Radical Compassion

Every once in a while I come across something that gives me hope for our energy future. It cries out, "people are smarter than we seem." The latest example comes from an article in "Sierra" magazine. 

 
Jong Bok Kim, a researcher in chemical and biological engineering at Princeton University, was sitting outside his office thinking about his research subject. He was asking, what is the most productive and efficient skin for a solar cell: pyramids, strips, mirrors? As Kim gazed at a nearby shrub he realized he was looking at the answer. A leaf is covered with transparent cells that act like magnifying lenses and there are millions of ridges that guide the light deeper into the inner workings of the shrub. When Kim created a solar skin like a leaf, he discovered it absorbed six times the light of a flat surface. Did you know how researchers at MIT discovered the best arrangement for a concentrated solar plant? They arrange solar mirrors around a central tower in such a way that the light is reflected to the tower's tip. They learned this design from a sunflower, one of the best and most efficient conductors of solar energy.   

 

Or, a scientist in China made a solar cell arranged like the tail of a swallowtail butterfly. The butterfly's wings have ridges and valleys that deliver maximum warmth when the wings are spread wide. Rather than use his butterfly solar cell to create electricity, this scientist used it to create hydrogen, a clean burning fuel that could power cars of the future. 

 

All of these discoveries reminded me of a visit I made to a house in my hometown of Brookings with a built in passive solar system. The thing that most impressed me was the design of the roof. It was constructed in such a way that when the sun was in the southern sky in the winter, it entered the house under the roof line. When the sun was high in the sky in the summer, the roof line shaded the house. At the time I remember thinking, how bright! Such a simple recognition of how nature operates saves on heat and air conditioning. It begins with observation of how the world operates and adapts human operations to nature.  What a difference to the typical Western attitude, where we say this is what we want to do and if nature can adapt fine, if not, nature be damned! As if we weren't part and parcel of nature! Exxon Mobil or not, solar power is coming. Solar installations in the U.S. more than doubled from the second quarter of 2011 to the second quarter of 2012. In California, utility scale solar production last year matched that of a large coal burner or nuclear plant. In the meantime, the rooftop solar production in the state reached a comparable level, plus 20%. At West Oakland's Peoples Grocery, 70 community members financed an 8.6 kilowatt solar project on the store roof that will save $32,000 over ten  years, just one of several projects enabled by Mosaic, a solar start up. St. Vincent de Paul, serving a thousand meals a day, found 80 supporters for a rooftop project that saves them about $1,200 a month. It's estimated that the rooftop potential in the U.S. is about a fifth of the electricity demand we had nationally in 2011. And solar costs are coming down. Expectations are that in two or three years, New York and California will have "grid parity," when power from the sun is no more expensive than normal electricity for one's home. 41% of building permits in Hawaii now include requests for installing solar. Then there's Germany. On May 26 of last year, rooftop solar in that country produced half their electricity demand. In a country that's not known for sunniness, the investment in solar bodes well for their future. And the costs of installing solar in Germany are half what we would pay in the states, partly as a result of less red tape.  You would think it would be a no brainer. Sunshine is free! It's the free gift of the creator to power the growth of flowers and trees, butterflies and bees, and you and me. But there's the rub! It's free! In a world of our creating, someone has to "own" the sunshine, or the wind, or the water, or the heat of the earth, in order to satisfy the "green frog skin" of Lame Deer fame. Instead of choosing a vision where we live in harmony with the creation, too many continue to choose a path of exploitation and profit, pitting one person or one country against another. Our living room has several large windows, facing south. The sun in the winter comes streaming through those windows with warmth and cheer. They say sun on the back of your neck is good for depression so if I'm feeling down I sit on the couch, set just right, so the sun hits the back of my neck. And then I read about smart people, mostly young, who are looking at the world and realizing how we might fit in better. The sun and their intelligence, give me hope. Carl Kline

New research suggests that mood-enhancing activities can serve as a nutrient for the human body

 

 

We’ve all experienced downward spirals, in which dark emotions lead to destructive behavior that damages our health, strains our relationships, and leaves us feeling even worse than when we started. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was an uplifting equivalent to that destructive chain of events?

Newly published research suggests there is. What’s more, this delightful dynamic helps explain the well-documented link between joy, appreciation, and good health.

“Positive emotion, positive social connections, and physical health influence one another in a self-sustaining, upward-spiral dynamic,” concludes a research team led by psychologist Bethany Kok of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences. It found upbeat emotions inspired by a meditative practice led to greater feelings of connectedness with others, which positively impacted “a biological resource that has been linked to numerous health benefits.”

