1: Think back to a moment that brought you joy.
“Choose a good moment from the last week, something that made you feel happy, hopeful, proud, or close to someone,” Kelly McGonigal suggests in her book Joy is a Risk Worth Taking.
Perhaps it’s “the pride and hope you feel when you make progress on a difficult goal that encourages you to keep striving.”
Or, perhaps it’s “the love … continue reading
1: So what exactly is happening in your brain when you experience joy?
Two interconnected systems, the reward system and the meaning system, work together, Kelly McGonigal writes in her new book Joy is a Risk Worth Taking.
“During a good moment,” Kelly notes, “these two brain systems communicate with each other to produce the essence of joy—a feeling of meaningful pleasure, uplift, or relief.”
She notes that your … continue reading
1: You might think joy would be an easy emotion to embrace, Kelly McGonigal writes in her new book Joy is a Risk Worth Taking.
“But if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the last decade of studying this emotion, it’s that for many people— even those who want more meaning, pleasure, connection, and hope in life—joy can be a hard feeling to trust.”
Why does this happen?
“Some … continue reading
1: “Joy is not, as many people believe, a frivolous or selfish emotion,” Kelly McGonigal writes in her new book Joy is a Risk Worth Taking.
“Nor is joy only possible when every aspect of life is going well.”
So, what is joy?
Kelly describes it as “the uplift you experience in moments that connect you to something that makes life worth living.” She adds, “It’s the flash of … continue reading
1: “I’ve only experienced joy a few times in my life,” Kelly McGonigal‘s eighty-year-old father said when she told him she was writing a book about joy.
She asked him what those experiences were.
“The first moment he shared happened in 1977, a few weeks after my twin sister and I were born,” Kelly writes in her new book Joy is a Risk Worth Taking. “My mom was … continue reading
1: Do you believe that all meaningful problems are deeply rooted and difficult to change?
David Yeager, a mindset researcher at the University of Texas at Austin, shares a story that reveals how deep people’s skepticism can run about the power of short interventions to improve people’s lives.
This week we’re examining multiple studies that show your mindset, or how you think about something, can have a profound impact … continue reading
1: Two-thirds of the housekeepers in Stanford Professor Alia Crum’s study believed they weren’t exercising regularly.
One-third said they got no exercise at all.
“Their bodies reflected this perception,” Kelly McGonigal notes in The Upside of Stress. “The average housekeeper’s blood pressure, waist-to-hip ratio, and body weight were exactly what you’d expect to find if they were truly sedentary.”
Their perception was their reality.
Which is different from … continue reading
1: Do people who have a positive attitude about aging live longer?
More than seven years longer, according to researchers at Yale University.
They followed middle-aged adults for twenty years. “Those who had a positive view of aging in midlife lived an average of 7.6 years longer than those who had a negative view,” writes Kelly McGonigal in her terrific book The Upside of Stress.
“To put that number … continue reading
1: Many people believe they are the only ones who don’t fit in.
“Feeling like you don’t belong can change how you interpret everything you experience,” writes Kelly McGonigal in her powerful book The Upside of Stress.
“Conversations, setbacks, misunderstandings,” she notes, “almost anything can be viewed as evidence that, in fact, you don’t belong.”
“The belief that you don’t belong also feeds into many destructive states of mind, … continue reading
1: You’ve got it all wrong.
You’ve been taught that stress is bad for you.
This belief is harmful, Kelly McGonigal argues in The Upside of Stress.
“The best way to manage stress isn’t to reduce or avoid it, but rather to rethink and even embrace it.”
The fight-or-flight survival instinct is part of your stress response. When something major happens, your sympathetic nervous system mobilizes your entire body.… continue reading
