Quitting smoking is a popular New Year’s resolution—but many have trouble sticking with it. “Many people underestimate how difficult it is to not only quit smoking, but to maintain the change.”
Modern citizenship in the West increasingly involves a duty to care for ourselves – to eat healthily, exercise enough and even screen ourselves for disease – to minimize our health-care costs to the state.
- By Karen Casey
Don’t let the past define the present. This is such an obvious idea that when I first encountered it my reaction was, “Of course! That’s not new information.” And then I promptly fell back into my normal way of seeing life that was through the lens of the past. I did this so unconsciously that I honestly didn’t see how powerful my attachment to the past had become over the years.
Do you really have sovereignty over own your mind anymore? Tristan Harris, a design thinker and former ethicist at Google, points to how smart phones changed our contract with advertisers, and our relationship with reality.
The mere thought of holiday traditions brings smiles to most people’s faces and elicits feelings of sweet anticipation and nostalgia. We can almost smell those candles, taste those special meals, hear those familiar songs in our minds.
At this time of year, readers worldwide turn to Charles Dickens, and A Christmas Carol in particular. Such is Dickens’ association with the season that a new film has even credited him with being “The Man Who Invented Christmas” with his famous tale. So did he? And what did Dickens really tell us in the pages of A Christmas Carol?
Good scientists are not only able to uncover patterns in the things they study, but to use this information to predict the future.
- By Lori Markson
There's one brain bias that affects 80% of adults and it has a familiar name you may not expect: optimism. It can be hugely helpful in our social lives and in keeping us motivated even if the trade off is, at times, the denial of reality.
So in the early days, including from the time of Aristotle and later in the 16th and 17th century most of physiognomy consisted of this whimsical comparisons between the physiognomy of humans and animals.
Motivation, rather than habit, drives addictive behavior in the face of adverse consequences and constantly changing circumstances, new research suggests. “We’re challenging the definition of addiction as a habit…”
Being by yourself—even for just 15 minutes—may decrease your strong positive and negative emotions, and instead reduce stress and induce calm, a new study suggests.
Black Friday is upon us once again. Deals for cut-price clothes, televisions, appliances – you name it – are popping up. And for a limited time only. While stocks last, you could snag a bargain before Christmas.
Mental health providers may want to take a closer look at including exercise in their patients’ treatment plans, a new study suggests. “Physical activity has been shown to be effective in alleviating mild to moderate depression and anxiety.”
My ears perked up when, in recent weeks, I heard Donald Trump and Ivan Pavlov mentioned twice in connection with each other.
Twin research has led to all kinds incredible insights into an important mystery: nature vs. nurture or how the environment and our genes affect our health.
Many of us listen to music while we work, thinking that it will help us to concentrate on the task at hand.
Hear the word psychopath and most of us think of violent, dominant men. There are lots of male psychopathic monsters from movies to illustrate this point. Think Alex in A Clockwork Orange, or Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.
October is a dismal time of year. The clocks go back, which accelerates the onset of darker evenings and the “shorter days” inevitably lead to calls for the tradition of putting clocks forward or backward to stop.
The first step to connection is to open ourselves to the possibility that we can survive the hurts and failures that inevitably accompany our humanity and that of those around us. Self-protection, in the long run, is self-destruction. If we hide out long enough...
A recent report showed there had been a steep rise in incidents of self harm among teenage girls. The findings, based on data from GP practices across the UK, show that self harm among girls aged 13 to 16 has risen by 68% in the past three years.
The phrase “rape culture” elicits strong responses. Prominent among them are confusion, scoffs, anger and even anonymous vitriol from internet “haters.”
Although the energy field of the heart has been proven to be quite powerful, in our culture today the voice of the heart is often muted or ignored altogether. When our heart’s intelligence isn’t activated, we can easily feel confused, or we may listen only to the voice of the head telling us what we should do.
Richard Thaler of the University of Chicago won the Nobel Prize for his extraordinary, world-transforming work in behavioral economics. Thaler demonstrated how nudging – or influencing people while fully maintaining freedom of choice – “may help people exercise better self-control when saving for a pension, as well in other contexts.”