The best way to stay on task may just be to let your mind wander a little bit. In a new study, mindfulness training helped improve memory & test performance

A psychologist argues that negative emotions are critical for our mental health and should be embraced.

In what may be a dangerous trend, the influx of digital gadgets into daily life has made people super productive, yet much less attentive and able to focus on any single detail

Daily relaxation routines can result in beneficial long-term changes to genes involved in blood sugar control and other processes

Hungarian shadow-theatre company ‘Attraction’ leaves the Britain’s Got Talent crowd and judges in tears.

Restorative justice is a relatively newly coined school of thought in the approach to seeking justice in a crime ridden world and subsequently reducing the amount of existing crime. Van Ness & Strong (2010) purports that Johnstone and Van Ness view the term as “complex” and that it is widely seen as good but to give a definition to it is not readily available off the tongues.

Its complexity is due to its development especially in the latter years which is when it has begun to be looked at critically. In breaking up the term, restorative, from the root word restore, refers to getting something or in this case someone, back to a previous state. It is also synonymous to words such as heal, curate, renovate and repair. Justice refers to a state of fairness, being treated with equality and equity and in the process having the display of integrity, honesty and with respect. According to Zehr (2002) restorative justice is “a process to involve to the extent possible those who have a stake in a specific offense and to collectively identify and address harms needs and obligations in order to heal and put things as right as possible.”

There are numerous established practices of restorative justice all over the world. One reason for this is that the raw practice of restorative justice has been in existence long before the modern world as it was in this method that tribes and villages used to resolve matters that were deemed “criminal”. It has been in existence since the time of aborigines such as those tribes in places such as Africa, North America (including Canada), Australia, New Zealand and parts of Europe. To go beyond that, evidence of the practice in its unnamed format can be found having biblical roots (Van Ness & Zehr, 2007). Restorative justice in its current modern form is about 30 years old. The practices have transcended time to the modern world and have been proven to still work today.

Recent happiness studies indicate that popularity, influence, and money do not make people happiest – even as our culture suggests otherwise.

Autonomy, life purpose and relationships are found at the top of the list. In her new book, “The Happiness Choice: The Five Decisions that Take You From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be,” Marilyn Tam communicates what she learned, in research and through painful experiences, on how to be happy, healthy, and have a balanced life. 

 

What are the five decisions that can make you happier?

Marilyn: Research has shown that a person is happiest, healthiest and most successful when he/she is making a positive difference; taking care of himself or herself physically, mentally, spiritually and has loving relationships.

 

There are five decisions we make every day to bring us either more happiness or less -- what we choose to do with, and how we treat our: Body, relationships, money, spiritual life and community.

 

Knowing your life purpose will help guide you in allocating the proper amount of energy and attention to each of these five key aspects of your life. Dynamic balance is what we strive for -- we can’t do it all but we can adjust the resources we dedicate toward each part of our life at each stage of our life. Situations and priorities change over time but knowing our reasons for being will guide us along the way. By being conscious about what we choose to do, we can get buy-in and cooperation from others more easily than when we are acting without awareness.

 

We can make purposeful decisions and plans when we are aware of our own values instead of simply reacting to outside blandishments and events. Knowing your personal priorities, you can take the steps to gain your dynamic balance and the life you’ve always dreamed of. Happiness and inner peace are yours when you choose what is in alignment with your life’s mission.

 

What are five decisions that can make you unhappy?

 

Marilyn: Conversely if we ignore or over emphasize one or more of the five primary components of our life, there will be imbalance and negative consequences -- unhappiness is sure to follow. The neglect or abuse of our body, relationships, money, spiritual life or community over time will result in illness, emotional distress, financial problems and a feeling of emptiness.

 

What are three ways you can shrug off impossible expectations?

Marilyn: We are suffering from the stress of trying to live up to the impossible expectations of a fantasy life as depicted in the media. There we see how the rich, famous and privileged supposedly live charmed, beautiful and worry free lives with nothing as mundane as laundry to do or bills to pay.

 

Yet these same celebrities are actually dealing with many of the same challenges we have –- health issues, relationships conflicts and, yes, even money problems. Real life is not TV or the Internet; question the incessant drumbeat of what is purportedly going to make us happy. Here’s three simple ways to shift from feeling that you have to achieve the outside-imposed expectations.

 

Use your life purpose to guide your decisions and include your own wellbeing in the equation. Question the outside assumptions; are they really the best for me?

 

Pause before you jump into doing what you feel pressured to do. Take some deep breaths, shrug your shoulders and move your arms and legs to loosen your body’s tightness, then ask yourself, what would happen if I didn’t do this now? You will realize that there are other options instead of meekly doing the expected.

