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Heavy questions. One researcher believes that writing down the answers can be decisive for students.
Science of the Spirit
Heavy questions. One researcher believes that writing down the answers can be decisive for students.
There is growing support that money spent on experiential items increases an individual's happiness. However, there has been minimal research on the causes and long-term consequences of the tendency to make experiential purchases.
New research shows that we feel more gratitude for what we've done than for what we have -- and more importantly, that kind of gratitude results in more generous behavior toward others.
"Think about how you feel when you come home from buying something new," explains Thomas Gilovich, professor of psychology at Cornell Universty and co-author the new study published online in a recent issue of the journal Emotion.
"I do," I said. "I practice gratitude all the time."
"No," she said. "You have to give thanks your baby died."
I felt like slapping her. What a stupid thing to say to someone who'd recently lost a child.
"Not just him, your father and brother's deaths too."
I was furious. But you know what? She was right.
It was hard. I won't pretend anything else. My mind scrambled for ways to be thankful. I could be grateful my father died at 42 because it relieved him of the pain he'd endured during his long battle with cancer. I was thankful that my brother's suicide at 20 finally ended the unendurable suffering his schizophrenia caused him. Death was an end to suffering — that I was grateful for. I could give thanks I had them with me for the time I did, that my father was a good man, my brother - a fun companion. But my baby? How could I be thankful he wasn't given a chance at life? How can people be grateful for the violent deaths of people they love?
Our minds are less "thinking machines" than they are "avoiding machines." And the incredible thing is that we aren't even usually aware that we're avoiding thinking about something.
I'll give you a few examples:
- Right now you're reading this article but probably avoiding the difficult thing you don't want to think about.
- We are constantly checking messages, news, feeds, notifications ... to avoid doing something we don't want to face.
- When we're facing difficulties in life, we try to tell ourselves that's it's OK because (fill in the blank), or get busy with some activity or numbing agent (like alcohol) so we don't have to face the difficulties.
- When a problem comes up, our reaction is to want to go do something else, put it off.
- We put off paying bills, doing taxes, dealing with long emails, dealing with clutter, because we don't want to face these difficulties.
- We put off exercise because it's uncomfortable.
Try this right now: pause for a minute and think about what difficulty you're avoiding thinking about right now.
People with lower levels of depression and anxiety tend to vary their emotional control strategy successfully depending on whether the situation can be explained.
Dr Peter Koval, one of the study's authors, said:
"Our results caution against a 'one strategy fits all' approach, which may be tempting to recommend based on many previous findings regarding reappraisal as a strategy for regulating emotion.For the research, people were tracked over a week.
Simply using any given emotion regulation strategy more (or less) in all situations may not lead to the best outcomes — instead, contextually-appropriate emotion regulation may be healthier."
Comment: Good advice for all the precious snowflakes angsting over the recent election!
- Hey, precious snowflakes! Here are some legitimate reasons to protest
- Precious snowflakes: Grieving liberal students beg for exam cancellations in wake of Killary's loss
- Professors across US cancel classes because precious marshmallows can't handle election of Trump
- Professor explains the increase of 'precious snowflakes' - cites narcissism, over-nurturing
I wanted to send this letter home because I am concerned about your kids. I know you are currently going through a breakup. It sounds like a particularly nasty split. You guys have been talking really poorly about each other. Spewing words of hate and oozing it onto your kids.
I know breakups are hard and you are having some pretty intense emotions right now, but I thought I would let you know that your kids are being affected.
As a child therapist, my week is normally spent helping kids navigate through their social life, their emotions and their kid worries. This week I had to spend too much time talking about you. I thought I should let you know that your breakup is destroying the kids.
I am hearing stories of hate. Your hate. Kids who were pure love until you filled them to the brim with your anger - your fears. I know this is a rough time for you. I get it. But your kids are suffering.
This week I listened as your kids told me their stories of woe. Woes you created as you spewed out hate over the dinner table.
Kids who were once best friends, no longer talking because they are taking sides - your sides. Kids being taunted on the playground because their beliefs are no longer respected. All sides are guilty. All beliefs are being attacked.
Breathing fully and freely is our birthright. If you watch a baby breathe, you will see the beauty and simplicity of flow in the body. With each inhale, the baby's belly fills with air like a balloon, the pelvis rocks, the legs open, the chest rises and then falls, like swells across the ocean. This is natural, oceanic full-body breathing. It is the way we were meant to breathe.
Breathing effortlessly, a baby lives fully and freely in the now, in the expansiveness of the moment. There is no past to remember, no future to plan for or worry about. Each breath is a process of receiving from the universe and giving back to it. With each inhale, she receives and takes life in. With each exhale, she lets go and gives back. She is in touch with and part of the essential rhythm of life.
"Full, free breathing is one of the most powerful keys to enhancing physical, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing."
The baby doesn't know or do this consciously, but simply experiences an inherent peace, joy, and connectedness with all things. Of course, a baby will also experience needs and be heavily influenced by the environment that she is in. She will have emotional outbursts or cries for attention, but what is important to notice is how easily a baby will settle back into a relaxed state of calm and peace. Much like animals, children have a great capacity for resilience. In one moment they may be screaming and then after a brief reassuring glance or embrace, settle back into a deep peace and calm.
Comment: For more on a breath-focused, stress-relieving meditation technique try Éiriú Eolas for free.
It tells you that someone just dropped a cognitive dissonance cluster bomb on the public. Heads exploded. Cognitive dissonance set in. Weird theories came out. This is the cleanest and clearest example of cognitive dissonance you will ever see. Remember it.
Constantly dwelling on the past can negatively effect your health
Research suggests that people who look back at their past experiences full of regrets about missed opportunities or with bitterness about how they have been treated are more likely to fall ill and generally have a poorer quality of life.
Those who look back in anger are also more sensitive to pain, it found.
It also suggested that focusing too much on the future does not harm health - but can stop people enjoying what they have.
Comment: More on how dwelling on the past, which is an inability or unwillingness to live in the present, affects you:
- Researchers show that dwelling on the past negatively impacts self control in the present
- Females explain influence of past on future differently than males
- Remembering the Past Negatively Worsens Health
- The real reason why you haven't healed your trauma, heartbreak, depression
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Peter, a retired lawyer, still can't believe he was scammed out of $2,000, under the premise of keeping his step-grandson out of jail. "I'm much too smart for that sort of thing," he said.
Except that, obviously, he wasn't.
Intelligence alone isn't sufficient protection from a scam. Anyone with a heart, with a family, or with common desires or insecurities can be victimized by the sophisticated mind games used by today's fraudsters.
Americans were scammed out of $1.7 billion in 2014 according to the FTC. Last year the FTC received more than 3 million fraud complaints, and it's been estimated that there were a least another 3 million victims who didn't report their losses.
Peter, one of the many people I interview for my research as a consumer psychologist, spent a lot of time trying to figure out how he was conned. "In retrospect I can see that I just kept filling in blanks and making assumptions instead of challenging what I was hearing," he told me. That's something we all do—especially in stressful situations.
We pay attention to information that supports our beliefs and ignore what doesn't. Peter's scammers had a good idea that he would make these kinds of cognitive errors. Their expertise in amateur psychology is the foundation of their success in ripping people off.
In order to protect yourself, it's wise to understand exactly how people get played. Here are some common scenarios that leave consumers especially vulnerable to scams:
Comment: