Debate, opinions and Goals... for the Happiness is a Choice...Make It - a page and group (on facebook) - you can join

Debate, opinions and goals

 

·         Once in a while, we may assess what the purpose was and where we are

·         This group was started to improve the happiness level of its members and beyond

·         As opposed to other means: posters, cat (or macaw) pics- we were supposed to…

·         Refer to science: Positive Psychology in particular

·         Albeit not very engaged, members of the group read the posts and even like them

·         Once in a while…variety may be the secret…

·         This is why I have and will try to use different methods:

·         The gratitude model,

·         the movies example,

·         sharing experiments and

·         tests

·         I will avoid however the mistake of making this just another “timeline”

·         With motivational one-liners (or ten-liners) which are counter-productive:

·         Tal Ben-Shahar, Martin Seligman and others emphasize the danger of

·         Using pop-psychology or

·         other forms of “easy steps” or

·         obvious and therefore Useless “advice”:

·         “money can’t may manners, a good hair day and so on…”

·         I mean: come on, this is a different standard we need here

·         More on the subject at

 

Evaluation

·         We are trying- up to ten participate, at least with a “like”

·         A small number of new members has been added

·         We are a bit far from the initial, utopic goal of gaining a countrywide audience

·         On the positive side, in 100 years maybe we will

Accomplishments?

·         One positive soundbite probably sounds like:

·         “if you made one person happy- good for you

·         If you made a few happy, that is Paradise”

·         Well, maybe- but compared with the goals and possibilities

·         We have a long way to go

How?

·         We need more involvement from…you

·         Because the members we do have shy away from

·         Taking a front seat and sharing more

·         I keep trying to add more members- you could do that

Marketing

·         I have made some small flyers which I have given away

·         The result is a small increase of…one (1) member Valeriu

·         The sky is the limit…there’s another cliché – I will try and adapt the

·         Initial, enthusiastic purpose and be happy with just a few more each month

 

Why?

·         As the scientific studies we have shared here point out:

·         Positive Psychology works: not with easy steps

·         Not with happy photos giving easy, but wrong advice

·         But with some Demonstrated techniques and proven results

·          

Plan

·         I will to read the Positive Psychology Classics and share with you

·         The fabulous research in the field

·         For variety (a proven means to well being) I will include:

·         Tests like the one included below

·         Films with a positive Psychology message

·         Evaluations like this one and more

·         Feel free to engage, participate and share

 

As an example of an interesting study, here are those made by

Alfred Kinsey, Meston and Buss

 

Human Sexual Behavior

 

·         Engaging in sex feels good physically, emotionally and psychologically

·         Alfred Kinsey has studied sexual practices, with over 18,500 interviews:

·         Most people are not clearly defined as heterosexual or homosexual

·         50% of males and 26% of females admitted to extramarital affairs

·         Meston and Buss studied and found in 2007 -237 reasons why humans have sex:

·         Boredom, spiritual connections, sorry for person, power,

·         punish, hurt, love and many more

·         They interviewed 3,000 women

·         Sex results in better physical shape, reduced blood pressure, Increased immune

·         system functioning, reduced cancer (prostate) risk and a Longer Life

·         neurologically : the brain activates the “pleasure centre” releasing:

·         dopamine, serotonin, epinephrine and norepinephrine

·         after orgasm: prolactin, oxytocin- inducing feelings of relaxation, sedation

·         psychologically- sexual intercourse results:

·          increased self-esteem and confidence, reduced anxiety and depression and

·         Enhanced overall quality of life  (more with someone you care about,

·         than with strangers)

·         Sex can lead to self-development and growth, even eudaimonic happiness

Healthy, Happy and Long Life in studies

Healthy, Happy and Long Life in studies

 

·        
Studies
have been made involving thousands of people from

·        
Okinawa, Hawaii, Sardinia, Glasgow
and California.

·        
There
are some answers to the issues of healthy,
long life

·        
In
Okinawa, many people live to one hundred and even more

·        
They
eat a “Rainbow Diet” of orange, yellow and green vegetables

·        
And
fruit: carrots, peppers…with lots of Tofu and Soy

·        
The
elderly women are used to eat about 1,200 calories per day

·        
The
attitude to meals is: do not stand from
the table with a full belly

·        
About
80% full should do it

·        
Diet is definitely a reason for the
longevity, as a
study of people

·        
In
Hawaii, descending from Okinawa has proved:

·        
The
families of Okinawan descent have abandoned the Japanese diet

·        
And
have adopted a eating culture with lots of calories, resulting in

·        
Weight
gain and finally much shorter life expectancy

·        
Genes
have an important role to play, tested in Sardinia and Glasgow

·        
In
California, the impact of spirituality and religion has been studied-

