Being happier doesn't have to be a long-term ambition. You can start right now.
In the next 30 minutes, tackle as many of the following suggestions as
possible. Not only will these tasks themselves increase your happiness,
but the mere fact that you've achieved some concrete goals will boost
your mood.
1. Raise your activity level to pump
up your energy. If you're on the phone, stand up and pace. Take the
stairs instead of the elevator. Put more energy into your voice. Take a
brisk 10-minute walk. Even better...
2. Take a walk outside.
Research suggests that light stimulates brain chemicals that improve
mood. For an extra boost, get your sunlight first thing in the morning.
3. Reach out.
Send an e-mail to a friend you haven't seen in a while, or reach out to
someone new. Having close bonds with other people is one of the most
important keys to happiness. When you act in a friendly way, not only
will others feel more friendly toward you, but you'll also strengthen
your feelings of friendliness for other people.
4. Rid yourself of a nagging task.
Deal with that insurance problem, purchase something you need, or make
that long-postponed appointment with the dentist. Crossing an irksome
chore off your to-do list will give you a rush of elation.
5. Create a more serene environment.
Outer order contributes to inner peace, so spend some time organizing
bills and tackling the piles in the kitchen. A large stack of little
tasks can feel overwhelming, but often just a few minutes of work can
make a sizable dent. Set the timer for 10 minutes and see what you can
do.
6. Do a good deed. Introduce two people by
e-mail, take a minute to pass along useful information, or deliver some
gratifying praise. In fact, you can also...
7. Save someone's life. Sign up to be an organ donor, and remember to tell your family about your decision. Do good, feel good―it really works!
8. Act happy.
Fake it 'til you feel it. Research shows that even an artificially
induced smile boosts your mood. And if you're smiling, other people will
perceive you as being friendlier and more approachable.
9. Learn something new.
Think of a subject that you wish you knew more about and spend 15
minutes on the Internet reading about it, or go to a bookstore and buy a
book about it. But be honest! Pick a topic that really interests you, not something you think you "should" or "need to" learn about.
Some
people worry that wanting to be happier is a selfish goal, but in fact,
research shows that happier people are more sociable, likable, healthy,
and productive―and they're more inclined to help other people. By
working to boost your own happiness, you're making other people happier,
too.
2015年1月7日
關於男人13件很怪，但卻異常吸引人的事情
我們都知道愛上一個人的理由能有千百種，除了顯著的外在特質，你是否曾經發現自己有那些特殊偏好？網路作家Ari Eastman與大家分享13個也許你不曾注意，但其實能讓女人產生好感的怪異特點，來看看你中了幾項！
1.用力時手臂突出的血管
雖然注意對方的血管聽起來不是件很吸引人的事，但或許是某種生理上的反應讓我們潛意識認為有突出的血管代表這個男人很精壯、是健康有力的象徵。
2. 對著路過的狗打招呼
看見男人不經意對著路過的狗打招呼，或是跑去逗弄小動物總會讓女孩子產生好感，認真想起來其實和動物說話這件事很奇妙，但畢竟喜歡動物的人總是有顆溫暖的心。
3.肩胛骨
4. 取笑你剛剛說過的話
雖然被取笑這件事本身有點令人惱怒，但就算他是在鬧著你玩，也都表示這個男人有認真在聽我們說話，而且這樣有點孩子氣的行為有時候確實很得人心。
5.有點笨拙時的模樣
每個人都想避免尷尬或出糗的時刻，但瞥見另一半傻裡傻氣的模樣，有時候卻能逗得女朋友心花怒放！
6. 在即將高潮前發出的聲音
我們都知道在一段關係中最愉悅的時刻其實是你為對方帶來歡愉的那個瞬間，會最讓你感到心滿意足。聽見另一半在快要高潮，大口的吸氣或吞嚥聲時，最能觸發你的快樂因子。
7. 當他喊你的名字時
另一半可以喊你Baby，親暱的叫你Sweetheart，但這些都不及當他深情的說出你的全名時，這種時刻真的能讓許多女孩的心融化！
8. 對於自己蠢蠢的樣子或行為感到毫不在乎
想像一下這個畫面：你的另一半在浴室洗澡時突然開始高唱Taylor Swift的Shake it off，你衝去看他發生什麼事，沒想到他竟然拿著蓮蓬頭當麥克風還毫不避諱地邀請你加入他，雖然很蠢，但卻異常的可愛呀！
9. 當他們也有做得很爛的事情時
有點不完美時反而會讓人更加欣賞，畢竟是人都無法盡善盡美，看見另一半也有做得很爛的事情時就是莫名其妙的能提升好感度。
10. 男人的下體
我們必須承認，多數女孩在第一次看到男性的生殖器官時都會有種嚇到的感覺，心想：「這長的怪裡怪氣的東西到底是什麼啊？」，但當另一半拉下拉鍊時，頭腦卻又會送出訊號，讓你愛上這奇怪的器官。
11. 堅持自己的原則、不輕易妥協
當一個男人能忠於自己的信念，不因外界而隨波逐流時，即使偶爾有你無法認同的事，都還是能讓女生覺得相當有魅力。當然如果只是為了反駁你而反駁或是連聆聽都做不到時就只能等著大吵一架啦！
12. 有時候不經意啞掉的聲音
好吧，雖然男性可能覺得很尷尬，尤其是認識初期或交往不久時，想必會想挖個地洞將自己埋進去，但這種不小心流露的真實面反而讓女生覺得很可愛！
13. 臉上的小鬍渣
How to Develop a Good Habit
- Q: Why don’t nuns have to worry about deciding what to wear?
- A: Because they have a habit.
Your schedule consists of three basic elements—appointments, to-do items, and habits. An appointment is a commitment with yourself or with another person. Your to-do list is essentially a wish list—it’s like that drawer in your kitchen where you dump all that stuff that doesn’t have a home yet. And habits are the third element. Brushing your teeth, for example, is not a to-do item, nor is it something we typically put on the calendar as an appointment. It’s a habit—something we do on autopilot.
I’d like to invite you to consider a habit that you would like to develop, then spend 30 seconds identifying a strategy, and then make that strategy a rule. Strategy turns to rule and then, with any luck, that rule becomes a new habit.
Let’s take the example of someone who spends several minutes each week looking for her misplaced keys. In her 30-second problem-solving period she might come up with a reasonable strategy like, "When I walk in my house, then I’ll put my keys in the candy dish by the door.” Next, she’ll make that strategy a rule. She’ll add an evening reminder to her calendar and if she has not followed her rule, she will stop what she’s doing and over-correct: She’ll pop downstairs and put the keys into the candy dish five times. She is over-practicing, or over-rehearsing, in an effort to lay down this new habit.
Step two is to make that strategy a rule in the form of when/then: When I walk in the door, then I put the keys in the dish. And step three is to make an appointment with yourself at the end of the day to determine whether in fact you have followed through. If you’ve picked a good strategy, this process should yield a new habit easily enough. On the other hand, if you don’t find that your new habit is easy to establish, you might need to go back to the drawing board and spend another 30 seconds identifying a new strategy.
Let’s try it
OK, let’s go: Spend 30 seconds right now identifying a strategy in the form of when/then. For example, "When I leave the office, then I will head straight to the gym." Or, "When I order a salad, then I’ll request dressing on the side." Or, "When my supervisor speaks sharply with me and I want to say something rude, then I’ll place my tongue at the roof of my mouth right behind my front teeth and count to five."
