Merce Cardus's Blog, page 56

It’s Hard for the Brain to Be Rational about a $1.5 Billion Lottery Jackpot

Did you know that just the thought of money causes your brain to react in ways similar to being high on cocaine?

There have been myriad studies conducted over the years on the psychology of money. Here, Sehgal, author of COINED, offers a highlight reel of some of the most notable findings.

So, I looked at the topic of what’s happening in the brain when we deal with the money. And there’s a part of the brain that activates — it’s called the nucleus accumbens. It’s deep within the sort of evo...

Love Is Under Threat

In In Praise of Love, For Badiou, love is an existential project, a constantly unfolding quest for truth. This quest begins with the chance encounter, an event that forever changes two individuals, challenging them “to see the world from the point of view of two rather than one.” This, Badiou believes, is love’s most essential transforming power.

Love under threat

Paris is plastered with posters for the Meetic Internet dating-site, whose ads I find really disturbing. I could mention a numbe...

LinkFest ~ Best Reads on Writing, Screenwriting & Self-Publishing: Writer’s Block Is Just An Excuse

WRITING

Scene Structure: Your Opening Scene , Live Write Thrive| Tweet

One of the main points discussed in previous posts involved picking just the right starting place to begin your book. This means the story starts in present action, in the middle of something happening, with your POV character right in the situation and revealing her (or his) fears, dreams, needs, or goals and the obstacle that is in the way and presenting a problem Related content: Making a scene 3 Keys to rega...

Want to Be Creative AND Successful? Understand the Nature of Creativity — And Success

Want to Be Creative AND Successful?Stephen J. Dubner, author of Think like a freak, tells you how.

There’s an irony in trying to get people to do their best work — but particularly to try new things and to innovate — in that very often the kind of characteristics that are common to someone who will have a good new idea have no overlap with the characteristics that are common to someone who’s really good at presenting in meetings. So it’s kind of like the difference between like sales and R&...

5 Strategies For Finding Your Life’s Task

By analyzing the lives of such past masters as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Leonard da Vinci, as well as by interviewing nine contemporary masters, including tech guru Paul Graham and animal rights advocate Temple Grandin, in Mastery, Greene debunks our culture’s many myths about genius and distills the wisdom of the ages to reveal the secret to greatness.

The misery that oppresses you lies not in your profession but in yourself! What man in the world would not fi...

There is No ‘I’: How the Brain Creates the Narratives of Your Life

Your brain creates all the narratives in your life, from fear to loneliness to anxiety, etc. But it’s possible to train your brain through mindfulness to transcend its innate urge to storify everything.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, author of Mindfulness for beginners and a respected medical researcher and professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, explains what years and years of study have taught us about the taming of the brain.

If you put people in a scanner and tell the...

How To Truly Love Someone?

In order to love in a real way, Thich Nhat Hanh explains, we need to learn how to be fully present in our lives. In True Love he offers readers the technique of conscious breathing as a method for synchronizing the mind and body to establish the conditions of love.

The 4 Aspects of Love

According to Buddhism, there are four elements of true love.

1. Loving-kindness or benevolence

The first is maitri, which can be translated as loving-kindness or benevolence.

Loving-kindness is not only the...

The Terrifying Truth About Bananas

In Banana: The fate of the fruit that changed the world, award-winning journalist Dan Koeppel gives readers plenty of food for thought.

Yes, we might eventuallyhave no bananas.

Is it really true? Why are bananas, as we know them, now under the threat of extinction? Can the fate of the Cavendish banana be changed?

First, the good:

Bananas are healthy, packed with nutrition and energy, they fit in your hand and give nice little cues when they’re perfectly ripe, and are easy to peel and eat; s...

Fear Is For Suckers: 5 Helpful Ways To Navigate Through Fear

By the end of You Are a Badass, you’ll understand why you are how you are, how to love what you can’t change, how to change what you don’t love, and how to use The Force to kick some serious ass.

To fear or not to fear, that is the question.

We’ve made being in fear a habit

We’re pumped full of it as children, like sugar, then as we grow we continue to take in the bad news on TV and the horror in the papers and the violence in books and films and video games and all this junk that fills us...

Why Women May Be Less Monogamous Than Men–Backed By Research

A bevy of new research is proving wrong many of our preconceived notions about women and sexuality. Daniel Bergner, author of The other side of desire, explains.

The desire

There’s some pretty stark research out there now that, oddly enough, I think doesn’t get quite as much attention as it deserves. I’ll just talk about one study. This was done by a German scientist who looked at 2,500 committed couples, so no small number. The results are probably no fluke. And he measured their desire...