·        
People who are religious or, if not
religious use spirituality to find a

·        
Higher meaning- live healthier,
happier and longer life

·        
As
tested and proved by Sonya Lyubomirsky-

<<Happiness Activity No 11: Practicing
Religion and Spirituality-

 becoming more involved in your
church, temple or mosque or

reading and pondering spiritually
themed books>>

·        
You
can find more by watching on youtube

·        
BBC
Horizon – How to live to 101 documentary which is also

·        
On
the BBC Knowledge channel, for those of you who have access to it

·        
One
can google for Okinawa diet, or role of genes,

·        
Spirituality
resulting in a long, happy life

Starving yourself on alternate days can make you live longer

There are some interesting findings from research on eating a minimum of calories. I have read about it in The Economist and The Daily Mail. On BBC Knowledge, The Horizon program has an episode on this issue:

·         every other day

·         2 days for every five of normal diet

·         Four about 86 hrs? about four days starvation

 

1.       One of these methods can help you live much longer and

2.       Decrease dramatically the chances that you get diabetes,

3.       cancer of the prostate, colon and some other benefits

4.       cholesterol is decreased astonishingly

from The Daily Mail:



Starving yourself on alternate days can make you live longer, according to scientists.
A group of Americans have said that fasting on and off can boost brain power and help to lose weight at the same time.
The National Institutes for Aging said their research was based on giving animals the bare minimum of calories required to keep them alive and results showed they lived up to twice as long.

+1

Nothing for me today: Starving yourself on alternate days can make you live longer, according to scientists

The diet has since been tested on humans and appears to protect the heart, circulatory system and brain against age-related diseases like Alzheimer's.
'Dietery energy restriction extends lifespan and protects the brain and cardiovascular system against age-related disease,' said Mark Mattson, head of the laboratory of neurosciences at the NIA and professor of neuroscience at John Hopkins University in Baltimore.

 

'We have found that dietary energy restriction, particularly when administered in intermittent bouts of major caloric restriction, such as alternative day fasting, activates cellular stress response pathways in neurones,' he said to the Sunday Times.
In one set of experiments, a group of mice were only fed on alternate days while others were allowed to eat daily.
Both groups were given unlimited access to food on the days they were allowed to eat and eventually consumed the same amount of calories.
Professor Mattson said he found the mice fed on alternate days were more sensitive to insulin and needed to produce less of it.
High levels of the hormone, which is produced to control sugar levels after a meal or snack, are usually associated with lower brain power and are at a higher risk of diabetes.

 

The brains from both sets of rodents were then examined and Professor Mattson said he found the calorie restricted diets appeared to improve the function of brain synapses.
These are the junctions between brain cells which promote the generation of new cells and make them more resistant to stress.
Previous research has found that starving yourself for a few days can help in the fight against cancer.
Scientists found that depriving healthy cells of the food they need sends them into a survival mode, making them highly resistant to stress and damage caused from chemotherapy.
Experts have described the behaviour similar to animals waiting out the winter by hibernating.

BBC Knowledge The Truth About Exercise The Chair Kills

BBC Knowledge The Truth About Exercise

“The Chair Kills”

I have read about these astonishing findings in The Economist. Recently, I have seen the documentary on BBC Knowledge (it is on right now, 15:30 May 1^st). The first astounding research talks about the length of the exercise and the second about sedentary, office work. It is useless to go every day for one hour to the gym, if you spend 12 hours on a chair. We need to get up and have some activity very hour, for a few minutes. You can learn more about this if you google it and watch, but I have placed what I have found on the subject at http://charlusguermantes.blogspot.ro/

 

 

The conclusion is…The Chair Kills!!

A few relatively short bursts of intense exercise, amounting to only a few minutes a week, can deliver many of the health and fitness benefits of hours of conventional exercise, according to new research, says Dr Michael Mosley. But how much benefit you get from either may well depend on your genes

Like many, Michael Mosley wants to get fitter and healthier but can't face hours on the treadmill or trips to the gym. Help may be at hand.

He uncovers the surprising new research which suggests many of us could benefit from just three minutes of high intensity exercise a week.

He discovers the hidden power of simple activities like walking and fidgeting, and finds out why some of us don't respond to exercise at all.

Using himself as a guinea pig, Michael uncovers the revealing new research about exercise, that has the power to make us all live longer and healthier lives

 

When I first read studies which suggested that I could make significant and measurable changes to my fitness by doing just three minutes of exercise a week, I was incredulous.

