27 June, 2016 by Choki team

The Mysterious World of Synchronicity

Do you often see 11:11? 12:34? 3:33? Or any other synchronistic patterns?

Do you ever have strange coincidences that defy logic, and often lead to magical unfoldings?

In this article we’ll explore the strange world of synchronicity.

What brought you here? Why in this very moment when you could be anywhere doing anything, is it that you have found yourself on this blog? Chances are that you saw the image and it made sense to you! Do you see 11:11? Does it boggle your mind and at times create weird and wonderful confusion? Are you struggling to make sense of its meaning? Don’t worry, I totally understand, and I hope this article can be of some comfort…

This article is not going to be just about numerology, that is only a small part of the mysterious world of synchronicity. I am going to try and bring some kind of meaning to something that is hard to understand at a purely logical view point, and something that I have to admit I do not fully understand. But it is my belief that synchronicity does not work on that kind of level. I know it is significant, I know that following it can bring great things, but it is not something that can be fully understood by the mind.

What is Synchronicity?

Synchronicity is a sequence of events that coincide with each other, and have significant meaning related to each other. These events would appear on the surface to be just chance, but are in no way a coincidence.

An example would be: You want to pursue your dream job and you are trying to make an excuse not to do so and for every excuse you make a solution seems to fall in your lap. Or you attend an event you would usually avoid because every time you switch on the TV, radio or speak with someone it’s all you hear about. Then as a result of attending that event you meet someone significant, like a partner, a business associate or a future friend.

One extreme example from my own life was when I was thinking about giving up on my passion of writing and sharing information about spirituality and growth due to the financial strain it was causing. I had gone online looked up some jobs and was ready to quit, that night I went to bed and said, “If you are going to give me a sign, now is the right time”. The next day I received a cheque from a family member that fixed that problem.

Synchronicities differ from coincidence, a coincidence could be you sneezing and at the same time a firework going off. It may be a little weird that it happens, but in most cases there would be no significant meaning.

Types of Synchronicity

Predictive: This is where you see, think or do something that links to an outcome. The classic example is thinking of someone and them calling you.

Guiding: This is where all signs guide you to a specific outcome. This could be you thinking of giving up on your music career because of a lack of work and just as you are about to do so, you get a phone call from someone trying to book you for work.

Reflective: This is where you are forced to reflect due to a synchronistic event. An example would be if you decided to cancel your gym membership and then as you go to do it an email hits your inbox about the benefits of exercise, making you reflect on if you have made the right decision or not.

Testing: This is where synchronicity tests you ego. An example would be if you had a food addiction and absolutely loved fried chicken, when thinking about this addiction a fried chicken advert comes on the TV. Testing your ability to fight the temptation. Be strong, don’t do it!!!

Synchronicities are Always Happening

One thing I have noticed is that there have always been synchronicities in my life, maybe not quite in the quantity that they are happening now, but they have always been there. Your job is to follow the synchronistic events. The magical thing is, the more you follow them the more they happen.

Don’t go searching for something that is not there, but learn to recognise when something is in front of you. If the perfect relationship seems to fall from the sky at the perfect moment and you decide not to pursue it, you are seeing the synchronicities, but not following them.

When you start to live out these synchronistic events you will start getting the little cosmic nudges, like 11:11 or in my case 33, I see this number everywhere and it was only on a doing a little research I realized the spiritual significance of it.

Synchronicity in Your Life

Think back to every significant event in your life, I am sure it is full of synchronicity and it is usually the bigger the life event the more synchronicities coincide with it.

A while back I had been trying to get in front of a bigger audience. These events led towards me being able to work at Truth Theory:

Synchronicity number 1: I had a list of around 30 blogs I wanted to write for, out of that list I sent my article: 6 Ideas For An Educational Revolution to Truth Theory.

Synchronicity number 2: The owner of Truth Theory was working on an educational website so he was drawn to the article.

Synchronicity number 3: Out of anywhere in the world he could have lived, he lived just 5 minutes from my house.

Synchronicity number 4: We decided to meet up and it turned out we were pretty much on the same wavelength and that he needed someone to write for Truth Theory.

