 climate control uses advanced thermal electric technology to provide heating and cooling in a single unit. Someday I’d like a C2 for my home office, but for now I use a foot warmer to stay warm. What’s your solution?

Me: You can’t possibly do all three well. Him: Practice makes perfect. Me: Riiiiight. Him: <shrug>

New research is on his side (darn it). René Marois, a psychology professor at Vanderbilt University is co-author of a study on multitasking. Marois says there are two major ways tasks can interfere with one another: If they both require concentration (we’re bad at splitting our attention effectively) or if they make demands on the same neural resources, e.g., trying to carry on two conversations at the same time. His study focused on the former and showed how people can become efficient multitaskers when tasks require less attention.

 “Our results imply the fundamental reason we are lousy multitaskers is because our brains process each task slowly, creating a bottleneck at the central stage of decision making,” he says. With practice, we can learn to process more quickly.

Researchers on another project asked a different question: Does multitasking affect your ability to concentrate when you aren’t multitasking? They tested the concentration of students who multitask frequently and other students who multitask but not all the time. The three tests measured students’ ability to ignore irrelevant information, organize items, and switch tasks. Each test required the students to do only one thing at a time. Students who spent less time multitasking did better on every test than students who multitask frequently.

Finally, experts agree that no one truly multitasks. Instead, the brain toggles between, say, history paper, Battlefield II, and girlfriend so quickly that it gives the illusion of multitasking. And oh, how we love that illusion.

Women who know about this misperception may think twice about using company-sponsored work/life balance programs like telecommuting—and rightly so. “As long as managers buy into that stereotype, women who take advantage of programs like on-site child care or flextime or paid time-off for parenting are only undermining their prospects for advancement in their companies,” says Professor Jenny M. Hoobler, one of the authors of the study. “What we’re talking about here, I expect, is one of the subtle, entrenched forms of discrimination that make up the glass ceiling.”

For the last seven years, the arrangement has been working for the Dernbergers. Rick enjoys the mix of parenting four daughters (ages 6 – 20), counseling college students, and helping entrepreneurs get new business loans. Being a part of all the details of his daughters’ daily lives has been especially rewarding—and an opportunity that most dads don’t have.

The Pew research didn’t ask men why they don’t want to work part-time, but it’s not hard to guess a few reasons. Cultural norms change slowly. Most men had dads who worked full time so, like Rick, the option might not even be on their radar screen. Even if men do consider it, the decision may be driven by finances: men still make more, on average (women make about 77 cents for every dollar men make).

Still, some men have made the switch. At Herman Miller, .5% of male employees in the U.S. currently work part time; 6.3% of female employees do. In our international division, 1.6% of employees work part time, and all are women.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—the Paris-based group that says Denmark is happiest—measures only life satisfaction. It asked citizens questions like “Did you learn something today?” and “Were you proud of something you did yesterday?”

But, nef, the independent “think-and-do tank” that says Costa Rica is happiest, measures life satisfaction, life expectancy, and ecological footprint. This allows it to assess the “environmental efficiency with which, country by country, people live long and happy lives.” It assigns each country a “Happy Planet Index” (HPI). So it’s not just about the happiness of a country’s people; it’s about whether or not the way that country’s citizens live makes the planet happy. An interactive map shows each country’s cumulative index and its index for each measure.

In addition to checking out your country’s HPI, you can also calculate your own personal HPI. Mine was 64. That’s above the world average of 46 but well below the target of 83, “which represents a good life that doesn’t cost the earth,” according to the folks at nef. Once you have your score, the site generates suggestions on how to improve in each area.

My ecological footprint really hurt my overall score, a weakness my country shares: The U.S. ranked 114th on the Happy Planet Index because it, too, has an outsized ecological footprint. We’re both going to have to work on that.

Check out what Herman Miller is doing to improve our ecological footprint through our environmental advocacy initiatives.

Linder, a tenured professor at San Francisco State University and partner in MSL Design, believes good design starts with good research, so he spent many hours in hospital waiting rooms observing how people interact with the furniture there. Some, he discovered, found comfort using armrest seams as “worry beads;” others took the concept of “lounge” to new heights – or depths, actually. These and other factors (did we mention those pesky pathogens?) were all taken into consideration before he ever picked up a drawing tool.

In addition to his observations, Linder also talked with hospital personnel, including nurses and maintenance crews.

KP: So what did your hospital waiting room research tell you?
ML: Our goal was to really understand how the furniture was used to find real problems we might be able to solve. We first observed a lot of dirt build-up in cracks, crevices, and seams in chairs, where pathogens develop. So that was our number one challenge.

Another one was where people touched the chair with their hands; they’d nervously pick at the material at the end of the armrests, almost using the seams as worry beads. And as we’re all aware, viruses are distributed through hand contact, so it wasn’t just a wear and tear problem, it was also a zone where viruses could be exchanged by one person after another.

