3 SUBTLE WAYS OUR HIGHER SELVES COMMUNICATE WITH US

We are constantly in contact with our higher selves; they are an infinite aspect of us. It is an interconnected aspect of our consciousness that sends and receives information from us at all times. It takes the practice of concentration and deeply listening to hear your higher self directly.

A lot of the time, the ways they send messages are subtle and it’s our job to figure out the meaning behind them. Our higher selves want us to learn and ask questions, not to just be given the answer.  Here are some of the subtle ways our higher selves communicate with us.

1. Through our own thoughts

A common question asked within the spiritual community is when will I receive direct contact? For a lot of us, the answer is you already are.

Many of us are ready to experience a more tangible form of communication from our higher selves or separate entities but are disappointed with the lack of ‘concrete’ communication.

The point of these energies being subtle is for us to learn how to navigate through them.

When we can feel subtle shifts in energy, we can know the difference between multiple entities sending us messages and what specifically feels different about each energy.

If a thought comes in that seems out of place or really sticks out; pay attention to it. Thoughts are a constant stream in our mental river; they are always flowing but we can control the direction.

We need to remember that a thought exists as a ‘physical’ or ‘real’ thing, just in a slightly higher frequency.

The other day I was trying to meditate when a line from a song kept repeating SO intensely in my head. It was like it was on full blast, fast forward and repeat, constantly playing the line: Life is what you make it.

I kept trying to ignore it and got frustrated with myself for having this song replay like this. It was like overlapping itself it was playing so fast.

The second I acknowledged the message, the repeating instantly stopped and it felt like this dense energy was lifted off me. I was ignoring the message until I realized how incredibly important it was for me to hear it in that moment. I knew without a doubt it was a message from an external source.

With things like this, you just know. You don’t need to guess or speculate when you can trust your feelings.

2. Through media

This one’s interesting and fun when you are really paying attention. Something that has happened to me throughout my whole life is when a lyrical song, movie or some kind of media with dialogue is playing, my thoughts or conversations ALWAYS sync up with it.

This happened earlier today even. I was talking to a friend when she started to say “I love the ocean” but stalled on saying Higher-Self 6‘ocean’ and the song playing in the background lined up perfectly and the singer said the word ocean.

This is the easiest synchronicity to brush off because it’s so ‘mundane’. It’s also the most subtly beautiful way to receive direct messages from the other side of the veil.  

Almost everyday, I’ll be thinking a thought or saying something and at the exact same time a word from a song will be said the exact same time I think of it. This happened the other day too, when I was feeling upset about a relationship issue and this song came on the radio.

It kept repeating lines that said something like let it go, don’t dwell, and move on. The core message was exactly what I needed to hear and I couldn’t help but cry and then shift my vibration to a lighter one.

When things like this happen, I don’t need to question if it’s a coincidence or not – I know it’s a message because it creates connections in my brain.

3. Through People

Your-Higher-Self

So, what if some people were extensions of your higher self?

What I mean is, say, you’re crying on a park bench and a lovely man or woman approaches you and asks if you’re alright. Maybe the strike up a conversation and momentarily bring you peace.

This happened to my friend a few weeks ago as she visited her dad’s grave. A man approached her and brought such a loving, comforting energy that she said she knew was her dads.

Source energy is infinite; there is so much more than this physical reality.
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Money isn't everything: The 10 happiest countries in the world

Turns out the old saying that money isn't everything holds true.

The latest Gallup-Healthways global well-being ranking puts Panama — a sliver of land with one of the world's busiest shipping routes — as the place to be, along with its Central American neighbours. There are fewer Panamanians than people living in Sydney, but it seems they are better off even when their gross domestic product per capita is just $US11,036 ($14,265) , less than a sixth that of Australia.

Panama was followed by Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and Switzerland. Australia ranked 40th in the list of the 50 best-off countries, far behind the US (rank 23), New Zealand (29) and Ireland (36), but ahead of the UK (rank 44) and Russia (47).

The results are based on 146,000 interviews with adults across 145 countries and areas throughout all of last year. Participants were asked 10 questions focusing on their purpose and ambitions, their social setting and love in their lives, their finances, where they live, the pride they take in their community and how healthy and energetic they fell.

While more than 40 per cent of the Australians questioned felt well and secure in their financial situation, less than a third felt healthy or liked what they do each day, according to the survey.

On the face of it, the results may appear surprising. Isn't Puerto Rico going bankrupt? Doesn't Guatemala have one of the world's highest murder rates?