If anyone one of these events didn’t happen, I would not be here writing this article. But they all did and now I am here.

What Is The Point of Synchronicity?

Synchronicity serves many purposes; it can serve as a reminder that you are on the right path, it can be for guidance, sometimes it is to test you, sometimes it will lead you to form significant relationships and other times it is just for you to stop and be present!

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Author: Luke Miller – Wake Up World

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12 May, 2016 by Choki team

In Search of Happiness: A Journey to the Last Shangri-la

Choki Nonprofit, for the benefit of all at the expense of none, is proud to sponsor Motivational Speaker, Photographer, Author, Fifa Agent and Spiritual Seeker, Donaldo Barros for a 21 day journey to Bhutan, one of the most inaccessible and unknown destinations in the world. Following the footsteps of Buddha’s teachings personally, Donaldo seeks the secret of true happiness to be used as an aid and inspiration to all. During his journey, Donaldo will be exploring some of the most sacred sites of Bhutan, while conveying his daily teachings of beauty and culture daily on social media with the world.

Barros believes that his visit to the land of the Thunder Dragon will encourage people to learn about the teachings of Bhutan for the world. “I feel that going to Bhutan is like having in my hands a proof of the statement: ‘The impossible exists until someone makes it possible’. With this opportunity there will be pages written that will be part of tomorrow’s history and that makes my responsibility even bigger. Do we want to change the world for good? This trip is my contribution in my efforts to do so, said Barros.”

During his journey, Barros will begin in the spiritual center of Punakha where he will visit the classroom supported by Choki at the Nalanda Buddhist Institute. There, he will spend several days learning from the lamas and interacting with the monks. Then, he will head north venturing to Gasa within the highlands of the Himalayas, where he will spend the next 19 days traveling by old footpaths to sites that are treasures of this world.

At Choki, we are excited to be collaborating with Donaldo Barros on this journey to benefit the Bhutanese community and the world. Through Donaldo’s vision and Bhutanese values, Choki hopes to express deep understanding of the Bhutanese people, by communicating the underlying causes of true happiness with the world.

Follow this amazing journey from Monday, May 16th through our Choki’s Fanpage or Choki’s Instagram @choki_org and stay tuned to discover what this great adventure might teach us.

Donaldo Barros – Established Motivational Speaker, Photographer, Author, and Spiritual Seeker

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18 October, 2015 by Choki team

18 Signs That You’re Here to Transform Human Consciousness

For many years now, a lot of people have been talking about “The Shift,” this mysterious transformation of human consciousness that is supposedly underway. Ever since the end of the Mayan calendar in December of 2012, New Age types tend to twitter away about the evolution of the species, the revolution of love, and other hopeful but fuzzy seeming changes in what it means to be human. I want to take a minute to help us all ground this floaty notion a bit.

See if any of this sounds familiar:

Do you have a vision of some aspect of a more beautiful world, and you know it’s your sacred purpose to help bring it into being?

Do you sense that something is out of alignment in the world, and you want to be a part of the solution?

Have you experienced a life-altering event that changed everything for you, and now you want to use that experience to help others?

Do you have an innovative idea that might make the world a better place?

Do you feel called to help others heal, transform, connect, love, create, succeed, and thrive?

Yeah, I thought so. I had a feeling you were one of us! Welcome to what my friend Martha Beck calls “The Team.” In her book Finding Your Way In A Wild New World,Martha Beck defines Team members by the following characteristics. You may not recognize every single attribute, but if you’re a Team member, you’re likely to be nodding your head a lot as you read through these characteristics of those whose souls incarnated here on this planet right now to facilitate this mystical shift in human consciousness. See if any of these Team traits resonate with who you are and how you feel.

