The book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People has sold over 15 million copies since it was first published in 1989, teaching people all over the world how to live a happier, more successful and more satisfying life. One of the prevailing themes of the book is the fact that to change your life you need to change your attitude because no one else is responsible for what happens to you but you, so you can either complain about the things you don't like in your life or you can set about changing them. Not surprisingly, this directly relates to the state of your finances. This post is a parody to the concepts presented in the book.

If you are tired of living paycheck to paycheck, of having your phone regularly cut off or having to make excuses to skip dinners with your friends if the money has run out before the end of the month then you can use the seven habits of highly effective people to take control of your money situation and live a more frugal lifestyle, and a happier one.

Certain meditation techniques can promote creative thinking. This is the outcome of a study by cognitive psychologist Lorenza Colzato and her fellow researchers at Leiden University, published 19 April in Frontiers in Cognition.

This study is a clear indication that the advantages of particular types of meditation extend much further than simply relaxation. The findings support the belief that meditation can have a long-lasting influence on human cognition, including how we think and how we experience events

Watching pornography would seem to be a vision-intensive task. But new research finds that looking at erotic movies can actually quiet the part of the brain that processes visual stimuli.

Most of the time, watching movies or conducting any other visual task sends extra blood flow to this brain region. Not so when the movies are explicit, the researchers found. Instead, the brain seems to shunt blood - and therefore energy - elsewhere, perhaps to regions of the brain responsible for sexual arousal.

Turns out, the brain may not need to take in all the visual details of a sex scene, said study researcher Gert Holstege, a uroneurologist at the University of Groningen Medical Center in the Netherlands.

"If you look, for example, at your computer and you have to write something or whatever, then you have to look specifically and carefully at what you're doing because if you don't, it means you make mistakes," Holstege told LiveScience. "But the moment you are watching explicit sexual movies, that's not necessary, because you know exactly what's going on. It's not important that the door is green or yellow."

I recently wrote an article that addresses the subject of psychopaths and how they insinuate themselves into society. Although the subject doesn't speak directly to what stock you should buy or sell to increase your wealth, I think it's critical to success in the markets. It goes a long way towards explaining what goes on in the heads of people like Bernie Madoff and therefore how you can avoid being hurt by them.

But there's a lot more to the story. At this point, it seems as if society at large has been captured by Madoff clones. If that's true, the consequences can't be good. So what I want to do here is probe a little deeper into the realm of abnormal psychology and see how it relates to economics and where the world is heading.

If I'm correct in my assessment, it would imply that the prospects are dim for conventional investments - most stocks, bonds and real estate. Those things tend to do well when society is growing in prosperity. And prosperity is fostered by peace, low taxes, minimal regulation and a sound currency. It's also fostered by a cultural atmosphere where psychopaths are precluded from positions of power and intellectual and moral ideas promoting free minds and free markets rule. Unfortunately, it seems that doesn't describe the trend that the world at large and the US in particular are embarked upon.

In essence, we're headed towards economic and financial bankruptcy. But that's mostly because society has been largely intellectually and morally bankrupt for some time. I don't believe a society can rise to real prosperity without a sound intellectual and moral foundation - that's why the US was so uniquely prosperous for so long, because it had such a foundation. And it's also why societies like Saudi Arabia will collapse as soon as the exogenous things that support them are pulled away. It's why the USSR collapsed. It's the reason why countries everywhere across time reach a peak (if they ever do), then stagnate and decline.

This isn't a matter of academic contemplation, for the same reason that it doesn't matter much if you're in a first-class cabin when the ship it's in is taking on water.

As riches grow, empathy for others seems to decline.

Who is more likely to lie, cheat, and steal - the poor person or the rich one? It's temping to think that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to act fairly. After all, if you already have enough for yourself, it's easier to think about what others may need. But research suggests the opposite is true: as people climb the social ladder, their compassionate feelings towards other people decline.

Berkeley psychologists Paul Piff and Dacher Keltner ran several studies looking at whether social class (as measured by wealth, occupational prestige, and education) influences how much we care about the feelings of others. In one study, Piff and his colleagues discreetly observed the behavior of drivers at a busy four-way intersection. They found that luxury car drivers were more likely to cut off other motorists instead of waiting for their turn at the intersection. This was true for both men and women upper-class drivers, regardless of the time of day or the amount of traffic at the intersection. In a different study they found that luxury car drivers were also more likely to speed past a pedestrian trying to use a crosswalk, even after making eye contact with the pedestrian.

