After three decades researching human hope and happiness, I discovered a method you can use to measure your happiness. It’s based on this simple equation:
Hope ÷ Hunger = Happiness
This math formula — hope divided by hunger equals happiness — says that the more hopeful and less hungry you are, the happier you become.
When I say hungry, I don’t just mean you have a hunger for food. I’m saying you have a compelling desire or craving for:
Inclusion and acknowledgment
Intimacy and trusted companionship
Food and comfort
Information and answers
Continuity and certainty
Hope, meanwhile, comes from:
High self-esteem
Robust human relationships
A good sense of economic sufficiency
Adequate knowledge
Spiritual assurances
To measure hope and hunger — and therefore happiness — with this formula, I developed a questionnaire that identifies whether you’re languishing, flourishing, or functioning somewhere in between.
If you’re languishing, it means you’re overwhelmingly hungry, unhappy, and disconnected, with feelings of emptiness, low hope, and a hollow sense of purpose. You’re functioning at the lowest end of the wellbeing spectrum.
If you’re flourishing, on the other hand, it means you’re happy, full of hope, and functioning well emotionally and socially.
So if you can confidently make these six statements, you’re flourishing — living a happier, more hopeful life than most people:
This post ran on April 30th, 2018. It still provides good advice on handling Murphy’s law. * * * Top Ten Things Not to Do According to Murphy’s Law. The inspiration for this list was thinking of all the things we do on a daily basis that someone else has done before. This naturally […]
Crows, chimps, and elephants: these and many other birds and mammals behave in ways that suggest they might be conscious. And the list does not end with vertebrates. Researchers are expanding their investigations of consciousness to a wider range of animals, including octopuses and even bees and flies.
Armed with such research, a coalition of scientists is calling for a rethink in the animal–human relationship. If there’s “a realistic possibility” of “conscious experience in an animal, it is irresponsible to ignore that possibility in decisions affecting that animal”, the researchers write in a document they call The New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness. Issued today during a meeting in New York City, the declaration also says that there is a “realistic possibility of conscious experience” in reptiles, fish, insects, and other animals that have not always been considered to have inner lives, and “strong scientific support” for aspects of consciousness in birds and mammals.
As the evidence has accumulated, scientists are “taking the topic seriously, not dismissing it out of hand as a crazy idea in the way they might have in the past”, says Jonathan Birch, a philosopher at the London School of Economics and Political Science and one of the authors of the declaration.
The document, which had around 40 signatories early today, doesn’t state that there are definitive answers about which species are conscious. “What it says is there is sufficient evidence out there such that there’s a realistic possibility of some kinds of conscious experiences in species even quite distinct from humans,” says Anil Seth, director of the Centre for Consciousness Science at the University of Sussex near Brighton, UK, and one of the signatories. The authors hope that others will sign the declaration and that it will stimulate both more research into animal consciousness and more funding for the field.
Blurry line
The definition of consciousness is complex, but the group focuses on an aspect of consciousness called sentience, often defined as the capacity to have subjective experiences, says Birch. For an animal, such experiences would include smelling, tasting, hearing, or touching the world around itself, as well as feeling fear, pleasure, or pain — in essence, what it is like to be that animal. But subjective experience does not require the capacity to think about one’s experiences.
I’ve tried a lot of strange workouts in the name of science, but there was no experience quite like seeing myself in an EMS suit for the first time. It’s all black, with straps and buckles everywhere. A long wire is about to connect me to a computer. I feel like I’m suiting up to operate a spaceship or a giant robot. Instead, I’m about to do lunges and pushups while being told that I’m getting a much better workout than those suckers who just go to a regular gym.
To try it out for myself, I accepted an offer of a free session at BODY20, a growing chain of EMS fitness studios. Its workouts are pricey, at $40 to $100 per session, depending on where the studio is located and what kind of membership you sign up for.
So, is an EMS workout any better than the regular thing? Probably not. (We’ll get into the details in a minute.) But after seeing myself in the mirror, I kind of get the appeal.
What is EMS?