A sense of having a specific mission or purpose involving a major transformation in human experience, but being unable to articulate what this change might be.
A strong sense that the mission, whatever it is, is getting closer in time.
A compulsion to master certain fields, skills, or professions, not only for career advancement but in preparation for this half-understood personal mission.
High levels of empathy; a sense of feeling what others feel.
An urgent desire to lessen or prevent suffering for humans, animals, or even plants.
Loneliness stemming from a sense of difference, despite generally high levels of social activity. One woman summed up this feeling perfectly when she said, “Everybody likes me, but nobody’s like me.
High levels of creativity; passion for music, poetry, performance, or visual arts.
An intense love of animals, sometimes a desire to communicate with them.
Difficult early life, often with a history of abuse or childhood trauma.
Intense connection to certain types of natural environment, such as the ocean, mountains, or forest.
Resistance to orthodox religiosity, paradoxically accompanied by a strong sense of either spiritual purpose or spiritual yearning.
Love of plants and gardening, to the point of feeling empty or depressed without the chance to be among green things and/or help them grow.
Very high emotional sensitivity, often leading to predilections for anxiety, addictions, or eating disorders.
Sense of intense connection with certain cultures, languages, or geographic regions.
Disability, often brain-centered (dyslexia, retardation, autism) in oneself or a loved one. Fascination with people who have intellectual disabilities or mental illness.
Apparently gregarious personality contrasting with a deep need for periods of solitude; a sense of being drained by social contact and withdrawing to “power up” again.
Persistent or recurring physical illness, often severe, with symptoms that fluctuate inexplicably.
Daydreams (or night dreams) about healing damaged people, creatures, or places.

You!

If you read that list (like I did) thinking “Check, check, check,” you’re definitely one of us visionary healer mender way-finders on The Team. And the world needs you to fulfill your sacred purpose — pronto!

As Martha wrote, “If enough people start mending their true nature in the incredibly interconnected world we’re creating, the cumulative effect really could begin healing the true nature of, well, everything.”

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Author: Lissa Rankin

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9 October, 2015 by Choki team

Sacred Space – What Is It and Why Do We Need It?

In a recent conversation, a dear friend for many years asked me, “I wonder why it is that people need to hold this special view of what is sacred… why some things are sacred and others aren’t.” This is fascinating inquiry, one that invokes a number of subjects, such as the nature of healing, activism, our working definition of spirituality, and our emotional lives — all of which I hope to touch on here.

Sacred Space is time and space we set aside, or which spontaneously arises, to experience a depth, richness, and sense of meaning that usually escapes us in fast-paced everyday life when we are not as connected as we could be with our body, intuition, good thinking, compassion and empathy, and other emotions.

I imagine that many reading this article consider everything to be sacred. Some of you might even consider evil and suffering to be sacred, since the world is full of dark and light. For me, the word sacred has a definite earthiness to it, a sense of being here engaged in some ritual or activity connected with everyday life. Whereas, what is “divine” to me has more connotations with things ethereal, with a non-material influence or presence in our lives. We could say, in a sense, that what we consider sacred is a certain holiness of earthy things and what is divine is the holiness and immutability of invisible forces.

These are the loose definitions I’ll hold for this discussion, and if your meanings are different, no worries, just use your own words to substitute for what I have defined as “divine” and “sacred.” After all, I don’t mention these definitions to impose my perspectives, but for the opposite reason — so that you know what I mean, so that you can find your own meaning for what is discussed here. The point, after all, is not to get hung up on the words, but on what the words mean and the things and experience to which they point.

So, in a nutshell, we’ll consider sacred to be the presence of something “divine” in an embodied or earthy way. Yet, many of us still, unconsciously or not, hold some aspects of life to be sacred and others non-sacred. Some of us also maintain huge distinctions between what is sacred, what is spiritual, and what is not. No doubt, some of this separation has arisen from religious traditions that maintain God and Spirit to be separate from material existence, and certainly our everyday, mundane activities.

While I’m not here to tell you what is sacred and what is not, I am here to help you clarify what the word “sacred” points to in your own experience, or whatever word you might use to describe what I have called sacred, and then to consider how your perceptions, and divisions, of what is sacred might be holding you back from more richness, fulfillment, and joy in your experience.

