-
Gratitude pays big dividends
The Boston Globe: The season to pause and give thanks is at hand. As we prepare to gather around hearth and table, some may hold a resigned sense that though they’ll go through the motions and say the right things — the things you’re supposed to say at Thanksgiving — they might not truly feel gratitude in their hearts. It’s like saying “I’m happy for you” to someone who just got the job you wanted. The words and the feelings just don’t match. This disconnect is unfortunate. It comes from a somewhat misguided view that gratitude is all about looking backward — back to what has already been. But in reality, that’s not how gratitude truly works.
-
Teaching Lessons
The New York Times: How do we help students achieve academically and socially? As a teacher, I have lofty answers. But challenges — and questions — arise when I try to translate my ideas (and ideals) into concrete lessons, delivered in 90-minute increments to a very particular set of sixth graders, each as individual and evanescent as a snowflake. To help teachers succeed, schools offer “professional development,” universally known as P.D. Like a lot of teachers, I’ve come to regard such training with a mix of optimism and disappointment. Over the last 20 years, I’ve attended more education “workshops” than I care to remember.
-
Does your pet have a costume yet?
MSN: Americans will spend a whopping $370 million on Halloween costumes for their pets this year, Time magazine reports. That's a massive $60 million jump over last year's projection by the National Retail Federation. In fact, the NRF says that of the 70% of Americans who plan to celebrate Halloween, 15.1% said their plans include a cute little outfit for their pet. Does that strike you as odd? Families will spend three times more to outfit their kids for Halloween, we've read, but still. My dogs would not be amused, and cats would be even less tolerant, one would think. Why do we do this?
-
Some Don’t Live to Earn, but Earn to Live
The Wall Street Journal: For most people, the key to retiring early is accumulating enough money to live out your days in your chosen style. For Fred Ecks, a former software engineer for Sun Microsystems, the answer lies on the other side of the balance sheet: on cutting costs to a bare minimum. Now 46 years old, Mr. Ecks was 35 when he stopped working for money. He was fed up with long work hours and the fatigue he felt from poor nutrition and lack of exercise. Mr. Ecks came across a book that introduced the concept that your money represents your life energy, and if you waste your money, you are actually throwing away your own time. Read the whole story: The Wall Street Journal
-
Wandering Minds Are Associated With Aging Cells
Scientific studies have suggested that a wandering mind is linked with unhappiness, whereas a mind that is present in the moment is linked with well-being. Now, a preliminary study suggests a possible connection between mind wandering and aging, by looking at a biological measure of longevity. In the new study, psychological scientist Elissa Epel and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco examined the relationship between telomere length, an emerging biomarker for cellular and general bodily aging, and the tendency to be present in the moment or to mind wander in 239 healthy women who were 50 to 65 years old.
-
Embattled Childhoods May Be the Real Trauma for Soldiers With PTSD
New research on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in soldiers challenges popular assumptions about the origins and trajectory of PTSD, providing evidence that traumatic experiences in childhood - not combat - may predict which soldiers develop the disorder. Psychological scientist Dorthe Berntsen of Aarhus University in Denmark and a team of Danish and American researchers wanted to understand why some soldiers develop PTSD but others don’t. They also wanted to develop a clearer understanding of how the symptoms of the disorder progress.
