Personal Well-being
In keeping with a general increase in interest in spirituality and complementary and alternative treatments, prayer has garnered attention among some behavioral scientists. Masters and Spielmans have conducted a meta-analysis of the effects of distant intercessory prayer, but detected no discernible effects.
Spirituality has played a central role in self-help movements such as Alcoholics Anonymous: "...if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead...."
Philosophers across many traditions, from Stoicism to Buddhism, have suggested that a spiritual practice is essential for personal well being. Such practices do not necessarily include a belief in supernatural beings. Contemporary authors, too, suggest that spirituality develops inner peace and forms a foundation for happiness. Meditation and similar practices may help any practitioner cultivate his or her inner life and character.
Read more about this topic: Spirituality
Famous quotes containing the words personal, well-being:
“I began to expand my personal service in the church, and to search more diligently for a closer relationship with God among my different business, professional and political interests.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“The liberal wing of the feminist movement may have improved the lives of its middle- and upper-class constituency—indeed, 1992 was the Year of the White Middle Class Woman—but since the leadership of this faction of the feminist movement has singled out black men as the meta-enemy of women, these women represent one of the most serious threats to black male well-being since the Klan.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)