All major causes of death vs smoking

Cause of Death	How to Prevent These Deaths	2010 Deaths
AIDS	condoms, education, research	12,113
Asthma	no prevention, only treatment	3,613
Auto Accidents	seatbelts, airbags, highway safety, training	45,316
Bike Accidents	reflectors, lights, helmets and training	714
Breast Cancer	mammography and medical research	41,210
Diabetes	medical research	72,449
Drowning	life jackets, swimming lessons, supervision	3,579
Influenza	treatment, vaccines	849
Falls	awareness, safety harnesses and helmets	20,823
Fires & Burns	alarms, extinguishers, education and planning	3,109
Gun Accidents	deprive children of access and hunter training	642
Hepatitis	vaccine (A&B) and clean needles & testing (C)	7,250
Illegal/Legal Drugs	motivation, education and support	24,400
Leukemia	research, exercise, diet, and no tobacco	21,944
Lightening	stay indoors and wear rubber shoes	57
Liver Disease	sound diet, max. 2 oz. of alcohol, research	27,555
Meningitis	vaccinations	634
Murder	police, courts, prisons, awareness	18,573
Poisoning	secure cleaning fluids, poisons and pills	27,531
Prostate Cancer	testing, exercise, diet, research	28,372
Shark Attacks	awareness, education	1
Skin Cancer	limit sun exposure, use screening products	8,441
Snake Bites	awareness, boots, vaccines	5
Suicide	counseling, medication and love	33,300
Syphilis	abstinence, condoms, education	36
Tuberculosis	treatment, vaccine, education	652
Ulcers	avoid tobacco, alcohol and caffeine	3,323
	TOTAL OF ALL OF THE ABOVE	397,479
SMOKING	TOTAL ANNUAL U.S. SMOKING DEATHS	443,000
Death by Tobacco Suicide?  Murder?  Accident?  Stupidity? Hypnotherapy saves lives! Quit today!

Fad Diets Are Not Diets

ANOTHER FAD DIET TO SUCK YOU IN! 

Another ridiculous diet is sweeping through the celebrity ranks, according to recent reports. It's the lollypop diet, and its fans are said to include Paris Hilton, Madonna and Britney Spears. But before you race to the confectionery aisle, take not that it's not just any candied sugar-on-a-stick that helps you shed the kilos, the lollies are specially made and include ingredients that Canadian makers claim are appetite suppressants, although the jury is out on whether they actually have any weight-loss power at all...

We're getting fatter and fatter.

By the year 2030, Half the world's adult population could be obese or clinically overweight if the present trends continue, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global institute. [ Courier Mail Body and soul article]

10 Things You May Not Know About Laughter

10 Things You May Not Know About Laughter 

 

November 13, 2014      131,679 views

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If you want to communicate with someone from across the globe who speaks a different language, all you have to do is laugh. Laughter is a form of communication that’s universally recognized, which suggests it has deep importance to humankind.¹

It's thought that laughter may have occurred before humans could speak as a playful way for mothers and infants to communicate, as a form of play vocalization, or to strengthen group bonds. Even today our brains are wired to prime us to smile or laugh when we hear others laughing.

Yet, laughter is a largely involuntary response; it’s not generally something you can force yourself to do. Instead, laughter is thought to be triggered by mechanisms in your brain and impacts breathing patterns, facial expressions, and even the muscles in your arms and legs.

It plays a role in your health, too, and has many quirks and mysteries that make it one of the most fascinating physical reactions that a human (and certain other species) can make.

10 Fascinating Facts About Laughter

Professor Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist and stand-up comic, put together these surprising facts about laughter. 

1. Rats Laugh When They’re Tickled

Rats laugh when they’re tickled, and the more they play together, the more they laugh. Psychologist Jack Panksepp first observed laughing rats in the 1990s; he needed special equipment to hear it, as rats’ laughs are very high pitched.

2. You’re More Likely to Laugh Around Others – Not Because of Jokes

If you're laughing, you're far more likely to be surrounded by others, according to research by laughter expert Dr. Robert Provine. The critical laughter trigger for most people is another person, not a joke or funny movie.

After observing 1,200 people laughing in their natural environments, Dr. Provine and his team found that laughter followed jokes only about 10-20 percent of the time. Social laughter occurs 30 times more frequently than solitary laughter.

In most cases, the laughter followed a banal comment or only slightly humorous one, which signals that the person is more important than the material in triggering laughter.

3. Your Brain Can Detect Fake Laughter

Professor Scott’s research has shown that your brain can tell the difference between real or staged laughter. When you hear staged, or deliberate, laughter, it prompts more activity in your brain’s anterior medial prefrontal cortex, which helps you understand other people’s emotions.

This suggests your brain automatically goes to work deciphering why someone is deliberately laughing.

