4 rituals that will make you happy

4 Rituals That Will Make You Happy, According to Neuroscience

You get all kinds of happiness advice on the Internet from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.

Don’t trust them.

Actually, don’t trust me either. Trust neuroscientists. They study that gray blob in your head all day and have

learned a lot about what truly will make you happy.

UCLA neuroscience researcher Alex Korb has some insights that can create an upward spiral of happiness in your

life. Here’s what you and I can learn from the people who really have answers:

1) The Most Important Question To Ask When You Feel Down

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like your brain wants you to be happy. You may feel guilty or shameful. Why?

Believe it or not, guilt and shame activate the brain’s reward center.

Via The Upward Spiral:

Despite their differences, pride, shame, and guilt all activate similar neural circuits, including the dorsomedial

prefrontal cortex, amygdala, insula, and the nucleus accumbens. Interestingly, pride is the most powerful of these

emotions at triggering activity in these regions — except in the nucleus accumbens, where guilt and shame win

out. This explains why it can be so appealing to heap guilt and shame on ourselves — they’re activating the brain’s

reward center.

And you worry a lot too. Why? In the short term, worrying makes your brain feel a little better — at least you’re

doing something about your problems.


In fact, worrying can help calm the limbic system by increasing activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and

decreasing activity in the amygdala. That might seem counterintuitive, but it just goes to show that if you’re

feeling anxiety, doing something about it — even worrying — is better than doing nothing.

But guilt, shame and worry are horrible long-term solutions. So what do neuroscientists say you should do? Ask

yourself this question:

What am I grateful for?

Yeah, gratitude is awesome… but does it really affect your brain at the biological level? Yup.

You know what the antidepressant Wellbutrin does? Boosts the neurotransmitter dopamine. So does gratitude.


The benefits of gratitude start with the dopamine system, because feeling grateful activates the brain stem region

that produces dopamine. Additionally, gratitude toward others increases activity in social dopamine circuits,

which makes social interactions more enjoyable…

Know what Prozac does? Boosts the neurotransmitter serotonin. So does gratitude.


One powerful effect of gratitude is that it can boost serotonin. Trying to think of things you are grateful for forces

you to focus on the positive aspects of your life. This simple act increases serotonin production in the anterior

cingulate cortex.

I know, sometimes life lands a really mean punch in the gut and it feels like there’s nothing to be grateful for.

Guess what?

Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to find anything. It’s the searching that counts.


It’s not finding gratitude that matters most; it’s remembering to look in the first place. Remembering to be

grateful is a form of emotional intelligence. One study found that it actually affected neuron density in both the

ventromedial and lateral prefrontal cortex. These density changes suggest that as emotional intelligence

increases, the neurons in these areas become more efficient. With higher emotional intelligence, it simply takes

less effort to be grateful.

And gratitude doesn’t just make your brain happy — it can also create a positive feedback loop in your

relationships. So express that gratitude to the people you care about.

(For more on how gratitude can make you happier and more successful, click here.)

But what happens when bad feelings completely overtake you? When you’re really in the dumps and don’t even

know how to deal with it? There’s an easy answer…

2) Label Negative Feelings

You feel awful. Okay, give that awfulness a name. Sad? Anxious? Angry?

Boom. It’s that simple. Sound stupid? Your noggin disagrees.


…in one fMRI study, appropriately titled “Putting Feelings into Words” participants viewed pictures of people

with emotional facial expressions. Predictably, each participant’s amygdala activated to the emotions in the

picture. But when they were asked to name the emotion, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex activated and reduced

the emotional amygdala reactivity. In other words, consciously recognizing the emotions reduced their impact.

Suppressing emotions doesn’t work and can backfire on you.

Via Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day

Long:

Gross found that people who tried to suppress a negative emotional experience failed to do so. While they

thought they looked fine outwardly, inwardly their limbic system was just as aroused as without suppression, and

in some cases, even more aroused. Kevin Ochsner, at Columbia, repeated these findings using an fMRI. Trying

not to feel something doesn’t work, and in some cases even backfires.

But labeling, on the other hand, makes a big difference.

Via Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day

Long:

To reduce arousal, you need to use just a few words to describe an emotion, and ideally use symbolic language,

which means using indirect metaphors, metrics, and simplifications of your experience. This requires you to

activate your prefrontal cortex, which reduces the arousal in the limbic system. Here’s the bottom line: describe

an emotion in just a word or two, and it helps reduce the emotion.

Ancient methods were way ahead of us on this one. Meditation has employed this for centuries. Labeling is a

fundamental tool of mindfulness.

In fact, labeling affects the brain so powerfully it works with other people too. Labeling emotions is one of the

primary tools used by FBI hostage negotiators.

(To learn more of the secrets of FBI hostage negotiators, click here.)

Okay, hopefully you’re not reading this and labeling your current emotional state as “Bored.” Maybe you’re not

feeling awful but you probably have things going on in your life that are causing you some stress. Here’s a simple

way to beat them…

3) Make That Decision

Ever make a decision and then your brain finally feels at rest? That’s no random occurrence.

Brain science shows that making decisions reduces worry and anxiety — as well as helping you solve problems.


Making decisions includes creating intentions and setting goals — all three are part of the same neural circuitry

and engage the prefrontal cortex in a positive way, reducing worry and anxiety. Making decisions also helps

overcome striatum activity, which usually pulls you toward negative impulses and routines. Finally, making

decisions changes your perception of the world — finding solutions to your problems and calming the limbic

system.

