Scientists Identify Sourpuss Gene. The inability to look on the bright side might have a genetic basis. A new study from the University of British Columbia has found a genetic variant might make the negative more salient than the positive for its carriers. A total of 207 participants were tested for a variant of the gene ADRA2B, a variant that has previously been linked to an enhanced ability to encode emotional memories. The participants were shown, in quick flashes, a set of 84 words designed to arouse positive, negative and neutral emotions while the researchers recorded their attentional blink, a perception test. People have difficulty detecting target words presented only a fraction of a second after another word in a stream (the attentional blink), but when the second word has emotional significance, participants are better at recognizing it, in a phenomenon called emotional sparing. The study is in Psychological Science. Positive thinking: Reduce stress by eliminating negative self-talk.
Positive thinking: Stop negative self-talk to reduce stress Positive thinking helps with stress management and can even improve your health. Practice overcoming negative self-talk with examples provided. By Mayo Clinic Staff Is your glass half-empty or half-full? How you answer this age-old question about positive thinking may reflect your outlook on life, your attitude toward yourself, and whether you're optimistic or pessimistic — and it may even affect your health.
Indeed, some studies show that personality traits like optimism and pessimism can affect many areas of your health and well-being. Understanding positive thinking and self-talk Positive thinking doesn't mean that you keep your head in the sand and ignore life's less pleasant situations. Positive thinking often starts with self-talk. If the thoughts that run through your head are mostly negative, your outlook on life is more likely pessimistic. The health benefits of positive thinking NextMar. 04, 2014 References See more In-depth. Thinking Positively Can Greatly Impact Your Success (NEW BOOK) The following is an excerpt from Daniel Goleman's new book, "Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. " Here’s a question: If everything worked out perfectly in your life, what would you be doing in ten years? That query invites us to dream a little, to consider what really matters to us and how that might guide our lives. Pursuing this simple exercise encourages openness to new possibilities.
"Talking about your positive goals and dreams activates brain centers that open you up to new possibilities. His research has explored these contrasting effects in coaching. Boyatzis and colleagues scanned the brains of college students being interviewed. For others the focus was more negative: how demanding they found their schedule and their assignments, difficulties making friends and fears about their performance. A focus on our strengths, Boyatzis argues, urges us toward a desired future, and stimulates openness to new ideas, people, and plans.
From "Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence. " How Positive Thoughts Build Skills, Boost Health, and Improve Work. Chinese Can't Understand Why The French Work So Little. Philippe Wojazer / REUTERS PARIS (Reuters) - A newspaper open on the bar of this Paris cafe tells of a row over France's Sunday trading rules.
But the bar owner, Zhang Chang, says he has little time to follow such debates. He's too busy working. While French workers worry the country's long economic downturn could mean the end of laws banning Sunday trading and enforcing a 35-hour week, Zhang and Chinese immigrants like him are quietly getting ahead the old-fashioned way - 11 hours a day, six days a week. "As I see it, when you work, you're paid. So why stop at 35 hours? " Zhang owns the Cafe Le Marais in central Paris and is part of a wave of entrepreneurial migrants from China's coastal Wenzhou region who are taking over France's "bar tabac" business. That approach, and their work ethos, runs counter to the work-life balance long treasured by many French and vigorously defended by their unions over the past century - but it chimes with others who say it may be time for a change. La confiance en soi - Par Antoni GIROD. J'ai décidé de vous faire partager aujourd'hui un excellent article d'Antoni GIROD, paru dans la revu "ITF COACHING AND SPORTS SCIENCE REVIEW n° 25 de décembre 2001.
L’impact que la confiance en soi peut avoir sur le jeu d’un joueur est tout simplement étonnant. Un manque de confiance en soi peut transformer le numéro un mondial en joueur ordinaire. A l’inverse, lorsqu’un joueur sur la mauvaise pente reprend légèrement confiance en lui, cela peut l’aider à réaliser des performances que personne n’aurait pu imaginer. Cela relève de l’alchimie : la confiance en soi agit comme un véritable catalyseur qui transforme le plomb en or ou permet de soudains revirements à peine croyables.
Qu’est-ce que la confiance ? Pour simplifier, il s’agit d’un état interne particulier qui nous permet de développer au maximum notre potentiel, voire d’aller au-delà. Il y a quelques années de cela, Andre Agassi était à la recherche de sa confiance perdue. Ensuite, il y a le processus de la révélation. 1. 2. 3. How to Sketch: 6 Steps. Edit Article Learning the BasicsPracticing Sketching Edited by Kajsa.mc, Dvortygirl, KnowItSome, Horses4Ever and 49 others Sketching is the practice of drawing a rough outline or rough draft version of a final piece of art. Sketching can be used in preparation for a large piece of art, or to just get an idea of how something will look.