4. Laughter Is Contagious

The saying "laugh and the whole world laughs with you" is more than just an expression: laughter really is contagious. The sound of laughter triggers regions in the premotor cortical region of your brain, which is involved in moving your facial muscles to correspond with sound and prepare to join in.³

5. Jokes Are Funnier if You Know the Comedian

Familiarity is a key part of humor and laughter, and research shows people find jokes told by famous comedians to be funnier than the same joke told by someone they’re not familiar with.

6. Laughing Burns Calories

Laughing raises both your energy expenditure and heart rate by about 10 percent to 20 percent. This means you could burn about 10-40 calories by laughing for 10 to 15 minutes. While this sounds good in theory, you’d have to laugh solidly for an hour or more for this calorie burning to have any meaningful effect.

7. Laughing Is Good for Your Relationships

Research shows that couples who use laughter and smile when discussing a touchy subject feel better in the immediacy and report higher levels of satisfaction in their relationship. They also tend to stay together longer.

8. Laughter Requires Timing

Laughter has a distinctive pattern. It rarely occurs in the middle of a sentence. Instead, laughter tends to occur at the end of sentences or during a break in speech, which suggests language is given the priority. According to Dr. Provine:⁴

"The occurrence of speaker laughter at the end of phrases suggests that a neurologically based process governs the placement of laughter in speech.

Different brain regions are involved in the expression of cognitively oriented speech and the more emotion-laden vocalization of laughter."

Comedians also use the natural tendency for laughter to grow and fade to their advantage, and will leave spaces at the end of a sentence for the audience to fill in with laughter.

9. Laughter Is Attractive

Research by Dr. Provine found that women laugh 126 percent more than men in cross-gender conversations, with men preferring to be the one prompting the laughter.

In a review of more than 3,700 newspaper personal ads, Dr. Provine revealed that women were 62 percent more likely to mention laughter, including seeking a mate with a sense of humor, while men were more likely to offer humor in their ads.

10. Some Things Can Make Virtually Everyone Laugh

While there’s no one joke that makes everyone laugh, Professor Scott found that one of the best tools for making people laugh in her lab is a clip of people trying not to laugh in a situation where it would be highly inappropriate to do so.

Laughter Is Good for Your Memory Too

Researchers at California's Loma Linda University looked into the role that humor can have on your health. They broke 20 older adults into two groups – one that watched funny videos and one that sat silently for 20 minutes. Before and after the session, both groups took a short-term memory test…

The humor group showed significantly more improvement on the test, 43.6 percent compared to 20 percent in the non-humor group.⁵ Those in the humor group also had significantly lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol. According to the researchers, laughter represents an enjoyable tool to help counteract age-related memory decline in older adults:

“The study's findings suggest that humor can have clinical benefits and rehabilitative implications and can be implemented in programs that support whole-person wellness for older adults. Learning ability and delayed recall are important to these individuals for a better quality of life--considering mind, body, spirit, social, and economic aspects. Older adults may have age-associated memory deficiencies. However, medical practitioners now can offer positive, enjoyable, and beneficial humor therapies to improve these deficiencies.”

Laughter Enhances Immunity, Improves Sleep, and More

What else is laughter good for? Research has shown laughter may reduce stress hormones and boost your immune function,⁶ while also inducing optimistic feelings.⁷ Laughter has demonstrated a wealth of physiological, psychological, social, spiritual, and quality-of-life benefits, such that increasing numbers of health care centers are adopting laughter therapy as a form of complementary care. Opportunities that provide for group laughter, such as laughter yoga and laugh parties, are also becoming increasingly popular around the world. Just a short list of the benefits of laughter therapy are noted below:

Relaxing your muscles	Triggering the release of your body's natural painkillers (endorphins)	Improving sleep
Enhancing creativity and memory	Easing digestion	Enhancing oxygen intake
Improving well-being and positive emotions	Boosting immune function	Improving blood pressure

Laugh Each and Every Day

Children laugh easily and often, but adults may forget to make room for laughter in their daily lives. If you can, incorporate laughter into your daily routine by finding what makes you laugh. Remember that you’re more likely to laugh in the company of others, so try to find the humor in life when you’re spending time with friends, family, and co-workers.

Some experts even recommend everyone get 15 to 20 minutes of laughter a day, much like you should exercise regularly and eat your vegetables. If you haven’t had your daily dose of laughter yet, check out the video below. It’s living proof that laughter is contagious…

By Dr. Mercola Internet article

70% ???!!!

70% is the percentage of kids aged between 11 and 17 who have at least two communication devices in their bedroom at night -  and they're stealing from their sleep, the Woolcock Institute of Medical Research in Sydney warns.  [Courier Mail Body & Soul article]

Kids learn how to be nice from adults

 Our little bundles of joy aren't born being kind and considerate -  they need a helping hand from adults in the form of play, new U.S. research shows.