But deciding can be hard. I agree. So what kind of decisions should you make? Neuroscience has an answer…

Make a “good enough” decision. Don’t sweat making the absolute 100% best decision. We all know being a

perfectionist can be stressful. And brain studies back this up.

Trying to be perfect overwhelms your brain with emotions and makes you feel out of control.


Trying for the best, instead of good enough, brings too much emotional ventromedial prefrontal activity into the

decision-making process. In contrast, recognizing that good enough is good enough activates more dorsolateral

prefrontal areas, which helps you feel more in control…

As Swarthmore professor Barry Schwartz said in my interview with him: “Good enough is almost always good

enough.”

So when you make a decision, your brain feels you have control. And, as I’ve talked about before, a feeling of

control reduces stress. But here’s what’s really fascinating: Deciding also boosts pleasure.


Actively choosing caused changes in attention circuits and in how the participants felt about the action, and it

increased rewarding dopamine activity.

Want proof? No problem. Let’s talk about cocaine.

You give 2 rats injections of cocaine. Rat A had to pull a lever first. Rat B didn’t have to do anything. Any

difference? Yup: rat A gets a bigger boost of dopamine.


So they both got the same injections of cocaine at the same time, but rat A had to actively press the lever, and rat

B didn’t have to do anything. And you guessed it — rat A released more dopamine in its nucleus accumbens.

So what’s the lesson here? Next time you buy cocaine… whoops, wrong lesson. Point is, when you make a decision

on a goal and then achieve it, you feel better than when good stuff just happens by chance.

And this answers the eternal mystery of why dragging your butt to the gym can be so hard.

If you go because you feel you have to or you should, well, it’s not really a voluntary decision. Your brain doesn’t

get the pleasure boost. It just feels stress. And that’s no way to build a good exercise habit.


Interestingly, if they are forced to exercise, they don’t get the same benefits, because without choice, the exercise

itself is a source of stress.

So make more decisions. Neuroscience researcher Alex Korb sums it up nicely:

We don’t just choose the things we like; we also like the things we choose.

(To learn what neuroscientists say is the best way to use caffeine, clickhere.)

Okay, you’re being grateful, labeling negative emotions and making more decisions. Great. But this is feeling

kinda lonely for a happiness prescription. Let’s get some other people in here.

What’s something you can do with others that neuroscience says is a path to mucho happiness? And something

that’s stupidly simple so you don’t get lazy and skip it? Brain docs have an answer for you…

4) Touch People

No, not indiscriminately; that can get you in a lot of trouble.

But we need to feel love and acceptance from others. When we don’t it’s painful. And I don’t mean “awkward” or

“disappointing.” I mean actuallypainful.

Neuroscientists did a study where people played a ball-tossing video game. The other players tossed the ball to

you and you tossed it back to them. Actually, there were no other players; that was all done by the computer

program.

But the subjects were told the characters were controlled by real people. So what happened when the “other

players” stopped playing nice and didn’t share the ball?

Subjects’ brains responded the same way as if they experienced physical pain. Rejection doesn’t just hurt like a

broken heart; your brain feels it like a broken leg.


In fact, as demonstrated in an fMRI experiment, social exclusion activates the same circuitry as physical pain… at

one point they stopped sharing, only throwing back and forth to each other, ignoring the participant. This small

change was enough to elicit feelings of social exclusion, and it activated the anterior cingulate and insula, just like

physical pain would.

Relationships are very important to your brain’s feeling of happiness. Want to take that to the next level? Touch

people.


One of the primary ways to release oxytocin is through touching. Obviously, it’s not always appropriate to touch

most people, but small touches like handshakes and pats on the back are usually okay. For people you’re close

with, make more of an effort to touch more often.

Touching is incredibly powerful. We just don’t give it enough credit. It makes you more persuasive,

increases team performance, improves yourflirting… heck, it even boosts math skills.

Touching someone you love actually reduces pain. In fact, when studies were done on married couples, the

stronger the marriage, the more powerful the effect.


In addition, holding hands with someone can help comfort you and your brain through painful situations. One

fMRI study scanned married women as they were warned that they were about to get a small electric shock.

While anticipating the painful shocks, the brain showed a predictable pattern of response in pain and worrying

circuits, with activation in the insula, anterior cingulate, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. During a separate

scan, the women either held their husbands’ hands or the hand of the experimenter. When a subject held her

husband’s hand, the threat of shock had a smaller effect. The brain showed reduced activation in both the

anterior cingulate cortex and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex— that is, less activity in the pain and worrying

circuits. In addition, the stronger the marriage, the lower the discomfort-related insula activity.

So hug someone today. And do not accept little, quick hugs. No, no, no. Tell them your neuroscientist

recommended long hugs.


A hug, especially a long one, releases a neurotransmitter and hormone oxytocin, which reduces the reactivity of

the amygdala.

Research shows getting five hugs a day for four weeks increases happiness big time.

Don’t have anyone to hug right now? No? (I’m sorry to hear that. I would give you a hug right now if I could.) But

there’s an answer: neuroscience says you should go get a massage.