 

 

Laugh! Look for the humor in the impossible expectation, and that will reduce your anxiety. Review the situation with more perspective and make the choice(s) that will get you what you really want in the long term.

 

Ultimately we all know what is for our highest good; that wisdom is inside of us all along. Take some quiet time to listen to your own inner voice. Turn off all the outside “shoulds”. Spend time in nature, meditate and journal your thoughts. Remember what is most important to you. And in letting go of the impossible outside expectations you will exceed your own idea of how happy you can be!

 

This article originally appeared on Everyday Health.

 

 

The seventy-five years and twenty million dollars expended on the Grant Study points … to a straightforward five-word conclusion: ‘Happiness is love. Full stop.’

Read more: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/05/thanks-mom/309287/#ixzz2RY2fJZKR.

If you buy into the medical propaganda that depression is the result of a chemical imbalance, then you've bought into just that - propaganda.

We've yet to see the evidence of those mysterious chemical imbalances, even though trillions of dollars are made promoting them.

Some research efforts still support the logical link between your actual life and your mood.

Analyzing data from nearly 5000 participants, with a follow up at 10 years, researchers have scientifically established what most people know intuitively. If your relationships are bad, your mood is likely to follow.

"Our study shows that the quality of social relationships is a significant risk factor for major depression," says psychiatrist Alan Teo, MD, of the University of Michigan. "This is the first time that a study has identified this link in the general population."

Relationship strain, feelings of isolation in relationships, a lack of support and other issues among spouses, families and friends contribute to depression. It isn't the quantity of relationships that is important, according to the research, but the quality.

Make no mistake about it; the quality of your relationships is a determining factor in your physical and mental health

"The magnitude of these results is similar to the well-established relationship between biological risk factors and cardiovascular disease," Teo says. "What that means is that if we can teach people how to improve the quality of their relationships, we may be able to prevent or reduce the devastating effects of clinical depression."

Yet, when you go to the doctor, how often are you asked about your relationships? The health of your relationships may be the most critical factor in your overall health, for that matter. Yet, most doctors never think to inquire. In fact, most doctors have horrible relationships skills.

What you can do to improve the quality of your relationships and increase your mood

Here are some ideas:

Forget your mood and focus on your relationships.

Which are the most important relationships in your life? What is wonderful about them? What is missing? What steps can you take to improve them, beyond passively wishing that other people will magically change?

Learn real relationship skills

Do you know how to take another person's perspective? Do you understand how to look at a relationship from a neutral perspective? Do you know your preferred way to receive love? Do you know your partner's? Do you know how to mediate a conflict when you are in the midst of one?

Most people do not have great intuition about these things. Most often, we assume other people should give love in the precise manner that we like to receive it. Most people assume that they should defend themselves with solid information when attacked. Most people assume the words they say are the most important aspects of the relationship. These assumptions are all dead wrong, even damaging to relationships.

Get some relationship skills! My professional bias is toward NLP or neuro-linguistic skills, but any conscious study is usually beneficial.

Beware of self-sabotage in relationships

The number one destroyer of relationships, in my experience working with people, is self-sabotage.

Beyond pure relating skills, self-sabotage is the number one issue in relationships. Most sabotage is done unconsciously, which is why it is imperative to expand your awareness? Do you unwittingly sabotage your relationships? Here are just a few signs that you do:

1. You don't express your needs
2. You take on more than your fair share of the burden
3. You resist accountability to your partner
4. You act like a child that needs supervision
5. You annoy your partner and encourage rejection

There are hundreds of signs that you are sabotaging your relationship, most of them leading to feelings of being controlled, deprived or rejected.

For your relationship to last - or more importantly - to be peaceful and happy, you must address the unconscious patterns of self-sabotage. To learn more about self-sabotage, watch this free, 20-minute video.

It is now firmly established that the health of your relationship is tied directly to your mental health. Guard it with care.

About the author:
Watch the free video The AHA! Process: An End to Self-Sabotage and discover the lost keys to personal transformation and emotional well-being that have been suppressed by mainstream mental health for decades.


Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/040370_relationships_depression_mental_health.html#ixzz2Ta90Qd5U

Feeling connected to the world could help make life seem more meaningful, according to a new study in the journal Psychological Science.

Researchers from the University of Missouri found that feelings of coherence -- that is, feeling like things are connected and make sense -- are linked with greater feelings of there being a meaning to life.

 

The study included having study participants take a survey on a computer where they looked at trees as they were going through the seasons. After viewing these images, they answered questions meant to measure their feelings toward the meaning of life, such as "My life has a clear sense of purpose," as well as questions to measure their mood.