But this apparently outrageous claim is supported by many years of research done in a number of different countries including the UK, so I decided to give it a go.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Aerobic fitness is a measure of how good your heart and lungs are at getting oxygen into your body and is an excellent predictor of future health”

End Quote

My guide into the world of High Intensity Training (HIT), was Jamie Timmons, professor of ageing biology at Birmingham University.

Jamie assured me that by doing just three minutes of HIT a week for four weeks, I could expect to see significant changes in a number of important health indices.

The first, and the one I was most interested in, is insulin sensitivity. Insulin removes sugar from the blood, it controls fat and when it becomes ineffective you become diabetic.

My father was a diabetic and died from complications of that disease. Jamie assured me that research from a number of centres has shown that three minutes of HIT a week improves insulin sensitivity by an average of 24%.

The second improvement I was likely to see would be in my aerobic fitness. Aerobic fitness is a measure of how good your heart and lungs are at getting oxygen into your body and is an excellent predictor of future health. I asked Jamie why.

"The simple answer is we don't know," he replied. "What we do know is that it is a very, very powerful predictor of future health."

Genetic test

So if I could improve my insulin sensitivity and my aerobic fitness then that should improve my general health. But Jamie said there was a potential sting in the tail. There was a possibility that I wouldn't improve. Not because HIT doesn't work but because I've inherited the wrong genes.

Continue reading the main story

FIND OUT MORE

• Michael Mosley presents Horizon: The Truth About Exercise on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Tuesday 28 February 2012 or watch online via iplayer (UK only) afterwards at the above link

The fact is that people respond to exercise in very different ways. In one international study 1,000 people were asked to exercise four hours a week for 20 weeks. Their aerobic fitness was measured before and after starting this regime and the results were striking.

Although 15% of people made huge strides (so-called "super-responders"), 20% showed no real improvement at all ("non-responders").

There is no suggestion that the non-responders weren't exercising properly, it was simply that the exercise they were doing was not making them any aerobically fitter.

Jamie and his collaborators investigated the reasons for these variations and discovered that much of the difference could be traced to a small number of genes.

On the basis of this finding they have developed a genetic test to predict who is likely to be a responder, and who is not. Jamie offered me that test. But I would not be told the results until I had completed my HIT regime.

I agreed, had blood taken and went through some baseline tests to assess my starting point, fitness-wise. Then I began to do HIT.

Full throttle

It's actually very simple. You get on an exercise bike, warm up by doing gentle cycling for a couple of minutes, then go flat out for 20 seconds.

A couple of minutes to catch your breath, then another 20 seconds at full throttle. Another couple of minutes gentle cycling, then a final 20 seconds going hell for leather. And that's it.

Advertisement

Michael Mosley tries high intensity training

So how does it work? According to Jamie, and other researchers I spoke to, part of the explanation is (probably) that HIT uses far more of our muscle tissue than classic aerobic exercise.

When you do HIT, you are using not just the leg muscles, but also the upper body including arms and shoulders, so that 80% of the body's muscle cells are activated, compared to 20-40% for walking or moderate intensity jogging or cycling.

Active exercise also seems to be needed to break down the body's stores of glucose, deposited in your muscles as a substance called glycogen. Smash up these glycogen stores and you create room for more glucose to be sucked out of the blood and stored.

Somewhat sceptical I went off and dutifully did my four weeks of HIT, making a grand total of 12 minutes of intense exercise and 36 minutes of gentle pedalling. I then went back to the lab to be retested.

Continue reading the main story

HEALTH AND EXERCISE

• Many kinds of exercise can provide a health benefit. Read tips on choosing exercise which may suit you.
• If you are worried about your weight, you can calculate your body mass index (BMI), and read more general advice about weight and diet.

The results were mixed. My insulin sensitivity had improved by a remarkable 24%, which was extremely satisfying, but my aerobic fitness had not improved at all.

I was crestfallen, but Jamie was not surprised. It turns out that the genetic test they had done on me had suggested I was a non-responder and however much exercise I had done, and of whatever form, my aerobic fitness would not have improved. My dreams of winning Olympic gold ended there and then.

I will continue doing HIT because I can see the benefits. It won't suit everyone, because although it is short, it is extremely intense. Like any new exercise regime if you have a pre-existing medical condition you should consult your doctor before trying it.

Michael Mosley presents Horizon: The Truth About Exercise is on BBC Two at 21:00 GMT on Tuesday 28 February 2012 or watch online afterwards at the above link.

