"Be a mind sticker."   WTF?!

1970s TV spot for Tab, and it's probably the creepiest soda commercial we've ever seen. As the first diet soft drink of The Coca-Cola Company (and the second diet soda ever), Tab was marketed to women as a way to keep slim, and thus, keep a man. As the voice over says, "When you can't be with him, be in his mind. Be a mind sticker." Then a spooky voice sings, "Don't you want to have a good shape?" It's like the Tab marketers are trying to scare women into saying, "Yes! Uncle! Uncle! I want a good shape!" Tab has had its ups and downs over the years: First it was sweetened with cyclamate, which was eventually banned by the FDA, then it was sweetened with saccharin, which eventually was required to carry a warning label that it may cause cervical cancer. (Just like HPV!) Since 1984, Tab has been using a blend of saccharin and aspartame to create its low-cal goodness.

I drank this crap years ago.

Because the Internet is magic, three hours' worth of MTV from 1983, happily humming Huey Lewis' "Heart and Soul" over and over like a borderline psychopath. Three hours! In addition to all the commercials (man, I want a ZZ Top keychain) and the videos (Night Ranger were pretty slick, weren't they?), these Google Video time capsules are a reminder of how people got their music news before blogs: from affable dorks with big, possibly permed hair and a relaxed demeanor. This guy woulda been eaten alive by a TRL crowd. Speed it up, Goodman!

Part 1

1. Avocados. These keep you from bloating up after a big lunch and are tasty either on their own, with sugar or salt on top, or with your salad.
2. Almonds. Great for brainpower. Read more here.
3. Raisins. Want more energy? Grab a pack of raisins. They are high in energy and antioxidants, and low in fat and calories.
4. Figs. They help maintain high energy levels while keeping your appetite far away. Whether you find fresh figs or a pack of dried fruit, enjoy its natural sweetness.
5. Olives. These are anti-inflammatory and they reduce symptoms to arthritis, asthma and menopause.
6. Walnuts. These are full of omega 3 fatty acids to help you think more clearly and keep you focused. Excellent source of protein, but be sure to chew well.
7. Carrots. I love carrots and have at least six carrots in a big glass of juice every morning. They are also good for other times too. Snacking on one cup of chopped carrots will give you six times your recommended daily value of Vitamin A. They improve eyesight, especially in the dark.
8. Strawberries. As with carrots and flaxseeds, strawberries surprisingly aid in better eye sight. Eating strawberries has also been linked to preventing cancer.
9. Flaxseeds. If you’ve been working hard all day, have some flaxseeds. They are great for your eyes to stop them feeling a little dried out, and allowing you to feel fresh even after a hard day.
10. Water. Nothing beats water, the healthiest drink on the planet. It speeds up your metabolism, makes you feel fuller instead of eating junk and keeps you hydrated.
11. Sunflower seeds. A popular way to beat fatigue. Chew properly as it can take some time.
12. Papaya. The colorful fruit helps protect you against the potential damages of secondhand smoke, rheumatoid arthritis, and even the common cold.
13. Pear. Usually only available during the pear season and when they come out, I always get them. They taste good, they’re cool in the mouth and they are hypo-allergenic.
14. Green tea. So this is probably one of the trendiest tea’s out there, but it’s also very healthy for your body. They are full of antioxidants and strengthens your immune system.
15. Ginger. Great for beating nausea and stomach gas. Have it as ginger tea, ginger in your stomach or as low fat ginger cookies. Also helps ease stomach tummy muscles.
16. Peppermint. If you have a stomach bug or just need to perk up a bit, have a peppermint drink. It’s a great muscle relaxant and helps you clean up your nasal passages and breathe easily.
17. Watermelon. There is nothing like cool, red sweet watermelon that gives you great energy and nutrients without any calories. It’s a great energy booster.
18. Low fat yoghurt. Yoghurt is refreshing and cool when you put it in your mouth so it’s a great, tasteful wake up call for your mind.
19. Dark chocolate. Having one small bar a day will satisfy your cravings for sweets and give you a load of antioxidants.
20. Raspberries. These beautiful fruits are a great source of antioxidants which are great to neutralize your free radicals which can affect your cells.

Experiences Beat Possessions: Why Materialism Causes Unhappiness

Materialism is a dirty word. It also gets a bad rap in psychology. Studies consistently show that people who agree with statements like "You will buy things just because you want them," tend to be:

• Less satisfied with life,
• Less happy,
• More likely to be depressed,
• More likely to be paranoid,
• More likely to be narcissistic.

Not a pretty picture, right? But, just like studies examining the connection between success and happiness, many of the findings are correlational. As a result we can't say for sure that materialism causes all these things, only that they're associated. So, for better evidence, cue the experiment.

