A new study by Japanese researchers concludes that listening to sad music may actually induce positive emotions. Music that is perceived as sad actually induces romantic emotion as well as sad emotion. And people, regardless of their musical training, experience this ambivalent emotion to listen to the sad music. Also, unlike sadness in…
Sad Music Helps Us Deal with Negative Emotions
What to Do with Worry Thoughts
According to professor Mark Reinecke, “The types of intrusive, negative thoughts that anxious, worried people experience differ little, however, from the thoughts of nonanxious people. The difference is in the meaning given to the thoughts.” If you’re a worrywart, or especially anxious, you might think, “This thought is awful. I shouldn’t be thinking this; I have to make it stop,” says Reinecke. But, as he points…
The Best Relationship Advice – Dos and Don’ts
For the 1.2 million lovebirds who will be married this summer, here are a few secrets for a long, successful marriage: DO Do choose your battles. Do cut out words like should or ought, as in “You should be a better listener.” That’s parental, not relational. Instead, simply ask for what you need. Do recognize what your spouse brings to the relationship rather than focusing on what you…
How to Smile for Better Health – Part 2
Find out how to smile to look younger, live longer, look prettier, and stamp out stress. 7. Which would you prefer: a smile or chocolate? Smiles stimulate the brain’s rewards systems better than sweets. One British study found that one smile can generate the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 (yes, you read that right: two thousand) bars of chocolate, according to…
How to Smile for Better Health – Part 1
Find out how to smile to look younger, live longer, look prettier, and stamp out stress. 1. Your smile can predict the length of your life. Here’s a good reason to get happy: A 2010 study of photographs of 150 Major League Baseball players from the 1952 season correlated the strength of their smile with the length of their life. Those who were deemed to…
Your Friends Are More Important Than You Think
I am sure you’ve felt the sense of emptiness when a friend has moved or when someone has passed away or even after a breakup. Indeed, psychological science has known that we define ourselves – that is, we come to know who we are as a person-through our closest relationships. When the relationships go, so goes a very part of our existence. One of the reasons…
Why Self-Disciplined People Are Happier
It’s easy to think of the highly self-disciplined as being miserable misers or uptight Puritans, but it turns out that exerting self-control can make you happier not only in the long run, but also in the moment. The research, which was published in the Journal of Personality, showed that self-control isn’t just about deprivation, but more about managing conflicting goals. The researchers found a strong connection between higher…
Why Do We Remember Faces but not Names?
It’s happened to all of us: We’re at an event and recognize peoples’ faces all over the room, but names utterly escape us. Don’t feel bad. When it comes to linking faces and names, the deck is stacked against us from evolutionary, neuroanatomical, and practical perspectives. For starters, our brains are far better equipped at storing visual data, such as a face, than a briefly…
How to Analyze Your Dreams
Dream analysis is actually a valuable way to better understand yourself. Why We Dream According to Sumber, who studied global dream mythology at Harvard University and Jungian dream interpretation at the Jung Institute in Zurich, Dreaming is non-essential when it comes to survival as a body but is essential with regard to our development and evolution as metaphysical beings. Dreaming is the communication between our…
4 Ways To Make Your Workspace More Productive
What’s happening around you can be just as important as what’s going on in your head. Open floor plans might promote collaboration, but they are clearly hotbeds of distraction. So there’s a trade-off: More collaboration, less productivity. It turns out, for example, that bad weather is good for productivity. It all comes down to distractions, according to a Harvard Business School study. The more distracted people…