Who is more courageous: soldiers, police, firefighters or… business executives?
bsp; Business executives showed less fear and more "willingness to act" than any of the other professions studied. Via The Courage Quotient: How Science Can Make You Braver: In a landmark study psychologists Cooper Woodard and Cynthia Pury measured the courage quotients of people from all walks of life. They measured both the fear and the willingness to act of college students, adults from a community sample, police officers, fire personnel, military officers in training, and corporate executives. Common opinion would…
1 min read
Would winning the lottery solve all your problems?
bsp; Via the documentary Lucky: Every year Americans spend $7 billion on movie tickets, $16 billion on sporting events, $24 billion on books... and $62 billion on lottery tickets. More than half of all American adults play the lottery making it, by far, the most popular form of paid entertainment in the country. Odds you believe your best shot at getting rich is winning the lottery: 1 in 5. Odds you will actually hit the jackpot in a Powerball lottery: 1 in…
3 minutes
5 Most Popular Posts for October:
bsp; What are the four things that kill relationships? What are the 18 secrets to giving a presentation like Steve Jobs? These are the 3 reasons why your relationship with food is totally crazy Is it better to be an introvert or an extravert? Are puppies the secret to productivity? Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here.
1 min read
What are the 5 things that make love last?
ve posted before about John Gottman. He can listen to a couple for 5 minutes and determine, with 91% accuracy, whether they’ll divorce. He was featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink. What system do they use in his lab for quickly telling who will stay together? Via What Makes Love Last?: How to Build Trust and Avoid Betrayal: We've settled on five basic dimensions that I believe express the richness of the subjects' stories. Called the Buehlman Scoring, this assessment is extraordinarily accurate in predicting…
3 minutes
How can you use your imagination to quickly boost your happiness?
bsp; I've posted before about how optimism, savoring and anticipation have all been shown to increase happiness. In Tali Sharot's book The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain she explains a scenario that illustrates how you can use these concepts to easily make yourself happier: For desirable events, such as a foamy pint of Guinness, optimism increases the joy of anticipation by (a) increasing our expectation that we will receive our pint sooner rather than later, (b) enhancing our…
2 minutes
What do you want to achieve before you die?
ndy Chang gives an inspirational talk about a project that asked people to finish the sentence: "Before I die I want to..." Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: What do people regret the most before they die? How can you live life without regret? 8 ways to inspire yourself to new heights
1 min read
Can trying something new for 30 days change your life?
tt Cutts gives a great talk about how trying new things for 30 days not only helped him learn new skills but also changed him as a person: Join 25K+ readers. Get a free weekly update via email here. Related posts: Malcolm Gladwell asks “What’s more dangerous: incompetent idiots or overconfident experts?” Malcolm Gladwell asks “Is it better to come in first… or third?” Dan Ariely explains why we lie and how we justify our actions
1 min read
Can you fight your feelings?
bsp; Just like "don't think of pink elephants" makes you think of pink elephants, fighting feelings often increases their effect. Via The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking: ...when experimental subjects are told of an unhappy event, but then instructed to try not to feel sad about it, they end up feeling worse than people who are informed of the event, but given no instructions about how to feel. In another study, when patients who were suffering from…
1 min read