Finding Meaning

So, let’s begin with positive sacred experiences. Popular sacred experiences might include spending time in nature, yoga and meditation practice, morning prayer, in church or a synagogue, tender love-making with your partner, a sharing circle, any kind of ritual or ceremony, or a healing session. Other sacred space moments might include feeding birds on a park bench, playing or reading with your child, watching a meaningful movie, making art, petting and cuddling with a pet, sharing deep feelings with a loved one, helping someone in need, giving someone your full attention, or saving a piece of nature.

All these experiences have something in common: we find meaning in them, and/or they make us feel good. If something isn’t meaningful to us or makes us feel not so good, we tend to push it away as non-sacred. So, either unconsciously or consciously, we tend to make a separation in our perception of reality. We separate “positive” experiences from “negative” ones, and we consider some things more meaningful than others.

Now, sometimes we consider ordinary reality less sacred not because it is inherently meaningless, but because we haven’t yet found the meaning in it. So, part of sanctifying what we consider less sacred aspects of life is finding meaning in them. This requires a change in perception and/or a change in heart. For me, this is a spiritual pursuit: finding meaning in what I have previously found meaningless by opening, or spontaneously being opened, to its wisdom. This does not mean making up stories about reality, not infusing meaning into things through denial, but finding real intellectual and emotionally honest meaning in my experience and the nature of reality. And this usually means letting both my heart and mind break open.

In particular, difficult emotions — such as anger, grief, remorse, guilt, and despair — is a domain I have found great meaning in over the years. I have found that when I stay with and welcome these difficult emotional states, they change, and change me for the better. In fact, my very welcoming them and feeling and expressing them allows them to change, allows them to truly transform me into more breadth and depth, so that I can keep my heart clear and open to the rest of life. So, all these emotions have become sacred to me, and they also allow me to experience more meaning and richness in the rest of what I consider sacred.

If we consider certain aspects of life not to be sacred, then we might hold them out of our hearts. When we hold parts of life out of our hearts we hold them away from our love and healing. Things I tend to want to hold outside of sacred are pollution, GMOs and toxic agriculture, dishonesty, and needless violence. And I confess, these are all still largely non-sacred to me because they desecrate the very fabric of life. But, if they spur more compassion, more revolution, more love, and more care for our environment, then they acquire some sacred value. And I do see that they inspire these qualities, however seemingly unnecessarily.

With this said, these industries don’t show enough transformational value, as with difficult emotional states, that I consider them worth keeping, at all. In other words, while they might elicit sacred internal moments, and sacred activism, they don’t create enough goodness in the world, and in fact, do great damage. And the good they do is only in the context of our trying to get rid of them! So, right or wrong, I do have a limit to what I consider good and “sacred.” What destroys the planet and our lives, with little redeeming value, is not sacred to me. With this said, destruction and death are natural, and sacred to me, but not when they are avoidable (largely by natural means) and go against the inherent wisdom of nature.

Love and the Sacred

So indeed, part of what is sacred relies on what we find meaningful and valuable. I find the Earth and its biosphere valuable. I find the proliferation of other species valuable. I consider clean water, soil, air, oceans, and forests valuable. So, I hold judgment over what injures these. And the sacred meaning I find in these negative influences is fighting against them and more deeply regarding as precious what they injure. I consider this gritty form of revolution part of the love revolution, as we protect what we have defined to be sacred. And since part of what fosters care for our planet involves feeling our anger and protection, our sadness and despair, these emotions increase our participation for what we love, for what is sacred. Love, then, is more than just a feel-good experience. And so is what I consider sacred.

When we can join what we consider non-sacred to what we do consider sacred, we join Yin and Yang, and we bolster the cycle of fertility and sustainability through ordinary activism, which is love in action.

For this reason, it’s important for me to keep my mind open to what I might be in denial of or blind to. For, if I misread part of reality and deem it evil when it is not — as certain religious and “spiritual” doctrines and edicts have done for too long, and I think many times in gross error — then I myself become a negative force. Discerning reality, therefore, is important to our sense of the sacred and our love. If I suddenly become aware of the great value of toxic agriculture, pollution, and mercenary greed, then I might be able to embrace these more and consider them sacred. So far, I have not found much grace, much sacredness, in these enterprises.