The recent Stanford University study found that children who engaged in reciprocal play with adults demonstrated greater generosity and a greater willingness to help others.  The researchers believe this is because the adults were modelling that kind of behaviour.   [Courier Mail Body & Soul article]

The Most Important Question of Your Life

November 6, 20137 minute readby Mark Manson

Everybody wants what feels good. Everyone wants to live a carefree, happy and easy life, to fall in love and have amazing sex and relationships, to look perfect and make money and be popular and well-respected and admired and a total baller to the point that people part like the Red Sea when you walk into the room.

Everyone would like that — it’s easy to like that.
If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything.
A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.
Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence — but not everyone wants to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle hell. People want to be rich without the risk, without the sacrifice, without the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.
Everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship — but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings and the emotional psychodrama to get there. And so they settle. They settle and wonder “What if?” for years and years and until the question morphs from “What if?” into “Was that it?” And when the lawyers go home and the alimony check is in the mail they say, “What was that for?” if not for their lowered standards and expectations 20 years prior, then what for?
Because happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life.
At the core of all human behavior, our needs are more or less similar. Positive experience is easy to handle. It’s negative experience that we all, by definition, struggle with. Therefore, what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings.
People want an amazing physique. But you don’t end up with one unless you legitimately appreciate the pain and physical stress that comes with living inside a gym for hour upon hour, unless you love calculating and calibrating the food you eat, planning your life out in tiny plate-sized portions.
People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don’t end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to appreciate the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and working insane hours on something you have no idea whether will be successful or not.
People want a partner, a spouse. But you don’t end up attracting someone amazing without appreciating the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It’s part of the game of love. You can’t win if you don’t play.
What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.
There’s a lot of crappy advice out there that says, “You’ve just got to want it enough!”
Everybody wants something. And everybody wants something enough. They just aren’t aware of what it is they want, or rather, what they want “enough.”
Because if you want the benefits of something in life, you have to also want the costs. If you want the beach body, you have to want the sweat, the soreness, the early mornings, and the hunger pangs. If you want the yacht, you have to also want the late nights, the risky business moves, and the possibility of pissing off a person or ten thousand.
If you find yourself wanting something month after month, year after year, yet nothing happens and you never come any closer to it, then maybe what you actually want is a fantasy, an idealization, an image and a false promise. Maybe what you want isn’t what you want, you just enjoy wanting. Maybe you don’t actually want it at all.
Sometimes I ask people, “How do you choose to suffer?” These people tilt their heads and look at me like I have twelve noses. But I ask because that tells me far more about you than your desires and fantasies. Because you have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns. And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar answers. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain?
That answer will actually get you somewhere. It’s the question that can change your life. It’s what makes me me and you you. It’s what defines us and separates us and ultimately brings us together.
For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I fantasized about being a musician — a rock star, in particular. Any badass guitar song I heard, I would always close my eyes and envision myself up on stage playing it to the screams of the crowd, people absolutely losing their minds to my sweet finger-noodling. This fantasy could keep me occupied for hours on end. The fantasizing continued up through college, even after I dropped out of music school and stopped playing seriously. But even then it was never a question of if I’d ever be up playing in front of screaming crowds, but when. I was biding my time before I could invest the proper amount of time and effort into getting out there and making it work. First, I needed to finish school. Then, I needed to make money. Then, I needed to find time. Then… and then nothing.
Despite fantasizing about this for over half of my life, the reality never came. And it took me a long time and a lot of negative experiences to finally figure out why: I didn’t actually want it.
I was in love with the result — the image of me on stage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I’m playing — but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough to fail at it. I hardly tried at all.
The daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, the pain of finding gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a shit. The broken strings, the blown tube amp, hauling 40 pounds of gear to and from rehearsals with no car. It’s a mountain of a dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what it took me a long time to discover is that I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the top.
Our culture would tell me that I’ve somehow failed myself, that I’m a quitter or a loser. Self-help would say that I either wasn’t courageous enough, determined enough or I didn’t believe in myself enough. The entrepreneurial/start up crowd would tell me that I chickened out on my dream and gave in to my conventional social conditioning. I’d be told to do affirmations or join a mastermind group or manifest or something.
But the truth is far less interesting than that: I thought I wanted something, but it turns out I didn’t. End of story.
I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love not with the fight but only the victory. And life doesn’t work that way.
Who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for. People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who get in good shape. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who move up it. People who enjoy the stresses and uncertainty of the starving artist lifestyle are ultimately the ones who live it and make it.
This is not a call for willpower or “grit.” This is not another admonishment of “no pain, no gain.”
This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes. So choose your struggles wisely, my friend.