 

My Voice Will Go With You By Milton Erickson, edited by Sidney Rosen

My Voice Will Go With You by Milton Erikson, Sidney Rosen

 

It is for good reason that My Voice Will Go With You has been included among the classics of psychology. The book from which I had learned about Milton Erikson has probably changed my life and is called 50 Psychology Classics, which has listed among other great books, the one recommended here. Many , if not most of the stories told in the book (some of them resumed here and on the blog) recall the Pygmalion Effect and the revelations about astonishing power of the human mind…„Therapy is liking spiting in someone’s soup- they could eat it, but won’t like it”

My Voice Will Go With You is about a famous, great psychologist Eriksson, who had a method of hypnotizing his patients, telling them the exact, appropriate story for their condition. Last night I was reading the episode with this woman who made love mechanically, without any pleasure. Eriksson told her how boys masturbate and their ancestors did the same …half of the ancestors of these boys being women. He told the woman about these ancestors in order to induce in her the idea that she can have pleasure and she did: while Eriksson was telling his story the woman exclaimed: “doctor Erikson, you are the first man who gave me an orgasm” and ever since, she changed her partner and enjoyed orgasms every time she made love -she experienced one or two or three orgasms…wow.

 

Another interesting fact learned from this book is that acne can be cured in a strange way, yet simple way. A woman came to see Doctor Erikson because her son suffered from severe acne. The doctor advised her to take her son on a holiday, in a cabin where all mirrors have to be removed. Indeed, after spending 10 days there, the young man was cured and other people as well, using the same technique: not being able to see their faces, their acne- cured the condition.

 

I wish I could meet someone who could hypnotize me. Doctor Erikson suggests to a patient under hypnosis to win in the first step the bronze medal and then twice the gold medal, at the Olympic Games.

A case which has attracted my attention regards weight loss. Here we have a few women who wanted to lose weight, the first one came to the doctor’s office with very long nails, which have been very well noticed by Milton Erikson. But this woman was not really willing to make an effort to be slimer and wouldn’t obey the prescription, so she abandoned trhe cure. The other women lost weight, in one situation with an unuasula method: she was made to gain weight to begin with, in order to break the pattern, because her experience with dieting was: lose weight and then put it back, lose and gain it again, and again. By changing the usual habit, the doctor was successful.

With another patient, divorce was avoided.

 

I keep reading from this interesting book and I reached the story of the “pianist”, who was obliged by his mother to play the piano for Four hours! Each day. The boy found this routine excruciating and started biting his nails. With time, the nails almost vanished, with the boy “eating „into his fingers. There was blood on the piano, but the mother did not give up her obsession. To make matter worse, the father insisted on the boy going to medical school, in spite of his lack of interest. Because the already grown young man had no desire to graduate medical school, he cheated in the open, in order to be excluded. The father wanted Doctor Milton Eriksson to cure his son’s habit of biting his fingers, convinced that it was because of his horrible hands that the medical schools denied his applications.

Doctor Eriksson understood what the problem was, through hypnosis cured the biting and encouraged the man to use his well developed skills as a musician, which he applied playing the organ. The young man graduated Law School, helped his brother become a car dealer and the two of them together helped their younger sister.

There are a few other patients who are cured of claustrophobia, with the doors and windows being closed inch by inch.

There’s so much one can do with the help of hypnosis!! Any of you know about this? Could you hypnotize me?? I am interested: let me know!

……….

In another story a policeman is cured of drinking, eating too much and smoking. He had grocery, liquor store and a habit of getting cartons of cigarettes. By telling him to walk a lot in between drinks and to buy groceries for one meal only, plus to buy only one pack of cigarettes at a time, Eriksson made this patient conscious of what he was doing. The doctor agreed with the patient, encouraged him to have as many drinks as he wanted, but to walk a mile to another bar in order to get another drink.

 

Whistleberries

A girl was in the classroom, when she farted. She ran away from there, locked herself into the room and wouldn’t leave. She contacted doctor Eriksson, who gave her a cure: to cook beans, known as whistleberries, eat them and dance, allowing for verious farts, while she jumped around, naked. Milton Eriksson explained the complexity and difficulty in keeping solid and fluid substances inside the body and leting only gas come out. The woman was cured.

Cinamon Face

The girl in this story hated everybody, because she was called freckles. The way out was a joke. The doctor told the girl he knew she stole cookies from a cinamon cookie jar, the girl laughed and got over her issue

Psoriasis

A woman cmplained to the doctor that she had dandruff all over her body. Milton Ericksson said that she only had a third of the dandruff she had estimated and this way he treated yet another patient.