The results are fairly clear that massage boosts your serotonin by as much as 30 percent. Massage also decreases

stress hormones and raises dopamine levels, which helps you create new good habits… Massage reduces pain

because the oxytocin system activates painkilling endorphins. Massage also improves sleep and reduces fatigue

by increasing serotonin and dopamine and decreasing the stress hormone cortisol.

So spend time with other people and give some hugs. Sorry, texting is not enough.

When you put people in a stressful situation and then let them visit loved ones or talk to them on the phone, they

felt better. What about when they just texted? Their bodies responded the same as if they had no support at all.


…the text-message group had cortisol and oxytocin levels similar to the no-contact group.

Author’s note: I totally approve of texting if you make a hug appointment.

(To learn what neuroscience says is the best way to get smarter and happier, click here.)

Okay, I don’t want to strain your brain with too much info. Let’s round it up and learn the quickest and easiest

way to start that upward spiral of neuroscience-inspired happiness…

Sum Up

Here’s what brain research says will make you happy:

Ask “What am I grateful for?” No answers? Doesn’t matter. Just searching helps.

Label those negative emotions. Give it a name and your brain isn’t so bothered by it.

Decide. Go for “good enough” instead of “best decision ever made on Earth.”

Hugs, hugs, hugs. Don’t text — touch.

So what’s the dead simple way to start that upward spiral of happiness?

Just send someone a thank you email. If you feel awkward about it, you can send them this post to tell them why.

This really can start an upward spiral of happiness in your life. UCLA neuroscience researcher Alex

Korb explains:

Everything is interconnected. Gratitude improves sleep. Sleep reduces pain. Reduced pain improves your mood.

Improved mood reduces anxiety, which improves focus and planning. Focus and planning help with decision

making. Decision making further reduces anxiety and improves enjoyment. Enjoyment gives you more to be

grateful for, which keeps that loop of the upward spiral going. Enjoyment also makes it more likely you’ll exercise

and be social, which, in turn, will make you happier.

So thank you for reading this.

And send that thank you email now to make you and someone you care about very happy.

Be More Successful: New Harvard Research Reveals A Fun Way To Do It We all want to be more successful. But everything you read probably sounds like a lot of work. Isn’t there a scientifically proven method that’s a little more… fun?

There is.

Shawn Achor is the bestselling author of The Happiness Advantage and for years at Harvard he studied exactly that: happiness. He gave an extremely popular (and, in my opinion, the all-time funniest) TED talk.

And his ideas even attracted the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who filmed an interview with him.

What’s so special about Shawn’s work? His research shows that success doesn’t bring happiness — happiness brings

success. He did what a lot of researchers never do: instead of scrubbing the freak outliers from the data he aggressively studied them.

He wanted to know what people with happiness superpowers do that we don’t. Here’s Shawn:

Instead of deleting those people that are weirdos in the data what we do is we intentionally study them. We try and find out why it is

that while an entire sales force has low numbers, we’re finding three or four people whose sales are skyrocketing. Or we’re looking at a low socioeconomic school in Chicago, where the academic scores are below average, there are a couple students whose grades

are skyrocketing. By studying those outliers, what we’re doing is we’re gleaning information not on how to move subpar performers

up toward that average point, but how to move people from average to superior. Shawn believes (and his research shows) that you can do things to be happier. And being happier will make you more successful.

I gave Shawn a call to find out what he’s learned. Want more joy and success in your life? Here’s what Shawn had to say.

1) Success Brings Happiness? No. Happiness Brings Success. We all chase success hoping it will make us happy: 1. I’ll be happy once I get that promotion.

2. I’ll be happy once I get that raise.

3. I’ll be happy once I lose 15 pounds.

But the research shows that isn’t true. You achieve a goal and you’re briefly happier… but then you’re looking toward the next big thing.

What Shawn’s research showed was when you flip the formula and focus on increasing happiness, you end up increasing success.

Here’s Shawn:

If we can get somebody to raise their levels of optimism or deepen their social connection or raise happiness, turns out every

single business and educational outcome we know how to test for improves dramatically. You can increase your success rates

for the rest of your life and your happiness levels will flatline, but if you raise your level of happiness and deepen optimism it turns

out every single one of your success rates rises dramatically compared to what it would have been at negative, neutral, or stressed.

MET Life saw such great results among happy salespeople that they tried an experiment: they started hiring people based on

optimism. And that was even if those people performed poorly on the standard industry “aptitude test.” What was the result?

It turns out that the optimistic group outsold their more pessimistic counterparts by 19% in year one and 57% in year two.

How can this be? Shawn explained that intelligence and technical skills only predict 25% of success: If we know the intelligence and technical skills of an employee, we can actually only predict about 25% of their job success. 75% of

long term job success is predicted not by intelligence and technical skills, which is normally how we hire, educate and train, but it’s

predicted by three other umbrella categories. It’s optimism (which is the belief that your behavior matters in the midst of challenge), your social connection (whether or not you have depth and breadth in your social relationships), and the way that you perceive

stress.

And students who want success in their future should worry a little less about grades and more about optimism. Shawn found that rolling a pair of dice was as predictive of your future income as your college GPA is. (And millionaires

agree.)

(For more on how to be more optimistic, click here.) So your attitude has a huge effect on how successful you are. What was the most powerful thing Shawn learned from looking at

those happiness outliers?

2) See Problems As Challenges, Not Threats Shawn did a study of bankers right after the huge banking crisis hit. Most of them were incredibly stressed. But a few were happy

and resilient.