The survey is a reminder that hard cold data isn't always the best measure of how a country is doing. Nuances can get lost. For example, on finances, the question is not so much what you earn but whether you have enough of it to meet your needs and if you get stressed about it.

Take Europe: sluggish growth, few employment prospects for its youth. Yet, when it comes to their financial well-being, its citizens seem the most at peace with their lot in life.

The worst places to be were Afghanistan, Cameroon - and Bhutan,which gauges its success as a nation not through its gross economic product, but its gross national happiness.
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How to be stress free at work

For many people, day-to-day stress at work is viewed as the norm – an unavoidable side effect of modern life. But this type of chronic, unmanaged stress can make you sick, tired, and even accelerate aging.

As many scientific studies have found, prolonged stress contributes to the development of high blood pressure, heart disease, stomach ulcers, autoimmune diseases, anxiety, cancer, insomnia, chronic fatigue, obesity, and depression.

While stress throughout the workday is often unavoidable, there are several simple ways to manage and reverse its debilitating effects, helping you prevent burnout and experience more fulfillment and happiness at work.

Focus on one thing at a time

In today’s fast-paced work environments, multitasking is often viewed as a skill. However, trying to do too many things at once can leave you feeling frazzled. As neuroscientists have discovered, the conscious brain cannot multitask.

If I’m speaking Stress-at-work to you and checking my emails at the same time, I’m actually doing neither.

The best way to avoid multitasking and still make sure everything gets checked off your list is to map out your day by compartmentalizing your time.

When you dedicate each part of your day to one specific type of activity, you avoid the feelings of stress that surface when you think of everything you need to do.

The optimal way to do this is to apportion your time each day into seven different categories. They are:

1. Sleep time: Get a full night’s restful sleep
2. Physical time: Take time to move and let your body be active
3. Focus time: Spend time alone to concentrate on what matters to you
4. Time in: Set aside a few moments for meditation, prayer, or self-reflection
5. Time out: Dedicate time to simply being present and resting into existence
6. Play time: Give yourself time to have fun in a carefree mood
7. Connecting time: Set aside intimate private time between you and those you love

Honor the mind-body system

When we are stressed out at work, the needs of our bodies often get neglected: We grab lunch from the vending machine, sit at our desks without getting up for hours at a time, or work late instead of heading to the gym.

The two sides of the mind-body connection are partners. When we ignore the needs of our bodies, our minds suffer as well, making us less productive than if we had taken the time to eat a healthy, nutritious lunch or enjoy a fifteen minute walk around the building.

The best ways to maintain balance in both body and mind are:

1. Get six to eight hours of restful sleep every night
2. Eat at the same time every day and don’t skip meals
3. Eat a wide variety of healthy, colorful foods throughout the day
4. Eat mindfully and avoid multitasking during meals
5. Give your body a chance to move around at least once an hour
6. Engage in at least half an hour of daily exercise
7. Meditate work-stress: During meditation, your body releases stress and actually begins to reverse its effects. Even a few minutes of meditation before a meeting can help you feel more focused and alert.

An ever-growing body of scientific data continues to confirm meditation’s many benefits to:

1. effectively manage and release stress and anxiety
2. improve brain function, enhancing focus, memory, and the ability to learn
3. improve creativity and problem solving
4. cultivate a deep state of peace and wellbeing

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Rewire Your Brain for Greater Happiness

Complaining.

We do it all the time. Most of the time, we don't even realize we're doing it. We may have no idea that there's any reason not to do it. We say, "I need to get something off my chest," or call it "personal sharing." Sometimes it's a one off; sometimes we repeat our stories again and again -- sometimes to the same person, sometimes to different people. We tell our stories to people we don't even know. We even tell other people's stories.

We tell the details of experiences that have not met with our satisfaction -- that frustrate us, thwart us, disappoint us, rob us, humiliate us or cause us regret, anger, sadness or some kind of stress. These stories are about our experiences with colleagues, bosses and jobs. They include our neighbors; the agencies meant to serve us; friends and lovers; wives and husbands; our parents; the schools our children attend; the weather and traffic. Time after time, over time we do this. Sound familiar?!

We think that relaying these stories to ourselves and others make us feel better. If others care about our stories, value the details as we do, see our point of view, agree with us, we are heard; we can be known and appreciated for what it takes to be us, we can be validated and sometimes even vindicated. On occasion, this does happen. But this redemption happens far, far less than we realize and need.

Yet, we keep at it.

We're here to tell you: Stop it. Really. Stop it.

Why? Because human beings and organizations wither and collapse in negative environments. And when we talk about ourselves and our views, to ourselves and to others, in so many of the most common and familiar ways we do, what comes out of our mouths is absolutely negative. We are haters in that moment.