Experiential versus material purchases

Leaf Van Boven from the University of Colorado and Thomas Gilovich from Cornell University carried out an intriguing experiment that gets at this question of whether materialism results in less happiness (Van Boven & Gilovich, 2003).

They randomly divided students into two groups and gave each group slightly different instructions:

1. This group was asked to write a description of a material purchase that had made them happy. Material purchases include things like clothing, gadgets, computers and so on. This could be either something they had bought themselves or that had been bought for them.
2. The task this group had was only slightly different. They were asked to write a description of an experiential purchase that had given them pleasure. Examples of experiential purchases are meals out, admission tickets to concerts and travel.

To see how they were feeling in the moment, participants were given surreptitious measures both before and after writing these short descriptions. Then, after about a week, the same participants were given back their own descriptions of their purchases and asked to reflect on it. Again, they were asked to report on their feelings in the moment.

Comparing these two groups provided a way of comparing how participants felt about two different types of purchases. The results showed that participants felt better when they were contemplating their experiential purchases than their material purchases.

Thinking about experience

As a result of this experiment, Van Boven & Gilovich predicted that people spend more time overall contemplating their experiential rather than material purchases. To test this out they asked participants to think about experiential and material purchases they were particularly happy with. Then they were asked which they thought about more often. The results clearly showed it was the experiential purchases people thought about more often (83%).

Why do experiences fare better than possessions?

It seems, then, that at some level we understand that our experiential purchases give us more pleasure than our material purchases. But why is that? Van Boven (2005) suggests three reasons:

1. Experiences improve with time (possessions don't).
The reason why experiences improve with time may be because it is possible to think about experiences in a more abstract manner than possessions. For example if you think back to a fantastic summer from your youth, you might easily remember an abstract sense of warm sunshine and exuberance, but you're less likely to remember exactly what you did day-by-day. On a moment-by-moment basis you might have been quite bored, although you'll tend not to remember that.

Material possessions are harder to think about in an abstract sense. The car you bought is still a car, that great new jacket you picked up cheap is still just a jacket. It's more likely the experience of that summer has taken on a symbolic meaning that can live longer in your memory than a possession.

2. Experiences are resistant to unfavourable comparisons
It's well established that social comparisons can have a huge effect on how we view what might seem like positive events. One striking example is the finding that people prefer to earn $50,000 a year while everyone else earns $25,000, instead of earning $100,000 themselves and having other people earn $200,000 (Solnick & Hemenway, 1998).

In other words it's not about how much we earn, it's about how much we earn in comparison to other people. It's the social comparison, then, not the actual amount of money, that affects how we feel about our earnings.

A similar effect is seen for possessions. When there's so many flatscreen HD TVs to choose from, it's easy to make unfavourable comparisons between our choice and the others available (check out Barry Schwartz on why too much choice is bad for us).

Experience, however, seems to be more resistant to these sorts of unfavourable comparisons. To explain this phenomenon, Van Boven puts forward the idea that it is because of the unique nature of experience. It's more difficult to make an unfavourable comparison when there is nothing directly comparable. After all, each of our youthful summers is different (even if only a little).

I also think it's hard to really compare our own experiences with those of other people. Comparing possessions, however, is generally easy.

3. Experiences have more social value
There are two reasons experiences have more social value than possessions. First, experiences tend to encourage social relationships and increased social relationships are good for our happiness. Second, it is more socially acceptable to discuss our experiences with others. People who bang on about their possessions are considered much less likeable than those who talk about their holiday adventures.

Limitations

Of course, it has to be acknowledged that this type of research is at an early stage. Van Boven points to a couple of potential problems yet to be investigated:

1. The experiments examined here looked at short-term emotions - will these short-term emotions add up to long-term happiness?
2. Highly materialistic people might actually get more pleasure out of material purchases than experiences.

Materialist dilemmas

Despite these limitations, it seems that along with experimental evidence, there are also some good psychological reasons why experiences are more likely to make us happy than material possessions. On top of this, at some level we do seem to understand that experiences probably beat possessions in terms of happiness.

Set against this is the fact that we clearly live in a society awash with materialism, where objects are valued way beyond their possible contribution to our happiness. So how can this conflict possibly be resolved?

One answer to this question is that while we're likely to think that other people are materialist, we defend our own purchases as necessary and at worst, indulgent. After all, materialism is a dirty word. A dirty word that's on everyone's minds.

Being Happy: Enjoyable Activities Beat Improved Life Circumstances

Being happy and staying happy is all about our day-to-day activities according to this theory of sustainable happiness. Research suggests that the contributions to our happiness are 50% genetic, 10% from our life circumstances and fully 40% determined by our day-to-day activities. But what evidence is there for this theory?

One prediction from this theory is that engaging in new activities should increase our happiness more than an improvement in our circumstances. This is exactly what Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) tested in three related studies.