Go ahead, identify the strategy; if you feel stuck, reach out to some creative friends. Just make sure that you’ve come up with a good strategy before you move onto the next step—making that strategy a rule. Agree with yourself in writing: Put it on your calendar. And achedule an evening check-in.
Develop a strategy, make it a rule, and develop a new habit. Wash, rinse and repeat...
10 Ways to Turn Off Your Worries
Worrying can feel like a way to cover
our bases, to find answers, to be responsible, or to keep that plane in
the air. In reality, it’s wasted energy. If something bad does happen, worry didn’t stop it. If it doesn’t happen, worry only sucked any potential joy from the moment.
Even when we realize that our worries are pointless—and quite often irrational—it’s not so easy to turn them off. But it’s important that we try. Worry can release stress hormones that trigger health issues, such as digestive and cardiac disorders, and it can lead to depression. It can also be a trigger for substance abuse; after all, drinks and pills seem to promise a quick way to blot worry from our minds, at least for the moment.
The next time you feel that sickening knot building inside you, try these strategies for flipping the worry switch to “off":
1. Live in the now.
Our lives feel as though they take a linear path, but in reality, everything that has ever happened to us or will happen to us occurs now. Appreciating that all we have is this moment can help us realize the pointlessness of worry, with its projection into a future that may never be.
2. Don’t try to brace yourself for the bad stuff.
Bad things will come in life. Worrying about them won’t stop them or better prepare you for them; it will simply exhaust you. Rather than using your energy to anticipate problems, save it to deal with them when, and if, they come.
3. Give yourself permission not to worry.
Worry can feel like a responsibility — it can even seem like the sign of a compassionate person. After all, good parents worry about their kids, hard workers worry about their jobs, involved citizens worry about the environment, and so on, right? They may well do so, but it doesn’t do much good. Caring, however, along with positive action, does.
4. Give yourself permission to worry.
If you can’t shake your worry, give yourself permission not to fight it. Instead, try to contain it; set aside a few minutes to worry about the issue each day. You may find that time or circumstances eventually make your worry moot. At the very least, you may be able to minimize the impact on your life.
5. Think positive.Much has been written about the power of positive thinking to make us healthier and happier.
Try it the next time the “what ifs” start to pile up. For example,
instead of thinking “What if I mess up this presentation?” tell
yourself, “I’m going to do great.” You’re much more likely to do well
with a positive mindset. Surrounding yourself with positive people also
helps - worry can be contagious.
6. Be aware of distorted thinking.
Is your worry based on a legitimate concern, or has it taken on a life of its own? Worry can have an almost superstitious quality, as though by worrying about something, we are making it less likely to happen. We may even worry about the good times, convinced that they will turn bad. The next time you find yourself worrying, ask yourself what is really worrying you, what would happen if you stop, and what you are accomplishing by continuing to worry.
7. Analyze your worry history.
Think back to times when you were worried. Did what you feared come to pass? And if so, were you able to handle it? Did your worry help in any way? Do those past worries now seem inconsequential? A realistic assessment will probably show you that not only do worries get easily overblown, you are more capable than you think of dealing with problems that come your way.
8. Let go of control.
When things are out of your control, it’s healthy to embrace a little fatalism. There’s not much we can do, for example, when taking a cruise other than picking a reputable company and making sure we know where the lifeboat station is. At some point, we simply have to hand off control if we want to be able to enjoy the experience - and our lives.
9. Embrace imperfection.
Strive for quality and the peace that it brings, but recognize that just like everyone else, you are going to mess up sometimes. You will not please everyone. You are going to have failures. That’s life. It’s messy. Realizing this can make worry seem much less necessary.
10. Let it out.
When worries are shared, they have much less chance to take hold and grow. Talk to a trusted friend or relative, or seek help from a professional therapist. The simple act of opening up to someone can sometimes be all you need to regain your peace of mind.
Even when we realize that our worries are pointless—and quite often irrational—it’s not so easy to turn them off. But it’s important that we try. Worry can release stress hormones that trigger health issues, such as digestive and cardiac disorders, and it can lead to depression. It can also be a trigger for substance abuse; after all, drinks and pills seem to promise a quick way to blot worry from our minds, at least for the moment.
1. Live in the now.
Our lives feel as though they take a linear path, but in reality, everything that has ever happened to us or will happen to us occurs now. Appreciating that all we have is this moment can help us realize the pointlessness of worry, with its projection into a future that may never be.
2. Don’t try to brace yourself for the bad stuff.
Bad things will come in life. Worrying about them won’t stop them or better prepare you for them; it will simply exhaust you. Rather than using your energy to anticipate problems, save it to deal with them when, and if, they come.
3. Give yourself permission not to worry.
Worry can feel like a responsibility — it can even seem like the sign of a compassionate person. After all, good parents worry about their kids, hard workers worry about their jobs, involved citizens worry about the environment, and so on, right? They may well do so, but it doesn’t do much good. Caring, however, along with positive action, does.
4. Give yourself permission to worry.
If you can’t shake your worry, give yourself permission not to fight it. Instead, try to contain it; set aside a few minutes to worry about the issue each day. You may find that time or circumstances eventually make your worry moot. At the very least, you may be able to minimize the impact on your life.
6. Be aware of distorted thinking.
Is your worry based on a legitimate concern, or has it taken on a life of its own? Worry can have an almost superstitious quality, as though by worrying about something, we are making it less likely to happen. We may even worry about the good times, convinced that they will turn bad. The next time you find yourself worrying, ask yourself what is really worrying you, what would happen if you stop, and what you are accomplishing by continuing to worry.
7. Analyze your worry history.
Think back to times when you were worried. Did what you feared come to pass? And if so, were you able to handle it? Did your worry help in any way? Do those past worries now seem inconsequential? A realistic assessment will probably show you that not only do worries get easily overblown, you are more capable than you think of dealing with problems that come your way.
8. Let go of control.
When things are out of your control, it’s healthy to embrace a little fatalism. There’s not much we can do, for example, when taking a cruise other than picking a reputable company and making sure we know where the lifeboat station is. At some point, we simply have to hand off control if we want to be able to enjoy the experience - and our lives.
9. Embrace imperfection.
Strive for quality and the peace that it brings, but recognize that just like everyone else, you are going to mess up sometimes. You will not please everyone. You are going to have failures. That’s life. It’s messy. Realizing this can make worry seem much less necessary.
10. Let it out.
When worries are shared, they have much less chance to take hold and grow. Talk to a trusted friend or relative, or seek help from a professional therapist. The simple act of opening up to someone can sometimes be all you need to regain your peace of mind.
Beyond Happiness: The Upside of Feeling Down
Negative emotions do us a great favor—they save us from
ourselves. They're signals urging us to change what we're doing— and
they're actually necessary for feeling good
No one questions the value of feeling good. In fact, it seems that for the past 20 years, everyone in America has been on a relentless quest for a blue-sky state of mind, in pursuit of permanent residence on the spectrum between contentment and ecstasy.
Feeling bad is another matter entirely. Emotions that generate unpleasant feelings have been called sins (wrath, envy), shunned in polite interaction (jealousy, frustration), or identified as unhealthy (sadness, shame). We suppress them, medicate them, and berate ourselves for feeling them.
Because such feelings are aversive, they are often called "negative" emotions, although "negative" is a misnomer. Emotions are not inherently positive or negative. They are distinguished by much more than whether they feel good or bad. Beneath the surface, every emotion orchestrates a complex suite of changes in motivation, physiology, attention, perception, beliefs, and behaviors: sweating, laughing, desiring revenge, becoming optimistic, summoning specific memories. Each component of every emotion has a critical job to do—whether it's preparing us to move toward what we want (anger), urging us to improve our standing (envy), or allowing us to undo a social gaffe (embarrassment).
