Worry is a natural emotion that occurs when we feel threatened. However, many of our worries are unfounded, sapping our energy and deflecting our attention from life’s real problems. In a recent New York Times article, Boston author David Ropeik makes the case that most of us don't know how to worry. Although we often underestimate how risky something really is, we are even more likely to overestimate the dangers of taking actions that would actually help us. In other words, when it comes to evaluating the risk-benefit ratio of our actions, we do a pretty poor job. This is because, Ropeik argues, our brains are wired to worry first and think second. This quote from the work of NYU neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux sums it up in a nutshell: “connections from the emotional systems to the cognitive systems are stronger than connections from the cognitive systems to the emotional systems.”
Meditation & Resisting Urges→
/Research shows that an ability to resist urges will improve your relationships, increase your dependability, and raise your performance. If you can resist your urges, you can make better, more thoughtful decisions. You can be more intentional about what you say and how you say it. You can think about the outcome of your actions before following through on them.Our ability to resist an impulse determines our success in learning a new behavior or changing an old habit. It's probably the single most important skill for our growth and development.
As it turns out, that's one of the things meditation teaches us. It's also one of the hardest to learn.
Peter Bregman, writing for Harvard Business Review, encourages us to take the time to meditate. Not unlike working out, finding the time to meditate actually increases productivity by teaching us how to better think and react to those thoughts.
The Week's Links: October 14, 2012
/All the links posted on social networks this week:
- Unexpected: What I Learned This Week ◉
- The Power of Negative Thinking ➞
- Algorithm turns computers into art experts ➞
- With The Oatmeal’s help, nonprofit buys property to build a Tesla Museum ➞
- So good: 15 Brilliant, Spooky, Hilarious and Creative Cinemagrams ➞
- Every great writer has a strong voice. Helping students find their own is key to any "writing revolution." ➞
- Code Monster and teaching programming to kids ➞
- Salman Khan: The Rise of the Tech-Powered Teacher ➞
- What's invisible? More than you think ➞
- Honey bee brains could soon be helping robots act more independently. ➞
- These are beautiful: High-Speed Photography Turns Water Droplets Into Liquid Sculptures ➞
- The design thinking behind the newDisney.com ➞
- Making Advanced Analytics Work for You ➞
- Why James Dyson Invested $8,000,000 In A Student Incubator ➞
- Why School Should Focus on Engagement Instead of Lectures ➞
- 10 Books to Restore Your Faith in Print ➞
- Two huge state-run museums open in Shanghai ➞
- A mission to photograph all 210,000 oil paintings in public ownership in the UK is completed ➞
- The Hollywood Reporter's Top 50 Showrunners 2012 - ➞
- Kickstarting: A 3-D Printer For Designers, By Designers ➞
- Who invented fire? When did people start cooking? ➞
- The Music Industry's New Math: Pop’s old metrics don’t matter. ➞
- Chanel Creates Interactive Digital Timeline For Coco And The Company ➞
- InsideOut Episode 1 by Photographer & TED Prize winner JR ◉
- I love the interrobang: 13 Little-Known Punctuation Marks We Should Be Using ➞
- An anthology of Tim Burton clips. ➞
- Your creative thinking performance can be primed with certain images and pictures.➞
- How close are we to fully digitised libraries? Rachel Coldicutt scanned her book collection to find out. ➞
- The 10 Most Mentioned Songs in Books ➞
- How Stories Change Your Brain ◉
- Best Rest Practices for Optimal Productivity & Creativity ➞
- Hacking Habits: How To Make New Behaviors Last For Good ➞
- Publisher releases interactive iPad editions of Shakespeare's most famous plays. ➞
- FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver Explains Why We Suck At Predictions (And How To Improve) ➞
- Joshua Foer: OK-ness is the enemy of greatness ◉
- A behind-the-scenes look at LinkedIn’s mobile engineering ➞
- AIGA | Aquent Survey of Design Salaries 2012 Results Now Available ➞
- Futures of Entertainment 6 is taking place November 9-10, 2012 at MIT ➞
- No Filter: Inside Hipstamatic’s Lost Year Searching For The Next Killer Social App ➞
- The Millions: 2012 National Book Award Finalists Announced (With Excerpts and Bonus Links) ➞
- Learn How To Become A Successful Entrepreneur From Stanford Professors, For Free. ➞
- 3D-Print Your Own Ancient Art at Museum Scanathon ➞
- Picasso Play to Get a Reading at the Guggenheim ➞
- 10 Must-See Documentaries for Entrepreneurs ➞
- Why We Are So Rude on Facebook and Other Social Media ➞
- Website pagination: Stories should load into a single page every time. ➞
- Want Your Message To Stick? Tell A Story ➞
- Hacking Habits: How To Make New Behaviors Last For Good ➞
- Well done is better than well sued ◉
- Popular Mechanics Selects The 10 World-Changing Innovators for 2012 ➞
- In Artificial Intelligence Competition, Two Bots Pass for Human ➞
- N Is a Number: A Portrait of Paul Erdős, the Most Prolific Mathematician of the 20th Century ➞
- The Creativity of Web Design, Indie Video Games and Fans ◉
- Those are so cool: Playing with pencil shavings ➞
- Almost a quarter of U.S. adults own a tablet, PEW survey finds ➞
- Terry Gilliam Shows You How to Make Your Own Cutout Animation ◉
- Forget Revolution: What would really happen if the lights went out. ➞
- W3C teams with Apple, Google, Mozilla on WebPlatform, a guide to building the open web (video) ➞
- I wouldn't mind commuting in a train like this: Trains evoking the palace of Versailles ➞
- Seeking to expand your education? This one is for you: ➞ /via @DisneyPixar
- New Goya and Rembrandt Databases Now Online | Open Culture ➞
- Gary Panter's drawing tips ➞
- How old is your brain? ➞
- The 10 Best Narrators in Literature ➞
- Operas and orgasms, a look at English National Opera's provocative 'Don Giovanni' ad ➞
- Musical Creativity and the Brain ➞
- Want Your Message To Stick? Tell A Story ➞
- Creativity Top 5: October 8, 2012 ◉
- CultureLab: Top 10 most influential popular science books ➞
- How It's Made: Instant Film for Polaroid Cameras ◉
- These are brilliant: Murakami covers by Noma Bar ➞
- Revisiting Oliver Burkeman on why everything takes longer than you think ◉
- Paradox of Hoaxes: How Errors Persist, Even When Corrected ➞
- Writing Rules! Advice From The Times on Writing Well ➞
- Branded for Life. A look at the performers that become permanently associated with a brand. ➞
- The Art of Fiction No. 203: In Interview with Ray Bradbury ➞
- Who Made That Escape Key? ➞
- The Role of Suspense in Stories and Music ➞
- The complicated history of simple scientific facts ➞
- Placebos Are Getting More Effective. Drugmakers Are Desperate to Know Why.➞
- How do we get people to understand programming? ➞
- Researchers identify brain region that generates optimism bias ➞
- African mouse regenerates lost skin, cartilage and hair without scarring ➞
- Coca-Cola creates ad that can be used as an iPhone dock for music listening. ➞
Recommended this week:
How Stories Change Your Brain
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This short video was produced by Kirby Ferguson of Everything is a Remix fame for the Future of Storytelling conference. It features Paul Zak describing recent studies on the effects of storytelling on the brain and how stories affect our empathy.