This week contains subjects that have not yet been fully scientifically validated.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_awe_buy_you_more_time_and_happiness
Experiencing awe—which psychologists define as the feeling we get when we come across something so strikingly vast in number, scope, or complexity that it alters the way we understand the world—might make us more generous with how we spend our time and improve our overall well-being.
"Awe-eliciting experiences might offer one effective solution to the feelings of time starvation that plague so many people in modern life."
As the researchers predicted, people who felt awe were less likely to feel impatient and more likely to volunteer their time than study participants who felt happiness.
However, awe did not make people more likely to donate money, suggesting that awe does not make people more generous in general. Instead, it was the sense that they had more time to spend that seems to have made participants more willing to lend a hand.
Nature, art and music invoke awe.
"Put yourself in situations where you're experiencing new things."
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/awe_boosts_health
Cytokines are proteins that signal the immune system to work harder.
"That awe, wonder and beauty promote healthier levels of cytokines suggests that the things we do to experience these emotions—a walk in nature, losing oneself in music, beholding art—has a direct influence upon health and life expectancy."
Awe is associated with curiosity and a desire to explore, suggesting antithetical behavioral responses to those found during inflammation, where individuals typically withdraw from others in their environment.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_awe_makes_us_generous
Participants recalled a time they felt awe—such as the view from a mountaintop or a brilliant ocean sunset—and then were asked to complete an ethical decision-making task. Once again, those who experienced awe demonstrated significantly more ethical behavior as compared to those who recalled other emotions such as pride.
Yet another experiment exposed different groups to an awe-inspiring nature video such as Planet Earth, a funny animal video, or a neutral video. Once again, people who experienced awe reported a feeling of a "small self" which triggered more generous behavior.
Awe binds people together—by causing them to want to share their positive experiences collectively with one another.
People who practice a spiritual path consistently report greater levels of happiness, the sense of community and being connected to something bigger are likely sources of joy.
Experiencing awe can jolt us out of a self-focused mindset, stirring feelings of wonder and inspiration by reminding us that we're a part of something larger than ourselves.
Experiencing awe may seem like something that requires travel to distant lands, but there are many opportunities closer to home—we just need to seek them out. This practice helps you do just that.
With the right outlook, awe can be found anywhere.
Once you have chosen where to go, during your walk consider these general guidelines:
Here are some more specific ideas for where to take an awe-inspiring walk:
Awe, the small self, and prosocial behavior.
Research suggests that awe has a way of lifting people outside of their usual selves and connecting them with something larger and more significant. This sense of broader connectedness and purpose can help relieve negative moods and improve happiness, and it can also make people more generous as it makes them less focused on themselves. Evoking feelings of awe may be especially helpful when people are feeling bogged down by day-to-day concerns.
What might be the deeper social and evolutionary functions of laughter?
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_do_we_laugh
Laughter can be so healing, it seems; "Laughter is the best medicine," the saying goes. But, is that really true? Does humor serve some adaptive purpose?
Laughter and humor help us process conflict in our environment through the dopamine that is released in our brains when we find something funny. Dopamine relieves tension.
"What elicits laughter isn't the content of the joke but the way our brain works through the conflict the joke elicits."
Take for example an old Groucho Marx joke: "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I don't know." Our brains will read the first sentence and be taken down a path imagining Grouch Marx on a safari in his pajamas, before we get the new image of the elephant actually inside his pajamas. That process of moving from one possible solution to the next involves a part of the brain called the anterior cingulate, or AC, which becomes more active when there are conflicting interpretations in the brain. The AC helps to quiet down the "louder" parts of the brain (associated with the expected response) to allow other quieter answers to emerge, and it's particularly active during jokes. It helps us to figure out the novel solution, which, when resolved, gets incorporated into the brain and gives us that spike of dopamine. This is why we feel so good when we get a joke.
If one tickles a rat by scratching its belly, it emits high-pitched laughter (normally outside of the human hearing range).
Experiments on humans have found that laughter can increase blood flow and strengthen the heart, much like aerobic exercise does.