We have the wrong idea about emotions. They're very rational;
they're means to help us achieve goals important to us, tools carved by
eons of human experience that work beyond conscious awareness to direct
us where we need to go. They identify trouble or opportunity and suggest
methods of repair or gain. They are instruments of survival; in fact,
we would have vanished long ago without them.
Negative emotions are not only crucial to our existence but also—ironically—to feeling good. To live optimally in the world and endure its challenges, it's necessary to engage the full range of psychological states we've inherited as humans.
"The
science of well-being has forgotten that the world is an uncertain,
complex place filled with people who often are annoying and obnoxious,"
says Todd Kashdan, a psychologist at George Mason University and
coauthor, with Robert Biswas-Diener, of The Upside of Your Dark Side. Knowing when and how to deploy all our emotions, we can better live with ourselves and with each other.
In his research, psychologist Aaron Sell has shown that strong men and pretty women—those who, over the course of evolution, have had the most power to cause harm or withhold benefits—are angered more easily than their peers. "The primary benefit of anger for an individual," Sell says, "is preventing oneself from being exploited."
If you know what you deserve, and someone else sees things differently, anger arises. Your heart rate increases, you start to sweat, you think about all the things you could do to set the other party straight. Safety, civility, practicality—such concerns evaporate. When really enraged, you can't contain your physical energy. Across cultures, people use metaphors for anger related to hot fluids in containers: You're a tea kettle or a volcano, ready to erupt.
Anger can seem like the ultimate loss-of-control emotion, perhaps because it triggers actions so against our norms of care and courtesy. But "any emotion, when it's really intense, takes over," observes Maya Tamir, a psychologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
In fact, the frustration of devaluation that leads to anger quite often gets you what you want. It is a reliable tool for obtaining the upper hand in negotiations. Sure, anger that progresses to rage can exacerbate a situation, but swallowing the pain of devaluation can lead to depression and health problems. And by acting as a threat of further aggression, anger can forestall escalation. I yell, you back down, we're good.
Anger motivates an individual to take action. While most "negative" emotions encourage us to avoid situations—think of fear—anger typically stimulates approach. Anger boosts confidence, optimism, and risk-taking, necessary when the alternative is losing something important to you. Anger has reputational value, too; it signals to others that you have strength of resources and resolve. In fact, those who display anger are seen as higher in status, more competent, and more credible.
Expressing anger varies widely across cultures. Tamir recalls an incident shortly after she moved back to Israel after studying in the U.S. She waited and waited in line to have her picture taken for her new driver's license. Finally someone asked what she was still doing there, and she told him. "He said, 'Well why didn't you come and shout?!'" Do not try this in Japan.
Anger does not merely benefit the individual. It also fuels social progress. It stimulated the civil rights and gender equality movements. It can bring about fairness, justice, boldness, and clarity. Without it the downtrodden might never be heard. If you always muzzle your frustration when your partner does something you don't like, your problem may never come to light, which can corrode the relationship from within.
Several
years ago, Ilona de Hooge had a job as an assistant professor of
psychology. "I really thought I was doing very well," she says, "but in
the end I was failing completely, and I was sacked." For a month, she
berated herself. "It felt as if I couldn't do anything right, that I was
completely worthless. Although I failed at just one aspect of my life,
it felt like, 'OK, now I'm failing at everything.'" But after a few
weeks, the experience "motivated me to start looking for a different
type of job where I could succeed." And that worked out very well. De
Hooge is now a marketing professor at Erasmus University, where she studies shame, guilt, and embarrassment.
Humans would not be so successful—indeed, would not have survived—without social cohesion. Living among others requires all to adhere to agreed-upon social and moral norms: Don't fart in public. Don't sext constituents. Don't sock people in the nose. When we violate a norm, we need a way to pull ourselves back toward appropriate behavior. Enter shame, guilt, embarrassment to heap self-consciousness upon us.
First, they make us feel crummy. De Hooge says she felt thoroughly worthless after her firing, a feature of shame. Embarrassment, by contrast, doesn't taint so broadly. When de Hooge once crashed her bicycle and broke her hand, she says, "it felt like, 'Ah, I did something really stupid and everybody's looking at me now.'" She didn't feel all-encompassing degradation, but she definitely felt dumb for making such a mistake. After uttering an insensitive remark, you vow never to make the same mistake again. The experience and anticipation of future psychic pain act as a deterrent to foolish or hurtful behavior.
The discomfort of embarrassment, and especially of shame, turns you inward to examine what led to such a state and what you need to fix within yourself. "People can learn from their mistakes only when they acknowledge that something went wrong," she says.
The emotions also motivate you to make amends. When feeling embarrassment, guilt, or shame, you try to repair what you damaged, by saving face or by offering help to others. You become more generous and cooperative, even with strangers, researchers find. Criminals who feel guilt are less likely to end up back in jail. Patients who feel shame during a doctor's visit improve their health behavior. Husbands who know what they did wrong buy flowers.
Involuntarily, you blush when embarrassed; you slump with shame. Such built-in displays signal vulnerability and deference and serve a positive end: They endear you to others, reports University of California, Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner. After a misstep, expressing embarrassment or guilt or shame makes people like you better. They see you as more ethical, empathize more with you, and offer greater help. Remaining unemotional signals either that you don't understand that you broke a norm or that you don't care. Either message will not win you a popularity contest. Blushing with embarrassment "acts as a nonverbal apology," Keltner says, "reducing the likelihood of harsh judgment and aggression." It's a hard-to-fake giveaway, unique to humans, that evolved to broadcast our essentially good character.
But we don't have to do anything wrong to feel embarrassment. It surfaces when we're flirting with a crush, meeting a rock idol, or receiving a round of "Happy Birthday." The attention we receive or the lack of a social script to go by may provoke blushing so as to invite a generous judgment from others or signal lack of threat.
There's a lot of shame about feeling shame, and embarrassment about feeling embarrassed (blushing feeds on itself), but these emotions enable us to live side by side. Without them we would not be able to trust each other—or ourselves.
Niels
van de Ven still thinks back to playing baseball as a kid. "A
teammate—whom I quite liked—was always the better hitter," he says,
"which is especially frustrating in a sport like baseball, where it's
nicely quantified in a batting average how much better the other person
is." He was bothered that his friend had something he didn't have, but
he didn't want to take that ability away from him. So he practiced more,
a lot more. He rehearsed his swing in his bedroom when he should have
been sleeping. "I once accidentally hit my bed so hard that part of the headboard broke off," he says. He improved.
Much of our success—financial, romantic, reputational—depends on our relative status and resources within a group, as it has throughout human history. You don't need to outrun the bear, just your friend. Happiness is greatly influenced by our comparison of ourselves to others. You don't need to be the smartest or richest, just smarter and richer than your neighbors. The discomfort of being worse off than those around you can present as a combination of hostility, shame, and resentment—a medley packaged as envy.
Envy can have destructive consequences. But it also has benefits. To reduce or reverse inferiority, envy moves us to increase our own standing or decrease the standing of others. One invariable way to increase our own standing is to become more successful. Van de Ven, now a research psychologist at Tilburg University, found that inducing envy enhanced subjects' persistence and performance on a creative task—even more than admiration did. Admiration sure feels better in the moment, but the sting of envy ignites ambition to achieve future success. We can also become more successful by emulating the person we envy. Envy increases attention to and memory for others of our gender.
