Stress

Stress is a precursor to anxiety, and more than 19 million Americans are afflicted with some type of anxiety disorder today. Furthermore, disorders such as anxiety critically impact quality of life and well-being. Although current research is working towards discovering factors that influence well-being, there is still a pattern of sidestepping the qualities of sacred moments in reference to mental health and well-being. With the field's persistent emphasis on techniques toward mental health that do not explicitly involve the sacred and the transcendent, it seems critical to continue to tap this area for its value to our own lives.

To back this up the need for this in our society, an electronic search of Psychological Abstracts in psychology's last 100 years reveals a 14 to one ratio of psychological articles about negative emotions versus positive emotions. The imbalance in research of negative versus positive makes it ever more important to ask the question: what does it mean to live the good life? The good news: there is resurgence in the world of focusing on this very question!