Importantly, humor is also great for our social relationships. People list having a sense of humor as one of the most important traits in a mate. In classrooms, a humorous teacher makes learning more enjoyable and increases a student's motivation to learn.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/tickled_pink_why_scientists_want_make_rats_laugh
Laughter, this research suggests, isn't merely a way to signal joy. It may also be a vital, age-old tool used to promote social bonding and to help individuals improve their standing within a group.
Our tendency to laugh appears to be hardwired. Human babies, even those born both deaf and blind, will smile, gurgle, and laugh by the age of four months. It is precisely this more childlike, instinctive form of laughter that scientists believe they have uncovered in rats.
As rats age, their chirping generally becomes less frequent. However, rats who were tickled often when young usually retain their tendency to chirp later in life.
Primates use laugh-like vocalizations primarily when they're in a subordinate position, trying to appease a potential assailant.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/can_we_play
Play is crucial to physical, intellectual, and social- emotional development at all ages. This is especially true of the purest form of play: the unstructured, self-motivated, imaginative, independent kind.
In infancy and early childhood, play is the activity through which children learn to recognize colors and shapes, tastes and sounds—the very building blocks of reality. Play also provides pathways to love and social connection. Elementary school children use play to learn mutual respect, friendship, cooperation, and competition. For adolescents, play is a means of exploring possible identities, as well as a way to blow off steam and stay fit. Adults have the potential to unite play, love and work into flow.
Babbling, for example, is a self-initiated form of play through which infants create the sounds they need to learn the language of their parents.
Regular physical activity had positive effects on academic performance. Spending one third of the school day in physical education, art, and music improved not only physical fitness, but attitudes toward learning and test scores. These findings echo those from one analysis of 200 studies on the effects of exercise on cognitive functioning, which also suggests that physical activity promotes learning.
By pushing young children into team sports for which they are not developmentally ready, we rule out forms of play that once encouraged them to learn skills of independence and creativity. Instead of learning on their own in backyards, fields, and on sidewalks, children are only learning to do what adults tell them to do. Moreover, one study found that many children who start playing soccer at age four are burned out on that sport by the time they reach adolescence, just the age when they might truly enjoy and excel at it.
Play is motivated by pleasure. It is instinctive and part of the maturational process. We cannot prevent children from self-initiated play; they will engage in it whenever they can. The problem is that we have curtailed the time and opportunities for such play.
What is important is balance. If a child spends an hour on the computer or watching TV, equal time should be given to playing with peers or engaging in individual activities like reading or crafts. It is important to involve the child in making these decisions and setting the parameters for how they spend their time. If we give children some ownership of the rules, they are usually more willing to follow them than when they are simply imposed from above.
When teachers are forced to teach to the test, they become less innovative in their teaching methods, with less room for games and imagination.
In Scandinavian countries, there are play areas in even the best restaurants, as well as in airports and train stations. These countries appreciate the importance of play for healthy development, and we could well follow their example.
When we adults unite play, love, and work in our lives, we set an example that our children can follow. That just might be the best way to bring play back into the lives of our children—and build a more playful culture.
Children do as we do, not as we say. That gives us incentive to bring play back into our adult lives.
Narrating events of our lives brings relief and meaning. Our inner narrative provides a structure acting as a home.
Some scholars claim every engaging story has a structure called the dramatic arc. It starts with something new and surprising, and increases tension with difficulties that the characters must overcome, often because of some failure or crisis in their past, and then leads to a climax where the characters must look deep inside themselves to overcome the looming crisis, and once this transformation occurs, the story resolves itself.
Which practices feel like a good fit?
Success of positive activity interventions.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_be_happy_fine_print
Most of us want to be happy and stay that way, and research from positive psychology has shown that making a habit of certain day-to-day activities—like expressing gratitude, exercising, or performing acts of kindness—can help us get there.
People are different, and not every positive activity or combination of activities will affect people in the same ways. And so the first step in understanding what happiness practices might suit you is examining your personal traits and circumstances—and then adapting the practices to your lifestyle. Here are some factors to consider:
Extroverts may benefit most from positives activities that involve socializing and being surrounded by others, whereas religious people might prefer an activity with a spiritual component.
Practical details that influence whether a practice is effective:
Practices presented in the course:
To find out if an activity is good for you, try it.
Updated on 2020-07-22.