What did those guys have in common? They didn’t see problems as threats; they saw them as challenges to overcome. Here’s Shawn: What these positive outliers do is that when there are changes that occur in the economic landscape or the political landscape or at

an educational institution, they see those changes not as threats, but as challenges.

So those people are just wired differently and our duty is to envy them, right? Nope. Shawn did an experiment that proved this attitude can be learned.

Just by showing the normal bankers a video explaining how to see stress as a challenge, he turned sad bankers into super-bankers.

Here’s Shawn:

And we watched those groups of people over the next three to six weeks, and what we found was if we could move people to view stress as enhancing, a challenge instead of as a threat, we saw a 23% drop in their stress-related symptoms. It produced a significant

increase not only in levels of happiness, but a dramatic improvement in their levels of engagement at work as well.

(For more on what the happiest people do every day, click here.) But what about when there’s just too much to do? Maybe there are more “challenges” than you can handle.

Should we just give up on any chance of work-life balance? Cancel those plans with friends and spend more hours at the office?

Once again the answer is the exact opposite.

3) Twice As Much Work Means You Need Friends Twice As Much After doing his undergraduate work at Harvard, Shawn was a proctor there, helping freshman adapt to the often stressful,

competitive environment.

Many students would respond to the workload by living in the library and eating meals in their bedrooms so they could keep studying.

Did those students perform better? No. Those were the ones who burned out; the ones who ended up wanting to transfer to another

school.

Shawn would tell them what they had unknowingly done was cut themselves off from the greatest predictor of happiness. Here’s Shawn:

The people who survive stress the best are the ones who actually increase their social investments in the middle of stress,

which is the opposite of what most of us do. Turns out that social connection is the greatest predictor of happiness we have when I run them in my studies. When we run social

support metrics, they trump everything else we do, every time. And what did we just learn about happiness? It predicts success. And it was no different here:

We found that social connection is extremely important for predicting academic achievement.

Want to resist stress, increase productivity and get a promotion? Then don’t just seek social support — provide it to others. Confirming the research of top Wharton professor Adam Grant, people who provide social support get some of the greatest benefits.

Shawn saw this not only with his students at Harvard but he’s since advised over a third of the Fortune 100 companies — and it

worked there too. Here’s Shawn:

Work altruists were ten times more likely to be engaged than the bottom quartile of that list and the top quartile was significantly

happier and 40% more likely to receive a promotion over the next 2-year period of time. (For more on how work altruism can benefit you, click here.)

Some of you might be thinking, “Alright already, happiness makes you more successful. I get it. But how do I get happier?”

It’s simpler than you think.

4) Send A “Thank You” Email Every Morning You might think happiness only comes from big wins or big achievements. You’re wrong. Research shows little things are more

important.

So Shawn believes rather than focusing on big boosts like vacations, it’s smarter to build little, consistent habits akin to brushing your teeth.

What little habit gives a big happiness boost over time? Send a 2-minute “thank you” email or text as soon as you get into

the office. Here’s Shawn:

The simplest thing you can do is a two-minute email praising or thanking one person that you know. We’ve done this at Facebook,

at US Foods, we’ve done this at Microsoft. We had them write a two-minute email praising or thanking one person they know, and a different person each day for 21 days in a row. That’s it. What we find is this dramatically increases their social connection which is

the greatest predictor of happiness we have in organizations. It also improves teamwork. We’ve measured the collective IQ of teams

and the collective years of experience of teams but both of those metrics are trumped by social cohesion. What other little daily happiness habits does Shawn recommend?

1. List the things you’re grateful for.

2. Meditate.

3. Exercise.

(For more on five emails that can improve your life, click here.)

Over 120,000 people receive my weekly email. And it’s sent from my real email address. People can reply. And they do.

What’s one of the most common things readers email me to say? Eric, you suggest all these great things. I read them. I agree with them. But I don’t end up doing any of them. How can I follow

through?

Shawn has a great answer for this too.

5) The 20-Second Rule What stops you from making the changes you know you should? Shawn says it’s “activation energy.”

You know, like the activation energy it takes to initially get your butt off the couch and to the gym. The hard part is getting started.

If you reduce the amount of activation energy required, tough things become easy. So make new habits 20 seconds easier to

start.

Shawn would sleep in his gym clothes and put his sneakers next to the bed and it made him much more likely to exercise when he

woke up. Here’s Shawn:

If you can make the positive habit three to 20 seconds easier to start, you’re likelihood of doing it rises dramatically. And you can do the same thing by flipping it for negative habits. Watching too much television? Merely take out the batteries of the remote control creating a 20 second delay and it dramatically decreases the amount of television people will watch.

(For more easy ways to build new habits, click here.)

So how do we pull all this together? And what was the most inspiring thing Shawn told me about happiness and success?

Sum Up Here’s what we can all learn from Shawn: 1. Success doesn’t bring happiness. Happiness brings success.

2. See problems as challenges, not threats.

3. More work means you need more social support. And giving support is better than receiving.

4. Send a 2-minute “thank you” email every morning.

5. Use the 20-second rule to build the habit.

Some people might think it’s too hard to get happier. Maybe they’ve suffered from depression. Or they’ve seen the research that we have a “happiness set point”, and our genetics ultimately decide how happy we can be.

You know what the most inspiring thing Shawn told me was? The latest research shows good habits might trump genes.