What Van de Ven felt was a kind of benign envy: He recognized that his friend was legitimately better, and he focused on what it took to reach that point. But when someone has something you don't think they deserve, you experience malignant envy, a "seething discontent that involves animosity toward the person you're envious of, while also feeling inferiority in oneself," says psychologist Garrod Parrot of Georgetown University, editor of the compendium The Positive Side of Negative Emotion. Unpleasant indeed! You sense injustice and want to take the rival down.
While benevolent envy is essentially a creative force, malignant envy is destructive—although it, too, can be good if an unworthy blowhard needs destroying. The increased attention to a competitor that allows you to learn from him might also enable you to take down someone who achieved success unfairly, by noticing his flaws and misdeeds and capitalizing on them.
Envy is often confused with jealousy, but the two are psychologically distinct. Envy is a longing for what another person has. Jealousy arises when a third party threatens a valued relationship. Like envy, jealousy can be destructive, but in response to a real infidelity it promotes survival. Stemming from the pain of feeling excluded and the fear of abandonment, it forces couples to examine and repair their relationship, the most protective envelope we have for raising children and perpetuating the species.
One
night around 10 o'clock, 30-year-old Samantha (not her real name) was
walking home by herself when she passed a park and a man on a bench
called out to her. As she drew near, he yanked her down, put a knife to
her throat, and yelled, "I'm going to cut you, bitch!" Instead of
panicking, she calmly looked into his eyes and commented on the choir
music coming from a nearby church. "If you're going to kill me," she
said, "you're gonna have to go through my god's angels first." He let
her go.
Samantha lives with a rare disorder that has destroyed the amygdala in her brain, eliminating her ability to feel fear. As a result, she's strolled through numerous life-threatening situations with similar aplomb, so it would appear that her fearlessness has kept her alive—until you consider that it may be what got her into those situations to begin with.
Fear is our defender, an appropriate response to signs of threat, heightening awareness and preparing the body to escape danger. Occasionally people are overcome with fear and become frantic or paralyzed, but more often fear is initially marked by widened eyes and nostrils, acutely tuned to collecting sensory information. No wonder subjects in one study chose to listen to scary music while playing video games in which they had to avoid enemies and aliens.
Fear stimulates vivid pictures of what's about to go wrong—and how to get out of the situation. Flee? Fight? Feign death? Your focus narrows, your heart races, your senses perk up. Everything unrelated to your safety fades.
While the fear response is automatic, originates deep in the brain, and has been conserved in species throughout evolution, many specific fears are learned. Children, for example, must be taught not to get friendly with electrical sockets.
Not all threats are deadly; some will merely kill your reputation. Fears of social repercussions are also good to have, which is why we're so concerned with morals and manners. You don't want to anger a superior or embarrass yourself. If you've never dreamt about going to school naked, you might not be on speaking terms with the human condition.
Without fear, we become uncritical risk takers. There are some situations that, by themselves, dull our ability to assess risk—being intoxicated, being in a position of power, being a teenager. Unnecessary risk taking can lead to anything from unprotected sex to economic collapse. Sometimes we don't fear things, such as climate change, enough because the outcomes are not sufficiently concrete.
When we are afraid but can't directly address the threat—or possibly even identify it—fear becomes anxiety. By stimulating information gathering, anxiety actually improves the performance of highly intelligent people (who have the power to process it), whether at work or at school. It makes people energetic and vigilant. Researchers believe that anxiety not only preserves life, it is essential in all kinds of situations that require caution and self-discipline.
Anxiety about how we're living our lives can point to ways in which we're not being true to ourselves, ways in which our actions don't align with our deepest values. Anxiety can serve a corrective purpose, bringing us back to authenticity.
Ted
Ligety went to Vancouver in 2010 favored to win an Olympic medal in
giant slalom skiing. He came away empty-handed. "I knew after the race
that I left speed on the hill," he said later. "That was a really
disappointing feeling, but it also helped me change my mentality." He
pushed himself harder, and four years later he won gold.
Regret emerges when we think about what could have been, if only we'd done something differently. It relies on counterfactual thinking—pondering alternate realities. Counterfactual thinking allows us to analyze the past and the future and to understand causality: If I hadn't done A, B would have happened; If I do X, Y will happen. It boosts learning and planning.
Because making a mistake is such an excellent learning opportunity, our emotions highlight our mistakes for us, adding regret to injury. "How could I have done that?" you wonder. "I was such a schmuck! If only I'd known then what I know now." We evolved to see the errors of our ways and to make note, often in cringe-worthy detail. There's a reason we kick ourselves while we're down: Research shows that by making our errors more painful, regret renders them more memorable and more effectively induces us to change our ways. It might be the most common negative emotion, shadowing every situation from our choice of mate to our choice of checkout line.
Todd Kashdan still reflects on his chance to take a class with Carl Sagan in college. He'd scheduled an interview with the astronomer to be admitted, but was too intimidated to show up. "I'm embarrassed that I let my anxiety override such a beautiful experience," he says. "And it's a great touchstone for every time I'm faced with the fear of making a decision because of how I might present myself."
Regret has a trusty sidekick keeping us out of trouble: anticipated regret. When it's not paralyzing us, this fear of future self-loathing makes us wear condoms, drink less, and eat better, studies show.
Regret also motivates us to fix whatever mess we've caused, whether that means returning an impulse purchase or apologizing to a friend. The reparative element distinguishes regret from disappointment, which motivates us to abandon a goal rather than persist. Regret arises when an outcome is worse than if we'd acted differently, implicating personal responsibility; disappointment arises when an outcome is worse than we expected it to be, highlighting powerlessness. Although unpleasant, disappointment also has its uses—putting us off an unachievable goal, for instance. It also attracts sympathy and support. As a result, others become more helpful toward us.
Voicing regret has benefits, too—it brings people together. Sharing personal regrets can make you seem more humble (we all make mistakes) or more vulnerable. And it shows that you care about the repercussions of your actions.
Psychologists Laura King and Joshua Hicks believe that regret is necessary for ego development. People who elaborate on lost possible selves—who they could have been—inhabit more mature, complex personalities: They tolerate ambiguity and see life in a more nuanced way, they're more empathic and open to new experience, and they form stronger relationships. Only by recognizing what you've lost can you absorb a lesson, not to mention disengage from your old goals and pursue new ones. In the long run, regret may actually enable a newer, more fulfilling type of happiness, one that is more resilient and more complex.
When
Sidney D'Mello, a psychologist at Notre Dame, was learning to program
computers, he'd frequently compose a program, run it, and get an
immediate error message. Everything looked fine, but something wasn't
working. Encountering new information that doesn't fit with the old—an
error message when you're not expecting one—elicits surprise, and if the
mismatch persists, you become confused. The world becomes an
unsettling, uncanny place, where perception and logic are no longer
reliable. The universe feels broken.
But confusion can be productive; it can force you to methodically piece the universe back together. D'Mello created a mental model of his program and ran test after test to determine which output every input begat. "That entire rich process, the abstract thinking, the testing, and seeing how a complex system works," D'Mello says, "that's the essence of deep learning."
D'Mello now researches how students learn scientific reasoning. The emotional discomfort of confusion drives problem solving. Education researchers talk about "desirable difficulties," which force students to engage with material and process information deeply. Teachers' goals, D'Mello writes, should be to find "zones of optimal confusion."
When confusion persists, you become frustrated—angry, even. Significantly, confusion, frustration, and anger all produce a furrowed brow, the indicator of a blocked goal. Frustration motivates you to push harder, churn those mental cogs, fight to resolve the incongruities.