7 Strange Questions That Help You Find Your Life Purpose

September 18, 2014 14 minute read by Mark Manson

One day, when my brother was 18, he waltzed into the living room and proudly announced to my mother and me that one day he was going to be a senator. My mom probably gave him the “That’s nice, dear,” treatment while I’m sure I was distracted by a bowl of Cheerios or something.

But for fifteen years, this purpose informed all of my brother’s life decisions: what he studied in school, where he chose to live, who he connected with and even what he did with many of his vacations and weekends.
And now, after almost half a lifetime of work later, he’s the chairman of a major political party in his city and the youngest judge in the state. In the next few years, he hopes to run for office for the first time.
Don’t get me wrong. My brother is a freak. This basically never happens.
Most of us have no clue what we want to do with our lives. Even after we finish school. Even after we get a job. Even after we’re making money. Between ages 18 and 25, I changed career aspirations more often than I changed my underwear. And even after I had a business, it wasn’t until I was 28 that I clearly defined what I wanted for my life.
Chances are you’re more like me and have no clue what you want to do. It’s a struggle almost every adult goes through. “What do I want to do with my life?” “What am I passionate about?” “What do I not suck at?” I often receive emails from people in their 40s and 50s who still have no clue what they want to do with themselves.
Part of the problem is the concept of “life purpose” itself. The idea that we were each born for some higher purpose and it’s now our cosmic mission to find it. This is the same kind of shitty logic used to justify things like spirit crystals or that your lucky number is 34 (but only on Tuesdays or during full moons).
Here’s the truth. We exist on this earth for some undetermined period of time. During that time we do things. Some of these things are important. Some of them are unimportant. And those important things give our lives meaning and happiness. The unimportant ones basically just kill time.
So when people say, “What should I do with my life?” or “What is my life purpose?” what they’re actually asking is: “What can I do with my time that is important?”
This is an infinitely better question to ask. It’s far more manageable and it doesn’t have all of the ridiculous baggage that the “life purpose” question does. There’s no reason for you to be contemplating the cosmic significance of your life while sitting on your couch all day eating Doritos. Rather, you should be getting off your ass and discovering what feels important to you.
One of the most common email questions I get is people asking me what they should do with their lives, what their “life purpose” is. This is an impossible question for me to answer. After all, for all I know, this person is really into knitting sweaters for kittens or filming gay bondage porn in their basement. I have no clue. Who am I to say what’s right or what’s important to them?
But after some research, I have put together a series of questions to help you figure out for yourself what is important to you and what can add more meaning to your life.
These questions are by no means exhaustive or definitive. In fact, they’re a little bit ridiculous. But I made them that way because discovering purpose in our lives should be something that’s fun and interesting, not a chore.

1. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE FLAVOR OF SHIT SANDWICH AND DOES IT COME WITH AN OLIVE?

Ah, yes. The all-important question. What flavor of shit sandwich would you like to eat? Because here’s the sticky little truth about life that they don’t tell you at high school pep rallies:
Everything sucks, some of the time.
Now, that probably sounds incredibly pessimistic of me. And you may be thinking, “Hey Mr. Manson, turn that frown upside down.” But I actually think this is a liberating idea.
Everything involves sacrifice. Everything includes some sort of cost. Nothing is pleasurable or uplifting all of the time. So the question becomes: what struggle or sacrifice are you willing to tolerate? Ultimately, what determines our ability to stick with something we care about is our ability to handle the rough patches and ride out the inevitable rotten days.
If you want to be a brilliant tech entrepreneur, but you can’t handle failure, then you’re not going to make it far. If you want to be a professional artist, but you aren’t willing to see your work rejected hundreds, if not thousands of times, then you’re done before you start. If you want to be a hotshot court lawyer, but can’t stand the 80-hour workweeks, then I’ve got bad news for you.
What unpleasant experiences are you able to handle? Are you able to stay up all night coding? Are you able to put off starting a family for 10 years? Are you able to have people laugh you off the stage over and over again until you get it right?
What shit sandwich do you want to eat? Because we all get served one eventually.
Might as well pick one with an olive.

2. WHAT IS TRUE ABOUT YOU TODAY THAT WOULD MAKE YOUR 8-YEAR-OLD SELF CRY?

When I was a child, I used to write stories. I used to sit in my room for hours by myself, writing away, about aliens, about superheroes, about great warriors, about my friends and family. Not because I wanted anyone to read it. Not because I wanted to impress my parents or teachers. But for the sheer joy of it.
And then, for some reason, I stopped. And I don’t remember why.
We all have a tendency to lose touch with what we loved as a child. Something about the social pressures of adolescence and professional pressures of young adulthood squeezes the passion out of us. We’re taught that the only reason to do something is if we’re somehow rewarded for it.
It wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s that I rediscovered how much I loved writing. And it wasn’t until I started my business that I remembered how much I enjoyed building websites — something I did in my early teens, just for fun.
The funny thing though, is that if my 8-year-old self had asked my 20-year-old self, “Why don’t you write anymore?” and I replied, “Because I’m not good at it,” or “Because nobody would read what I write,” or “Because you can’t make money doing that,” not only would I have been completely wrong, but that 8-year-old boy version of myself would have probably started crying.