In order to figure out whether selfishness leads to wealth (rather than vice versa), Piff and his colleagues ran a study where they manipulated people's class feelings. The researchers asked participants to spend a few minutes comparing themselves either to people better off or worse off than themselves financially. Afterwards, participants were shown a jar of candy and told that they could take home as much as they wanted. They were also told that the leftover candy would be given to children in a nearby laboratory. Those participants who had spent time thinking about how much better off they were compared to others ended up taking significantly more candy for themselves--leaving less behind for the children.

The activity in a region of the brain associated with reward can predict who will gain weight or have sex in the next six months, according to new research.

The nucleus accumbens, buried deep in the brain, has been linked to both pleasure and addiction. Now, a new study finds that young women whose nucleus accumbens reacts strongly to pictures of appealing food are more likely to gain weight in the next six months compared with women with more muted responses.

Likewise, when the nucleus accumbens responds more strongly to sexual imagery, women are more likely to be sexually active within the next six months.

"This study is nice in a sense in that it's one of the first ones to actually tie your brain responses to more long-term measures of behavior," study researcher Bill Kelley, a psychologist at Dartmouth University, told LiveScience.

In the long run, Kelley added, the brain's reward system is likely to be only a piece of the puzzle. How good a person is at overriding that system through willpower will matter too, he said.

How much control do you have over your emotions?

Have you ever wondered why one person can speak in public without apparent nerves while another crumples under pressure?

Or why one elite athlete can shake off their nerves to win Olympic gold while another chokes?

Even with ample experience some people never seem to learn to cope with their emotions.

A key insight comes from a controversial psychology study carried out on a rickety bridge by Dutton and Aron (1973).

As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, however, the experience of being moved by art seems universal. A new neurological study offers some insight into this aesthetic paradox.

The results indicate that connecting deeply to a work of art activates the same part of everyone's brain. However, part of the brain activated by such strong aesthetic appeal is associated with personal reflection, the researchers found.

A team of researchers from New York University showed study subjects 109 images of works of art from a variety of cultures, historical periods, styles and depicting a variety of subjects.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers monitored blood flow in the subjects' brains as they viewed the images and rated them on a scale of 1 to 4 scale, with 4 as the highest, in response to the question: "How strongly does this painting move you?"

"Your job is to give your gut-level response, based on how much you find the painting beautiful, compelling, or powerful," the team instructed.

To explore individual differences in aesthetic reactions after the brain scan was complete, the researchers asked subjects to rate the degree to which each work of art evoked nine emotions: joy, pleasure, sadness, confusion, awe, fear, disgust, beauty and the sublime.

Brain size and smarts are, to some extent, genetic - and now, a team of more than 200 researchers has uncovered specific genes that are linked to both brain volume and IQ.

Though scientists have suggested bigger brains are "smarter," this study is the strongest case yet for a genetic connection to brain size and to IQ. Of course, brain size is not 100 percent correlated with a person's intelligence, and other factors, including connections between brain cells and even a person's experiences, play roles.

"We found fairly unequivocal proof supporting a genetic link to brain function and intelligence. For the first time, we have watertight evidence of how these genes affect the brain," said lead researcher Paul Thompson, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine.

The international research team pooled brain scans and genetic data from around the world as part of a collaboration known as ENIGMA (Enhancing Neuro Imaging Genetics through Meta-Analysis). They scoured the data for single genes that influence disease risk as well as for genes linked to brain-tissue atrophy and brain size, said lead researcher Paul Thompson, a neurologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, School of Medicine.

"Our individual centers couldn't review enough brain scans to obtain definitive results," Thompson said in a statement. "By sharing our data with Project ENIGMA, we created a sample large enough to reveal clear patterns in genetic variation and show how these changes physically alter the brain."

"People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion."

~Albert Einstein

In a study done in West Germany on concentration camp survivors, it was found that each of the subjects, in a sense, still live in the concentration camp. ¹

The same is true for survivors of child sexual abuse, who have not yet dealt with their subconscious mind.

Any stress, or feelings of being threatened or unsafe, can cause trauma survivors to return to earlier patterns of behavior that were utilized during the abuse. During this state of "high arousal," the survivor will do what they know, which is rooted in the instinct used while they were still a child. They will demonstrate defensive strategies - even if it didn't work the first time. ²