There are costs to complaining. There IS something to downloading our experience and there IS something juicy about sharing your human experience with another human who can appreciate it. It can even feel like it brings you closer to someone. Yet complaining is ultimately a cheap take-out meal, on a late work night, when you should have been in bed an hour ago but it's what you crave and it tastes SO good. Soon, you don't feel well at all. Though we often don't notice, complaining doesn't nourish us in any sustainable way. We may have a feeling of deep justification or power as we tell our stories, but it's a false and fleeting power, and it undermines our real experience of feeling alive.

Like a mantra, we continue to hear our negative circumstances play over and over. The more we verbalize our point of view, the more real it becomes. Fewer opportunities for interpretation or other points of view have room to emerge. So we see what happened in one way, only in that way and, probably, always in that way. This is especially potent because, as the victim in our stories, we only reiterate the data relevant to affirm our point of view, validating to ourselves that this is as good as it's going to get for us. This thing is stuck, and our complaining keeps it exactly so. This judgment we listen to again and again costs us joy, our sense of freedom and our power over our choices and future.

Complaining about what happened five minutes ago or yesterday or 20 years ago also robs us of the presence of being either with ourselves or another person, in this moment. We lose this moment in time and it's gone forever. Many, many moments get used this way, though. How many times have your conversations been more than just a few moments?

Recommendations:

1. PAUSE 
The next time you are faced with the chance to tell a story of this kind, see if you can take a moment before you do. This will cut down on the automaticity that can come along with it. Let what you see in that extra moment inform what you do next. Do you need to say what you are about to? Will it support you? Will it make a difference for the person to whom you are about to tell it? Will it forward anything truly meaningful?

2. LOOSEN YOUR GRIP ON YOUR VERSION OF REALITY
See if you can focus on and let yourself relate to the facts about what happened vs. the spin or interpretation you've applied. We know there are many valid points of view about any set of facts. Your point of view is valid but if it's not one that empowers you or the people around you, if it keeps you stuck, lighten up about that point of view or shift it to a more empowering one. Because the meanings we give our stories actually come to dictate our thoughts and actions, simply starting with the understanding that you have a point of view can give you some power.

Here is an example of what we mean: Your brother-in-law emails the family that he can't make it to your house for the holidays, but leaves you off the email. Instead of repeating to yourself, your family allies and your friends that your brother-in-law is going behind your back to undermine and diminish you in the family, take a moment to notice the difference between the facts and your story.

Facts: Your brother-in-law Greg emailed some family members about not being able to spend the holidays at your house and didn't include you in the email.

Your story: Greg is sneaky and jealous of you (or some version of this).

Once you can see this set of facts merely as facts, you can choose a way of viewing them that is more flexible. In this case, it might mean considering Greg left you off the email by accident or that he was looking for feedback and reached out to your family first. Maybe he felt terrible and couldn't bring himself to tell you. It's the stories we make up, and get other people to agree with, that keep us stuck. When you are willing to give up being right about your complaints, and see the chance for a new view, you have freedom.

3. UNDERSTAND: YOUR EXPERIENCE, NOT THE STORY, IS MOST IMPORTANT
See if you can discover how you actually feel. Instead of relaying your story, try to get to the feeling you felt. In the case of Greg, you might say to yourself, "I can't believe Greg sent an email and didn't include me. I feel hurt and threatened." This is how you get in touch with what's really driving your upset. This is a valuable place. Here, you can choose to be hurt and threatened (vs. blaming) or choose to let it go. Here, you can take action. For example, you could call Greg and let him know how hurt you felt. When you can contact your felt experience, should you then decide to share your story, you have a much greater chance to be heard and validated than when you merely download to a receptacle.

These recommendations are not about positive thinking a negative circumstance, though you may start feeling less negatively, as a result. What we are suggesting is being more purposeful about where you apply your attention and energy. We think this gets rid of the bad take-out feeling. When you do, you better connect with yourself and your needs vs. requiring someone else to handle them, have a greater chance to arise from difficult feelings and truly negotiate life far better.

Written by: Meredith Haberfeld
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Happiness: it’s not always smiley faces and that’s okay - See more at: http://blog.oup.com/2015/06/happiness-not-always-smiley/#sthash.np2GiNB4.dpuf

Imagine that today is Happiness Day. For the next 24 hours, you get to enjoy the day to the best of your ability. What would you do?’