3. WHAT MAKES YOU FORGET TO EAT AND POOP?

We’ve all had that experience where we get so wrapped up in something that minutes turn into hours and hours turn into “Holy crap, I forgot to have dinner.”
Supposedly, in his prime, Isaac Newton’s mother had to regularly come in and remind him to eat because he would go entire days so absorbed in his work that he would forget.
I used to be like that with video games. This probably wasn’t a good thing. In fact, for many years it was kind of a problem. I would sit and play video games instead of doing more important things like studying for an exam, or showering regularly, or speaking to other humans face-to-face.
It wasn’t until I gave up the games that I realized my passion wasn’t for the games themselves (although I do love them). My passion is for improvement, being good at something and then trying to get better. The games themselves — the graphics, the stories — they were cool, but I can easily live without them. It’s the competition — with others, but especially with myself — that I thrive on.
And when I applied that obsessiveness for improvement and self-competition to an internet business and to my writing, well, things took off in a big way.
Maybe for you, it’s something else. Maybe it’s organizing things efficiently, or getting lost in a fantasy world, or teaching somebody something, or solving technical problems. Whatever it is, don’t just look at the activities that keep you up all night, but look at the cognitive principles behind those activities that enthrall you. Because they can easily be applied elsewhere.

4. HOW CAN YOU BETTER EMBARRASS YOURSELF?

Before you are able to be good at something and do something important, you must first suck at something and have no clue what you’re doing. That’s pretty obvious. And in order to suck at something and have no clue what you’re doing, you must embarrass yourself in some shape or form, often repeatedly. And most people try to avoid embarrassing themselves, namely because it sucks.
Ergo, due to the transitive property of awesomeness, if you avoid anything that could potentially embarrass you, then you will never end up doing something that feels important.
Yes, it seems that once again, it all comes back to vulnerability.
Right now, there’s something you want to do, something you think about doing, something you fantasize about doing, yet you don’t do it. You have your reasons, no doubt. And you repeat these reasons to yourself ad infinitum.
But what are those reasons? Because I can tell you right now that if those reasons are based on what others would think, then you’re screwing yourself over big time.
If your reasons are something like, “I can’t start a business because spending time with my kids is more important to me,” or “Playing Starcraft all day would probably interfere with my music, and music is more important to me,” then OK. Sounds good.
But if your reasons are, “My parents would hate it,” or “My friends would make fun of me,” or “If I failed, I’d look like an idiot,” then chances are, you’re actually avoiding something you truly care about because caring about that thing is what scares the shit out of you, not what mom thinks or what Timmy next door says.

Living a life avoiding embarrassment is akin to living a life with your head in the sand.

Great things are, by their very nature, unique and unconventional. Therefore, to achieve them, we must go against the herd mentality. And to do that is scary.
Embrace embarrassment. Feeling foolish is part of the path to achieving something important, something meaningful. The more a major life decision scares you, chances are the more you need to be doing it.

5. HOW ARE YOU GOING TO SAVE THE WORLD?

In case you haven’t seen the news lately, the world has a few problems. And by “a few problems,” what I really mean is, “everything is fucked and we’re all going to die.”
I’ve harped on this before, and the research also bears it out, but to live a happy and healthy life, we must hold on to values that are greater than our own pleasure or satisfaction.¹
So pick a problem and start saving the world. There are plenty to choose from. Our screwed up education systems, economic development, domestic violence, mental health care, governmental corruption. Hell, I just saw an article this morning on sex trafficking in the US and it got me all riled up and wishing I could do something. It also ruined my breakfast.
Find a problem you care about and start solving it. Obviously, you’re not going to fix the world’s problems by yourself. But you can contribute and make a difference. And that feeling of making a difference is ultimately what’s most important for your own happiness and fulfillment.
Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Gee Mark, I read all of this horrible stuff and I get all pissed off too, but that doesn’t translate to action, much less a new career path.”
Glad you asked…

6. GUN TO YOUR HEAD, IF YOU HAD TO LEAVE THE HOUSE ALL DAY, EVERY DAY, WHERE WOULD YOU GO AND WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