We can create an external space with similar qualities we want to cultivate inside us. And, we can bring qualities inside us that we want to see in the external world.

So, if you are torn up inside, find sacred space outwardly to help heal yourself inwardly. And if you are in chaos outwardly, summon your sustainable and enduring inner resources to the aid of the external moment.

Spiritualizing the Ordinary

A popular domain of the sacred is what many include in their definition of spirituality. Rituals, ceremonies, and gatherings of all sorts that we consider sacred are often held in a special space with special preparations. This has been the case for millennia in all cultures. Part of my struggle, however, has always been how to integrate the meaning and quality of attention common to these special functions and experiences into everyday experience. How to spiritualize “ordinary” life.

Indeed, many don’t even try to integrate “sacred space” in to “everyday space.” Their spiritual life is separate from everyday life. This creates a schism between what we consider sacred and what is not. I have never been satisfied with a spiritual life that does not directly and practically influence my everyday life, thereby spiritualizing the mundane.

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Author: Jack Adam Weber – Wake Up World

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11 August, 2015 by Choki team

Tomorrow Never Comes… The Moment is Now!

Mainstream Spirituality teaches us to be content with the way things are. I agree; to be awesomely okay with the moment brings with it not only the wholeness of surrender, but also a tremendous sense of well-being and aliveness. But if you then somehow curtail the natural arising of motivational soul, you limit the potential of all that you can be. Such denial can lead to subconscious frustration and sense of limitation.

We must allow the soul to breakthrough and break free – to fully express and be alive to the bounteous wonders of the moment. Those waiting for ‘it’ to arrive tomorrow may find that ‘it’ never comes at all.

The point is, there are many qualities of the soul, not just surrender and acceptance; these are only the beginning, they get you to the start of the path. To truly experience the wonder of life and the full majesty of your soul, you then have to start ‘walking’.

Each step is about the expression of who you are. Find the sweet-spot of your divine expression in the moment, then the world begins to change and shape around you.

Yes, what you do is important. But truly authentic doing, which delivers Right Action in the moment, can only ever come from truly authentic being. So in each moment, look for and express the majesty of who you are. Get into and peel away any veils that mask your greatness. Begin it now, in this moment, and you will always create a vibrant and alive tomorrow.

The time is now. There is no other time!

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Author: Openhand – Wake Up World – Your World Within

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10 March, 2015 by Choki team

10 Psychological Studies That Will Change What You Think About Yourself

Why do we do the things we do? Despite our best attempts to “know thyself,” the truth is that we often know astonishingly little about our own minds, and even less about the way others think. As Charles Dickens once put it, “A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other.”

Psychologists have long sought insights into how we perceive the world and what motivates our behavior, and they’ve made enormous strides in lifting that veil of mystery. Aside from providing fodder for stimulating cocktail-party conversations, some of the most famous psychological experiments of the past century reveal universal and often surprising truths about human nature.

Here are 10 classic psychological studies that may change the way you understand yourself.

We all have some capacity for evil.

Arguably the most famous experiment in the history of psychology, the 1971 Stanford prison study put a microscope on how social situations can affect human behavior. The researchers, led by psychologist Philip Zimbardo, set up a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psych building and selected 24 undergraduates (who had no criminal record and were deemed psychologically healthy) to act as prisoners and guards. Researchers then observed the prisoners (who had to stay in the cells 24 hours a day) and guards (who shared eight-hour shifts) using hidden cameras.

The experiment, which was scheduled to last for two weeks, had to be cut short after just six days due to the guards’ abusive behavior — in some cases they even inflicted psychological torture — and the extreme emotional stress and anxiety exhibited by the prisoners.

“The guards escalated their aggression against the prisoners, stripping them naked, putting bags over their heads, and then finally had them engage in increasingly humiliating sexual activities,” Zimbardo told American Scientist. “After six days I had to end it because it was out of control — I couldn’t really go to sleep at night without worrying what the guards could do to the prisoners.”

We don’t notice what’s right in front of us.

