Nothing in life is easy. If you really want something, then fight for it.

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Please pause for a moment when you notice the “PAUSE” request before you continue. Think how what you just read can assist you with a specific set of circumstances that you are faced with. Think what changes can come about if you applied what you learned here in your relationships, work or with your family and friends. You will be astounded how much value you get from the material when you PAUSE for a few moments, take a small break and apply what I requested above. Do you have a train or bus to catch or do you tend to rush through life with your eyes so fixed on the potential outcomes that you forget to enjoy the journey?

 

An energy bubble surrounds each one of us. This energy field is charged by your predominant focus at any given moment in time. People can sense when anger, grief or revengeful thoughts are trapped in this energy field. You need to sanitise this invisible energy bubble that accompanies you wherever you go if you want to improve your health or lifestyle. Letting go of the past is a good place to start. The key to a clear energy field is forgiveness. Not only forgiveness of others, but of yourself.

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Anticipation is a powerful force. Never show all your cards while the game is still in progress. The game of life is like a chess game. You must mentally always be a few moves ahead of your opponents.

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Anticipation is vital to your survival. If you fail to anticipate what the implications of a current action or decision could be, you are putting yourself at great risk. The wise man reads people and events and anticipates their next few moves. He is not paranoid, but vigilant and wise.

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Anticipation is what fuels the champions of life. If you lose your ability to dream, you lose your zest for life. If all your anticipation is suddenly removed, you will go into shock. Most people do not only anticipate the future, but also make the mistake of mentally living there. Anticipate the future, but live in the now if you want to experience true happiness.

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Appear uncertain if you need other’s support, compassion and understanding. Ask for assistance in a clear and precise manner. Tell it like it is. Why continue hiding behind masks and facades? Get your ego out of the way and reveal your needs in an open and sincere manner. What is the worst that can happen? You have nothing to lose, but everything to gain.

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Appreciation is the key to understanding. Only when we learn to appreciate what we have will more value be added to our lives. Gratitude and appreciation are the two most neglected emotions in society today. You can never be happy or achieve piece of mind if you lack these vital components.

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Are you a person that enjoys making an issue out of everything? When you oppose something, you stop the natural flow of things. When you continually question and dig for potential flaws it usually disturbs the natural rhythm and flow of events. You need to find a balance between being a pain in the backside and a people pleaser.

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Ask for reconsideration when things fail to work out as anticipated. Any softening in judgement will be a bonus. Any drop in price will put money in your pocket. Only the less informed will walk away without giving it his best shot. Nothing in life is easy. If you really want something, then fight for it.

Rene

 

Money dulls physical pain and eases the sting of social rejection.

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Money dulls physical pain and eases the sting of social rejection, new research shows.

Through six experiments, psychologists and a marketing professor probed the power of money as a proxy for social acceptance. Among their results, they found that merely touching bills or thinking about expenses paid affected the participants both physically and emotionally.

Because it affects pain, money may be a clue to how the brain evolved to process social interactions, the researchers wrote in a paper published in the June edition of the journal Psychological Science.

In one experiment, 84 undergraduate student volunteers were divided into two groups and asked to take a “finger-dexterity test.” One group counted 80 $100 bills from a stack, the other group counted paper. Afterward, the volunteers played Cyberball, a computer game in which four players passed a ball to each other. They were told that they were playing with three real people, but in fact a computer simulated the other players. In half of the games, all the players received the ball an equal number of times, but the other half was rigged against the human players, excluding them after 10 passes.

Those who played the rigged version of Cyberball reported that they felt snubbed. But, on average, those who had counted money before playing rated their level of social distress lower than those who had counted paper.

To test money’s effect on physical pain, 96 recruits were split into two groups and counted either money or paper. Then an assistant strapped down their left hands and dipped their fingers in hot water with a temperature of 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius). On average, those who counted money rated their pain lower than those who counted paper.

The scientists wondered if money may have just been a distraction that took the volunteers’ minds off their pain, so they repeated the experiments, but this time without the bills. Instead, they asked half of the participants to write about their expenses in the past month and the other half wrote about the weather. Then they either played Cyberball or dipped their fingers in hot water. Simply writing about spent money caused social distress, the participants reported. And it intensified the pain of the hot water and the social snub of rigged Cyberball.

“These effects speak to the power of money, even as a symbol, to change perceptions of very real feelings,” like pain, said Kathleen Vohs, a marketing professor at the University of Minnesota and co-author of the study.

The results prop up earlier studies showing that money’s effect on our emotions stems from its symbolic power in social interactions, the researchers wrote. It stands in for acceptance and popularity, and allows those who have it to get what they want from the vast social network on which we depend — regardless of whether they are well liked or not.

Its physical effects may be tied up in the early evolution of those social interactions. Earlier research by psychologists Geoff MacDonald at the University of Toronto and Mark Leary at Duke University has showed a link between psychological pain and physical pain. The emerging hypothesis is that early in the evolution of social interactions, our brains took a shortcut to handle the new system: instead of laying down new biological hardware to process things like relationships and culture, human brains hacked their older hardware that deals with physical pain and gave it the double duty of handling social interactions.

Two final experiments in the study suggested that people who feel rejected or physically hurt have a higher desire for money than those who don’t. The results dovetail with work by University of Rochester psychologist Edward Deci, he said. Deci has written about well-being and the pursuit of different kinds of goals.

“People want money more and are soothed by it when they are not experiencing deeper need satisfaction, but the satisfaction of money is superficial and is not enduring,” Deci said.

These results could help explain some puzzles about money, said the study’s lead author, Xinyue Zhou, a psychologist at Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, China. He said it could lead to a clearer picture of how people become addicted to making money. And his work justifies court-ordered financial compensation to victims of battery, he said. If money is linked to physical pain, then making attackers pay their victims is a punishment that suits the crime, he said.

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By Robert Goodier / Live Science