For many of us, the enemy is just old-fashioned complacency. We get into our routines. We distract ourselves. The couch is comfortable. The Doritos are cheesy. And nothing new happens.
This is a problem.
What most people don’t understand is that passion is the result of action, not the cause of it.^{2, 3}
Discovering what you’re passionate about in life and what matters to you is a full-contact sport, a trial-and-error process. None of us know exactly how we feel about an activity until we actually do the activity.
So ask yourself, if someone put a gun to your head and forced you to leave your house every day for everything except for sleep, how would you choose to occupy yourself? And no, you can’t just go sit in a coffee shop and browse Facebook. You probably already do that. Let’s pretend there are no useless websites, no video games, no TV. You have to be outside of the house all day every day until it’s time to go to bed — where would you go and what would you do?
Sign up for a dance class? Join a book club? Go get another degree? Invent a new form of irrigation system that can save the thousands of children’s lives in rural Africa? Learn to hang glide?
What would you do with all of that time?
If it strikes your fancy, write down a few answers and then, you know, go out and actually do them. Bonus points if it involves embarrassing yourself.

7. IF YOU KNEW YOU WERE GOING TO DIE ONE YEAR FROM TODAY, WHAT WOULD YOU DO AND HOW WOULD YOU WANT TO BE REMEMBERED?

Most of us don’t like thinking about death. It freaks us out. But thinking about our own death surprisingly has a lot of practical advantages. One of those advantages is that it forces us to zero in on what’s actually important in our lives and what’s just frivolous and distracting.
When I was in college, I used to walk around and ask people, “If you had a year to live, what would you do?” As you can imagine, I was a huge hit at parties. A lot of people gave vague and boring answers. A few drinks were nearly spit on me. But it did cause people to really think about their lives in a different way and re-evaluate what their priorities were.

This man’s headstone will read: “Here lies Greg. He watched every episode of ’24’… twice.”

What is your legacy going to be? What are the stories people are going to tell when you’re gone? What is your obituary going to say? Is there anything to say at all? If not, what would you like it to say? How can you start working towards that today?
And again, if you fantasize about your obituary saying a bunch of badass shit that impresses a bunch of random other people, then again, you’re failing here.
When people feel like they have no sense of direction, no purpose in their life, it’s because they don’t know what’s important to them, they don’t know what their values are.
And when you don’t know what your values are, then you’re essentially taking on other people’s values and living other people’s priorities instead of your own. This is a one-way ticket to unhealthy relationships and eventual misery.
Discovering one’s “purpose” in life essentially boils down to finding those one or two things that are bigger than yourself, and bigger than those around you. And to find them you must get off your couch and act, and take the time to think beyond yourself, to think greater than yourself, and paradoxically, to imagine a world without yourself.

Footnotes

1. Sagiv, L., & Schwartz, S. H. (2000). Value priorities and subjective well-being: direct relations and congruity effects. European Journal of Social Psychology, 30(2), 177–198.↵
2. Wrzesniewski, A., McCauley, C., Rozin, P., & Schwartz, B. (1997). Jobs, careers, and callings: People’s relations to their work. Journal of Research in Personality, 31(1), 21–33.↵
3. Newport, C. (2012). So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. Business Plus.↵