If you keep churning and get nowhere, boredom ensues. Boredom nudges you to search for more interesting problems. The state is so aversive that people will give themselves electric shocks to avoid spending 15 minutes with their own thoughts. If you don't happen to have a battery on hand, you might take to daydreams or new challenges. Great ideas may emerge.
Failure to experience grief and sadness (and anger) after such a tragedy would be unthinkable. It would also not have led Barbara to help the organization that had helped her son so much, and she would not have brought his friends together. "Particularly when there's a senseless loss," Barbara says, "there is such a need to make something positive come from it."
Sadness comes in response to a real or potential loss and signals that restoration is needed. As a result, it motivates change, and different types of sadness stimulate different types of fix. In one study, subjects imagined losing a loved one to cancer, failing to achieve an important goal, or just going to the grocery store, and then listed all the things they'd like to do. Those who felt a relationship loss outlined the most social activities, and those who felt failure listed more work-related activities. We try to make right the cause of our anguish.
Sadness makes you more rational, your thinking more concrete. It reduces gullibility, forgetfulness, and susceptibility to stereotypes. It also makes you more sensitive to social norms, increasing politeness and fairness. By contrast, happiness can lead to superficial thinking, hubris, and risk taking. Accepting negative feelings such as sadness can, ironically, lower depression; it doesn't compound the problem by making people feel bad for feeling bad.
Sadness also functions as a signal to others that we may need help. Crying, some scientists believe, makes the facial displays of sadness especially unambiguous. Depression—a state of prolonged sadness and hopelessness—is now widely seen as a disorder. But it can be a healthy response to difficult life situations. It may have evolved as a way for people to remove themselves from distracting activities (by eliminating their interest in them) and to ruminate on whatever complex problem is besetting them.
Whether avoiding sadness or anger, confusion or boredom, distancing ourselves from our negative feelings cripples everyday functioning and growth. It also alienates us from the full range of human experience. "While you never look for grief," Barbara Perry says, "it's one of the hugest growing experiences you'll ever have. It deepens you as a human being."
Recalling the desperation she felt after losing her son, she says, "You've got to find footholds wherever you can." She laughs. "Sometimes holding onto the side of a fucking cliff."
No one questions the value of feeling good. In fact, it seems that for the past 20 years, everyone in America has been on a relentless quest for a blue-sky state of mind, in pursuit of permanent residence on the spectrum between contentment and ecstasy.
Feeling bad is another matter entirely. Emotions that generate unpleasant feelings have been called sins (wrath, envy), shunned in polite interaction (jealousy, frustration), or identified as unhealthy (sadness, shame). We suppress them, medicate them, and berate ourselves for feeling them.
Because such feelings are aversive, they are often called "negative" emotions, although "negative" is a misnomer. Emotions are not inherently positive or negative. They are distinguished by much more than whether they feel good or bad. Beneath the surface, every emotion orchestrates a complex suite of changes in motivation, physiology, attention, perception, beliefs, and behaviors: sweating, laughing, desiring revenge, becoming optimistic, summoning specific memories. Each component of every emotion has a critical job to do—whether it's preparing us to move toward what we want (anger), urging us to improve our standing (envy), or allowing us to undo a social gaffe (embarrassment).
Negative emotions are not only crucial to our existence but also—ironically—to feeling good. To live optimally in the world and endure its challenges, it's necessary to engage the full range of psychological states we've inherited as humans.
Stephen Lewis
Anger
An ex-girlfriend once told me she didn't know how much I cared about her until I yelled at her. That succinctly summarizes a decade or two of research on what may be our most misunderstood emotion. Anger results when we feel undervalued. It prompts us to reassert the importance of our welfare by threatening to harm others or withhold benefits if others don't recalibrate our worth. This explanation clarifies why you might get angry when people needlessly try to be helpful; they haven't shown malicious intent, but they've underestimated you.In his research, psychologist Aaron Sell has shown that strong men and pretty women—those who, over the course of evolution, have had the most power to cause harm or withhold benefits—are angered more easily than their peers. "The primary benefit of anger for an individual," Sell says, "is preventing oneself from being exploited."
If you know what you deserve, and someone else sees things differently, anger arises. Your heart rate increases, you start to sweat, you think about all the things you could do to set the other party straight. Safety, civility, practicality—such concerns evaporate. When really enraged, you can't contain your physical energy. Across cultures, people use metaphors for anger related to hot fluids in containers: You're a tea kettle or a volcano, ready to erupt.
Anger can seem like the ultimate loss-of-control emotion, perhaps because it triggers actions so against our norms of care and courtesy. But "any emotion, when it's really intense, takes over," observes Maya Tamir, a psychologist at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.
In fact, the frustration of devaluation that leads to anger quite often gets you what you want. It is a reliable tool for obtaining the upper hand in negotiations. Sure, anger that progresses to rage can exacerbate a situation, but swallowing the pain of devaluation can lead to depression and health problems. And by acting as a threat of further aggression, anger can forestall escalation. I yell, you back down, we're good.
Anger motivates an individual to take action. While most "negative" emotions encourage us to avoid situations—think of fear—anger typically stimulates approach. Anger boosts confidence, optimism, and risk-taking, necessary when the alternative is losing something important to you. Anger has reputational value, too; it signals to others that you have strength of resources and resolve. In fact, those who display anger are seen as higher in status, more competent, and more credible.
Expressing anger varies widely across cultures. Tamir recalls an incident shortly after she moved back to Israel after studying in the U.S. She waited and waited in line to have her picture taken for her new driver's license. Finally someone asked what she was still doing there, and she told him. "He said, 'Well why didn't you come and shout?!'" Do not try this in Japan.
Anger does not merely benefit the individual. It also fuels social progress. It stimulated the civil rights and gender equality movements. It can bring about fairness, justice, boldness, and clarity. Without it the downtrodden might never be heard. If you always muzzle your frustration when your partner does something you don't like, your problem may never come to light, which can corrode the relationship from within.
Stephen Lewis
Shame, Guilt, Embarrassment
Several
years ago, Ilona de Hooge had a job as an assistant professor of
psychology. "I really thought I was doing very well," she says, "but in
the end I was failing completely, and I was sacked." For a month, she
berated herself. "It felt as if I couldn't do anything right, that I was
completely worthless. Although I failed at just one aspect of my life,
it felt like, 'OK, now I'm failing at everything.'" But after a few
weeks, the experience "motivated me to start looking for a different
type of job where I could succeed." And that worked out very well. De
Hooge is now a marketing professor at Erasmus University, where she studies shame, guilt, and embarrassment.
Stephen Lewis
Humans would not be so successful—indeed, would not have survived—without social cohesion. Living among others requires all to adhere to agreed-upon social and moral norms: Don't fart in public. Don't sext constituents. Don't sock people in the nose. When we violate a norm, we need a way to pull ourselves back toward appropriate behavior. Enter shame, guilt, embarrassment to heap self-consciousness upon us.
First, they make us feel crummy. De Hooge says she felt thoroughly worthless after her firing, a feature of shame. Embarrassment, by contrast, doesn't taint so broadly. When de Hooge once crashed her bicycle and broke her hand, she says, "it felt like, 'Ah, I did something really stupid and everybody's looking at me now.'" She didn't feel all-encompassing degradation, but she definitely felt dumb for making such a mistake. After uttering an insensitive remark, you vow never to make the same mistake again. The experience and anticipation of future psychic pain act as a deterrent to foolish or hurtful behavior.
The discomfort of embarrassment, and especially of shame, turns you inward to examine what led to such a state and what you need to fix within yourself. "People can learn from their mistakes only when they acknowledge that something went wrong," she says.