New activities vs. new circumstances

Two different signs were put up around a university campus asking for participants. One asked for participants who had recently seen an improvement in their circumstances while another asked for those who had recently taken up a new activity.

The study also tested how much these changes had been affected by hedonic adaptation (see sustainable happiness post) and variety. This was to make the comparison fair, so that both groups had not yet adapted to their new circumstances or activity and it was still providing variety - both factors thought important in sustainable happiness.

The results showed that those who had recently engaged in a new activity felt happier than those whose circumstances had improved. This provides some preliminary evidence but data collected over a period of time (longitudinal) is more convincing, so that is what Sheldon and Lyubomirsky (2006) did in their second study.

Here they recruited participants in the same way but this time measured their happiness at three time-points. The results again supported the theory with the effects of improved circumstances increasing happiness, but the boost from a new activity being more lasting. Finally a third study along the same lines also found similar results.

The power of randomisation

A problem with both these studies is that participants in both groups were self-selected. This creates problems for the interpretation of the results. For example, perhaps the type of people who take up new activities are also prone to stay happier for longer periods. If that is the case the results aren't really showing the benefits of activities over circumstances.

This is exactly why experiments using random allocation to groups are so useful for psychologists. Once people have been randomly allocated to groups, the counter-argument about self-selection is ruled out.

Sheldon and Lyubomirsky are, therefore, currently carrying out a study with random allocation which will soon be published (Sheldon & Lyubomirsky, 2007). Early indications bode well for their theory as the results support their previous studies. So, it looks like their previous results are not the result of self-selection.

Activities win

These studies emphasise that new, enjoyable activities have more potential for making us happy than improvements in our circumstances. Indeed activities may have as much as four times more power to make us happy.

In the next post I'll be looking at which specific activities have received empirical support for increasing happiness.

Name one person who made you laugh last night.
my son

What were you doing at 8:00?
reading the news

What were you doing thirty minutes ago?
blogging, drinking coffee.

What happened to you in 2006?
not much if i can't remember. a milestone birthday, though.

What was the last thing that you said out loud?
"that's enough heat for you, I'm turning if off now."

to my cat who was sprawled out in front of it.

How many beverages did you have today?
1

What color is your hairbrush?

black

What was the last thing that you paid for?
daughter's lunch for today.

Where were you last night?

home

What color is your front door?

white

Where do you keep your change?
anyplace I can dump it.

What's the weather like today?

partly sunny. 48 degrees.

later tonight - storm moving in. yay!

What's the best ice cream flavor?
peanut butter chocolate

What excites you?

new books

Do you want to cut your hair?
nope.

Are you over the age of 25?
Yes

Do you talk a lot?
yes, sometimes.

Do you watch The O.C?
Nope

Do you know anyone named Steven?
yes

Do you make up your own words?
once in a while.

Are you a jealous person?
not usually, no.

Name a friend whose name starts with the letter A.
Anne.

Name a friend whose name starts with the letter K.

??.

Who is the first person on your received call list?

daughter.

What does the last text message you received say?

"hurry up."

Do you chew on your straw?
No.

Do you have curly hair?
yes

Where's the next place you are gonna go?

see a movie

Who's the rudest person in your life?
too many

What was the last thing you ate?
tuna sandwich from subway last night

Will you get married in the future?

again?  if my husband dies, maybe.

What was the best movie you have seen in the past two weeks?

best?  none.  I'm watching Sopranos, Season Five. It's the best.

Is there anyone you like right now?
i like a lot of people

When was the last time you did the dishes?
few days ago.  that's why i have kids. : ).

Are you currently depressed?
nope.

Did you cry today?
Not yet

This kid's got some major cahones to do this dumb and possibly deadly stunt.

Bono, Jay-Z, George Clooney and other A-Listers bid Bill Gates a fond farewell on his last day on the job at Microsoft.

and more surprise cameos.

you have to admit this is funny.

It's raining, it's pouring;
The old man is snoring.
He went to bed and he
Bumped his head
And he couldn't get up in the morning.

what a sad song if you really think about it.

A giant mess today - hail, tornadoes, snow, flash floods, wind advisory, potluck.

TGIF!!!

activities that were easy before have now become three- and four-click adventures

exactly.

I am also displeased with this new release. What used to be user friendly is now user unfriendly.

I took the survey - stated my case (not very eloquently) and immediately after finishing, I lost my option to change back to the old Vox. I got sucked in. They made the decision for me.

I said it before and I'll say it again - Blogger is much better. And they know this. I'm only here because of the themes. I like to change things up. I couldn't care less for the social aspect of Vox, I've always blogged for myself. I am not that connected to Vox and that's what keeps me here, knowing I could pick up and go at any time. No major commitment. Wheee.....

And they have major font issues as well. Size and color changing present too much of a challenge for me.

Vox release 41 is what Windows Millennium was to Microsoft. Unnecessary. Remember that?