Top 10 Food Lies That Keep Us Sick and Fat, Part 1

by Mark Hyman, MD

• Last Updated April 2, 2014
• Articles, Uncategorized
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The First Five Food Lies
When it comes to weight loss, there’s a ton of advice out there. The problem is, most of it is terrible, outdated and scientifically disproven. And if you believe it, it could be getting in your way.  So let’s take a look at the Top Ten Food Lies that keep you sick and fat.
Food Lie #1: All Calories Are Created Equal
When I walked into an 8^th grade class recently, I asked if them if there was a difference between 1000 calories of broccoli and a 1000 calories of soda. You know what I heard? A unanimous, “Duh! Yes!”
The idea that, as long as we burn more calories than we consume, we will lose weight IS SIMPLY DEAD WRONG.  The lie is that losing weight is all about energy balance or calories in/calories out. Just eat less and exercise more is the mantra we hear from the food industry and government agencies. It’s all about moderation. How’s that working for America?
The truth is there are good and bad calories. And that’s because it’s more than a simple math problem.
When we eat, our food interacts with our biology, which is a complex adaptive system that instantly transforms every bite. Every bite affects your hormones, brain chemistry and metabolism. Sugar calories cause fat storage and spike hunger. Protein and fat calories promote fat burning.
What counts even more are the QUALITY of the calories.
What are high-quality calories? Whole foods – fresh foods, foods like great-grandma made. Good quality protein: grass-fed animal products (not factory farmed), organic eggs, chicken, small wild fish, nuts and seeds. Good carbs: vibrantly colored vegetables, the brighter the better (you can binge on these!). Fruits like wild berries, apples and kiwis. And super foods like chia and hemp seeds. And good fats like avocado, extra virgin olive oil, nuts and seeds, coconut butter and omega-3 fats from fish.
Food Lie #2: Don’t Lose Weight Too Fast, You’ll Gain it All Back
Slow and steady is what we are told. No quick fixes. Don’t lose more than a pound a week. This is dead wrong. Studies show the opposite – that a jumpstart leads to more weight loss over time. If you reboot your metabolism with a quick detox from sugar, processed food and junk, you will reset your hormones and your brain chemistry making it much easier to sustain the changes.
The key is to use a healthy, sustainable strategy for weight loss that balances your hormones and brain chemistry and doesn’t put you in a starvation response.
That allows you to lose the weight and keep it off – I see it with my patients all the time – if you see results, you feel empowered and get inspired to keep losing weight.
Food Lie #3: All You Need is Willpower
This is one of the most insidious lies pushed on us by the food industry and government.
Their mantra is this: Eat Less, Exercise More.
The implicit message in this idea is that the real reason we are all fat and sick is that we are lazy gluttons. If we just stopped stuffing our faces and got up off the couch and moved our butt, we would lose weight. It is moral failing, weak psychology, apathy or worse that prevents people from moderating their food intake and exercise. This is nonsense.
If you try to control your appetite with willpower, you will fail. We have short-term voluntary control and can starve ourselves but then our bodies compensate by slowing our metabolism and dramatically increasing appetite. It is unsustainable. If I asked you to hold your breath for 15 minutes – no matter how bad you want to make it happen, you’re just not designed to pull that off.
When your taste buds, brain chemistry, hormones and metabolism have been damaged by sugar and processed foods, willpower alone won’t do it. If you are addicted to sugar and refined carbs you cannot white knuckle it for very long. You have to naturally reset your brain chemistry and hormones so your body will automatically self regulate and the cravings disappear and hunger will be in balance.
When your metabolism has been hijacked you need to detox from the addictive power of sugar and flour and replace them with real, whole high quality foods. That will allow your appetite and weight to automatically regulate without willpower.
Food Lie #4: Diet Soda Is Better Than Regular Soda
I call soda LIQUID DEATH. And you might as well call diet soda “New & Improved Liquid Death,” because it may actually be WORSE.
In a 14-year study of more than 66,000 women, researchers found that diet sodas actually raised the risk of diabetes MORE than sugar-sweetened sodas. One diet soda increased the risk of type 2 diabetes by 33% and one large diet soda increased the risk by 66%.
The truth is, diet soda slows your metabolism, makes you hungry for sugar and carbs and packs on the belly fat.  Stay away from all artificial sweeteners, even natural ones. Just add a little real sugar to your coffee if you want. It’s not the sugar that you add to your diet that’s the problem. It’s the sugar that is added to your diet by food corporations.
Food Lie #5: Foods Labeled Low Fat or Whole Grain Are Good for You
The low-fat craze of the last 30 years has paralleled the dramatic rise in obesity and type 2 diabetes. When food companies took the fat out of the products it was replaced with sugar. And in those 30 years our sugar consumption has doubled. Fat actually makes you satisfied, curbs your appetite and a review of all the research on fat and weight found that fat does not make you fat.
The latest health buzzword is “whole grain.”  Food companies add a few flakes of whole grain to processed foods and try to convince us its healthy. A whole grain Pop Tart? Really?
Most cereals are 75% sugar, even with a little bit of whole grain added. They shouldn’t be called breakfast, they should be called dessert. And we are feeding sugary cereal to our kids for breakfast thinking we are doing something good for them. In fact, we are killing them.
My basic rule for food: If it has ANY health claim on the label, it’s probably bad for you.
To read more about these other food lies, please check out my new book, The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet.

Beating Depression

5 Steps To Stop Fear In Its Tracks

By Erin Matlock, Founder      Brain Pages

Erin Writes:   

I rarely write publicly of my struggles with severe depression and anxiety. For several years, I have been answering reader questions privately via email, and I hope that by blogging about it here, more of you will find the help you are looking for.
During my recovery, I not only learned powerful tools and techniques to help with my mental health, I learned how to optimize my brain for better living, learning and working in general.
Spending time in and out of hospitals when I was younger left me unable to travel like I always dreamed I would. By creating a lifestyle business, I am now able to work anywhere in the world with just a laptop.
So, I’m making up for lost time, and I’ve noticed that travel brings up some little devils…
One of those is fear. You can insert your own fears here, but for this example, I’m going to take you step by step into how I stopped one particularly crippling fear from preventing me from living fully and having some fun.
A couple of weeks ago, I made my way to London for the first time. While I thankfully don’t suffer from a fear of flying, I do struggle with a peculiar fear of heights.

