When you wake up in the morning, what is the first thought that pops into your mind?

Is it the hectic workday that you have to go through? Or, is it the terrifying and extremely exhausting meeting with your boss? Or maybe, it is all the work in the house that you need to finish?

Or, do you think about the kiss that you’ll get from your kids when you come home from work? Or, the sweet embrace from your partner and them telling you to have a wonderful day? Or, maybe you think that even though you don’t have everything you want, you have everything that you need?

The fact is, what you think first the moment you wake up will have a tremendous effect on how your whole day will go by.

According to Albert Einstein, “the most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or a hostile universe.”  You have to make this decision every single day. When you decide to start your day with positive thoughts, it will automatically bring you more energy and happiness. Plus, you will be less bothered when things don’t go your way.

When someone cuts you in traffic, you will think that you are lucky they didn’t hit you; they saved you the trouble of having to deal with insurance companies and the frustration of the whole process of repairing your car. Or, when someone in front of you is walking really slow, you won’t be bothered with it – you will think that you have more time to enjoy your walk and the nature around you.

The thing is, when you consciously decide that the world is good, that your life is good, and that you are happy the way things are right now – you will start to enjoy every day, and you won’t get nervous or frustrated when something bad happens. You will start to look on the bright side only.

Moreover, good attracts good. Meaning, if you start your day by happy thoughts, you will attract more positive events to happen to you.

As Susan Reynolds, co-author of “Train your brain to get happy,” states that “feeling pleasure can be so stimulating for your brain that it is primed to respond to pleasure in a way that reinforces that pleasure.”

In other words, when you tell yourself that the world you live in is good, and you start your day believing in the good things in it, you will notice that more and more good things will start happening to you, however cliché it may sound to you right now.

Furthermore, positive thinking has many health benefits: it reduces your anxiety and depression levels while increasing your serotonin levels (the hormone responsible for your happiness). On the other hand, negative thoughts can cause depression, will kill your creativity, and make you less successful.

So, tell yourself every morning that you will have a wonderful day no matter what!

It could also help you if you are surrounded with positive people. Appreciate everything you have, and everything you are – this will lead you to appreciate your life overall.

All in all, you have a choice: you can decide to be either positive or negative. An optimist or a pessimist. I choose to be an optimist, and I choose to be happy every single day. How about you?

Emotional abuse leaves devastating effects on a person. It’s one of the main causes of anxiety and loss of self-esteem and it profoundly disturbs the personality of every person.

Adults suffer greatly when going through an emotionally abusive relationship, so imagine the effects emotional abuse has on the child’s psyche.

Being a victim of emotional abuse as a child is something which leaves permanent traces on one’s personality, in some cases even irreversible damage, and on their behavior later in life. And the reason is that this abuse most often comes from parents who don’t know better – it comes from the people the child can trust the most.

I have a very close friend who has experienced emotional abuse as a child, and I know how differently these people function compared to those who had a normal childhood.

There’s something different in the way they look at the world, and they still feel trapped in the mental prison that their parents have created for them.

So, how does emotional abuse reflect later in life? People who have gone through childhood emotional abuse usually exhibit these signs. If you have been emotionally abused as a child, you might recognize these habits in you.

1. Sensitivity to loud noises

Your experiences with emotional abuse have made you very sensitive, and this has manifested physically with you being constantly on the lookout for danger. Your hypersensitivity can be attributed partly to the anxiety you have developed and partly to the fear that has been a great part of your childhood.

Being somewhere quiet allows you to think clearly. Otherwise, your thoughts start jumping around and you lose control of the situation in your head. And if the loud noise is sudden, you might even jump.

2. Avoiding eye contact

You find it very hard to maintain eye contact with people. If you struggle to maintain it for even a bit longer above your limit, you start developing anxiety about it and you just want to run away.

Your subconscious makes you want to remain closed down inside and keep other people’s piercing gaze to reach deeper. And it’s just natural after suffering from the judging looks from the people who were supposed to give you love.

3. Introversion/antisocial behavior

You have felt betrayed by the people you trusted the most. You know that you let them in unconditionally, just so they can leave a complete mess inside. So, now it’s very hard for you to let someone else in.

That’s why you have closed yourself off from other people and you have created a distance between yourself and them that is shrouded in disbelief and doubt. It’s only natural that you behave this way – if your parents could, why wouldn’t others do the same?

4. Lack of self-worth

You always think that you aren’t worthy of compliments because you have been taught that you don’t deserve compliments. In fact, you doubt your abilities in every aspect and find it hard to accept that you are capable of doing anything.

That’s why you often don’t know how to react on compliments and you think they are insincere. And when it comes to what you can do, the mere thought that you need to use your abilities repels you from doing the thing you can actually do.

5. Avoiding conflict

No matter how wrong that other person is, you’d rather avoid conflict so as not to anger them, as you can’t bear witnessing emotionally intense dramas. They have been in your life for so long that you’d rather be the fool in the situation than experience another emotional attack.

You just want to be at peace and left alone. When someone is undeserving because of something they have done wrong, you would rather cut them off from your life than face them and try to resolve the problem.