The third problem was just the emotional/physical comfort people were seeking. They might be there for hours at a time; maybe they’ve got a loved one in intensive care, and they’re often upset. But many of the chairs are designed for very formal, upright seating. So people were slouching and looking for comfortable ways to sit or even sleep, while kids might be jumping up and down on them like they’re trampolines.

So those were our three priority problems we were trying to solve.

KP: And what did you do to solve them?
ML: First, we designed the chair so the seat floats separately from the arms, creating a gap, where all this dirt and liquid can drop to the ground and be swept away, greatly reducing the pathogens.

The second thing we did was use urethane for the armcaps/handcaps, which allows them to be cleaned to fight bacteria. It wears very well, even with the constant cleaning and touching when people move their hands around. In fact, we designed the handcaps to encourage people to caress them because of what we had observed before. I wanted it to be enticing and satisfying to rub as they’re sitting there, to provide a psychological and emotional comfort.

We also designed the chair to be somewhat like a body “vessel;” it almost wraps around you and hugs you to some degree, again, to give another level of psychological comfort.

KP: Interesting! So what other problems did you solve?
ML: Florabella’s chair back is sculpted in a way that allows people to move around in the seat and still have great comfort whether they’re putting their head on the back and slouching or sitting up in the traditional way. It was really all the behaviors we observed that led to physical characteristics of the chair.

KP: So it was more about function than beauty?
ML: I’d say it was really about performance. We wanted to provide functional performance as well as psychological performance, which is where these sort of “organic” characteristics came out. Of course, that led to all kinds of manufacturing challenges: How do you engineer a chair so that the seat and arms are separate but still keep it strong and flexible?

There was a lot of ideation with engineers and vendors to make it all work right. In fact, it led to using a whole new foam mold manufacturing process. But it all turned out great and the chair is performing very well, thanks to a lot of people who helped develop it, from my partner Chris Morlock to all the folks at Herman Miller and Brandrud who believed in and supported this project. It was truly a collaborative effort.

KP: Well, congratulations on the win; I’m sure you were happy about the award, which I understand is the “Oscar” in the healthcare world.

ML: I’m absolutely delighted with it. It makes me proud to be part of an elite group of designers and manufacturers who are trying hard to design really good products that solve problems. And I’m happy that it also meets Herman Miller’s environmental standards. To me, Herman Miller is the pinnacle of furniture design and having an association with them is as satisfying as winning the award.

I couldn’t believe their responses. They totally got into it and I had trouble keeping up with all the fantastic ideas they were throwing at me!

Headlines like, “Play soccer under the stars,” “The ball that can’t be beat,” “The soccer ball with muscle,” “The best night-light ever!” I just never expected such great ideas from them. And I think I learned a valuable lesson that day: Kids are creative. Kids like to think. Kids can make work fun. Isn’t that the way it should be for adults, too?

Do you share an office with a furry friend? Send your stories and photos to Discover and we’ll highlight them in a future blog post.

Herman Miller featured several products, including this year’s NECE Attendees’ Choice Award winner, the Envelop desk. Also on display were: the Embody chair (last year’s Attendees’ Choice Award winner), the Setu chair, Sense desking system, Intent furniture, keyboard and mouse support products, the Flute personal light, and the Twist LED task light.

As a platinum sponsor for the event, Herman Miller provided the furniture in the speakers’ lounge and press room, allowing for a comfortable space for speakers and press personnel to relax and focus on their work.

With our heritage of problem-solving design and research in ergonomics, it was appropriate that Herman Miller sponsored a CEU presentation on “Concordance,” which addresses the “two hemispheres” of work—the person and the technology. Presented by Gretchen Gscheidle and Matt Camilleri, the concordance story highlights the research and design behind the Envelop desk and the Embody chair.

It’s apparent that many of the conference participants—more than 100—were interested in this topic, since attendance doubled the number from last year’s CEU presentation.

Our live media team, composed of individuals from Herman Miller and our subsidiaries Brandrud and Nemschoff, covered the event live on Twitter under stream #hcd09.

What did we learn? What were the major trends we observed and takeaways we will continue to think about? What texture did we take away from the intangible? We synthesized our experience and now we present five takeaway points back to you for consideration:

1.  You can apply lean process to any industry. Learn and apply best practices from other fields.
2.  Use evidence-based design to drive innovation.
3.  Patients, doctors, nurses, furniture, infrastructure, equipment, buildings, and nature are all part of the same ecosystem.
4.  Design healthcare products and environments that reference norms but create delight.
5.  Listen, ask, test, challenge, and participate in communities that are shaping the future of healthcare.

We’d love to hear your reactions. Do you agree? Understand? Let’s continue the conversation here and on Twitter. Follow @healthcarehm and stream #betterworld.

Almost every material or object has a texture. These items and surfaces are tangible. They have weight, density, and a composite quality. We have tactile reactions to products and artifacts that can be drivers for our purchasing decisions and triggers for memories.

But can an experience have a texture? Does a conversation or a presentation have a tactile signature? How might we qualify the interactions and knowledge shared at a conference?