Here’s Shawn: When you look at outliers on the graph, you find people who actually break the tyranny of genes and environment by creating these

conscious positive habits that actually cause them to interact with life in a more positive way with higher levels of success, lower

levels of stress, and higher levels of resilience. They do it by changing their mindset and changing their habits, and by doing so they actually trump their genes.

Most people accept that they’re just born some way and that’s how they’re going to be the rest of their life, and whatever

they were last year is what they’re going to be this year. I think positive psychology shows us that that doesn’t actually have

to be the case. Send a gratitude email right now. It only takes 2 minutes. And send another one tomorrow. That habit will make you happier. And being happier will make you more successful and deepen your relationships.

Happiness. Success. Strong relationships. What else really matters?

Hostage Negotiation Techniques That Will Get You What You Want

How does hostage negotiation get people to change their minds? The Behavioral Change Stairway Model was developed by the FBI’s hostage negotiation unit, and it shows the 5 steps to getting someone else to see your point of view and change what they’re doing.

It’s not something that only works with barricaded criminals wielding assault rifles — it applies to most any form of disagreement.

There are five steps: 1. Active Listening: Listen to their side and make them aware you’re listening.

2. Empathy: You get an understanding of where they’re coming from and how they feel.

3. Rapport: Empathy is what you feel. Rapport is when they feel it back. They start to trust you. 4. Influence: Now that they trust you, you’ve earned the right to work on problem solving with them and recommend a course of

action.

5. Behavioral Change: They act. (And maybe come out with their hands up.) The problem is, you’re probably screwing it up.

What you’re doing wrong In all likelihood you usually skip the first three steps. You start at 4 (Influence) and expect the other person to immediately go to 5

(Behavioral Change). And that never works.

Saying “Here’s why I’m right and you’re wrong” might be effective if people were fundamentally rational.

But they’re not. From my interview with former head of FBI international hostage negotiation, Chris Voss:

…business negotiations try to pretend that emotions don’t exist. What’s your best alternative to a negotiated agreement,

or ‘BATNA’? That’s to try to be completely unemotional and rational, which is a fiction about negotiation. Human beings are incapable of being rational, regardless… So instead of pretending emotions don’t exist in negotiations, hostage negotiators have

actually designed an approach that takes emotions fully into account and uses them to influence situations, which is the reality of the

way all negotiations go… The most critical step in the Behavioral Change Staircase is actually the first part: Active listening.

The other steps all follow from it. But most people are terrible at listening.

Here’s Chris again:

If while you’re making your argument, the only time the other side is silent is because they’re thinking about their own argument, they’ve got a voice in their head that’s talking to them. They’re not listening to you. When they’re making their argument to you,

you’re thinking about your argument, that’s the voice in your head that’s talking to you. So it’s very much like dealing with a

schizophrenic. If your first objective in the negotiation, instead of making your argument, is to hear the other side out, that’s the only way you can

quiet the voice in the other guy’s mind. But most people don’t do that. They don’t walk into a negotiation wanting to hear what the

other side has to say. They walk into a negotiation wanting to make an argument. They don’t pay attention to emotions and they don’t listen.

The basics of active listening are pretty straightforward:

1. Listen to what they say. Don’t interrupt, disagree or “evaluate.” 2. Nod your head, and make brief acknowledging comments like “yes” and “uh-huh.”

3. Without being awkward, repeat back the gist of what they just said, from their frame of reference.

4. Inquire. Ask questions that show you’ve been paying attention and that move the discussion forward. So what six techniques do FBI hostage negotiation professionals use to take it to the next level?

1. Ask open-ended questions You don’t want yes/no answers, you want them to open up.

Via Crisis Negotiations, Fourth Edition: Managing Critical Incidents and Hostage Situations in Law Enforcement and Corrections: A good open-ended question would be “Sounds like a tough deal. Tell me how it all happened.” It is non-judgmental, shows

interest, and is likely to lead to more information about the man’s situation. A poor response would be “Do you have a gun? What

kind? How many bullets do you have?” because it forces the man into one-word answers, gives the impression that the negotiator is more interested in the gun than the man, and communicates a sense of urgency that will build rather than defuse tension.

2. Effective pauses Pausing is powerful. Use it for emphasis, to encourage someone to keep talking or to defuse things when people get emotional.

Gary Noesner, author of Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator has said: Eventually, even the most emotionally overwrought subjects will find it difficult to sustain a one-sided argument, and they again

will return to meaningful dialogue with negotiators. Thus, by remaining silent at the right times, negotiators actually can move the

overall negotiation process forward.

3. Minimal Encouragers Brief statements to let the person know you’re listening and to keep them talking.

Gary Noesner:

Even relatively simple phrases, such as “yes,” “O.K.,” or “I see,” effectively convey that a negotiator is paying attention to the subject. These responses will encourage the subject to continue talking and gradually relinquish more control of the situation to the

negotiator.

4. Mirroring Repeating the last word or phrase the person said to show you’re listening and engaged. Yes, it’s that simple — just repeat the last word or two:

Gary Noesner:

For example, a subject may declare, “I’m sick and tired of being pushed around,” to which the negotiator can respond, “Feel pushed,

huh?”