Think you know what’s going on around you? You might not be nearly as aware as you think. In 1998, researchers from Harvard and Kent State University targeted pedestrians on a college campus to determine how much people notice about their immediate environments. In the experiment, an actor came up to a pedestrian and asked for directions. While the pedestrian was giving the directions, two men carrying a large wooden door walked between the actor and the pedestrian, completely blocking their view of each other for several seconds. During that time, the actor was replaced by another actor, one of a different height and build, and with a different outfit, haircut and voice. A full half of the participants didn’t notice the substitution.

The experiment was one of the first to illustrate the phenomenon of “change blindness,” which shows just how selective we are about what we take in from any given visual scene — and it seems that we rely on memory and pattern-recognition significantly more than we might think.

Delaying gratification is hard — but we’re more successful when we do.

A famous Stanford experiment from the late 1960s tested preschool children’s ability to resist the lure of instant gratification — and it yielded some powerful insights about willpower and self-discipline. In the experiment, four-year-olds were put in a room by themselves with a marshmallow on a plate in front of them, and told that they could either eat the treat now, or if they waited until the researcher returned 15 minutes later, they could have two marshmallows.

While most of the children said they’d wait, they often struggled to resist and then gave in, eating the treat before the researcher returned, TIME reports. The children who did manage to hold off for the full 15 minutes generally used avoidance tactics, like turning away or covering their eyes. The implications of the children’s behavior were significant: Those who were able to delay gratification were much less likely to be obese, or to have drug addiction or behavioral problems by the time they were teenagers, and were more successful later in life.

We can experience deeply conflicting moral impulses.

A famous 1961 study by Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram tested (rather alarmingly) how how far people would go to obey authority figures when asked to harm others, and the intense internal conflict between personal morals and the obligation to obey authority figures.

Milgram wanted to conduct the experiment to provide insight into how Nazi war criminals could have perpetuated unspeakable acts during the Holocaust. To do so, he tested a pair of participants, one deemed the “teacher” and the other deemed the “learner.” The teacher was instructed to administer electric shocks to the learner (who was supposedly sitting in another room, but in reality was not being shocked) each time they got questions wrong. Milgram instead played recordings which made it sound like the learner was in pain, and if the “teacher” subject expressed a desire to stop, the experimenter prodded him to go on. During the first experiment, 65 percent of participants administered a painful, final 450-volt shock (labeled “XXX”), although many were visibly stressed and uncomfortable about doing so.

While the study has commonly been seen as a warning of blind obedience to authority, Scientific American recently revisited it, arguing that the results were more suggestive of deep moral conflict.

“Human moral nature includes a propensity to be empathetic, kind and good to our fellow kin and group members, plus an inclination to be xenophobic, cruel and evil to tribal others,” journalist Michael Shermer wrote. “The shock experiments reveal not blind obedience but conflicting moral tendencies that lie deep within.”

Recently, some commenters have called Milgram’s methodology into question, and one critic noted that records of the experiment performed at Yale suggested that 60 percent of participants actually disobeyed orders to administer the highest-dosage shock.

We’re easily corrupted by power.

There’s a psychological reason behind the fact that those in power sometimes act towards others with a sense of entitlement and disrespect. A 2003 study published in the journal Psychological Review put students into groups of three to write a short paper together. Two students were instructed to write the paper, while the other was told to evaluate the paper and determine how much each student would be paid. In the middle of their work, a researcher brought in a plate of five cookies. Although generally the last cookie was never eaten, the “boss” almost always ate the fourth cookie — and ate it sloppily, mouth open.

“When researchers give people power in scientific experiments, they are more likely to physically touch others in potentially inappropriate ways, to flirt in more direct fashion, to make risky choices and gambles, to make first offers in negotiations, to speak their mind, and to eat cookies like the Cookie Monster, with crumbs all over their chins and chests,” psychologist Dacher Keltner, one of the study’s leaders, wrote in an article for UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center.

We seek out loyalty to social groups and are easily drawn to intergroup conflict.

