Why do life-threatening situations make some people more calm?
e heart rates of the best bomb disposal experts actually drop when they're in the danger zone. Why? Confidence. Via The Wisdom of Psychopaths: What Saints, Spies, and Serial Killers Can Teach Us About Success: Back in the 1980s, Harvard researcher Stanley Rachman found something similar with bomb-disposal operatives. What, Rachman wanted to know, separated the men from the boys in this high-risk, high-wire profession? All bomb-disposal operatives are good. Otherwise they’d be dead. But what did the stars have that the…
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3 Things The Greatest Generals Of History Can Teach You About Strategy
Don't do what your enemy is prepared for. Frontal assaults against prepared defenses are stupid. Via How Great Generals Win: From the beginning of organized warfare, frontal attacks against prepared defenses have usually failed, a fact written large in military history for all generals to see... great generals strike where they are least expected against opposition that is weak and disorganized. Almost all successful attacks have hit enemies from the rear, from the flank, or anywhere it is not…
3 minutes
The Secret To Eliminating Stress, According To Research
is often said, stress isn't about what happens to us, it's how we react to it. This is very true. We don't feel as stressed when we feel in control. Again, the emphasis is on feel. Even illusory feelings of control can eliminate stress. (This is the secret to why idiots and crazy people may feel far less stress than those who see a situation clearly.) Anything that increases your perception of control over a situation -- whether it…
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Research Says You Can Beat Your Cravings With These Two Words
en deciding whether to eat something that isn't necessarily nutritious, use the words "I don't" instead of "I can't." You're 8x more likely to be successful. Via LA Times: ...try a reframing exercise that seems to work for all sorts of yearnings. It's actually pretty easy: When deciding whether to eat something that isn't necessarily nutritious, use the words "I don't" instead of "I can't." What's the difference? "With 'I don't' you're choosing words that signal empowerment and determination rather…
1 min read
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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Here’s Why Stupid People Don’t Realize They’re Stupid
know how skilled you are at something, you need to watch yourself, watch others and compare. If you don't have the experience (or the mental firepower) to do this effectively, your judgements won't be accurate. To oversimplify it a tad -- stupid people may be too stupid to realize they're stupid: Successful negotiation of everyday life would seem to require people to possess insight about deficiencies in their intellectual and social skills. However, people tend to be blissfully unaware of their…
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When an expert speaks does your ability to think for yourself literally shut down?
s. "Fascinatingly, the fMRI showed that in the face of “expert” advice (even though it actually wasn’t particularly good advice), the parts of the volunteers’ brains involved in considering alternatives became almost completely inactive." Via Brandwashed: Tricks Companies Use to Manipulate Our Minds and Persuade Us to Buy: In a 2009 study, Emory University School of Medicine scientists led by Gregory Berns, MD, a professor of neuroeconomics and psychiatry at Emory, found that people will actually stop thinking for themselves…
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