5. Paraphrasing Repeating what the other person is saying back to them in your own words. This powerfully shows you really do understand and

aren’t merely parroting. From my interview with former head of FBI international hostage negotiation, Chris Voss:

The idea is to really listen to what the other side is saying and feed it back to them. It’s kind of a discovery process for both sides.

First of all, you’re trying to discover what’s important to them, and secondly, you’re trying to help them hear what they’re saying to find out if what they are saying makes sense to them.

6. Emotional Labeling Give their feelings a name. It shows you’re identifying with how they feel. Don’t comment on the validity of the feelings — they

could be totally crazy — but show them you understand. Via Crisis Negotiations, Fourth Edition: Managing Critical Incidents and Hostage Situations in Law Enforcement and Corrections:

A good use of emotional labeling would be “You sound pretty hurt about being left. It doesn’t seem fair.” because it recognizes the

feelings without judging them. It is a good Additive Empathetic response because it identifies the hurt that underlies the anger the woman feels and adds the idea of justice to the actor’s message, an idea that can lead to other ways of getting justice.

A poor response would be “You don’t need to feel that way. If he was messing around on you, he was not worth the energy.” It

is judgmental. It tells the subject how not to feel. It minimizes the subject’s feelings, which are a major part of who she is. It is

Subtractive Empathy.

The Single Most Proven Way To Get Smarter And Happier

Yes, It’s This Simple Many of the fixes for our problems aren’t complex — something that’s clear inthe things I recommend people do

every day.

What’s a scientifically validated way to get smarter, happier, healthier and calmer?

Stop reading this right now and go for a walk. It’s that simple.

Here’s why.

Exercise Powers The Body — And The Mind They used to say you don’t grow new brain cells. They were wrong.

Via Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain:

As an illustration of just how new this territory is, I’ll go back to the story of neurogenesis, the once-heretical theory

that the brain grows new nerve cells throughout life. “Ten years ago people weren’t even convinced that it

happened,” says neurologist Scott Small. It was at his Columbia University lab, in 2007, where they witnessed telltale

signs of neurogenesis for the first time in live humans. “Five years ago people said, OK, it might happen, but is it

really meaningful? Now there isn’t a week that goes by where there’s not another study that shows neurogenesis has

some kind of effect on the brain.”

What really feeds those baby brain cells? Hitting the gym.

A 3 month exercise regimen increased bloodflow to the part of your brain focused on memory and

learning by 30%.


In his study, Small put a group of volunteers on a three-month exercise regimen and then took pictures of their brains.

By manipulating a standard MRI machine’s processing— essentially zooming in and cocking the shutter open— he

captured images of the newly formed capillaries required for nascent neurons to survive. What he saw was that the

capillary volume in the memory area of the hippocampus increased by 30 percent, a truly remarkable change.

The Dumb Jock Is A Myth Being in good shape increases your ability to learn. After exercise people pick up new vocabulary words

20% faster.


“One of the prominent features of exercise, which is sometimes not appreciated in studies, is an improvement in the

rate of learning, and I think that’s a really cool take-home message,” Cotman says. “Because it suggests that if

you’re in good shape, you may be able to learn and function more efficiently.”

Indeed, in a 2007 study of humans, German researchers found that people learn vocabulary words 20 percent

faster following exercise than they did before exercise, and that the rate of learning correlated directly with

levels of BDNF.

Want to be more creative? Sweating for about a half hour on the treadmill notably increases cognitive

flexibility.


A notable experiment in 2007 showed that cognitive flexibility improves after just one thirty-five-minute treadmill

session at either 60 percent or 70 percent of maximum heart rate… Cognitive flexibility is an important executive

function that reflects our ability to shift thinking and to produce a steady flow of creative thoughts and answers as

opposed to a regurgitation of the usual responses.

Fine, you can see differences on an MRI and with nerdy tests. Does it make a difference in the real world?

Yes.

Office workers who exercised at lunch were more productive, less stressed and had more energy.


In 2004 researchers at Leeds Metropolitan University in England found that workers who used their company’s gym

were more productive and felt better able to handle their workloads. Most of the 210 participants in the study took an

aerobics class at lunchtime, for forty-five minutes to an hour, but others lifted weights or practiced yoga for thirty

minutes to an hour. They filled out questionnaires at the end of every workday about how well they interacted with

colleagues, managed their time, and met deadlines. Some 65 percent fared better in all three categories on days they

exercised. Overall, they felt better about their work and less stressed when they exercised. And they felt less fatigued

in the afternoon, despite expending energy at lunchtime.

That super-productive co-worker who runs every day might not exercise because they have energy — they might

have energy because they exercise.

While it might not make you the smartest person in the world, among the many ways to increase intelligence,

exercise stands out.

Sweating Increases Smiling Can’t make it simpler than this: Research from Duke University shows exercise is as effective as

antidepressants in treating depression.


In a landmark study affectionately called SMILE (Standard Medical Intervention and Long-term Exercise),

James Blumenthal and his colleagues pitted exercise against the SSRI sertraline (Zoloft) in a sixteen-week

trial… Blumenthal concluded that exercise was as effective as medication. It also reduces anxiety.


One interesting study in 2005 measured the physical and mental effects of exercise in a group of Chilean high school

students for nine months… The experimental group’s anxiety scores dropped 14 percent versus a statistically

insignificant 3 percent for the control group (an improvement that could be explained by the placebo effect).

What if you’re not depressed or anxious? Stay sedentary and you’re 1.5x more likely to

eventually become depressed.