The emotions also motivate you to make amends. When feeling embarrassment, guilt, or shame, you try to repair what you damaged, by saving face or by offering help to others. You become more generous and cooperative, even with strangers, researchers find. Criminals who feel guilt are less likely to end up back in jail. Patients who feel shame during a doctor's visit improve their health behavior. Husbands who know what they did wrong buy flowers.
Involuntarily, you blush when embarrassed; you slump with shame. Such built-in displays signal vulnerability and deference and serve a positive end: They endear you to others, reports University of California, Berkeley psychologist Dacher Keltner. After a misstep, expressing embarrassment or guilt or shame makes people like you better. They see you as more ethical, empathize more with you, and offer greater help. Remaining unemotional signals either that you don't understand that you broke a norm or that you don't care. Either message will not win you a popularity contest. Blushing with embarrassment "acts as a nonverbal apology," Keltner says, "reducing the likelihood of harsh judgment and aggression." It's a hard-to-fake giveaway, unique to humans, that evolved to broadcast our essentially good character.
But we don't have to do anything wrong to feel embarrassment. It surfaces when we're flirting with a crush, meeting a rock idol, or receiving a round of "Happy Birthday." The attention we receive or the lack of a social script to go by may provoke blushing so as to invite a generous judgment from others or signal lack of threat.
There's a lot of shame about feeling shame, and embarrassment about feeling embarrassed (blushing feeds on itself), but these emotions enable us to live side by side. Without them we would not be able to trust each other—or ourselves.
Stephen Lewis
Envy and Jealousy
Niels
van de Ven still thinks back to playing baseball as a kid. "A
teammate—whom I quite liked—was always the better hitter," he says,
"which is especially frustrating in a sport like baseball, where it's
nicely quantified in a batting average how much better the other person
is." He was bothered that his friend had something he didn't have, but
he didn't want to take that ability away from him. So he practiced more,
a lot more. He rehearsed his swing in his bedroom when he should have
been sleeping. "I once accidentally hit my bed so hard that part of the headboard broke off," he says. He improved.
Stephen Lewis
Much of our success—financial, romantic, reputational—depends on our relative status and resources within a group, as it has throughout human history. You don't need to outrun the bear, just your friend. Happiness is greatly influenced by our comparison of ourselves to others. You don't need to be the smartest or richest, just smarter and richer than your neighbors. The discomfort of being worse off than those around you can present as a combination of hostility, shame, and resentment—a medley packaged as envy.
Envy can have destructive consequences. But it also has benefits. To reduce or reverse inferiority, envy moves us to increase our own standing or decrease the standing of others. One invariable way to increase our own standing is to become more successful. Van de Ven, now a research psychologist at Tilburg University, found that inducing envy enhanced subjects' persistence and performance on a creative task—even more than admiration did. Admiration sure feels better in the moment, but the sting of envy ignites ambition to achieve future success. We can also become more successful by emulating the person we envy. Envy increases attention to and memory for others of our gender.
What Van de Ven felt was a kind of benign envy: He recognized that his friend was legitimately better, and he focused on what it took to reach that point. But when someone has something you don't think they deserve, you experience malignant envy, a "seething discontent that involves animosity toward the person you're envious of, while also feeling inferiority in oneself," says psychologist Garrod Parrot of Georgetown University, editor of the compendium The Positive Side of Negative Emotion. Unpleasant indeed! You sense injustice and want to take the rival down.
While benevolent envy is essentially a creative force, malignant envy is destructive—although it, too, can be good if an unworthy blowhard needs destroying. The increased attention to a competitor that allows you to learn from him might also enable you to take down someone who achieved success unfairly, by noticing his flaws and misdeeds and capitalizing on them.
Envy is often confused with jealousy, but the two are psychologically distinct. Envy is a longing for what another person has. Jealousy arises when a third party threatens a valued relationship. Like envy, jealousy can be destructive, but in response to a real infidelity it promotes survival. Stemming from the pain of feeling excluded and the fear of abandonment, it forces couples to examine and repair their relationship, the most protective envelope we have for raising children and perpetuating the species.
Stephen Lewis
Fear and Anxiety
One
night around 10 o'clock, 30-year-old Samantha (not her real name) was
walking home by herself when she passed a park and a man on a bench
called out to her. As she drew near, he yanked her down, put a knife to
her throat, and yelled, "I'm going to cut you, bitch!" Instead of
panicking, she calmly looked into his eyes and commented on the choir
music coming from a nearby church. "If you're going to kill me," she
said, "you're gonna have to go through my god's angels first." He let
her go.
Stephen Lewis
Samantha lives with a rare disorder that has destroyed the amygdala in her brain, eliminating her ability to feel fear. As a result, she's strolled through numerous life-threatening situations with similar aplomb, so it would appear that her fearlessness has kept her alive—until you consider that it may be what got her into those situations to begin with.
Fear is our defender, an appropriate response to signs of threat, heightening awareness and preparing the body to escape danger. Occasionally people are overcome with fear and become frantic or paralyzed, but more often fear is initially marked by widened eyes and nostrils, acutely tuned to collecting sensory information. No wonder subjects in one study chose to listen to scary music while playing video games in which they had to avoid enemies and aliens.
Fear stimulates vivid pictures of what's about to go wrong—and how to get out of the situation. Flee? Fight? Feign death? Your focus narrows, your heart races, your senses perk up. Everything unrelated to your safety fades.
While the fear response is automatic, originates deep in the brain, and has been conserved in species throughout evolution, many specific fears are learned. Children, for example, must be taught not to get friendly with electrical sockets.
Not all threats are deadly; some will merely kill your reputation. Fears of social repercussions are also good to have, which is why we're so concerned with morals and manners. You don't want to anger a superior or embarrass yourself. If you've never dreamt about going to school naked, you might not be on speaking terms with the human condition.
Without fear, we become uncritical risk takers. There are some situations that, by themselves, dull our ability to assess risk—being intoxicated, being in a position of power, being a teenager. Unnecessary risk taking can lead to anything from unprotected sex to economic collapse. Sometimes we don't fear things, such as climate change, enough because the outcomes are not sufficiently concrete.
When we are afraid but can't directly address the threat—or possibly even identify it—fear becomes anxiety. By stimulating information gathering, anxiety actually improves the performance of highly intelligent people (who have the power to process it), whether at work or at school. It makes people energetic and vigilant. Researchers believe that anxiety not only preserves life, it is essential in all kinds of situations that require caution and self-discipline.
Anxiety about how we're living our lives can point to ways in which we're not being true to ourselves, ways in which our actions don't align with our deepest values. Anxiety can serve a corrective purpose, bringing us back to authenticity.
Stephen Lewis
Regret and Disappointment
Ted
Ligety went to Vancouver in 2010 favored to win an Olympic medal in
giant slalom skiing. He came away empty-handed. "I knew after the race
that I left speed on the hill," he said later. "That was a really
disappointing feeling, but it also helped me change my mentality." He
pushed himself harder, and four years later he won gold.
Stephen Lewis
Regret emerges when we think about what could have been, if only we'd done something differently. It relies on counterfactual thinking—pondering alternate realities. Counterfactual thinking allows us to analyze the past and the future and to understand causality: If I hadn't done A, B would have happened; If I do X, Y will happen. It boosts learning and planning.
Because making a mistake is such an excellent learning opportunity, our emotions highlight our mistakes for us, adding regret to injury. "How could I have done that?" you wonder. "I was such a schmuck! If only I'd known then what I know now." We evolved to see the errors of our ways and to make note, often in cringe-worthy detail. There's a reason we kick ourselves while we're down: Research shows that by making our errors more painful, regret renders them more memorable and more effectively induces us to change our ways. It might be the most common negative emotion, shadowing every situation from our choice of mate to our choice of checkout line.