I asked some of my friends and family this same question. If you’re like many of the people I polled, you would probably plan to spend the day with family, indulge in a pleasurable activity, or aim to carve out a significant chunk of time with one of your favorite hobbies. But not everyone approaches happiness the same way.

As a matter of fact, some people don’t approach happiness at all. My husband, for example, told me he would spend the day “not doing anything at all that would make him unhappy.” His response shocked me. I was expecting him to say something more along the lines of “Bingeing on Season 3 of House of Cards”. But more than that, I was surprised by his approach, or lack thereof, toward happiness. He wasn’t planning to seek or pursue happiness at all; he was planning to spend the day avoiding unhappiness.

The truth of the matter is that many of us experience a similar retreat from negative emotions, and it may be interfering with our experience of happiness.

There are lots of really good reasons why nobody likes negative emotions. For one, they’re just not fun. Most of the time, they’re barely tolerable. They can make us feel anxious, embarrassed, unworthy, and many other decidedly “unhappy” feelings.

For another, many of us are raised to think of negative emotions as “bad” or off-limits. We’ve learned to hide them, brush them aside, and basically avoid them for as long as possible. Funny thing about this strategy is that it only makes things worse. The more we try to suppress unpleasant thoughts and feelings, the more urgently and frequently they show up. What’s more, research has shown time and again that suppressing emotions not only makes them stronger; it reduces well-being and it can even cause psychopathology. Unfortunately, ruminating, or compulsively thinking about negative emotions, is just as toxic. Allowing negative thoughts and emotions to consume us can lead to depression, impaired thinking, poor problem-solving, and strained social relationships. In short, another really bad happiness strategy.

Commons
Like it or not, negative emotions are very much a part of our lives. Perhaps more to the point, negative emotions are very much a part of our happiness. The key is learning to value them in such a way that they can be successfully integrated into daily life, so that even on a day spent in pursuit of happiness, it would be okay to occasionally feel sad, lonely, or bored and that the experience of those emotions would not ruin the whole day.

Getting to this point takes practice, determination and, above all, a willingness to explore the full range of emotional experience. This willingness to experience all emotions, including the negative ones, requires a different mindset than what many of us are used to. Even those of us who are skilled at managing our negative emotions tend to look at them as a means to an end. A willingness to experience emotions, however, requires that we allow ourselves to literally feel emotions, just as we would reach out to touch a shiny new car, or in the case of negative emotions, coarse sandpaper. The purpose is not to feel happy or sad, but to open ourselves up to the experience, whether it be smooth or rough, so that we can move forward, toward the people and pursuits that bring us real happiness.

It may seem counterintuitive, but when in pursuit of happiness, try not to spend your time avoiding the things that make you feel bad. Go ahead and fully explore happiness by doing something that is meaningful to you, something that makes you laugh, spend quality time with the people you love, challenge yourself at something you’re really good at, and/or share your time with someone who really needs you. And if unhappiness shows up on your doorstep, don’t run away. Be willing to let it in and bend your ear for a minute or two. Listen to it, take some notes even, thank it for its time, and then politely excuse yourself from the conversation. After all, you’ve got some quality time planned with your spouse, and House of Cards is about to begin…
Written by: Amanda Conley Ayers
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How to de-stress after a tiring week

A lot of stress can cause your body to release cortisol, a natural steroid hormone. High levels of cortisol for extended periods of time have been shown to be seriously detrimental to your immune system.

As compiled by womenstalk.com, huffingtonpost.com and mindbodygreen.com, here are some ways to take a break from the pressure at work or otherwise.

Read!

The ultimate mode of relaxation is to lose yourself in the pages of your favourite book, says cognitive neuropsychologist Dr David Lewis. Reading can help to relax your body by lowering your heart rate and easing the tension in your muscles. This is because your mind is free from the stressors that occupy your daily life.

Call a friend

It might be worth calling a friend and letting all the stress come out. There is a reason why talking therapy works and people spend so much money to get appointments with a therapist. If you have a friend who is a good listener as well then make yourself feel better by sharing your inner thoughts and worries.

Buy yourself a plant

Houseplants aren’t just beautiful air purifiers – they can actually have a great calming effect. According to a Washington State University study report in Prevention magazine found, a group of stressed-out people who entered a room full of plants had a four-point drop in their blood pressure, while a comparison group who didn’t see plants dropped only two points.

Play some music

Grab your headphones and listen to your favourite music. Listening to good music release feel-good neurochemicals like dopamine in your brain. Try to empty your mind of negative thoughts and just focus on the sound.

Go into the light

Stress can be triggered when our bodies don’t know what time it is, says Julie Holland, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at New York School of Medicine. It can be depressing to be stuck indoors throughout the work during the day at office, hence weekends should be spent enjoying in natural sunlight.