Researchers tracked 8,023 people for twenty-six years, surveying them about a number of factors related to lifestyle

habits and healthiness starting in 1965. They checked back in with the participants in 1974 and in 1983. Of all the

people with no signs of depression at the beginning, those who became inactive over the next nine years were 1.5

times more likely to have depression by 1983 than their active counterparts.

Still not convinced? People who exercise are, across the board, mentally healthier: less depression, anger,

stress, and distrust.


A massive Dutch study of 19,288 twins and their families published in 2006 showed that exercisers are less anxious,

less depressed, less neurotic, and also more socially outgoing. A Finnish study of 3,403 people in 1999 showed that

those who exercise at least two to three times a week experience significantly less depression, anger, stress, and

“cynical distrust” than those who exercise less or not at all.

Okay, Okay — How Much Do I Need To Do? What’s optimal? Exercise 6 days a week, 45 minutes to an hour per day.


The best, however, based on everything I’ve read and seen, would be to do some form of aerobic activity six days a

week, for forty-five minutes to an hour… In total, I’m talking about committing six hours a week to your brain. That

works out to 5 percent of your waking hours.

Stop rolling your eyes. It’s not all or nothing.

Regarding body health and brain health, experts and neuroscientists agree: “A little is good, and more is

better.”

Here’s something proven to make you smarter, healthier, and happier. What could be a better

investment of your time?

You might ask: If it’s obviously so great, why don’t we all do it?

Because habits and social influences are much more powerful than we think.

And, in general, we don’t do what makes us happy — we do what’s easy.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

How To Stop Being Lazy And Get More Done – 5 Expert Tips

Some days the to-do list seems bottomless. Just looking at it is exhausting.

We all want to know how to stop being lazy and get more done. I certainly want the answer.

So I decided to call a friend who manages to do this — and more. Cal Newport impresses the heck out of me. Why? Well, I’m glad you asked. He’sinsanely productive:

1. He has a full-time job as a professor at Georgetown University, teaching classes and meeting with students.

2. He writes 6 (or more) peer-reviewed academic journal papers per year. 3. He’s the author of 4 books including the wonderful “So Good They Can’t Ignore You.” And he’s at work on a fifth.

4. He’s married with a young child and handles all the responsibilities that come with being a husband and dad.

5. He blogs regularly about productivity and expert performance.

And yet he finishes work at 5:30PM every day and rarely works weekends. No, he does not have superpowers or a staff of 15. Okay, let’s you and I both stop being jealous of his productivity for a second and

learn something. Below you’ll get Cal’s secrets on how you can better manage your time, stop being lazy, get more done — and be finished by 5:30.

Let’s get to work.

1) To-Do Lists Are Evil. Schedule Everything. To-do lists by themselves are useless. They’re just the first step. You have to assign them time on your schedule. Why?

It makes you be realistic about what you can get done. It allows you to do tasks when it’s efficient, not just because it’s #4. Until it’s on your calendar and assigned an hour, it’s just a list of wishful thinking.

Here’s Cal: Scheduling forces you to confront the reality of how much time you actually have and how long things will take. Now that you look

at the whole picture you’re able to get something productive out of every free hour you have in your workday. You not only squeeze

more work in but you’re able to put work into places where you can do it best. Experts agree that if you don’t consider how long things take, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

I can hear what some of you are thinking: But I get interrupted. Things get thrown at me last minute.

Great — build that into your schedule. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Things will change. But you need to have a plan, otherwise you’ll waste time.

Want to stop procrastinating? Schedule. Here’s Cal:

Assigning work to times reduces the urge to procrastinate. You are no longer deciding whether or not to work during a

given period; the decision is already made. Does this sound too mechanical? Overly structured and not much fun? Wrong.

Research shows that it’s even a good idea to schedule what you do with your free time. It increases quality of life: This study was designed to identify the relationship between free time management and quality of life, exploring whether the

amount of free time or the way people using their free time relates to their quality of life… The result has found a positive

relationship between free time management and quality of life. (For more on the schedule the most productive people use, click here.)

Okay, the to-do list is in the trash and things are going on the calendar. How do you prioritize so you’re not at work forever?

2) Assume You’re Going Home at 5:30, Then Plan Your Day Backwards Work will fill the space it’s given. Give it 24/7 and guess what happens?

You need boundaries if you want work/life balance. But this also helps you work better because it forces you to be efficient.

By setting a deadline of 5:30 and then scheduling tasks you can get control over that hurricane of duties. Cal calls it “fixed schedule productivity”: Fix your ideal schedule, then work backwards to make everything fit — ruthlessly culling obligations, turning people down,

becoming hard to reach, and shedding marginally useful tasks along the way. My experience in trying to make that fixed schedule a

reality forces any number of really smart and useful in-the-moment productivity decisions.

What does research say prevents you from getting burned out at work?Feeling in control of your schedule. Anything that increases your perception of control over a situation — whether it actually increases your control or not — can

decrease your stress level. Via Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long:

Over and over, scientists see that the perception of control over a stressor alters the stressor’s impact.

(For more on how to achieve work/life balance, click here.)

You’ve drawn a line in the sand and worked backward, giving all your tasks hours in your day. But how do you handle longer term

projects?

3) Make A Plan For The Entire Week I think you’ll agree that the last thing this world needs is more short term thinking.