This classic 1950s social psychology experiment shined a light on the possible psychological basis of why social groups and countries find themselves embroiled in conflict with one another — and how they can learn to cooperate again.

Study leader Muzafer Sherif took two groups of 11 boys (all age 11) to Robbers Cave State Park in Oklahoma for “summer camp.” The groups (named the “Eagles” and the “Rattlers”) spent a week apart, having fun together and bonding, with no knowledge of the existence of the other group. When the two groups finally integrated, the boys started calling each other names, and when they started competing in various games, more conflict ensued and eventually the groups refused to eat together. In the next phase of the research, Sherif designed experiments to try to reconcile the boys by having them enjoy leisure activities together (which was unsuccessful) and then having them solve a problem together, which finally began to ease the conflict.

We only need one thing to be happy.

The 75-year Harvard Grant study –one of the most comprehensive longitudinal studies ever conducted — followed 268 male Harvard undergraduates from the classes of 1938-1940 (now well into their 90s) for 75 years, regularly collecting data on various aspects of their lives. The universal conclusion? Love really is all that matters, at least when it comes to determining long-term happiness and life satisfaction.

The study’s longtime director, psychiatrist George Vaillant, told The Huffing ton Post that there are two pillars of happiness: “One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.” For example, one participant began the study with the lowest rating for future stability of all the subjects and he had previously attempted suicide. But at the end of his life, he was one of the happiest. Why? As Vaillant explains, “He spent his life searching for love.”

We thrive when we have strong self-esteem and social status.

Achieving fame and success isn’t just an ego boost — it could also be a key to longevity, according to the notorious Oscar winners study. Researchers from Toronto’s Sunny brook and Women’s College Health Sciences Center found that Academy Award-winning actors and directors tend to live longer than those who were nominated but lost, with winning actors and actresses outliving their losing peers by nearly four years.

“We are not saying that you will live longer if you win an Academy Award,” Donald Redelmeier, the lead author of the study, told ABC News. “Or that people should go out and take acting courses. Our main conclusion is simply that social factors are important … It suggests that an internal sense of self-esteem is an important aspect to health and health care.”

We constantly try to justify our experiences so that they make sense to us.

Anyone who’s taken a freshman Psych 101 class is familiar with cognitive dissonance, a theory which dictates that human beings have a natural propensity to avoid psychological conflict based on disharmonious or mutually exclusive beliefs. In an often-cited 1959 experiment, psychologist Leon Festinger asked participants to perform a series of dull tasks, like turning pegs in a wooden knob, for an hour. They were then paid either $1 or $20 to tell a “waiting participant” (aka a researcher) that the task was very interesting. Those who were paid $1 to lie rated the tasks as more enjoyable than those who were paid $20. Their conclusion? Those who were paid more felt that they had sufficient justification for having performed the rote task for an hour, but those who were only paid $1 felt the need to justify the time spent (and reduce the level of dissonance between their beliefs and their behavior) by saying that the activity was fun. In other words, we commonly tell ourselves lies to make the world appear a more logical, harmonious place.

We buy into stereotypes in a big way.

Stereotyping various groups of people based on social group, ethnicity or class is something nearly all of us do, even if we make an effort not to — and it can lead us to draw unfair and potentially damaging conclusions about entire populations. NYU psychologist John Bargh’s experiments on “automaticity of social behavior” revealed that we often judge people based on unconscious stereotypes — and we can’t help but act on them. We also tend to buy into stereotypes for social groups that we see ourselves being a part of. In one study, Bargh found that a group of participants who were asked to unscramble words related to old age — “Florida,” “helpless” and “wrinkled” — walked significantly slower down the hallway after the experiment than the group who unscrambled words unrelated to age. Bargh repeated the findings in two other comparable studies that enforced stereotypes based on race and politeness.

“Stereotypes are categories that have gone too far,” Bargh told Psychology Today. “When we use stereotypes, we take in the gender, the age, the color of the skin of the person before us, and our minds respond with messages that say hostile, stupid, slow, weak. Those qualities aren’t out there in the environment. They don’t reflect reality.”

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Source: Huff Post

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