Category: emotion

anthropology · behavior · community · emotion · happiness · Social

Just how lonely are we?

Beth Kelley
Jeff Ragsdale on Location
Jeff Ragsdale, the instigator for "One Lonely Guy" (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

More and more studies are coming out about how Americans feel more isolated than ever, and that we have less “close” friends despite being more connected to people via social media and technology.

One book was recently released that explores that idea of loneliness and the need for humans to connect with each other through the case of one man’s ad and the voicemails he received in response. From University of Washington News:

In October 2011, former University of Washington student Jeff Ragsdale, living in New York, had hit a low point — his stand-up comedy and acting career had stalled, he had been through a bad breakup and he was living in a cheap rented room. Despondent, Ragsdale posted a flyer around the city that said, “If anyone wants to talk about anything, call me. (347) 469-3173.”

To his surprise he got about 100 calls and texts the first day alone, and they kept on coming, finally numbering in the thousands. In time he brought the messages to the attention of his former teacher, UW English Professor David Shields. From that came the book “Jeff, One Lonely Guy,” edited by Ragdsale, Shields and Michael Logan of Seattle.

“I had kept in touch with Jeff over the years; I knew he was always up to interesting projects,” said Shields. “Jeff kept sending me the most amazing transcriptions of phone calls and texts that he had received. At a certain point, I just couldn’t say no. The material was simply too interesting; it spoke too deeply to the culture.

“What I love about the book (and I can say this because it’s less anything any of us did, and it’s more the voices that came in on Jeff’s cell phone) is what it tells us about what it’s like to live in America right now. I can’t think of a book that evokes more specifically how people talk now (the new words and phrases and sayings are extraordinary — it’s a virtual Roget’s of contemporary slang); how much they/we hunger for connection to themselves/ourselves, to each other, to a larger community; how energized and enervated they are/we are by Big Media and digital culture; how confusing love is in a 24/7 porn environment; and how baffling transcendence is — how fame or brief flickers of fame seem to beckon out of every internet portal. This book is a remarkable document of contemporary existence.”

Read/watch more about “Jeff, One Lonely Guy” in The New Yorker, Book Forum, and The Huffington Post.

The explorations of loneliness and connectedness sparked by one simple ad is pretty incredible. The book itself is also pretty powerful in that it truly is a collaborative effort, not only edited by three guys, but the content of the book is created from the voicemails of 100’s of individuals who were looking to connect with another individual in some way.

In Seattle we talk about the “Seattle Freeze,” this phenomenon where it’s hard for newcomers to make friends, but it sounds like it’s a problem all over the U.S. Would you say you have a close friend, or close friends? Would you say you feel connected to where you live, to your community? Why do you think we feel so disconnected from our neighbors compared to 30 years ago? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

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behavior · creativity · emotion · happiness · psychology

Surefire way to make yourself smile

Beth Kelley

Feeling a little down after the festive weekend with possibly WAY too many chocolate bunnies? There is a cure for that. But don’t take my word for it, ask Canadian artist Alison Ann:

I was a bit sad that my vacation was over until I remembered this little gem of a project that I did on a cool January eve.

The goal here was to draw 100 smiley faces in an act of self cheering.
It totally works.
Here is my sample, and I encourage you to do the same.
If you do do the same you should share it with others too.. or share it with me!!!
Or share on this blog! 🙂

Happy Monday!

 

behavior · community · emotion · happiness · play · youtube

Laughter infects Berlin Train – the power of others and place

Beth Kelley

People often wonder just how powerful the people and spaces around us can be. Well, it turns out they can be pretty dang powerful! Just check out the video. Thanks Guy Kawasaki for sharing this out:

Giggles spread through an U-Bahn train in Berlin after one woman starts laughing. Happiness: the best infectious thing you can catch on a train.