6. Doubting oneself about everything

You may find comfort in someone you finally learned to trust, but you will never trust yourself enough. Each of your decisions is put under your pessimistic scrutiny and you doubt your every choice.

Your self-esteem has been ruined, and you find it hard to believe that you are capable of making good decisions. That’s why you often try to escape some responsibilities that require a decisive attitude.

7. Apologizing for everything

Another typical symptom of childhood abuse trauma is your need to apologize for everything, even when someone else stepped on your toe. Partly to avoid conflict, and partly because you have truly started thinking that everything that’s happening is because of you.

You think that it’s your fault that you are in the situation where you are, and you may even think that it was your fault that you were emotionally abused in the first place. At least, abusive parents make sure to force their children into thinking this way. Apologizing when it’s not your fault has become a learned habit for you since then.

8. Anger outbursts

When with people you can trust and who want to help you, you often find yourself bursting out in anger for the most trivial things. You simply can’t help it. You know you love them, and you know that you are doing a foolish thing, but the anger seems to be driving you down the road and you have no control at that moment.

The thing is, you have started replacing self-esteem with anger, or more precisely, you have filled the gap where self-esteem should be with anger. You feel a subconscious anger driving your personality, and you feel angry at your life because you never deserved such a thing to happen to you.

The truth is, it was never your fault that you were abused as a child. You never asked to be brought up by such parents who simply didn’t deserve a child like you in the first place.

You need to be aware, though, that people can often become misled in their habits, attitudes, and beliefs. Parents always try to do the best for their children.

Some simply don’t know any better than that. It would be no wonder if they had also been victims of childhood emotional abuse and they’re just continuing the circle.

Remember that there are good people in this world who will be there for you. There are ways you can get out of the prison you have been inside for so long, and all you need to do is simply wish for it and stay strong.

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We are intelligent beings, and we tend to make smart choices, do smart things… up to the point where our brains start playing tricks on us. After all, it seems that we may not be as intelligent as we like to think we are.

If you look at it from another perspective, people tend to do a lot of dumb things. We tend to be irrational, led by superficial appearances and wild guesses or biased presumptions. And if you ask psychologists, it’s not really our fault.

Here are 5 brilliant experiments that explain why we do dumb or irrational things, without even knowing it.

1. Conforming to the Norm

The word ‘normal’ comes from the word ‘norm.’ So, it’s safe to assume that people who try to be ‘normal’ would conform to the norm, no matter how much they at first disagree with it.

This is what social psychologist Asch has discovered to be true for most people who would go against their judgment in order to conform with the false judgment of the group. In other words, we tend to accept that 2+2=5 if most people say it to be.

So, we find ourselves wearing the clothes that are this season’s fashion trend, and even if we didn’t like the style just two months ago, it seems more acceptable to us now that everybody’s wearing it.

The examples can go on endlessly, with us always succumbing to the peer pressure of the group we associate ourselves with – either because we start believing that their choice is the right choice, or because we feel uncomfortable to stand out of the crowd.

2. The False Consensus Effect

We tend to see ourselves as being good at judging other people’s characters. Starting from ourselves, we tend to think that our values, preferences, habits, and beliefs are normal and typical, or that others tend to think the same way as we do in most respects.

However, this is often far from the truth. The idea that there is some kind of unwritten consensus is what has been dubbed by psychologists as the False Consensus Effect or Bias. It is a result of our wish to conform and be liked by others.

It has been found that people tend to think that their beliefs are prevalent among the rest and that there is clearly something wrong with those who don’t conform to these beliefs.

So, whenever your opinion is supported by the group you associate yourself with, you will start believing that this opinion is something most people would adhere to, or in any case.

There have been several experiments explaining the same situation: people tend to perceive their opinions as the opinion of the majority and dissociate themselves from those who disagree.

3. The Halo Effect

Keats once wrote “beauty is truth” and many will agree. When we see someone as beautiful, we immediately attribute to them a lot of the positive characteristics a person can have. We see beautiful people as intelligent, trustworthy, warm, friendly, you name it.

The effect your ‘global evaluation’ of a person has on your interpretation of their individual characteristics is known as the Halo effect and was first studied by psychologist Richard Nisbett in the 70s.

If you meet someone who seems likable or interesting, your mind will start associating that person with all the positive traits that he or she can possess. However, the opposite is true when you meet a person who doesn’t seem to be leaning toward the positive characteristics so much at first impression.

But is this always the case? Of course not. However, we tend to stick to the first impression of a person and we tend to base our further evaluations on that general evaluation. No matter how they turn out to be later, your judgment of that person will be based on your first impression.

4. Cognitive Dissonance

We all try to function on the basis of our values, feelings, and beliefs. In fact, they motivate us to do the right thing. However, sometimes our decisions are based on things that conflict these prior beliefs.

Whenever we get to such scenario, Dr. Leon Festinger explains that we create a cognitive dissonance, a tension between what we think and what we do. Whenever this tension becomes too big to ignore, we try to reduce the dissonance between how we think we should act and how we actually act, by changing the first or the latter.

