The Emotion Machine

What makes one person different than another? Many may say it’s a combination of genes and environment, but recent neuroscience shows that it’s more than just that.

In an interesting study published in Science, neuroscientists studied the brains of 40 mice who were genetically identical and grew up in the same exact environment.

They found that despite these genetic and environmental similarities, the mice each culminated their own individual experiences which contributed to underlying changes in their brain’s wiring.

Due to these unique experiences, each mouse developed different brain and behavioral patterns while interacting with their environment, and over the course of 3 months these differences continued to increase in size over time.

Specifically, they noticed significant changes develop in the hippocampus, the part of the brain responsible for learning and memory.

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I’d rather do what I love and make a modest living than do what I hate to become rich and famous.

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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Don’t wait for that one big “enlightening” moment, just recognize the small insights of each and every day.

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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If you can’t explain to others why you believe the things you do, then it’s unlikely you can explain your beliefs to yourself – and that’s not a good sign.

It’s odd, but a lot of people seem to not know exactly what they believe until they are called upon to describe those beliefs and why they have them.

Instead, most of us take our beliefs for granted.

We feel strongly about our beliefs, even though we don’t think very critically about them, because deep-down we think we must have good reasons behind them, even if we aren’t fully aware of those reasons.

Upon reflection, however, we often find that our beliefs aren’t as sturdy and convincing as we initially thought. This is one of the main reasons we should frequently challenge our beliefs whenever possible.

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This is a 25 question quiz designed to assess if you are more of a “Big Picture” or “Detail Oriented” thinker.

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Inner peace means you don’t always need to smile to be happy.