Todd Kashdan still reflects on his chance to take a class with Carl Sagan in college. He'd scheduled an interview with the astronomer to be admitted, but was too intimidated to show up. "I'm embarrassed that I let my anxiety override such a beautiful experience," he says. "And it's a great touchstone for every time I'm faced with the fear of making a decision because of how I might present myself."
Regret has a trusty sidekick keeping us out of trouble: anticipated regret. When it's not paralyzing us, this fear of future self-loathing makes us wear condoms, drink less, and eat better, studies show.
Regret also motivates us to fix whatever mess we've caused, whether that means returning an impulse purchase or apologizing to a friend. The reparative element distinguishes regret from disappointment, which motivates us to abandon a goal rather than persist. Regret arises when an outcome is worse than if we'd acted differently, implicating personal responsibility; disappointment arises when an outcome is worse than we expected it to be, highlighting powerlessness. Although unpleasant, disappointment also has its uses—putting us off an unachievable goal, for instance. It also attracts sympathy and support. As a result, others become more helpful toward us.
Voicing regret has benefits, too—it brings people together. Sharing personal regrets can make you seem more humble (we all make mistakes) or more vulnerable. And it shows that you care about the repercussions of your actions.
Psychologists Laura King and Joshua Hicks believe that regret is necessary for ego development. People who elaborate on lost possible selves—who they could have been—inhabit more mature, complex personalities: They tolerate ambiguity and see life in a more nuanced way, they're more empathic and open to new experience, and they form stronger relationships. Only by recognizing what you've lost can you absorb a lesson, not to mention disengage from your old goals and pursue new ones. In the long run, regret may actually enable a newer, more fulfilling type of happiness, one that is more resilient and more complex.
Stephen Lewis
Confusion, Frustration, Boredom
When
Sidney D'Mello, a psychologist at Notre Dame, was learning to program
computers, he'd frequently compose a program, run it, and get an
immediate error message. Everything looked fine, but something wasn't
working. Encountering new information that doesn't fit with the old—an
error message when you're not expecting one—elicits surprise, and if the
mismatch persists, you become confused. The world becomes an
unsettling, uncanny place, where perception and logic are no longer
reliable. The universe feels broken.
Stephen Lewis
But confusion can be productive; it can force you to methodically piece the universe back together. D'Mello created a mental model of his program and ran test after test to determine which output every input begat. "That entire rich process, the abstract thinking, the testing, and seeing how a complex system works," D'Mello says, "that's the essence of deep learning."
D'Mello now researches how students learn scientific reasoning. The emotional discomfort of confusion drives problem solving. Education researchers talk about "desirable difficulties," which force students to engage with material and process information deeply. Teachers' goals, D'Mello writes, should be to find "zones of optimal confusion."
When confusion persists, you become frustrated—angry, even. Significantly, confusion, frustration, and anger all produce a furrowed brow, the indicator of a blocked goal. Frustration motivates you to push harder, churn those mental cogs, fight to resolve the incongruities.
If you keep churning and get nowhere, boredom ensues. Boredom nudges you to search for more interesting problems. The state is so aversive that people will give themselves electric shocks to avoid spending 15 minutes with their own thoughts. If you don't happen to have a battery on hand, you might take to daydreams or new challenges. Great ideas may emerge.
Sadness and Grief
In 1995, Jane and Flicka Rodman were hiking the Pacific Crest Trail from Canada to Mexico. Two thousand miles into their trip, the young couple took a detour alongside a road to meet up with friends. A driver went off the road, killing them both. Flicka's mom, Barbara Perry, channeled her overwhelming grief into two projects. She set up the Jane and Flicka Fund for the Pacific Crest Trail Association, and she organized an annual two-week backpacking trip, on which she and the couple's friends hike stretches of the trail. Each night around a campfire Barbara reads from Flicka's journal his account of the trail section just hiked. Tears and laughter flow. Flicka, a medical student, loved to write about his poop.Failure to experience grief and sadness (and anger) after such a tragedy would be unthinkable. It would also not have led Barbara to help the organization that had helped her son so much, and she would not have brought his friends together. "Particularly when there's a senseless loss," Barbara says, "there is such a need to make something positive come from it."
Sadness comes in response to a real or potential loss and signals that restoration is needed. As a result, it motivates change, and different types of sadness stimulate different types of fix. In one study, subjects imagined losing a loved one to cancer, failing to achieve an important goal, or just going to the grocery store, and then listed all the things they'd like to do. Those who felt a relationship loss outlined the most social activities, and those who felt failure listed more work-related activities. We try to make right the cause of our anguish.
Sadness makes you more rational, your thinking more concrete. It reduces gullibility, forgetfulness, and susceptibility to stereotypes. It also makes you more sensitive to social norms, increasing politeness and fairness. By contrast, happiness can lead to superficial thinking, hubris, and risk taking. Accepting negative feelings such as sadness can, ironically, lower depression; it doesn't compound the problem by making people feel bad for feeling bad.
Sadness also functions as a signal to others that we may need help. Crying, some scientists believe, makes the facial displays of sadness especially unambiguous. Depression—a state of prolonged sadness and hopelessness—is now widely seen as a disorder. But it can be a healthy response to difficult life situations. It may have evolved as a way for people to remove themselves from distracting activities (by eliminating their interest in them) and to ruminate on whatever complex problem is besetting them.
Whether avoiding sadness or anger, confusion or boredom, distancing ourselves from our negative feelings cripples everyday functioning and growth. It also alienates us from the full range of human experience. "While you never look for grief," Barbara Perry says, "it's one of the hugest growing experiences you'll ever have. It deepens you as a human being."
Recalling the desperation she felt after losing her son, she says, "You've got to find footholds wherever you can." She laughs. "Sometimes holding onto the side of a fucking cliff."
2015年1月6日
2015年1月5日
7 Ways to Get Psychologically Healthier, Quickly
When the stress
and wear and tear of everyday life gets us down, there are small things
that we can do that will allow us to take a break and improve our
well-being. Here are some research-supported practices that can help us
feel better and less stressed or troubled:
- Express Gratitude. Research in positive psychology has discovered the benefits of expressing gratitude—appreciating what we have, or thanking someone for something positive they have done for or given us. Not only can gratitude make us feel better and more optimistic, but it increases empathy, and, if expressed to a friend or loved one, makes them feel better, too.
- Laugh and Be Happy. Laughter may not be the best medicine, but it certainly can make us feel better. Laughter can increase energy, and it’s hard to feel stressed when you are laughing. Even smiling can have an effect. Research on the facial feedback effect found that when participants were made to smile (by holding a pencil between their teeth), it increased their feelings of happiness. In addition, laughter is infectious and can lighten a tense situation, or make another person feel better.
- Take a Break. Taking a break from the everyday grind—a weekend getaway, a round of golf, a good workout, a shopping spree—can provide welcome stress relief. The critical element, however, is to truly “take a break,” and not sit ruminating on what you are not getting done. Rewarding yourself with a break is a quick way to get some relief.
- Count Your Blessings. Related to gratitude, this is actually taking inventory of the good things in your life. Focusing too much on the negatives, leads to pessimism and, in extremes, can make us feel hopeless and helpless. Focus on the positives—good friends, good times, your talents and strengths—and you should feel better.
- Visit Someone Who Needs You. Being a support to friends or loved ones in their time of sickness or trouble not only makes them feel better, but can improve your well-being, both through the shared camaraderie, and from knowing that you are helping them get through a difficult time.