 

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behavior · brain · cognition · emotion

Meditation leads to less mind wandering, more doing

Beth Kelley
Meditate
Meditation helps people stay on task and reduce stress. Image by plemeljr via Flickr

Thanksgiving and the Black Friday rush are behind us, but for many it is just the beginning of a crazy month. How to destress from last week’s trials and tribulations (and sales) and stay focused on this month’s tasks, including work? Meditation:

The brains of experienced meditators appear to be fitter, more disciplined and more “on task” than do the brains of those trying out meditation for the first time. And the differences between the two groups are evident not only during meditation, when brain scans detect a pattern of better control over the wandering mind among experienced meditators, but when the mind is allowed to wander freely.

Those insights emerge from a study to be published next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which looked at two groups: highly experienced meditators and meditation novices, and compared the operations of the “Default Mode Network” — a newly identified cluster of brain regions that go to work when our brains appear to be “offline.”

“I think its safe to say this is brain-training at work,” says Yale University psychiatrist Judson Brewer, who conducted the study with psychologists from Yale, the University of Oregon and Columbia University. “It makes sense,” adds Brewer. “Anything you train to do, you do better.”

In fact, some studies have found that too much daydreaming or getting off task can have negative effects:

A study that tracked the daily activities and moods of iPhone users-published in Science magazine last November–found that those whose minds were wandering off task more often were more depressed. People who suffer from attention deficit disorder also have difficulty keeping mind-wandering at bay, which may be why many studies have found that meditation helps those with attention deficit disorder.

more via This is your mind on meditation: less wandering, more doing – latimes.com.

Now truth be told, I am not that great at sitting still and clearing my mind. In fact none of us are. But, even attempting to clear one’s mind for 30 seconds at a time has been found to be truly beneficial. Just focusing on one’s breathing for two or three rounds of breathing in and out has been shown to be calming and rejuvenating.

If sitting still is not your thing, stretching, walking or running are also good ways to clear your mind, and they provided the added benefit of exercise.

Remember to breath deep this holiday season! It will improve your mood and overall ability to handle tense situations in any environment, from shopping to grandma to bad weather.

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behavior · brain · emotion · happiness · mental health

How being grateful for the little things makes a big difference

Beth Kelley
The First Thanksgiving, painted by Jean Leon G...
Being thankful for the little everyday things, like just being able to eat, is better for you psychologically over the long haul. Image via Wikipedia

I received this newsletter post from financial advice blog LearnVest. It provided some interesting insight into another reason why practicing how to be grateful in itty-bitty ways (see my earlier post) is actually better for you in the long run.

—

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about gratefulness and what really makes us happy. This has been a truly happy year for me personally—the LearnVest audience has grown 310%, our company is celebrating its two-year anniversary, our team has tripled in size, and, to top it all off, I got engaged last month to the best guy I know.

All of this has reminded me of the “happiness lab” I worked at back in college, where I witnessed one psych study that changed my life:

When given the hypothetical choice between lots of big wins in a short amount of time (like all of your dreams coming true in a week) and one consistent thing they already liked, guaranteed forever (like a warm cup of coffee every morning), most people chose the big wins: a bigger house, a fancy car, a promotion, winning the lottery.

But the lab’s researchers found that the coffee-every-day-forever approach really makes people happier when push comes to shove. Why?

We say we want a bigger house, but then we have to maintain it. We say we want a promotion, but it comes with more stress and longer hours. Meanwhile, one reliable, comforting constant in our lives—like a soothing cup of coffee every day—can make us feel great. In general, the big things we strive for don’t necessarily make us happier.

This study proves scientifically what many of us have always known: Money can’t buy happiness.

This Thanksgiving, I encourage you to think about what really makes you happy. Is it writing? Taking pictures? Giving back to the community? I have a feeling you’ll find that many of the best things in your life don’t cost a thing, or are well within your reach right now.

I hope you can find the laughter and the joy in every situation. May this year and every year bring you a lot to be thankful for.

Toward a richer life,

Follow @alexavontobel

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behavior · emotion · family · happiness · mental health

Steps to ease into being grateful, and how it benefits you psychologically

Beth Kelley2 Comments

"The most psychologically correct holiday of the year is upon us." according to the New York Times article, A Serving of Gratitude May Save the Day.