No erection

This time there is a man who had had his first sexual experience in a bawdy house and found it terrible. After that, for twenty years he had no erection, even if tried and paid various women. He found a woman he loved and wanted to marry, but still did not get an erection. Doctor Eriksson talked with the man’s would-be wife and told her to prevent the man from touching her breasts, genitalia, anything. After a few weeks, the man „raped” the woman and got over his problem. This was because the doctor moved the issue, the problem outside the man.

 

Slurp, Slurp

In this story we meet a girl who was sucking her thumb. Here we learn that „Therapy is liking spiting in someone’s soup- they could eat it, but won’t like it” Doctor Ericksson tells the girl that she could suck her thumb, but should do it properly, with something like a program, 20 minutes at a time, especially for those she didn’t like. Making the act conscious, as opposed to unconscious as she had done it before and making it something of an obligation, the girl was cured.

 

Learning by experience

Milton Eriksson says that we best learn by experinece: take the case of swiming, if we try it on a chair it wouldn’t do-we have to learn it in the water. We learn about the man who gave his kids to taste engine oil, to smell amoniac...so that they will be careful when the time will come to taste cigarettes, alcohol or drugs.

 

There are some controversial aspects: at one point there is a little spanking, which is against the law today, even if mild...as well as holding a child for a few hours, which, even without aggression, any violence is not cusher and may again be outside the law nowadays. On the whole, the book is very good and an excellent, even entertaining read.

Positive Psychology at Harvard, the most popular lectures ever

As
mentioned before on this page, Tal Ben-Shahar is the most popular lecturer at
Harvard. His Positive Psychology course has attracted about 1,400 students,
roughly one in four. I had the chance to listen to his lectures and if at first
I was struck by their simplicity, later on I gathered that their accessibility is
intentional and to the point. Some of the catch phrases used by Tal Ben- Shahar
have stayed with me:

·       
“Be
a merit finder, not a fault finder

·       
Words
create worlds

·       
Learn
to fail or fail to learn

The acclaimed
professor and writer uses jokes, movie clips- one from Pay It Forward, comedy excerpts
from Seinfeld or Ellen de Generes. There are personal stories and anecdotes
(one about Michelangelo, for instance) which make the lectures exiting,
entertaining and meaningful. There are some points where Ben-Shahar differs
with Sonja Lyubomirsky or Ed Diener, but we can’t all see everything in exactly
the same light.

One story I
remember more or less is from the Jewish ancient wisdom:

“A man goes
to the rabbi to ask for advice- he is overwhelmed with the children, the farm
and all the things that he has to do:

-        
What
can I do rabbi, I can’t face it any more

-        
Do
you have chicken?

-        
Yes,
but what does this have to do with…

-        
Put
them in the house…

-        
But
rabbi!! What good will that do?! It will be…

-        
You
want my advice? There it is, use it and come in a week

After a week, the rabbi asks”

-        
Well?
How is it?

-        
Very
bad! It is not working!!

-        
Do
you have pigs?

-        
Yes,
but…

-        
Put
them in the house

-        
This
is terrible rabbi

-        
Listen
to me and come in a week

In a week, we have the same conversation, only this time the rabbi says:

-        
Do
you have a horse? Put it in the house

-        
Rabbi,
I can’t stand it!!! It is a mess already!!

-        
Come
back in a week

After a week, relief at last:

-Well?

- It’s awful rabbi, I feel like shit

-Take all the animals out and come back

 

A week has passed and the farmer is back. The rabbi asks him:

-        
How
is it now?

-        
Heaven
rabbi

The point
is that we should be happy with our life and feel gratitude for what we have: “Be
a merit finder, not a fault finder”

From The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

In a nutshell, what I found interesting:

·         Six Degrees of Separation:

·         The theory is that we all connect through six degrees of separation.

·         The Broken Windows theory

·          It was used in dealing with and decreasing crime in places like New York.

·         If a neighborhood has broken windows, pretty soon it will have more crime and violence on the streets. The same things with graffiti-Disorder, broken windows provoke a feeling that crime is all right, the sense that there is no order; the sense that there is no authority allows crime to increase and turn to its more violent forms.

·         When they started painting over or erasing graffiti, cracking down on “petty” crime, policemen in New York discovered that they found guns on many of the people who committed these “small” offences. When they started sending people to jail for peeing in public places, the level of crime got down: In fact The Economist had the lowering level of crime on its cover and discussed in its lead article, in an issue from 2013

·         One surprise: children are better off with a bad family in a good neighborhood than vice versa: with a good family but living in a rotten area. I wonder how I should rate my gated community of self absorbed nouveaux riches…you think I am being pretentious? Pretentious, moi? The end is a joke from Fawlty Towers, starring John Cleese.