Author Archives: Josh

Disappointment is inevitable in life. Reality often fails to meet our expectations. Maybe you were looking forward with great anticipation to a first date. Your mind had raced ahead to fantasies of instant connection and a great romance only to meet and experience a complete lack of chemistry. Profound disappointment crashes in. You experience sadness […]

Do you struggle to be consistent? Find yourself oscillating between the extremes of being intensely productive and completely nonproductive? If so, you’re not alone. Consistency is often cited as one of the primary contributing factors to success, yet it is very thing many people struggle to achieve. The good news is there are science-based strategies […]

When life throws you a curveball, you have a choice in how to respond. How we look at our setbacks and the stories we tell ourselves about them can affect our ability to deal with future challenges. We can choose to see setbacks as opportunities for learning and growth or as limitations placed on our […]

Does your mind often drift to an imagined future of negative scenarios? If so, you just might be a worrier. When we worry, we’re essentially making negative predictions. Worry is the tendency of your mind to make a beeline to the worst-case scenario overlooking all the other possible scenarios, including the best-case and the most […]

Procrastination is a habit closely tied to anxiety. When we’re anxious about working on a project, the decision to postpone it reduces our anxiety in the short term. This reduction in anxiety reinforces procrastination making it more likely we’ll procrastinate again. But over the longer-term, procrastination maintains our anxiety because the unfinished work is looming […]

Did you know some people avoid positive emotions? Studies show that happiness can cause some to feel ill at ease or distrustful. And, as a result of this discomfort, they tend to block or suppress their positive emotions, rather than fully experience them. This emotion regulation strategy obviously puts a cap on happiness. But it […]

Did you know awe is an essential human emotion? According to psychologist Dacher Keltner, “awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your understanding of the world.” There is growing research to show that awe has many physical and psychological benefits. Physically, awe calms our nervous system, slows down […]

As the year comes to close, we tend to look back and assess the progress we’ve made towards our goals and set new ones. But because of negative biases in our thinking we’re more likely to focus on what we haven’t done rather than what we have, or on how we’ve stagnated rather than how […]

The science is clear. Experiences make us happier than things. Research shows that with experiential gifts, unlike material gifts, there are more opportunities for happiness. Merely looking forward to or anticipating an experience brings happiness, as well as the experience itself. For example, waiting for a concert or a sporting event evokes more happiness and […]

If you’ve struggled to develop healthy habits like meditating or running in the morning, here are some tips from the science of habit formation. According to Dr. Andrew Huberman, a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine, a habit is something that your nervous system has learned consciously or not. Learning takes […]