Whether you're sketching for fun or for a project, learning the proper technique can make the practice much more enjoyable. Ad Steps Part 1 of 2: Learning the Basics 1Get the right materials. Part 2 of 2: Practicing Sketching 1Gather all materials listed. 6When you have completed your sketch, apply a fixative to seal the image. Tips Have a sharp pencil. Warnings Having a poorly lit space may cause eye strain. SKETCHBOOKS. Pages Now available from Boom Studios Email ThisBlogThis! Share to TwitterShare to FacebookShare to Pinterest Home Subscribe to: Posts (Atom) Buy my latest book The Second in Line, 44$ with shipping International customers ($44 with world wide shipping) Swedish customers (SEK230 med porto) Offline an accordion style advice companion, 10$ +shipping About Me Mattias Adolfsson Freelance Illustrator View my complete profile Contact me: mattiasadolfsson@gmail.com Phone +46 (0)8 592 50 333 Mobile +46 768 53 66 54 Facebook Badge Mattias Adolfsson Promote Your Page Too Keep the Blogger in Ink Buy Originals Links Blog Archive ► 2014(101) ► April(22) ► March(32) ► February(27) ► January(20) Sketchbooks My Blog List (in progress)
Learn How to Draw. Meditation Posture | How to Meditate. When we practise meditation we need to have a comfortable seat and a good posture. When we practise meditation we need to have a comfortable seat and a good posture. The most important feature of the posture is to keep our back straight. To help us do this, if we are sitting on a cushion we make sure that the back of the cushion is slightly higher than the front, inclining our pelvis slightly forward.
It is not necessary at first to sit cross-legged, but it is a good idea to become accustomed to sitting in the posture of Buddha Vairochana. The seven features of Vairochana’s posture are: (1) The legs are crossed in the vajra posture. If we want to colour our mind with a virtuous motivation we need to clear away all our negative thoughts and distractions. A further feature of Vairochana’s posture is the preliminary breathing meditation, which prepares our mind for developing a good motivation. Geek to Live: Take great notes. On Deciding . . . Better 3.0 : How BIll Gates Takes Notes. In 2003, Rob Howard described a meeting with Bill Gates The first thing I notice as the meeting starts is that Bill is left-handed. He also didn’t bring a computer in with him, but instead is taking notes on a yellow pad of paper. I had heard this before – Bill takes amazingly detailed notes during meetings.
I image he has to, given all the information directed at him. This is an anecdote that continues to be retold whenever the subject of note taking comes up on the web. Taking notes during a meeting sends a powerful message. For the note taker, the act of recording promotes active listening. If the meeting is important enough to be physically present, then it should be important enough to be mentally present as well. Rob’s other interesting observation was that Gates used a structured note taking system. I’ve never been able to find any more information than this, but I assume that Gates picked up the Cornell system or some variant at some point in his life. Systempage1.doc. How to Become a Masterful Note-Taker: 8 Lessons From Research - Anna Codrea-Rado. Use a computer. Underline. Take a break. Read them later. AP Photos The value of note-taking--or notebooks at least--gets a stock market capitalization in the coming weeks with Moleskine's planned IPO.
The Italian stationery firm has boosted the profile of note-taking at companies around the world. But is all of the scribbling on nicely bound paper actually helping business people? Here's everything you need to know about taking notes at work, but never bothered to ask: 1. 2. 3. ... The US Air Force Academy teamed up with West Virginia University to work out the art of electronic note-taking. And if you're worried about the environment, Slate weighed the green implications of taking notes on an iPad. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. It's probably not a bad time to buy shares in Moleskine after all. How To Speed Read. The Official Site of Bill Gates - The Gates Notes. Summer Reading List 2013. Whether I’m at the office, at home, or on the road, I always have a stack of books I’m looking forward to reading.
Last year I shared my summer reading list, and I thought I’d do it again this year. Here are a few of the books I’m planning to read, along with one recommendation of a book I’ve already finished. The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies? By Jared Diamond Viking Adult, 2012 It’s crazy that I haven’t read this one yet.
In fact, I’d like to invite you to read it along with me. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger by Marc Levinson Princeton University Press, 2008 I’ve read a fair amount already about how advances in engines for jets and ships made globalization possible. However Long the Night: Molly Melching's Journey to Help Millions of African Women and Girls by Aimee Molloy HarperOne, 2013 Melinda read this book a while ago and wrote a great review of it on the foundation's site. Bill Gates invites us all to read Jared Diamond's The World Until Yesterday. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has shared his personal summer reading list in a blogpost and invited readers to join him in reading The World Until Yesterday by Jared Diamond, which explores what traditional societies can teach those living in the west.
Gates say he's "a big fan" of the popular science writer. "Like a lot of people, I was blown away by Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel. I had never read anything that explained so much about human history. None of the classes I took in high school or college answered what I thought was one of the biggest and most important questions about history: Why do some societies advance so much faster and further than others? " As "an experiment", Gates invites readers to read Diamond's latest with him, and to post their thoughts on his blog.
He promises to "respond to a few of them in my review", which will be posted this week. "It should be fun. Ways To Boost Your Self-Confidence. A study from the University of Texas at Austin found that children who took piano lessons had higher self-esteem than their peers. 117 fourth graders attending public schools in Montreal were chosen who had no formal music instruction, no piano at home, and an annual family income of below $40,000. 63 children were given an acoustic piano and received weekly piano lessons for three years, and 54 students did not participate in any formal music instruction.
The kids were tested on their self-confidence, academic achievement, cognitive abilities, musical abilities, and motor proficiency at the beginning and throughout the three year study. The results showed that piano instruction had a positive effect on children's self-esteem. How To Become More Happy.