Cultivating an “attitude of gratitude” has been linked to better health, sounder sleep, less anxiety and depression, higher long-term satisfaction with life and kinder behavior toward others, including romantic partners. A new study shows that feeling grateful makes people less likely to turn aggressive when provoked, which helps explain why so many brothers-in-law survive Thanksgiving without serious injury.

But say you’re not in the habit of giving thanks. After all, we’re only asked to officially do it once or twice a year. Well, there are some pointers in the article to get you going:

Start with “gratitude lite.” – start out with writing just five things, and maybe a sentence or two about why you’re appreciative of them.

Don’t confuse gratitude with indebtedness – you don’t need to owe anybody anything to be grateful for them.

Try it on your family – even if they are horribly dysfunctional, you can still be grateful they passed the peas without throwing you a dirty look.

Don’t counterattack – okay, so maybe they did throw you a dirty look. By being grateful to them anyway, it puts individuals off guard and makes them more likely to be kinder in the future, according to some studies.

Share the feeling – … “More than other emotion, gratitude is the emotion of friendship,” Dr. McCullough says. “It is part of a psychological system that causes people to raise their estimates of how much value they hold in the eyes of another person. Gratitude is what happens when someone does something that causes you to realize that you matter more to that person than you thought you did.”

Try a gratitude visit.This exercise, recommended by Martin Seligman of the University of Pennsylvania, begins with writing a 300-word letter to someone who changed your life for the better. Be specific about what the person did and how it affected you. Deliver it in person, preferably without telling the person in advance what the visit is about. When you get there, read the whole thing slowly to your benefactor. “You will be happier and less depressed one month from now,” Dr. Seligman guarantees in his book “Flourish.”

Contemplate a higher power. Religious individuals don’t necessarily act with more gratitude in a specific situation, but thinking about religion can cause people to feel and act more gratefully, as demonstrated in experiments by Jo-Ann Tsang and colleagues at Baylor University. Other research shows that praying can increase gratitude.

Go for deep gratitude. Once you’ve learned to count your blessings, Dr. Emmons says, you can think bigger…

And if that seems too daunting, you can least tell yourself —

Hey, it could always be worse. When your relatives force you to look at photos on their phones, be thankful they no longer have access to a slide projector. When your aunt expounds on politics, rejoice inwardly that she does not hold elected office. Instead of focusing on the dry, tasteless turkey on your plate, be grateful the six-hour roasting process killed any toxic bacteria.

Happy Thanksgiving!

emotion · environment · happiness · psychology

10 Careers With High Rates of Depression – Health.com

Beth Kelley
On the Threshold of Eternity
Artist is one of the top careers associated with depression. But the most common jobs were in the "helping" professions. Image via Wikipedia

Feeling down about your job? You may not be the only one. In fact, some jobs are more prone to depression. A recent study looked at reports of depression associated with what job the individual had.

Here are 10 fields (out of 21 major job categories) in which full-time workers are most likely to report an episode of major depression in a given year. But if you want to be a nurse (No. 4), it doesn’t mean you should pick another profession.

“There are certain aspects of any job that can contribute to or exacerbate depression,” says Deborah Legge, PhD, a licensed mental health counselor in Buffalo (NY). “Folks with the high-stress jobs have a greater chance of managing it if they take care of themselves and get the help they need.”

via 10 Careers With High Rates of Depression – depression – Health.com.

It doesn’t give an order of which careers are the most depression-prone, but a lot of the careers on the top ten were care-giving or “helping” jobs. These jobs can be draining, don’t pay very well, and apparently there isn’t much appreciation dulled back onto these workers. A lot of them are also associated with or coordinated with government institutions, which is known for its bureaucracy. Bureaucracy can also be frustrating and make workers feel futile or helpless, another key stressor and depresser.

