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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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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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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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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Self-awareness is an important part of happiness, but you have to be careful not to focus too much on yourself – to the point where you begin to confuse “self-awareness” for what is actually “self-indulgence.”

Self-awareness is a non-judgmental form of introspection that seeks to better understand yourself. But self-indulgence is a judgmental form of introspection that seeks to feed and protect your ego.

Both are forms of reflection, but they come from very different perspectives.

When your introspection comes from a place of “self-indulgence” it can turn into negative rumination – addictive and excessive thinking about ourselves that leads to depression, frustration, anger, and apathy.

If you want to be happier in your life, pay attention to the happiness of others.

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