Electrical muscle stimulation (EMS) workouts are having a moment—not for the first time, and probably not for the last—based on their futuristic vibes and the fitness industry’s constant quest to sell you newer, cooler workouts than what everyone else is doing.
Electrical muscle stimulation is a family of techniques and technologies that trigger your muscles to contract by passing a mild electric current through your body. You may be familiar with some of the other uses of passing electric current through your body for health and fitness purposes, so I’ll describe them for comparison.
If you’ve used a TENS machine for pain relief, you know one type. You’ll put sticky electrodes on your skin, and turn on a handheld machine that’s connected to them by wires. TENS uses a mild current that feels like tingling, but it doesn’t make your muscles twitch or contract. The idea is that the tingling feeling interferes with pain signals. TENS stands for transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, meaning that the electrical current crosses the skin and the sensation is picked up by your nerves, but it’s not designed to contract muscles.
The best meteor shower of the spring will kick off a month featuring a variety of astronomical sights, none of which will require a telescope to see.
Warming weather across North America will provide more comfortable conditions for spending time under the stars with summer right around the corner, although there may still be a few chilly nights across the northern tier of the United States.
May 4-5: Eta Aquarid meteor shower
The first weekend of the month will bring the peak of the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, the second event of its kind in less than two weeks following the Lyrids in late April. And experts say 2024 will be a particularly good year for viewing the event.
“Most observers in the northern hemisphere usually see a maximum of 15-20 eta Aquariid meteors per hour under ideal conditions. Those rates could be doubled this year,” the American Meteor Society explained on its website.
The peak falls on the night of Saturday, May 4, into the early hours of Sunday, May 5. The best time to view the event is between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m., local time, on Sunday.
May 9: Mercury in the morning sky
Mercury is one of the most challenging planets to spot in the sky due to its proximity to the sun, but early risers will have the opportunity to see the planet during the first full week of the month.
On May 9, Mercury will be visible low in the eastern sky before sunrise. If cloudy conditions obscure the sky, stargazers should be able to see the planet on the mornings that follow if the cloud conditions improve, although Mercury may not appear quite as high in the sky compared to May 9.
No telescope is required to see Mercury, but it will be dim and low in the sky, so onlookers will need a clear view of the eastern horizon and to look for it about an hour before sunrise.
May 23: Full Flower Moon
The last full moon of spring will rise on Thursday, May 23, a moon that has many nicknames due to the flora and fauna on full display during the month.
The most common nickname for May’s full moon is the Flower Moon, as it is the time when blooming and blossoming flowers are on full display across North America, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac.
Other nicknames for May’s full moon include the Budding Moon, the Egg Laying Moon, the Fog Moon, and the Planting Moon.
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Silhouette of countryside landscape under the starry skies and meteor shower. (Getty Images)
The stereotype of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is someone, often a young boy, who can’t focus and can’t sit still. And there are certainly people who fit that description. But the condition often presents very differently—for instance, some people with ADHD have a tendency to sit for hours and focus on a project to the point that they forget to eat and ignore the world around them. In that case, ADHD can be more about an overabundance of focus rather than a deficit. And many with ADHD—especially girls, who tend to go undiagnosed—aren’t hyperactive at all.
A new book, ADHD Is Awesome: A Guide to (Mostly) Thriving with ADHD (Harper Horizon, 2024), by Penn and Kim Holderness, aims to update the conversation about ADHD and point out the benefits along with the challenges. “ADHD is a superpower,” says Penn Holderness, who sees many benefits of his own ADHD diagnosis, including a special ability to concentrate on things he’s interested in, solve problems, and be creative. He and his wife, Kim Holderness, have gained fame for creating popular online videos about family life, many of which showcase aspects of ADHD. Penn struggles with remembering daily tasks—and sometimes leaves his keys in the refrigerator. But he and Kim also credit his ADHD superfocus for their 2022 win in the CBS reality competition The Amazing Race, which required them to solve puzzles, assemble musical instruments, and complete detailed memory tests, among other challenges, during a trip around the world.
Scientific American spoke to the Holdernesses about ADHD perception versus reality, ways to support loved ones with the condition, and how ADHD helped them win $1 million.