Munch on your favourite snack mindfully

The connection between the gut and brain is huge, called the ‘gut-brain axis and lots of interesting data supports the idea that the gut is a major mediator of the stress response, says DR Ramsey, an assistant clinical professor of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians & Surgeons and the author of The Happiness Diet. Choose a snack that will keep you satiated and full as nothing is more stressful to the brain Ramset explains, than feeling like you have run out of nourishment.

Sleep to combat stress

Lack of sleep can wreak havoc on your general well-being. Experts have connected stress with blood sugar and belly fat. Chronic stress raises insulin, driving relentless metabolic function that becomes weight gain, insulin resistance and ultimately diabetes. Hence, get your eight hours of sleep no matter what.

Compiled by: Komal Anwar

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Lawyers Go Zen, With Few Objections

Soft winds of change are rustling through the legal profession.

You can see it on the cover of a recent Louisiana Bar Journal, which featured a photo of an empty bench against a burnt-orange sky.

It has swept through University of Miami School of Law, whose students this year completed a homework project by deliberately losing an argument.


And this spring it breezed past a verdant bluff above the Hudson River, where dozens of law professors, litigators and judges spent three days meditating and pacing trails under a blanket of silence and the tutelage of a Buddhist priest.

It wasn’t too long ago when attorneys were caricatured as Rambo types who scorched civility and professionalism to win at all costs.

But that was before the “mindfulness” movement.

A Zen-inspired blend of meditation, breathing exercises and focus techniques are in vogue in corporate America—championed by blue-chip employers like Google Inc. and General Mills Inc. as a simple but potent mind-sharpening tool.

Now, the movement is on the cusp of a more improbable breakthrough into the field of law.

Scott Rogers, founder and director of University of Miami’s “Mindfulness in Law Program” says looser vibes have touched a nerve with younger generations—some of whom are turned off by the perceived nastiness in the profession.

“People are yelling at each other all the time,” says Mr. Rogers, a former commercial litigator who remembers the moment 15 years ago when he realized it’s OK to recognize the humanity in opposing counsel.

Students who take his mindfulness courses earn up to three credits toward their law degree. They all have waiting lists, he says, including the one in which students are instructed to lose an argument. “It’s not about losing a fight or giving up at all,” says Mr. Rogers. “It’s developing greater insight in the ways we lose touch” with our impulses.

His law school is one of about two dozen across the country to incorporate mindfulness exercises into its curriculum.

Another one is nearby Florida International University College of Law, where students have bonded over an assignment requiring them to stare at themselves in the mirror for five minutes and say loudly, “I love me.”

As for more seasoned lawyers, the pressure to bill hours has never been more intense, the pace never more punishing. The result is high rates of attrition, depression and fatigue, according to some studies. The discontent has spawned a cottage industry of coaches bearing promises of relief.

Judi Cohen founded a mindfulness coaching firm last year after a 30-year career as a Bay Area real-estate lawyer. She named her company Warrior One, paying homage to the mystical warrior-kings of Tibet.

Her clients include the commercial law firm Fox Rothschild LLP and Facebook Inc.’s legal department, which invited her to stop by their annual retreat last fall in Half Moon Bay. She says Facebook’s rapidly growing legal team was keen on unlocking secrets that could help them communicate better with fellow Facebook lawyers.

During a typical workshop, she asks participants to break into pairs and have a conversation in which they suppress the desire to interrupt or even consider a retort until the other person finishes his or her thought. Lawyers are also discouraged from judging their partners during the session.

Some exercises aim to cultivate empathy and understanding. Those can be challenging, including one in which lawyers pick out three random people during the day and silently wish them well.

“ ‘I didn’t see anyone worthy,’ ” Ms. Cohen recalls a dejected senior attorney reporting back to her.

Most attorneys she trains walk in with an open-mind, even making a valiant, if not successful, effort to stow away their phones during training.
But there are exceptions, including one prosecutor at the San Francisco district attorney’s office—another one of her clients—who tried to poke holes in her philosophy. He posed questions like, “If mindfulness is just about paying attention, couldn’t that make you a good assassin instead of a compassionate person?”

Some skeptics of mindfulness, like Manhattan criminal defense attorney Scott Greenfield, say they have nothing against stress relief but doubt that a regimen of meditation, daily affirmations and Qigong training will cure the ills of the profession.

Mindfulness, he says, “feeds the narcissism that being a lawyer should be fun, happy and pleasant.”