You’ll never get ahead of the game by only looking at today and never thinking about tomorrow. How do you write books, teach classes, meet with students, do research papers and be a good parent consistently? Plan the week.

Here’s Cal: People don’t look at the larger picture with their time and schedule. I know each day what I’m doing with each hour of the day. I

know each week what I’m doing with each day of the week and I know each month what I’m doing with each week of the month.

Are you rolling your eyes? Does this sound overbearing? It’s simpler than you think. What’s really necessary? Just one hour every Monday morning. Here’s Cal:

Every Monday I lay out a plan for the week. I go through my inbox, I go through my task list, I go through my calendar and

try to come away with the best thing to do with each day this week. I write it in an email and I send it to myself and leave it

in my inbox because that’s a place I know I will see it every day and I’ll be reminded of it multiple times throughout the day. And he’s right. Research shows you spend your time more wisely when you follow a plan. Via What the Most Successful People Do at Work: A Short Guide to Making Over Your Career:

Preliminary analysis from CEOs in India found that a firm’s sales increased as the CEO worked more hours. But more intriguingly,

the correlation between CEO time use and output was driven entirely by hours spent in planned activities. Planning doesn’t have to

mean that the hours are spent in meetings, though meetings with employees were correlated with higher sales; it’s just that CEO

time is a limited and valuable resource, and planning how it should be allocated increases the chances that it’s spent in productive

ways. Maybe you think it’s enough to run down the week’s duties in your head. Nope.

Studies show writing things down makes you more likely to follow through.

(For more on how the most productive people get things done, click here.) So you’ve got a fixed schedule and a weekly plan — but the math doesn’t add up. There’s just too much stuff. Cal has an answer for

that too.

4) Do Very Few Things, But Be Awesome At Them Maybe you’re thinking: I just have too many things to do. I could never get it all done in that amount of time. And Cal concedes that you might be right. But the answer isn’t throwing up your arms and working until 10PM.

You need to do fewer things. Everything is not essential. You say “yes” tomore than you need to.

Ask “What’s creating real value in my life?” And then eliminate as much of the rest as you can. Here’s Cal:

You’re judged on what you do best so if you want to have as much success as possible you’re always better off doing fewer things

but doing those things better. People say yes to too much. I say no to most things. I’m ruthless about avoiding or purging tasks if I realize they’re just not providing much value.

You feel like you have no time but John Robinson, the leading researcher on time use, disagrees. We may have more free time than

ever. Via Overwhelmed: Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time:

He insists that although most Americans feel they’re working harder than ever, they aren’t. The time diaries he studies show that

average hours on the job, not only in the United States but also around the globe, have actually been holding steady or going down in the last forty years. Everybody, he says, has more time for leisure.

So what gives? It feels like you have no time because it’s so fragmented with little annoying tasks that drain the life out of

you. So do less. And be amazing at those things.

(For more on what the most successful people do, click here.)

Your plans are in order and by doing less, it all fits on the schedule. But one question remains: what exactly should you be doing with your time?

5) Less Shallow Work, Focus On The Deep Stuff All work is not created equal. Cal says knowledge workers deal with two fundamentally different types of work, Shallow and Deep:

Shallow work is little stuff like email, meetings, moving information around. Things that are not really using your talents.

Deep work pushes your current abilities to their limits. It produces high value results and improves your skills. And what’s the problem? Most of us are “drowning in the shallows”:

People who are the most busy often are getting a lot less done of significance than the people who are able to stop by 5PM every day. That’s because the whole reason they need to work at night and on the weekends is because their work life has become full of

just shallows. They’re responding to messages, moving information around and being a human network router. These things are

very time consuming and very low value. Nobody in the history of the universe ever became CEO because they responded to more email or went to more meetings. No way,

Bubba.

Cal has it right: Shallow work stops you from getting fired — but deep work is what gets you promoted. Give yourself big blocks of uninterrupted time to make things of value. What’s the best first step?

Stop checking email first thing in the morning. Tim Ferriss, author of the international bestseller, The 4-Hour Workweek, explains:

…whenever possible, do not check email for the first hour or two of the day. It’s difficult for some people to imagine. “How can I do that? I need to check email to get the information I need to work on my most important one or two to-dos?”

You would be surprised how often that is not the case. You might need to get into your email to finish 100% of your most important to-dos. But can you get 80 or 90% done before you go into Gmail and have your rat brain explode with freak-out, dopamine

excitement and cortisol panic? Yes.

(For more on how to motivate yourself, click here.) So how do we tie all this together?

Sum Up Cal’s five big tips:

1. To-Do Lists Are Evil. Schedule Everything.

2. Assume You’re Going Home at 5:30, Then Plan Your Day Backwards

3. Make A Plan For The Entire Week

4. Do Very Few Things, But Be Awesome At Them 5. Less Shallow Work, Focus On The Deep Stuff

Schedules and plans sound cold and clinical but the end result couldn’t be farther from that.

You’ll be less stressed, create more time for friends and family, and make things you can be proud of. Here’s Cal:

Knowledge work is really just craftsmanship. It’s just that what you’re crafting is information and not carved wood. You’re

crafting ideas. You’re crafting knowledge out of raw material and the more you think about it like a craftsman, the happier

and more satisfied you’ll be, not to mention more successful. The offices of the world could use a few less cubicle drones and a few more proud craftsmen.