In other words, whenever you are forced to do something which is conflicting your beliefs and values, and you do not receive a proper incentive for it, your mind starts perceiving the activity as more acceptable – you change your beliefs in favor of reducing the dissonance.

We tend to lie to ourselves best when it comes to trying to do what we perceive in our minds as the ‘wrong’ thing. This way, we convince ourselves to do it and we start perceiving it actually better than we previously had.

5. The Bystander Effect

Perhaps one of the creepiest things we tend to do is stand and do nothing when someone’s in trouble when surrounded by people. This has been the case in many situations, with even news stories covering tragic events where nobody did nothing to help.

So, why do we freeze when someone’s in trouble when we know we should help? Psychologists call this the Bystander Effect, where, in cases where you see someone in trouble, you don’t do anything if you are surrounded by more people.

Several experiments have shown that people would react instantly when they are alone with a person in trouble. However, when there are more people, the responsibility the individual would feel is dispersed among the crowd and everybody waits for somebody else to do something until it’s too late.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdpdUbW8vbw

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Emotional control is what many people take for granted and it can easily become a means to a poorer state of well-being when overused. Instead, psychologists suggest a more flexible use of the same, depending on the situation.

Emotions are natural, and you cannot ‘control’ them in the literal sense. In fact, you really shouldn’t. However, being emotionally flexible and giving way to different emotional reactions depending on the situation is what researchers have found to be the key to a happier and better-balanced life.

Being flexible means that there is no ‘single’ strategy that can fit all situations, and this means that you should allow your emotions to vary depending on the situation. However, the situations you choose to reappraise determine the outcome of your emotional well-being.

In a study called The Wisdom to Know the Difference, researchers analyzed in which situations the participants tried to use emotion-regulation strategies and they found a crucial difference in the approach of those with a relatively high well-being and those who lacked the same.

According to the strategy-situation-fit hypothesis, emotion-regulation strategies contribute to the well-being of a person only when used in appropriate contexts. In other words, controlling your emotions in every given situation does not work as well as choosing when to control them, depending on the situation.

Going from this hypothesis, the research team asked the participants to report how they managed their emotions in different situations and how much control they had over those situations.

The results showed that the participants who exhibited a state of high well-being chose different approaches depending on the controllability of the situation.

For situations they couldn’t control, they chose to reevaluate their emotions and reappraise the situation. Not tying yourself emotionally to situations that you cannot control is crucial to understanding them and learning something out of them.

However, the same is not true about situations that you can control. For situations they could control, they didn’t use any emotion-regulation strategies but rather used those emotions as a motivator to change the situation.

As the authors explain, reappraising situations that can be directly changed undermines the adaptive function of emotions in motivating action.

All in all, it’s rather simple.

Change your emotions when you can’t change the situation, accept that you are not in charge of the events that are happening, and understand the message from that situation.

Don’t change your emotions when you can change the situation, accept your role in the situation and use your emotions to motivate you to change that situation.

Source: The Wisdom to Know the Difference

How fine is the line between genius and insanity? It turns out that highly intelligent people are prone to mental illness due to a unique characteristic – overexcitability.

The saying about highly intelligent people that “there’s a fine line between genius and insanity” may prove to be just the right definition for people with high IQ. In fact, many studies have found that high intelligence comes with the increased risk of mental illness.

From the increased prevalence of intelligent socially anxious people to the well-known bipolar geniuses like Virginia Woolf, Ernest Hemingway, Lord Byron, and many more, the connection between some kind of disorder and high IQ seems almost inevitable.

A new research confirms that the connection between mental illness and high intelligence is not only more prevalent but that it’s something that seems almost inevitable due to a characteristic people with high IQ possess: overexcitability.

The research team surveyed 3,715 American MENSA members with an IQ score greater than 130 to find out if the prevalence of mental illnesses among these people was similar to that of the general US population.

They asked the participants to report whether they were suffering or suspected that they were suffering from any mental illness diagnoses, including ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), mood and anxiety disorders, as well as physiological diseases such as asthma or food allergies.

The results showed a significant increase in the prevalence of mental illnesses among the MENSA members compared to that of the general population. For example, in the case of anxiety disorders, the 10,9% figure of the general population diagnosed with anxiety disorders rose to 20% among the members of the Mensa community.

The researchers attribute the larger prevalence of mental illnesses among people with higher IQ to their “broader and deeper capacity to comprehend their surroundings.” As the authors explain, highly intelligent people possess “unique intensities and overexcitabilities which can be at once remarkable and disabling.”

This heightened awareness is both very powerful for the creative mind and very dangerous in the potential of deep depression. As the authors explain, people with such overexcitable cognitive ability are bound to have a hyper-reactive central nervous system, and this can lead to “various other psychological and physiological consequences.”

Which is more, the authors have pointed to a link between an increase in allergies, asthma, and autoimmune diseases among highly intelligent people, compared to the general population and they attribute these same health conditions to the both psychologically and physically overexcitable nature of people with high IQ.

Source: High intelligence: A risk factor for psychological and physiological overexcitabilities