- Spend Quality Time With a Loved One. Nothing is more rewarding than spending focused, positive time with someone you love. Whether it is a romantic dinner, an outing with a child, reminiscing with parents, or an enjoyable activity with a sibling or best friend, these intense, focused interactions lead to the positive memories that will get us through future hard times.
- Volunteer or Help Someone. Many people engage in volunteer work simply because it makes them feel good to know that they are helping others. And it's an easy thing to do because there are so many structured volunteer organizations.
2015年1月2日
The Surprising Value of Negative Thinking
A CEO calls her staff into the
conference room on the eve of the launch of a major new initiative. They
file in and take their seats around the table. She calls the meeting to
attention and begins, “I have bad news. The project has failed
spectacularly. What went wrong?”
The team is perplexed: What?! But we haven’t even launched yet…!
I know it seems strange and maybe even counterproductive to demand that employees think negatively instead of optimistically, but in business circles today, everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies and the Harvard Business Review are doing this exact exercise. In a direct response to optimistic, feel-good thinking, these leaders are encouraging their employees to think negatively.
The technique that the CEO above was using was designed by psychologist Gary Klein. It's called a premortem. In a premortem, a project manager must envision what could go wrong—what will go wrong—in advance, before starting. Why? Far too many ambitious undertakings fail for preventable reasons. Far too many people don’t have a backup plan because they refuse to consider that something might not go exactly as they wish.
In fact, I think more companies need a Chief Dissent Officer, someone to shoot down the bad ideas that our blind spots and naive optimism
too often obscure. They can catch us when we are puffed up with visions
of our own greatness and preordained success. Remember Netflix’s
aborted attempt to split into two separate companies? Or when Google Wave
was marketed as “the next Gmail,” only to be shut down in a little over
a year? If only these great companies had stopped to envision the
possible travails that awaited them, they might have been able to
prevent them.No one has ever understood this better than
former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson, who, reflecting on the collapse
of his fortune and fame, told a reporter, “If you’re not humble, life
will visit humbleness upon you.”
The practice goes back much further than just psychology though. It dates back many thousands of years, in fact—to the great Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca. And they had an even better name for it: premeditatio malorum (premeditation of evils).
A writer like Seneca would begin by reviewing or rehearsing his plans, say, to take a trip. And then, in his head (or in writing), he would go over the things that could go wrong or prevent it from happening—a storm could arise, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates.
“Nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation,” he wrote to a friend. “. . . nor do all things turn out for him as he wished but as he reckoned—and above all he reckoned that something could block his plans.”
By doing this exercise, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans. He was fitted for defeat or victory. And let’s be honest, a pleasant surprise is a lot better than an unpleasant one.
In a case where nothing could be done, the Stoics would use it as an important practice to do something the rest of us too often fail to do—manage expectations. Because sometimes the only answer to “What if?” is, "It will suck but we’ll be okay."
We often learn the hard way that our world is ruled by external factors. We don’t always get what is rightfully ours, even if we’ve earned it. Not everything is as clean and straightforward as the games they play in business school. Psychologically, we must prepare ourselves for this to happen.
If it comes as a constant surprise each and every time something unexpected occurs, you’re not only going to be miserable whenever you attempt something big, you’re going to have a much harder time accepting it and moving on to attempts two, three, and four. The only guarantee, ever, is that things could go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation, because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.
The world might call you a pessimist. Who cares? It’s far better to seem like a downer than to be blindsided or caught off guard.
If we have prepared ourselves for the obstacles that are inevitably on their way, we can rest assured that it’s other people who have not. In other words, this bad luck is actually a chance for us to make up some time. We become like runners who train on hills or at altitude so they can beat racers who expected the course would be flat.
Anticipation doesn’t magically make things easier, of course. But we are more prepared for them to be as hard as they need to be, as hard as they actually are.
You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life. Of course, it’s a lot more fun to build things up in your imagination than it is to tear them down. But what purpose does that serve? It only sets you up for disappointment. Chimeras are like bandages—they hurt when torn away.
With anticipation, we have time to raise defenses, or even avoid them entirely. We’re ready to be driven off course because we’ve plotted a way back. We can resist going to pieces if things didn’t go as planned. With anticipation, we can endure.
We are prepared for failure and ready for success.
The team is perplexed: What?! But we haven’t even launched yet…!
I know it seems strange and maybe even counterproductive to demand that employees think negatively instead of optimistically, but in business circles today, everyone from startups to Fortune 500 companies and the Harvard Business Review are doing this exact exercise. In a direct response to optimistic, feel-good thinking, these leaders are encouraging their employees to think negatively.
The technique that the CEO above was using was designed by psychologist Gary Klein. It's called a premortem. In a premortem, a project manager must envision what could go wrong—what will go wrong—in advance, before starting. Why? Far too many ambitious undertakings fail for preventable reasons. Far too many people don’t have a backup plan because they refuse to consider that something might not go exactly as they wish.
Stocklite/Shutterstock
The practice goes back much further than just psychology though. It dates back many thousands of years, in fact—to the great Stoic philosophers like Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus and Seneca. And they had an even better name for it: premeditatio malorum (premeditation of evils).
A writer like Seneca would begin by reviewing or rehearsing his plans, say, to take a trip. And then, in his head (or in writing), he would go over the things that could go wrong or prevent it from happening—a storm could arise, the captain could fall ill, the ship could be attacked by pirates.
“Nothing happens to the wise man against his expectation,” he wrote to a friend. “. . . nor do all things turn out for him as he wished but as he reckoned—and above all he reckoned that something could block his plans.”
By doing this exercise, Seneca was always prepared for disruption and always working that disruption into his plans. He was fitted for defeat or victory. And let’s be honest, a pleasant surprise is a lot better than an unpleasant one.
In a case where nothing could be done, the Stoics would use it as an important practice to do something the rest of us too often fail to do—manage expectations. Because sometimes the only answer to “What if?” is, "It will suck but we’ll be okay."
We often learn the hard way that our world is ruled by external factors. We don’t always get what is rightfully ours, even if we’ve earned it. Not everything is as clean and straightforward as the games they play in business school. Psychologically, we must prepare ourselves for this to happen.
If it comes as a constant surprise each and every time something unexpected occurs, you’re not only going to be miserable whenever you attempt something big, you’re going to have a much harder time accepting it and moving on to attempts two, three, and four. The only guarantee, ever, is that things could go wrong. The only thing we can use to mitigate this is anticipation, because the only variable we control completely is ourselves.
The world might call you a pessimist. Who cares? It’s far better to seem like a downer than to be blindsided or caught off guard.
If we have prepared ourselves for the obstacles that are inevitably on their way, we can rest assured that it’s other people who have not. In other words, this bad luck is actually a chance for us to make up some time. We become like runners who train on hills or at altitude so they can beat racers who expected the course would be flat.
Anticipation doesn’t magically make things easier, of course. But we are more prepared for them to be as hard as they need to be, as hard as they actually are.
You know what’s better than building things up in your imagination? Building things up in real life. Of course, it’s a lot more fun to build things up in your imagination than it is to tear them down. But what purpose does that serve? It only sets you up for disappointment. Chimeras are like bandages—they hurt when torn away.
With anticipation, we have time to raise defenses, or even avoid them entirely. We’re ready to be driven off course because we’ve plotted a way back. We can resist going to pieces if things didn’t go as planned. With anticipation, we can endure.
We are prepared for failure and ready for success.
订阅：
博文 (Atom)