Here Are 3 Awesome Secrets To Happier Memories, Backed By Research
u can't trust your memory. Memory is fluid. Every time you recall something you're essentially rewriting it in your head. Yet you're prone to stubbornly trusting this copy of a copy of a copy -- even if it no longer resembles the original: Robert Burton describes an experiment in his book On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You Are Not, which everyone with a strong opinion should read. Immediately after the Challenger explosion in 1986, the psychologist Ulric Neisser asked…
4 minutes
Five Simple Things That Will Make Your Life Better
bsp; 1) Want to be happy? It's more about perspective than anything else. Write down three good things that happen to you every day. Via Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being: Every night for the next week, set aside ten minutes before you go to sleep. Write down three things that went well today and why they went well. You may use a journal or your computer to write about the events, but it is important that you…
3 minutes
The Secret To Telling If Your Life Is On Track
bsp; Sir Ray Avery, entrepreneur and author of Rebel With A Cause, says it's as easy as counting your days. “When you’re born, you’re born with 30,000 days. That’s it. The best strategic planning I can give to you is to think about that.” He's 65. So he's "got about 5,625 days to live." Then he just works backward to plan. Via Techcrunch (HT: 99U): “For me, I can reverse engineer my life to achieve much more than you guys. Every…
1 min read
Does Your Mind Wander? Here’s Why That Can Be Your Greatest Asset
ndering minds are associated with creativity. Popular wisdom tells you to live in the moment. Huh? So is it better to be unfocused or focused? Let's look at the research. The Upside of Mind Wandering You spend up to 8 minutes of every hour daydreaming. Your mind will probably wander for 13% of the time it takes you to read this post. Some of us spend 30-40% of our time daydreaming. Via The Science of Sin: The Psychology of the…
4 minutes
Here’s What Scientific Research Says Leads To A Merry Christmas
me people love the holidays, others think they're awful. What's the deal? People are happier during the Christmas season, even if they do feel more stress: …subjects are on the whole reasonably satisfied with their holiday experience, with 74.8% scoring above “neutral” in terms of their satisfaction. Subjects’ stress levels approach the midpoint of the scale, with 57.4% disagreeing that the holiday was stressful and 43.6% agreeing. The holiday experience involved substantially more PA than NA for most individuals, with 75.4% of the…
2 minutes
These 5 Books Can Change Your Life
recently posted about five of my must-read books. Here are a few more that have really made a difference in my life: 1) 59 Seconds: Change Your Life in Under a Minute What is it? If you like this blog, you'll love this book. Richard Wiseman takes psychology research and tells you how to use it to improve your life in a straightforward (but entertaining) way. What did I learn from it? A ton. I learned that: Best…
3 minutes
Why do you read 1000 things about change and never change?
owing isn't doing. I post a lot of stuff about getting better at things. A common response to my posts is "I know that." Knowing is great for watching Jeopardy. It's not nearly as good for life. So why is learning about improvement so easy and actually improving so damn hard? Most any change that requires a lot of consistent mental effort is going to fail because you spend most of the day on autopilot. Via Charles Duhigg’s excellent book The…
5 minutes
The One Word That Sums Up Everything You Need To Do To Be Happier
at word is "PERMA." It's an acronym for: Positive Emotion Engagement Good Relationships Meaning Accomplishment Martin Seligman is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the foremost experts on the study of happiness. He gave the following talk in 2011 explaining "PERMA", the research behind it, and how we can use it to improve our lives. I'll break it down after the video. For the longest time the model of happiness we've had has followed how we look…
5 minutes