What are some ways to make these “giving” jobs better appreciated and less stressed? There’s a lot of hoopla right now about jobs creation, but what can be done to make the jobs we have right now better?

behavior · emotion · happiness

Moods on Twitter Follow Biological Rhythms, Study Finds – NYTimes.com

Beth Kelley
social media
Image by Sean MacEntee via Flickr

It’s Friday, and I’m looking forward to the weekend, and apparently so is the rest of the online world. A team of sociologists measured the amount of “happy” tweets people put out around the world, and found it matched previously known patterns of happiness trends:

Drawing on messages posted by more than two million people in 84 countries, researchers discovered that the emotional tone of people’s messages followed a similar pattern not only through the day but also through the week and the changing seasons. The new analysis suggests that our moods are driven in part by a shared underlying biological rhythm that transcends culture and environment.

The report, by sociologists at Cornell University and appearing in the journal Science, is the first cross-cultural study of daily mood rhythms in the average person using such text analysis. Previous studies have also mined the mountains of data pouring into social media sites, chat rooms, blogs and elsewhere on the Internet, but looked at collective moods over broader periods of time, in different time zones or during holidays.

via Moods on Twitter Follow Biological Rhythms, Study Finds – NYTimes.com.

Studying emotions through Twitter and other social media can always be a little tricky (for example, most algorithms don’t get sarcasm). But, that aside, I am very intrigued to see the results that market researchers and sociologists are finding using social media, and seeing how much our “real” lives are accurately reflected in our online worlds as well.

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emotion · environment · mental health

Giving my brain time to breathe

Beth Kelley
The M54 motorway near Wellington viewed from t...
Off into the wild blue yonder this week. Image via Wikipedia

I will be on vacation this week, as sort of a decompression from summer and respite before I jump full on into Fall, Winter, and all that ensues.

I intend to spend as much time as possible in nature, listening, smelling, seeing, and overall experiencing the amazing world that is around me. Spotting animals, smelling trees, water, flowers, and moss, feeling the crunch of leaves and rocks beneath my feet, hearing the wind blow through the leaves and listen for animal calls, and taste the heat in the hot afternoon sun and cold at early dawn.

I encourage everyone to take 20 minutes sometime between now and when I get back to just go outside, find a comfortable, quiet place to sit – under a tree, near some water, on the street corner near your house – and just listen, smell, taste, and watch. Listen to all the noises. What’s the closest noise, what’s the farthest noise? How many animals can you spot? How many different smells can you pick up? Breathe fully into your lungs and slowly let the air out, feeling it work its way through your nose, throat, and lungs.

Give yourself this 20 minute vacation, even just once this week, and I guarantee your environment will feel fuller, richer, and you’ll feel more in tune with your surroundings.

Enjoy!

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behavior · disease · emotion · mental health

10 Things I Learned From People Who Survive Cancer | Care2 Healthy Living

Beth Kelley

This is a great article that was shared with me by a friend who has survived cancer (that’s a huge deal, by the way, I’ve had plenty of friends and family the last couple of years who didn’t). It was written Lissa Ranken for her project The Woman Inside. Lissa noticed that all of the cancer survivors she met shared some characteristics in common:

They had all faced down death and decided to live every day like it might be their last. And then they all beat cancer.The more interviews I did, the more I noticed that these women were living differently than most of the people I knew who had not been diagnosed with cancer. Here’s what I learned from those survivor women. Learning these lessons changed my life, and I hope they’ll change yours.

read on for 10 Things I Learned From People Who Survive Cancer | Care2 Healthy Living.

What they all boil down to is being yourself and living for the moment. These women all had days where that moment might have been their last, so they made the most of it. They got angry, they put themselves and their health first, and they got better.

It is a lesson that we can all learn, to not worry about doing what’s “right” for the future so much, or “right” for someone else. Yes it’s important to be nice and get along with people and make sure you have enough money saved for retirement, but so much of the time I’ve seen people, myself included, act a certain way or do something because they thought it would make other people happy, when the truth is if they did what they wanted to do for themselves it would have worked out just as well, if not better!

So go read the 10 things, and then tell yourself you’re beautiful and being feisty is a good thing!

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