Taking a break on top of a mountain hike. Scottsdale, AZ

I spend as much time as possible hiking high in the mountains here in Scottsdale. Interestingly, hitting the top and taking in the view never bothers me – no matter how high I climb.
But put me in a glass elevator or take me to the top of a skyscraper, and in my mind, the world is ending.
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), introduced to me by a wonderful therapist, was critically important in my recovery from depression. A bonus of learning it is that I have a toolbox to help me navigate the challenges of daily life.
Step 1) Catch The Thoughts
One aspect of CBT is catching automatic thoughts. This is a term coined by Aaron Beck, who along with Albert Ellis, pioneered the therapy. I like to look at CBT as a ‘crowdsourced” tool as there have been many brilliant people who have contributed to its development.
Negative automatic thoughts go on throughout our day without us even being aware of them.
For this example, I’m referring to three recent outings:
Going to the Top of the Eiffel Tower.

View of the Eiffel Tower from the top of the Arc de Triomphe. Paris, France

Riding in the London Eye.

The London Eye.

Big Ben. Inside The London Eye.

Going to the top of The Shard, the Tallest Building in London – Which Opened in 2012.

The Shard. London.

Night View of Tower Bridge from the Top of The Shard. London, England.

The Thoughts I Caught: (While going up in the elevator):
“Damn it, they have put WAY too many people in this elevator. The cables are going to break, and I am going to die.”
(Out on the viewing deck as I inch closer to the window):
“Is this thing swaying?! Oh my God, this building is going to fall over and I am going to die.”
(Trying to walk right up to the window and look down):
“If I go too close to this window, it might break and I’m going to fall out and die.”
(And the more general beat down I give myself):
“I will never get over this. Why am I even doing this to myself? I should just quit going up in these things.”
Step 2) Acknowledge The Thought.
Once I catch one of these thoughts (and that part takes a little practice), I talk back in my own words. For me, it’s important that I talk back to myself this way. You’ll want to talk in a way that is natural for you.
“OK, Erin. Here it is. This is just a negative automatic thought. This is fear talking. You hardwired your brain for this by letting fear win for so many years. You can listen to it or you can go on with life.”
3) Counter The Thought
I was taught long ago to counter these thoughts as soon as I catch myself thinking them.
And by the way, it’s OK if you don’t believe your counter-argument. You are slowly rewiring years (in some cases a lifetime) of irrational thought pathways.
Catching the thought and countering it doesn’t cure it on the first try. This is a life practice, but stay with me, because it works.
Thought: “Damn it, they have put WAY too many people in this elevator. The cables are going to break, and I am going to die.”
Counter: “These elevators are safety checked, weight tested, and there are posted limits as to how much weight is allowed at a time.” (And believe me, I am counting heads and doing some math to hold the operator accountable.)
Thought: “Is this thing swaying?! Oh my God, this building is going to fall over and I am going to die.”
Counter: “Buildings don’t just fall over. This building was designed by expert architects and constructed by highly qualified engineers. It has passed rigorous safety inspections.”
Thought: “If I go too close to this window, it might break and I’m going to fall out and die.”
Counter: “These windows are made to withstand enormous amounts of pressure. A few people pushing up against them will never cause a break. I will not fall out of a closed window.”
Thought: “I will never get over this. Why am I even doing this to myself? I should just quit going up in these things.”
Counter: “I am ‘getting over this’. By continuing to confront my fear, I am slowly but surely overcoming it. Look at how much I have done. Remember, rewiring the brain takes time.”
4) Confront and Carry On
This is a saying I created to remind myself to keep going. It’s a throwback to the old “Keep Calm and Carry On” quote we see all over the internet. Be open to chances to be uncomfortable because it means you are working through fear.
It’s common to try this once and quit. As I mentioned above, there is no magic button. I practice, and I improve.
5) Reward Yourself
This is another of my additions. Each time I make progress, no matter how small, I take time and celebrate. Whether it’s a glass of champagne, your favorite coffee, a delicious meal or a simple high five with your partner in crime, remember to be kind to yourself.
Why Put Yourself Through This?
A friend once asked me why I insist on doing these things if it causes me so much stress.
Depression robbed me of a large chunk of my life. After recovering fully, gaining perspective and looking back, it also gave me great gifts.
One of those gifts is knowing that fear doesn’t have to win.
There was a time when I wouldn’t have even dared to go to the top of the Eiffel Tower, and now that I have (although it was a bit messy), it counts as one of the favorite moments of my life. I can’t imagine not having that.
(Please note:) While these techniques work for me, I am not a licensed therapist and certainly do not prescribe them. My goal is to write more about the struggles I have had and hopefully shed light on solutions that you may want to investigate further.
If this makes sense to you, I encourage you to find a local therapist who specializes in CBT.
And if you have techniques that have helped you, I’d love to hear about them in the comments.



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