Jeena Cho, a San Francisco bankruptcy attorney who also teaches mindfulness, says lawyers have asked her if they have to shave their heads or dress like a monk. “This isn’t like joining a cult,” she assures them. She says she committed herself to meditation after she started losing clumps of hair from all the anxiety she was feeling about work.

For some lawyers who have given it a spin, it’s a way to clear their minds and find a new perspective.

Cari Rincker, a New York family and divorce lawyer, was among the more than 80 attorneys at a mindfulness retreat at the Garrison Institute, a Franciscan monastery-turned meditation sanctuary nestled on a hilltop near West Point on the opposite bank of the Hudson River.

Ms. Rincker spent hours walking back and forth in silence. “I forgot how nice it is to be outside and listen to birds chirp,” she says of the retreat, which was organized by UC Berkeley School of Law’s “Mindfulness Initiative.”

For a handful of sleep-deprived attorneys, the sessions led to drowsiness—with the occasional snoring reverberating in the stained-glass adorned meditation hall. A Zen Buddhist priest advised those drifting into the land of Nod to try meditating standing up.
“It was a bunch of lawyers in a room and no one was talking,” recalls Ms. Rincker. “I have to say it was quite refreshing.”

Written by: Jacob Gershman

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Destress in One Minute

Recharge Yourself

The Secret to Making Yourself Happier? Give Your Money Away

According to the World Bank’s most recent estimate, more than one billion people live on less than $1.25 per day. UNICEF estimates that an average of 18,000 children die every twenty-four hours from easily preventable causes. That’s equivalent to losing a young life every five seconds.

Faced with these figures, it’s easy to despair. But that’s a mistake. The world is steadily getting better. The percentage of people living in extreme poverty has declined dramatically over the past twenty-five years. Compared with 1990, 17,000 fewer children now die each day. What’s more, you and I can each make a significant contribution to improving the lives of the world’s poorest people.

Inspired by this idea, a growing number of people are choosing to donate a significant fraction of their income to the most effective developing world charities. I’m one of them. I am the assistant director of Giving What We Can, an international society whose members pledge to give at least ten percent of their earnings to whichever organizations do the most to help others. More than a thousand people have signed our pledge and our membership is growing every day.

Is giving really for me?
You might think this is admirable, but not for you. You’re a good person, but there are limits to what you can be asked to do for others. The idea of giving away as much as ten percent of your income might seem impossible. Wouldn’t this mean taking on a significant burden?

Well, would it? It’s worth thinking seriously about this question. After all, it would be extraordinary to be able to look back on your life and know that you had saved the lives of hundreds of people. What’s more, the answer to this question isn’t as obvious as it might seem.

How much you can afford to give depends ultimately on your personal circumstances. It’s something you have to decide on your own terms. However, it’s important that you be aware of the fallibility of your own intuitions. You are worse at making predictions about your own future happiness than you might think.

We don’t know what makes us happy
A significant body of work in social psychology shows that we systematically overestimate the impact that various life-changes will have on our sense of happiness, especially for those life-changes we expect to make us unhappy. Psychologists express this by saying that our affective forecasts (that is, our predictions about our future happiness) are subject to an 'impact bias'.

A person’s level of happiness is more stable and resilient than we expect. For this reason, people overestimate the unhappiness of individuals with disabilities, academics overestimate how bad it will feel to be denied tenure, and voters overestimate the negative impact of having their candidate lose the election. The impact bias works with money too. Studies show that people significantly underestimate the happiness of people earning lower levels of household income.

So if your gut tells you that giving a lot to charity would be a serious burden, it’s very likely that you’re wrong. It will cost you less than you think. Your expectations about the extent to which your happiness hinges on enjoying a certain level of income aren’t as trustworthy as they seem. Don’t let the impact bias fool you.

So does giving actually make us happy?
If we can’t trust our intuitions, how can we know what it would be like to give away a significant fraction of our earnings?

One thing we could do is to ask people earning different levels of income how happy they are, giving us a sense of how much income really matters for personal well-being.


Surveys of this kind have been carried out in many countries. They generally find that the richer you are, the more likely you are to report being happy or very happy. Even so, the differences between people earning different levels of income tend to be slight. The correlation between income and happiness is small and much smaller than most people expect. In his bestselling book Happiness:

Lessons from a New Science, economist Richard Layard estimates that lowering household income by one third means a fall in happiness of just two points when happiness is scored between ten and one hundred. It turns out that the effect of income on happiness is overshadowed by many other factors, such as health and personal relationships. These are the things that really matter.