 

Researchers found that when the study participants viewed photos of the trees in seasonal order -- that is, a tree in the summer, followed by a tree in the fall, followed by a tree in the winter, followed by a tree in the spring, etc. -- they were more likely to report higher senses of a meaning of life, compared with those who just saw the photos completely out of order. And even if this seasonal pattern was backward -- like autumn, then summer, then spring, then winter -- they still reported high sense of meaning of life.

 

Researchers also had study participants do a similar test, but this time with words that had some relation to each other -- like the words "falling," "actor" and "dust" in relation to the word "star" -- and also found that those who read word groups like this had greater sense of meaning of life compared with those who read random words lumped together.

 

Indeed, research shows that feeling like you have a purpose in life could actually have protective benefits for your health. A study published last year from researchers at the Rush Alzheimer's Disease Center found that people with greater life purpose had slower mental decline rates, even when plaques (which are linked with Alzheimer's) developed in their brains.

About a decade ago, Washington State embarked on an early social experiment to educate people about the impacts of stress on children. The results.

How can you better remember that perfect day with your family? Psychologist and author Charles Fernyhough on the tricks and limitations of human memory.

Akintunde Akinleye/Reuters

In 1990, Jon Huntsman, Sr. made a business decision that most in corporate America would probably have called insane. He was intensely negotiating the biggest business deal of his life with Charles Miller Smith, the head of a British chemical company. Deep into the negotiations over the acquisition, Smith's wife died. She had been suffering from terminal cancer. It was unfortunate, but business is business and the negotiation was incomplete. On top of that, Huntsman had millions of dollars on the line -- money that would be his if he just pushed Smith further.

But he didn't.

"I decided the fine points of the last 20 percent of the deal would stand as they were proposed," he later wrote. "I probably could have clawed another $200 million out of the deal, but it would have come at the expense of Charles' emotional state. The agreement as it stood was good enough."

When people are stressed out, their first instinct is to protect themselves -- or to retreat into a taker mentality. But operating like a giver may actually be more effective in buffering against stress and enhancing well-being.

In his 2008 book Winners Never Cheat, Huntsman summarized his philosophy on business and life, writing, "Monetarily, the most satisfying moments in my life have not been the excitement of closing a great deal or the reaping of profits from it. They have been when I was able to help others in need ... There's no denying that I am a deal junkie, but I also have developed an addiction for giving. The more one gives, the better one feels; and the better one feels about it, the easier it becomes to give."

Huntsman is what organizational psychologist Adam Grant calls, in his provocative new book, a "giver." In Give and Take, Grant, the youngest tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, wields a large body of social science research, much of it his own, to challenge the idea that career success is a zero-sum game in which your gains equal my losses, a harmful idea that discourages people from helping each other out at work.

In Grant's book, the reader encounters three types of people: givers, takers, and matchers. Matchers reciprocate favors and good deeds tit-for-tat. Takers try to tilt the balance of a transaction in their own favor, hoping to get more than they give -- the type of person who takes credit for someone else's work. Givers are the opposite. Their hallmark is generosity. Crudely put, givers are focused on others, takers are focused on themselves, and matchers care above all about fairness.

Most people are givers in their personal relationships. They act selflessly and try to contribute more than they take with those they love. But when these people enter the workforce, their style of interacting with others changes dramatically. As Grant told me in an interview, "There is an extraordinary number of people who are in a giver mindset at home and a matcher or taker mindset in the work setting." Only 8 percent of people describe themselves as givers at work. That's because most people think it's safer to operate like a taker or matcher at work; givers, they think, are chumps who will fall behind in the game of life.

Across four other studies, researchers found that giving time away -- in the form of volunteering -- makes people feel like they actually have more time than if they spent time on themselves, wasted time, or got a random bit of free time.

Grant explodes that myth in his book, showing that givers are among the most successful people in business. They may also be the happiest. "There is powerful evidence," Grant tells me "that givers experience more meaning in their work than takers or matchers."

This is important considering that Americans spend most of their waking hours -- most of their lives -- at work. The average American man works 8.4 hours per day and the average American woman works 7.7 hours a day. How they feel in those hours is a major determinant of their well-being. But, according to the American Psychological Association, nearly 70 percent of Americans cite work as a major source of stress in their lives and four out of ten say that they experience stress at work on a daily basis. One report indicates that over half of working Americans are unsatisfied and unhappy with their jobs. The top person people don't like being around is, according to the National Time Use survey, their boss. Bosses and work seem to be significant sources of unhappiness for many people.