What do you hope people get out of the book?
PENN HOLDERNESS: I hope people get that they’re not alone, and they’re not broken. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them. If they have ADHD, they actually have a pretty fantastic brain—a very unique brain—and the world would be very boring without all of us.
They didn’t have this book when I was a kid. I can’t go back in time and give this book to myself, the kid who struggled and wondered why he was so weird. We’ve gone on a journey to discover what ADHD really is because even those who have it don’t always really understand it unless they take a deep dive into it. Once you realize what it is, you can quickly discover that there are some wonderful traits to this, as long as you put systems in place to manage the rough stuff.
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Penn and Kim Holderness hold their new book, ADHD Is Awesome. Samantha Pressman
Functional fitness is a type of workout that focuses on movements that mimic everyday activities. It’s all about training your body to perform better in real-life situations by improving strength, mobility, flexibility, and balance.
Functional fitness includes movements such as pushing, pulling, bending, squatting, walking, lunging and core strength. Some examples of functional fitness exercises are squats, lunges, pushups, single-leg deadlifts, and planks.
10 functional fitness exercises
Below is list of functional fitness exercises you can add to your routine to train your body to move with more ease during daily activities.
Squat
Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and toes pointed forward. Pull your shoulders back and down to keep your chest up and head looking forward. Pull your navel in toward your spine to engage your core. Bend at the hips and knees while keeping your heels and toes on the floor. Slowly sit back into a squat position. Make sure that your knees do not move past your toes and that they are as close to a 90-degree angle as possible. Pressing into your heels to straighten the legs and return to standing. Squeeze your glutes at the top, tilting your pelvis forward.
My 70-year-old father tells me he’s routinely startled simply by seeing his face in the mirror. “Who’s that old guy?” he thinks. Science shows he’s far from alone in this feeling.
Neuroscientists have explored the puzzling gap between our real age and how old we feel in our heads (aka our “subjective” age) and discovered that, on average, middle-aged adults in Western societies feel 20 percent younger than their actual number of years.
I’m 43, so this formula says I probably feel about 35, and my father is likely expecting to see a less wrinkly and white-haired 56-year-old in the mirror. Sounds about right.
But what does science have to say about why this common pattern exists and what, if anything, you can do to change your subjective age?
How old do you feel?
It may be clear that most adults feel younger than they are. Why remains a bit of a mystery. This long Atlantic article from Jennifer Senior offers several fascinating possibilities, as well as great anecdotes from a variety of people about their own inner age.
One theory is that years rich in new experiences seem to make more of an impression on our brains. When we enter into maturity, we settle down and the years seem to count less, throwing off our internal clocks.
“Adolescence and emerging adulthood are times dense with firsts (first kiss, first time having sex, first love, first foray into the world without your parents’ watchful gaze); they are also times when our brains, for a variety of neurodevelopmental reasons, are inclined to feel things more intensely, especially the devil’s buzz of a good, foolhardy risk,” Senior explains about a Duke neuroscientist’s theory.
More intensity means more memories, which means these years feel longer and weightier. Middle-aged routine adds less life to our internal tally, slowing our inner clock. This effect also may be why the tedious pandemic years seem to have fallen into a memory hole for many people and why time seems to speed up as we age.
But there are other theories too. Several people Senior spoke instead suggested their subjective age was frozen at a particular point because of a trauma they experienced, like the death of a loved one. A few “old souls” told her they felt older than their years. Meanwhile, cross-cultural studies show that people in societies that revere elders seem not to internally discount their years as much.
Can you change your subjective age?
There may be some broad patterns in how people settle on an internal age, but the process is clearly quirky and personal. There is no such thing as a “correct” subjective age. But that doesn’t mean you might not want to shift your own. If you’re feeling aged beyond your years by the stresses of being an adult and entrepreneur, are there ways to feel internally younger?
Yup, answers science. Here are the steps research suggests — and they are pretty simple, if not entirely easy.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
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Silhouette of countryside landscape under the starry skies and meteor shower. (Getty Images)
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