When you give, you’re spending money, not losing it
Here’s something else to consider. Why assume that giving a significant fraction of your income to charity is like earning less? In reality, you won’t have a lower income, just one that’s spent differently. Otherwise you’d be just as happy (or sad) giving money to charity as you would be simply throwing that money away. But that doesn’t really make sense – if you’ve read this far, you presumably care about the welfare of people in developing countries and would be glad to know that their lives are being improved as a result of your actions.

So if your income doesn't affect your happiness all that much and we know you’ll gain some amount of life-satisfaction from the knowledge that your donations are improving people's lives, the key question is: how much?

There is evidence to suggest that spending money on others can make us happier than spending on ourselves. To start, we can point to some striking correlational data. One recent study examined survey data gathered from one hundred and thirty-six countries. The authors wanted to see whether donating to charity was correlated with greater feelings of happiness, even when controlling for household income. They found that, in almost all countries, those who gave to charity were happier. If fact, donating to charity had a similar relationship to individual happiness as a doubling of household income.

Of itself, this doesn’t prove that spending money on others is what causes greater happiness. However, there are experiments which suggest that this is in fact the case.

Imagine the following scenario. You are given an envelope containing a small sum of money, which you are asked to spend within 24 hours. You can spend the money on yourself (paying a bill or buying yourself a treat) or you can spend the money on others, giving it to charity or buying a gift for a friend. Which would bring you greater happiness: spending the money on yourself or on others?

When a group of scientists carried out an experiment like this, most participants thought they’d be happier if they could spend the money on themselves. They were wrong. The people who were asked to spend their money on others ended up happier as a result.

This wasn’t an isolated result. The same researchers conducted a long-term study of employees at a Boston-based company who received a profit-sharing bonus. They found that those who devoted more of their bonus to prosocial spending experienced greater happiness later on.

Giving to others > spending on ourselves
We should obviously be cautious in trying to extrapolate from these results. Even so, these findings lend weight to the idea that giving our money to help others can be a source of personal satisfaction that outweighs whatever minor frustrations we might experience from having less money to spend on ourselves.

Anecdotally, that same idea is borne out when I talk to the members of Giving What We Can. Far from feeling like a sacrifice or a burden, most people say that joining Giving What We Can is an incredibly positive experience. Certainly, that’s been my own story. Given the evidence that income itself doesn’t matter all that much and that helping others often makes us happier, it wouldn’t be surprising if the same could hold true for you.

Ultimately, of course, it’s not about you or me. It’s about helping others who are malnourished, or suffering from terrible diseases like malaria, through no fault of their own. As it turns out, we can each afford to give a lot more than we might have thought. I can, and so can you. So let’s do it.

Written By: Andreas Mogensen
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Happiness Should Be a Verb

Flourishing should be the new happiness. What most pursue now ignores old wisdom and the logic of our biology. A verb capturing the required recurring effort is better than a noun describing the desired static state--by nature, not a thing we can be or get but that we do. It is perhaps better harvested than pursued. Many see their main goal as maximizing pleasure. But even the ancient hedonists took pains to distinguish between types of pleasure and happiness. They typically thought pleasure was necessary but not sufficient.

Enlightenment thinkers believed that humans were "intended by nature to achieve happiness," as Darrin McMahon notes, requiring only knowledge to overcome ignorance. But Jeremy Bentham increased ignorance by blurring once useful distinctions. In probably the Enlightenment's saddest sin of synonymy, he equated happiness with pleasure for the sake of easier calculations. Many psychologists today remain confused.

Daniel Kahneman writes: "it is logical to describe...life... as a series of moments, each with a value" of positive or negative feeling, and to evaluate an experience by the "sum of the values for its moments." He complains that our brains are illogical in not working that way. But it's futile to wish our physiology was different. We'd be better served by adapting our reason to fit how our biology works.

The field of positive psychology is less confused. Mihly Cskszentmihlyi says "we do not understand what happiness is any better than Aristotle did." His studies of "optimal experience" led to the idea of "an active state of flow," in which a challenging skilled activity, with clear goals and unambiguous feedback, enables concentration to the point of loss of consciousness of self and time.

Such autotelic (done for their own sake) activities are common in sports, music and the arts, but rare when we're passive. Similarly, Martin Seligman distinguishes the raw feelings of easy pleasures from earned "gratifications," which are the longer-lasting rewards of flow-like activities.

This emphasis on effort and skill is more logically consistent with our biology than Bentham and Kahneman's focus on felt pleasure. Our survival has long depended on using second-nature skills. Yeats rightly claimed, "all skill is joyful." Many such joys are adaptive.

