Feel Good Friday is a small collection of the inspiring stuff I’ve discovered around the web. It’s all about good health, happiness and the stuff that makes us feel good! Please leave me a comment if you have a great article or blog post to share in next week’s round-up.
First of all, a link from my friend Ralf (hi Ralf!) about “Ego Depletion”. Turns out willpower is not just a metaphor, it’s actually a finite resource. This is a really worthwhile read and made me think.
A great deal of your thoughts and behaviors are automatic and unconscious. Blinking and breathing, for example, need no help from the conscious part of you. Much of your behavior, like driving to work or toweling off after a shower, just happens while your conscious mind drifts off to think about Game of Thrones or how you’ll approach your boss for a raise. If you touch a stove you recoil without thought. Your desire to avoid dark alleys and approach embraces occurs without your input. When moved by a song or a painting or a kitten, the emotional rush comes without volition. Much of your mental life is simply not under your conscious control, and Baumeister’s research suggests once you take the helm every act of volition diminishes the next.
It is as if the mind is a terribly designed airplane. As long as the plane flies in a straight line, it burns very little fuel, but as soon as the pilot takes over in any way, to dive or bank or climb, the plane burns fuel at an alarming rate making it more difficult to steer in the future. At some point, you must return the plane to autopilot until it can refuel or else it crashes.
This is why chocolate is my favourite vegetable!
15 Things you should give up to be happy. These are the things we should try to quit for a happy and stress-free life: from needing to be “right”, to living your life to others’ expectations.
This week I learned of a new hazard related to smoking: Third-hand smoke. Researchers have warned that toxins from cigarette smoke remain in the environment and build up over time. Like we needed more to worry about!
What if bone health has more to do with our Vitamin D intake than calcium and dairy? This study suggests that calcium may only be part of the picture.
Much Too Complex Carbohydrates by Rick London.
And so ends another week!
I’ve been feeling pretty stretched lately, and after a couple of weeks of trying to ignore the problem (and eventually admitting that it’s not going away) I’ve spent a little bit of time trying to figure out why. Turns out I’m not really doing anything more than usual, I’m just making terrible use of my time!
My suitcase isn’t unpacked from our trip to Apollo Bay two weeks ago. My laundry is being stored on top of my suitcase instead of being put away. The whole house needs a vacuum and my bathtub needs a scrub. We also have a car load of stuff to donate, and we keep shifting it all from the car to the laundry because we can’t organise ourselves to drop it all off! Ridiculous, right?
So this weekend I have two goals: sort my house out (if I crank up some music this will take 2 hours, max) and see The Avengers. Probably in that order, so that I don’t go rewarding myself prematurely.
Hopefully by getting these jobs out of the way my brain will have a little more space for the stuff that really matters – like drawing or painting or tackling one of the 91 uncompleted things from my 101 list! I haven’t really made any ground so far this month, so it’s time to get serious again.
What have you got planned for your weekend? If you’re in Melbourne it’s going to be a chilly one, so find a good book and remember to pick up marshmallows for your hot chocolate!
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