The Emotion Machine

A ritual is any meaningful or symbolic behavior that we believe helps us face a situation or overcome an obstacle.

Our daily lives are filled with small rituals that we believe benefit our lives. For example, putting on your “lucky shirt” before a big date, or giving yourself a pep talk in front of a mirror before a job interview, or visualizing yourself scoring before you shoot a basketball.

While these rituals can often seem irrational and superstitious, research suggests that they may actually serve a positive function.

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I’d rather lose 10lbs over the course of a year and keep it off, than lose 10lbs in a week and gain it right back. Think long-term about your habits and goals.

Motivation is a psychological process that initiates, guides, and maintains goal-oriented behavior.

It begins with a particular goal in mind that we want to fulfill, then follows with the actions needed to make that goal into a tangible reality.

A goal can be anything we want to achieve: happiness, relationships, money, health, education, or whatever.

And whether we recognize it or not, we all have certain goals in life, even if they aren’t things we would normally consider “goals.”

This is because every action has an intention behind it. We feel a desire for something, then we take action to make it happen – even something as simple as feeling thirsty and grabbing a glass of water is a goal-oriented behavior.

This article gives you a mechanistic breakdown of how motivation works and things to keep in mind when pursuing long-term goals.

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Self-affirmations are a popular tool in self improvement. The basic idea is that we can adopt healthy, positive, and productive beliefs if we recite a belief enough times to ourselves.

For example, if we repeat a thought like “I’m a smart and happy person” 20 times every morning, then we may begin to actually believe that about ourselves, and thus act in ways that could make that belief a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Reciting these beliefs is said to work because increased repetition of certain thought patterns (and neural pathways) is said to condition our brains to begin thinking in these new ways. It’s kind of like working a muscle: the more repetitions you do, the stronger the thought will become.

This article is going to recap scientific evidence for the different ways self-affirmations have been shown to improve our lives.

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Taking responsibility is a form of empowerment. It teaches you that you’re more than just a rock stumbling down a hill - you have a say in what direction you go in life.

We commonly hear about the fear of failure, but could there also be a fear of success?

Most of us say we want success, but when we actually think about success it can have some major consequences that many of us aren’t willing to face.

Often instead of reaching our full potential as individuals, we sell ourselves short and settle for less, because we don’t feel we’re truly ready to handle the success we’re actually capable of.

The humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow wrote a lot about the concept of self-actualization – recognizing our full potential as individuals – and he shared compelling reasons many of us try to avoid this greatness in our lives.

This article will describe 4 key reasons why people tend to fear success. Simply becoming more aware of these reasons is a great starting point in accepting this fear and working to overcome it.

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A happy and successful life often requires a healthy sense of urgency to do the right things.

Many of us have a deep fear of failure.

We imagine it to be the worst thing possible in our lives: What happens if that person at the bar rejects me? What happens if my band does terrible during our first show? What happens if people say my new blog sucks?

We’re so afraid of what people may think about us that we end up never doing what we really want to do, because we’re scared that we are going to suck at it and embarrass ourselves in front of everyone.

If we want to reverse this pattern, we need to learn that not only is failure a necessary first step to success, it can also be kind of fun. That’s right, let me repeat that: failure isn’t so bad, it can actually be kind of fun.

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Do a quick Twitter search for “positive thinking” and you’ll find new tweets being shared every minute about people trying to stay more positive in their lives. It’s a buzzy catchphrase that a lot of people use very often, but without really answering the question, “What does it really mean?”

Everyone has their own definition, and I find some better than others. But instead of attacking a bunch of potential strawmen, I’ll just share my own thoughts about what “positive thinking” means to me and how it fits into my worldview.

I define positive thinking as any type of thinking that inspires us to accomplish something constructive with our lives. It’s a type of thinking meant not merely to make us feel good about ourselves, but to motivate us to take action and make a physical change.

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Interesting positivity hack I came across recently: Make your online passwords positive affirmations.

Just a few examples off the top of my head:

- “IGrowEveryday!”
- “This2ShallPass!”
- “ILiveInThePresent!”
- “1WithEverything!”
- “BeHappy!”

You get the idea. I’m going to change some of my main passwords tonight to something that resonates with me.