James' World 2

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Most of us have come across them at some point – the kind of people who can walk into a room full of strangers but then leave with 10 new friends, a lunch date for the next day, and the promise of an introduction to an industry insider.

Charmers. What makes these lucky individuals so effortlessly likable when many of us have to work so hard at it? While many would have you believe social grace or winning people over is something of an art form, there is a surprising amount of science behind it too.

The factors that determine our success with other people, and the impressions we make upon them, can start even before we meet them. Research has proven the people we meet often make judgments about us based purely on the way we look. Alexander Todorov, a professor of psychology at Princeton, has shown that people can make judgments about someone’s likeability, trustworthiness, and competence after seeing their face for less than a tenth of a second.

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Charmer

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A lava-loaded “super-earth” called 55 Cancri e is twice the size of our own planet but eight times as dense. And it’s so close to its star that a year lasts only 18 hours.

Just 40 light-years away, 55 Cancri e may also be tidally locked to its sun the way the moon is to Earth. One side would be a blazing hot eternal night with temperatures of 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and the other an even hotter permanent day, according to a heat map of the planet published in the journal Nature that used data from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.

“The day side could possibly have rivers of lava and big pools of extremely hot magma, but we think the night side would have solidified lava flows like those found in Hawaii,” Michael Gillon of the University of Liège in Belgium said in a news release.

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Weirdest Exoplanet

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We all ruminate sometimes. But if you’re still kicking yourself because your kid caught COVID at a family gathering last year or replaying that awkward Zoom meeting on a loop in your brain, you’re trapping yourself in your own head — which can be exhausting and harmful for your mental health. Overthinking is a common trap to fall into, and there are ways to break the habit.

Overthinking is closely connected to unhappiness. Yale psychologist Susan Nolen-Hoeksema famously linked rumination, the clinical term for overthinking, to depression. Unlike concern or even worry, which can lead us toward productive action, overthinking is circular, an endless cycle of chewing over what’s already happened, from small social missteps to life-changing choices. 

Now, it’s important to further understand the distinction between overthinking and worrying. “Worrying is helpful when it can lead to an action that will actually reduce risk in some way,” explains Katie Gordon, Ph.D., a licensed clinical psychologist who specializes in cognitive-behavioral therapy and author of The Suicidal Thoughts Workbook. A parent who is worried about a proposal to lift a mask mandate at their child’s school, for example, may feel motivated to speak out at a school board meeting. 

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Maskot, Getty Images

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Words matter. How you choose them and how you use them makes a big difference in the way people perceive you. 

Researchers have found that there are certain words, phrases, and other ways of communicating that can make others think more highly of you, improve your reputation, and help create a more empathetic and compassionate workplace.

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Not too long ago, Daniel Pink, the bestselling social psychology author, made an observation that seemed to speak to our national mindset: There are more than 50 books in the U.S. Library of Congress with the title No Regrets. Living without regret, he felt, had become a uniquely American mantra. In his new book, The Power of Regret, Pink proceeds from that national obsession with positivity: “A good life has a singular focus (forward) and an unwavering valence (positive),” he writes. “Regret perturbs both. It is backward-looking and unpleasant—a toxin in the bloodstream of happiness.” But it’s impossible to avoid regret, Pink says. In fact, he argues, regret is a distinguishing feature of humanity, since it involves an aptitude for narrative storytelling and mental time travel that only humans possess. We should embrace our regrets—and learn from them.

In an attempt to better understand this most beguiling emotion, Pink conducted a survey, polling more than 16,000 people in 105 countries about the moments in life they’d come to regret. “When people tell you their regrets, they’re simultaneously telling you what they value,” Pink says. “So it’s this interesting thing where this chorus of 16,000 people are saying, ‘Hey, this is what a good life is.’” But living that good life requires taking a hard look at our past mistakes—thus going against society’s “No Regrets” dictum. Pink hopes his book can change the cultural conversation around regret and help readers recognize how looking backward can help us move forward.

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Photo-illustration by Michael Houtz

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There’s good news for musophobia sufferers. If you’re concerned that there’s some mutation out there, resulting in rodents of a gargantuan size, well …

“I do not think there are any 3-pound rats in the city,” Combs told The Huffington Post last week. “There seems to be a physiological limit to their size at about 2 pounds. I would need some physical evidence to believe they can get any larger.”

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Anyone who has ever taken an economics class has heard the phrase, “There’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

It means that everything has a cost, even if that cost is not always immediately apparent. To achieve anything, you must give up something else.

In today’s happiness-obsessed culture, most pursue just the opposite: we want to know how to be happy with no costs, all benefits. We want the rewards without the risks, the gain without the pain.

But ironically, it’s this unwillingness to sacrifice anything, to give up anything, that makes us more miserable.

As with anything else, happiness has costs. It is not free. And despite what Cover Girl or Tony Robbins or the Dalai Lama once told you, it’s not always easy breezy figuring out how to be happy either.

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Happiness

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https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-hidden-costs-of-happiness?utm_source=pocket_discover

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