Is a smile as pleasurable as 2000 bars of chocolate? Or $25,000?
iling gives the brain as much pleasure as 2000 bars of chocolate, or $25,000. Via Smile: The Astonishing Powers of a Simple Act (TED Books): Abundant research on facial feedback shows that smiling feels great. A group of researchers in the UK working with Hewlett-Packard Development Company, tried to quantify and make sense of what all this brain activity meant. They used an electromagnetic brain scan machine and heart rate monitor to establish “mood-boosting values” for various brain stimuli. They…
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Here’s The Secret To Loving Your Job, According To Research
ople whose jobs allowed them to use their signature strengths -- those qualities they were uniquely best at, the talents that set them apart from others -- were consistently happier: We hypothesized that the amount of positive experiences at work (job satisfaction, pleasure, engagement, meaning) is a function of the extent to which the situational circumstances at the workplace allow for the application of an individual’s signature character strengths. For the description of the individual a reliable and valid instrument…
3 minutes
How A Night Owl Can Learn To Be An Early Bird
ink Christmas morning: when there's something we're excited about, it's easy to get out of bed early. Via What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast: A Short Guide to Making Over Your Mornings--and Life: Shawn Achor, author of The Happiness Advantage and a self-proclaimed night owl, trained himself to become a morning person by creating rituals that make him excited to get out of bed. He starts the day by writing down things he’s thankful for. “The reason we…
1 min read
3 Secrets To Living Life Without Regret – Backed By Research
rst, what do we regret the most? You're more likely to regret the things you didn't do than the things you did. (The split is about 75/25.) Education was the biggest inducer of regret, followed by career, romance, parenting, the self, and leisure. You're more likely to regret purchasing things. You're more likely to regret not purchasing experiences. And for the big picture: what do people regret the most before they die? 1. "I wish I'd had the courage to…
2 minutes
This question can predict whether you will be alive and happy at age 80
s there someone in your life whom you would feel comfortable phoning at four in the morning to tell your troubles to?" Via Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being: Is there someone in your life whom you would feel comfortable phoning at four in the morning to tell your troubles to? If your answer is yes, you will likely live longer than someone whose answer is no. For George Vaillant, the Harvard psychiatrist who discovered this fact,…
1 min read
Can you turn stress into excitement?
ny studies have shown we easily confuse our feelings: Ariely thinks it might have something to do with "misattribution of emotions": "Sometimes we have an emotion and we don't know where it's coming from, so we kind of stick it on something that seems sensible." The rush from a Red Bull and a roller coaster can make us believe we're in love with the person next to us. We can even fall in love with someone trying to kill us…
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Here’s The Secret To Persistence, According To Research
en challenged, focus on "getting better" -- not doing well or looking good. Get-better goals increase motivation, make tasks more interesting and replenish energy. This effect even carries over to subsequent tasks. Via Nine Things Successful People Do Differently: Get-better goals, on the other hand, are practically bulletproof. When we think about what we are doing in terms of learning and mastering, accepting that we may make some mistakes along the way, we stay motivated despite the setbacks that might…
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4 Secrets To Becoming Luckier, According To Research
open to more opportunities, interact with a large network of people, break routines and keep a relaxed attitude toward life. Via Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries: ...lucky people pay more attention to what’s going on around them than unlucky people. It’s more nuanced than that. Here’s where being open to meeting, interacting with, and learning from different types of people comes in. Wiseman found that lucky people tend to be open to opportunities (or insights)…
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