When people are stressed out, their first instinct is to protect themselves -- or to retreat into a taker mentality. But operating like a giver may actually be more effective in buffering against stress and enhancing well-being. On its face, this is counter-intuitive. Time is a scarce resource, especially for people who are stressed. Being a giver involves taking time away from yourself to help someone else. This could seemingly aggravate stress levels, but it actually alleviates them.

In one study, Grant and a colleague found that givers who were high school teachers were less vulnerable to stress and exhaustion if they saw the impact their giving was having on their students. Across four other studies, researchers found that giving time away -- in the form of volunteering -- makes people feel like they actually have more time than if they spent time on themselves, wasted time, or got a random bit of free time.

Not only does being a giver protect against stress, but it also has lasting benefits on well-being outside of work. In a study of 68 firefighters, Grant and a colleague found that those who helped others on the job felt happier at home at bedtime than those who did not. Interestingly, the increase in happiness from giving was delayed. The firefighters were not any happier at the end of the working day, but only after they had been at home for several hours.

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Another study, led by psychologist Sonja Lyubomirsky, shows that the more giving an individual is, the happier he becomes. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: Over a six-week period, they would either perform five random acts of kindness all in one day or to do one act of kindness across five different days. Those who fit all five acts of giving into one day were happier at the end of the study than those who thinly spread their giving out.

Being a giver is a principle many of us apply -- or at least try to -- in our personal lives. It's also one we should internalize in the workplace. As Grant puts it, "Let's ignore the evidence that givers often outperform matchers and takers. Let's say their scores are even. Given that, here is the question I would ask takers: Would you rather achieve success in ways that come at the expense of others or in ways the lift other people up?" He also points out that if you try to be a giver just to get ahead, it probably won't work.

Psychologists say kids who get entangled in their parents' arguments often suffer shame and low self-esteem.

FREE THE MIND is the fantastic tale of how one man's vision provides a turning point in the lives of three people.

Professor Davidson sets out to discover if, and how, it may be possible to physically change the brain using only the power of thought.

An expert in the field of positive psychology explores the perks of bonding -- with everyone around you.

 

By Nicole Frehsée

 

Here's some simple advice: Spread the love. Not just with your partner, family, and friends but with people you hardly know, because the more loving you are in everyday life, the healthier you could be. In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, Barbara Fredrickson, Ph.D., suggests that true love isn't just about romance, companionship, or fondness; fundamentally, it springs from something she calls "micromoments of shared positive emotion." Fredrickson's research has found that such moments have the potential to lower our risk for disease and may even influence how our cells regenerate. We asked her to tell us more.

Q: How did you arrive at your definition of love?
BF: I look at it from the body's point of view. When the brain registers love, it triggers the release of the hormone and neurotransmitter oxytocin. This happens as long as three things occur: First, a warm feeling must be shared -- say, the barista at your café comps your latte after noticing you've had a rough day. Second, your brain activity has to sync up with the other person's, as when you laugh at the same joke. Third, there's a mutual motivation to invest in each other's well-being.

Q: But can you really be invested in a stranger's well-being?
BF: Yes. Say you have a friendly chat with a guy in line at the post office, and then you see a package fall on his foot. You'll have more concern for him than for a person you'd never connected with. It's not something we think about consciously, but these fleeting connections happen more often than we realize.

Q: If the connections are so short-lived, why should we care about them?
BF: They can help improve something called cardiac vagal tone, which reflects how much your heart rate is influenced by your breathing. It's an indication of your body's capacity to regain calm after you've been in a stressful situation. Low vagal tone has been linked to chronic inflammation throughout the body, which is a known risk factor for heart failure, stroke, and diabetes. In our research, we found that the more positive social connections people had over a nine-week period, the more their vagal tone increased.

Q: You say these micromoments of love can also change our cells. How does that work?
BF: Your emotions can trigger hormones that influence the way genes are expressed in the body. We know this happens with negative emotions: Stress releases adrenaline, which can prime cells for inflammation, causing disease. I believe that positive feelings, which can trigger the release of oxytocin, have the opposite effect and set us up for a healthier life.

 

Q: How can we add more micromoments to our lives?
BF: Simply get out and be more social! That's what's really promising about our research. Getting the benefits of love doesn't require being in a romantic relationship or living near family and friends. Just make sure you're connecting with others, whether it's through conversation or eye contact. We tend to trivialize these interactions, but they're just as important to your health as eating well or going for a run.

Sam Parnia helps bring people back from the dead -- and some return with stories that could challenge traditional scientific ideas about the nature of consciousness