Find out between October 31 and November 3. Herman Miller Healthcare, along with our subsidiaries Nemschoff and Brandrud, is participating in Healthcare Design 09—a four-day, solution-focused experience aimed at delivering successful outcomes for healthcare facilities. Search for our live media team stream on Twitter under #hcd09. Follow users @healthcarehm and @hermanmiller to get started.

Additionally, we’d like to invite you to a special Twitter power hour event on Monday, November 2, from 4-5 p.m. EST when we’ll host a live Q+A on Lean Healthcare Practices.

In the days following the conference we’ll synthesize our learnings and let you know the results. Until then, please share your ideas and feedback and, of course, examples of your favorite textures.

Brown (who is single) isn’t alone, according to a survey of 60,000 members of Gen Y (those born between the late 1970s and late 1990s) about the most important characteristics of an entry-level job. Work/life balance was their top characteristic, above meaningful work and pay.

Is it because they are too young to know the trade-off they are making? I doubt it. Brown, who doesn’t have health insurance, recently chipped a molar. He can’t afford the dental work but “this hasn’t made me rethink anything,” he says.

In previous recessions, work/life balance has dropped on the list. But cutbacks, once used only as a last resort, have become business as usual. Gen Y watched their parents lose their “secure” eight-to-five jobs and maybe they’ve decided that if nothing is for sure, they may as well build time for fun into their lives. Some people call Gen Y selfish. I call them smart.

I began teaching English at our local community college as a gig, a little diversion from the monotony of the glass screen. Hours at the computer makes me feel like a social misfit. I figured that teaching a night class here and there would at least refresh my ability to talk.

I never expected to like it so much.

Community college is frontier territory. By and large, my students aren’t bright-eyed high school graduates who have been groomed since kindergarten for academic success. My students come to English Comp class at West Shore Community College after working gut-wrenching hours at McDonald’s or the local nursing home. They might be single parents who are back in school to make their children proud and to give them a good example. They might be laid off after decades at a menial job, or they might be aging laborers who can no longer handle the hours and the work.

Dual-enrolled high school juniors, who can earn college credit for free, might sit next to grandmothers, who pay reduced rates. Lately, vets from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are returning, some with physical or emotional wounds. They write about their experiences, and sometimes it seems like therapy.

“I don’t have to look any further than my classroom to see the power of community colleges to change lives,” writes Jill Biden, PhD. and wife of the vice president. She continues to teach at community college because, like me, she is inspired by her students.

What I discovered much too slowly is that these classes are less about the fine points of grammar and more about how to learn and how to communicate. And often I am there simply to crack open a door that might otherwise remain closed to these nontraditional students and to let them know they’re absolutely good enough to walk right in.

By Kate Convissor

Within the family, my mother was known as the “Queen of De Nile.” With ten kids and a Peter Pan-ish visionary for a husband, she learned that selective blindness was a helpful and adaptive way to keep her sanity.

That curmudgeon Freud was the first to label denial a defense mechanism, thus casting it into the psychological outer darkness. I think, however, that a little wholesome denial can be an artful dodge to the knuckle sandwiches of life. It’s like a shock absorber, a mental cushion, that buffers us from the potholes in the road. Everyone knows the bumps are there, but it’s easier on the spine not to absorb the full, teeth-rattling impact.

Reality will inevitably strike, which is why our brokerage account statements are lying unopened in a dusty corner right now, but sometimes, if we ignore them long enough, reality’s discomfiting facts will fade away on their own. Do we really want to know what our 17-year-old is doing at every moment? Probably the same things we were doing at that age, but who wants to dwell on that? With any luck, he’ll soon be standing in our shoes cultivating the same strategic blind spot with his own teenagers. And, with any luck, we may be able to peek at those brokerage statements soon. Experts at the Economic Cycles Research Institute report a “pervasive upturn” in the leading economic indicators, and so far, that group has never missed a call on economic cycles.

Denial must be selectively applied, however, or it takes on those bad, old Freudian overtones. Pretending that high blood pressure will go away or that a three-martini-lunch habit isn’t an addiction are the attitudes that give denial a bad name. As a species, we’re doing an impressive job pretending that we have plenty of time to deal with our warm and crowded planet.

But on the whole, given the choice between the-sky-is-falling Chicken Little and pie-in-the-sky Pollyanna, a little magical thinking is a good option. When the facts are unalterable and unpleasant, sometimes it’s best to ignore them. Chances are, the sky won’t fall. And if it does, well, we’ll deal with it then.

By Kate Convissor

Sources:

“Denial.” Encyclopedia of Mental Disorders. 2007. 

“Denial: Learn to Cope With Painful Situations.” MayoClinic.com. 25 Jun 2009. Mayo Clinic.

“Economist Predicts Recession Will Soon Be Over.” All Things Considered. NPR. 18 July 2009.

Kirwan-Taylor, Helen. “How to Handle Wealth Loss.” Wealth Bulletin. 25 Feb 2009. eFinancial News, Ltd.