As Aristotle knew, life's goals required exercising natural virtues, which now would be better called life skills. Nouns like "happiness" and "well-being" seem too static. Verbs reflecting the required cyclical activity would fit better. Sadly the verb "happies," used in Shakespeare's sixth sonnet, is obsolete. "Well-doing" is more precise than "well-being". And "flourishing" is fitter than "being happy." Victor Frankel believed "happiness cannot be pursued; it must ensue."

However difficult to pursue, effective happiness can be harvested. By skilled activity, we can be flourishing.

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Science Shows What Meditation Really Does to Your Brain

Meditation, according to its spiritual gurus, is a universal panacea. Enthusiasts have long preached its benefits, which include its ability to lower anxiety, improve concentration, help treat those with HIV and even extend one's life expectancy.

While it's undeniable meditation contributes to a sense of inner piece, its physiological benefits remain less certain. That is, until a team of researchers confirmed them. What they uncovered is more than surprising.

"We found several brain regions that had changed," Sara Lazar, an associate research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital, told Mic. Lazar conducted a major study on meditation in 2011 and was one of the earliest scientists to take a serious look at the practice, according to the Washington Post.

Some of the changes she saw took place in the posterior cingulate cortex, which helps control one's ability to focus on the task at hand, the left hippocampus, which helps in learning, cognition and memory and the temporo parietal junction, which helps manage empathy and compassion. Brain scans of people who meditate reveal they have more gray matter than non-meditators.

Increased gray matter in areas of the brain often correlates to heightened abilities in a range of skills. "Musicians," said Lazar as an example "have more gray matter in music areas than non-musicians." The logical conclusion, therefore, is that skills touched by areas of the brain that benefit from meditation will undergo a similar improvement.

Meditation is like a super-vitamin for your brain. It targets and boosts the parts that are already strong, and improves their functionality to make them even stronger.

Lazar said when people began meditating, their amygdala got smaller. That is the area of the brain most closely associated with fear and aggression.

Of course, meditating is not a universal panacea, but there are distinctive benefits to the practice. "There is something more to meditation than just sitting," Lazar said.

Nationally, 50% of Americans report working more than 40 hours a week. Unsurprisingly, all the added time at the office has come amid shrinking vacation for employees as well. A 2013 study by the global forecasting agency Oxford Economics found workers have taken less vacation than at any time in four decades.

Given all the unique challenges faced today by young and old, anything safe that helps people chill out is worth a look. Given how easy meditation can be, it's something everyone should give serious consideration.
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More Stress Means Less Eating

Here's a pop quiz. What do speeches, fires and first dates have in common?

Hmm, well, they all tend to cause stress that suppresses our appetite. The last thing on our mind as we run from a burning building is that yummy donut we left on the counter.

Our anxiety is connected to hormones in the brain called corticotropin-releasing factors or CRFs, which regulate stress and appetite.

Recently the drug industry, desperate to uncover a solution to obesity, say they found a type of this hormone called CRF2 that cuts hunger without added stress. Sounds like a dream huh?

Well it was, until a group of scientists took a closer look. Their study in the Journal of Neuroscience concludes that activating CRF2 in rats cut their appetites in half, no doubt - BUT the rats ate less is because they were totally stressed out. They nervously self-groomed, licking so much they often knocked themselves over.

Seems stress and appetite is a ying yang combo. Not surprising, ask anyone who's suffered a broken heart they’ll say the only good thing about being dumped is that easy 10 pounds we lose.
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Age Brings Happiness

Do people get happier or crankier as they age? Stereotypes of crotchety neighbors aside, scientists have been trying to answer this question for decades, and the results have been conflicting. Now a study of several thousand Americans born between 1885 and 1980 reveals that well-being indeed increases with age—but overall happiness depends on when a person was born.

Previous studies that have compared older adults with the middle-aged and young have sometimes found that older adults are not as happy. But these studies could not discern whether their discontent was because of their age or because of their different life experience. The new study, published online January 24 in Psychological Science, teased out the answer by examining 30 years of data on thousands of Americans, including psychological measures of mood and well-being, reports of job and relationship success, and objective measures of health.

The researchers found, after controlling for variables such as health, wealth, gender, ethnicity and education, that well-being increases over everyone's lifetime. But people who have lived through extreme hardship, such as the Great Depression, start off much less happy than those who have had more comfortable lives.

This finding helps to explain why past studies have found conflicting results—experience matters, and tough times can influence an entire generation's happiness for the rest of their lives. The good news is, no matter what we've lived through, we can all look forward to feeling more content as we age.
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