10 Health Benefits of Being in a Relationship (via Men's Journal)

Men's Journal has assembled 10 health benefits from being in a [healthy] relationship (they left out the healthy part, which is important - an unhealthy relationship is BAD for your health).

Judge for yourself whether you need to be in a relationship to get these benefits in your life (although, men in relationships live longer than those who are not and, generally, report greater life satisfaction).

10 Health Benefits of Being in a Relationship

Men's Journal – Taylor Kubota

Romantic relationships, no matter their length, can be complicated, frustrating, and demanding. Although every couple has their issues, overall, partnering can actually give our physical and psychological well-being a big boost.

“I think the big picture is pretty straightforward: Good relationships are good for our health and bad relationships are not,” says Christine Proulx, associate professor at the College of Human Environmental Sciences at the University of Missouri.

Some of the advantages of being in a relationship are straightforward, like having someone to talk to and share financial burdens with. Others are more surprising, like the fact that men in long-term relationships live longer. Read on to learn more about the health benefits of coupling and how they work.

Click the links below to read more on each topic.


Increased Dopamine and Testosterone



Longer Lifespan



Emotional Support



Greater Wealth



Gain a Confidant



Avoid Loneliness



More Leisure Time



Reduced Stress



Get Taken Care Of



Long-Term Happiness

Meaningful Happiness (Eudaimonia) Boosts the Immune System

Researchers identify two distinct forms of happiness or well-being - hedonic happiness is based on material or bodily pleasures, such as fine cuisine or great sex; eudaimonic happiness is based on a deeper satisfaction from activities that provide meaning or a sense of purpose, such as intellectual endeavors or charity work.

When researchers look at the ways each type of well-being influences gene expression, the find that there are very distinct ways genes are impacted.

People with a meaning-based or purpose-based outlook had favorable gene-expression profiles, whereas hedonic well-being, when it occurred on its own, was associated with profiles similar to those seen in individuals facing adversity.

Findings such these support the idea that volunteering is a great way to change our moods and our gene expression.

This is only one of the interesting findings from this Scientific American article that originally appeared in the journal Nature.

How Happiness Boosts the Immune System

Researchers have struggled to identify how certain states of mind influence physical health. One biologist thinks he has an answer.

By Jo Marchant and Nature magazine | Wednesday, November 27, 2013



Volunteers serve a Thanksgiving meal to homeless and needy families in New Bern, NC. Image: Wikimedia Commons/United States Marine Corps
When Steve Cole was a postdoc, he had an unusual hobby: matching art buyers with artists that they might like. The task made looking at art, something he had always loved, even more enjoyable. “There was an extra layer of purpose. I loved the ability to help artists I thought were great to find an appreciative audience,” he says.

At the time, it was nothing more than a quirky sideline. But his latest findings have caused Cole — now a professor at the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at the University of California, Los Angeles — to wonder whether the exhilaration and sense of purpose that he felt during that period might have done more than help him to find homes for unloved pieces of art. It might have benefited his immune system too.

At one time, most self-respecting molecular biologists would have scoffed at the idea. Today, evidence from many studies suggests that mental states such as stress can influence health. Still, it has proved difficult to explain how this happens at the molecular level — how subjective moods connect with the vastly complex physiology of the nervous and immune systems. The field that searches for these explanations, known as psychoneuroimmunology (PNI), is often criticized as lacking rigour. Cole's stated aim is to fix that, and his tool of choice is genome-wide transcriptional analysis: looking at broad patterns of gene expression in cells. “My job is to be a hard-core tracker,” he says. “How do these mental states get out into the rest of the body?”

With his colleagues, Cole has published a string of studies suggesting that negative mental states such as stress and loneliness guide immune responses by driving broad programs of gene expression, shaping our ability to fight disease. If he is right, the way people see the world could affect everything from their risk of chronic illnesses such as diabetes and heart disease to the progression of conditions such as HIV and cancer. Now Cole has switched tack, moving from negative moods into the even more murky territory of happiness. It is a risky strategy; his work has already been criticized as wishful thinking and moralizing. But the pay-off is nothing less than finding a healthier way to live.

“If you talk to any high-quality neurobiologist or immunologist about PNI, it will invariably generate a little snicker,” says Stephen Smale, an immunologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who is not affiliated with the Cousins Center. “But this doesn't mean the topic should be ignored forever. Someday we need to confront it and try to understand how the immune system and nervous system interact.”

The best medicine?

In 1964, magazine editor Norman Cousins was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a life-threatening autoimmune disease, and given a 1 in 500 chance of recovery. Cousins rejected his doctors' prognosis and embarked on his own program of happiness therapy, including regular doses of Marx Brothers films, and credited it with triggering a dramatic recovery. He later established the Cousins Center, which is dedicated to investigating whether psychological factors really can keep people healthy.

At the time, mainstream science rejected the idea that any psychological state, positive or negative, could affect physical well-being. But studies during the 1980s and early 1990s revealed that the brain is directly wired to the immune system — portions of the nervous system connect with immune-related organs such as the thymus and bone marrow, and immune cells have receptors for neurotransmitters, suggesting that there is crosstalk.

These connections seem to have clinical relevance, at least in the case of stress. One of the first researchers to show this was virologist Ronald Glaser, now director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at the Ohio State University in Columbus. “When I started working on this in the 1980s, nobody believed what stress could do, including me,” he recalls. He and his colleagues sampled blood from medical students, and found that during a stressful exam period, they had lower activity from virus-fighting immune cells, and higher levels of antibodies for the common virus Epstein–Barr, suggesting that stress had compromised their immune systems and allowed the normally latent virus to become reactivated.

The field of PNI has grown hugely since then, with medical schools worldwide boasting their own departments of mind–body medicine, of which PNI is just one component. It is now accepted that the body's response to stress can suppress parts of the immune system and, over the long term, lead to damaging levels of inflammation. Large epidemiological studies — including the Whitehall studies, which have been following thousands of British civil servants since 1967 — suggest that chronic work stress increases the risk of coronary heart disease and type 2 diabetes, for example. Low socio-economic status increases susceptibility to a wide range of infectious diseases, and there is considerable evidence that stress increases the rate of progression of HIV/AIDS. But researchers have a long way to go before they will understand exactly how signals from the brain feed into physical health.

Worried sick

PNI studies have mostly tended to look at levels of individual immune-cell types or molecular messengers — such as the stress hormone cortisol and the immune messenger proteins called cytokines — or the expression of individual genes. But Cole wanted to get a sense of how the whole system was working.

His first foray, published in 2007, looked at loneliness. Social isolation is one of the most powerful known psychological risk factors for poor health, but it is never certain whether it causes the health problems, or whether a third factor is involved: lonely people might be less likely than others to eat well, for example, or to visit their doctor regularly.

Cole and his colleagues looked at gene expression in the white blood cells of six chronically lonely people — people who had said consistently over several years that they felt lonely or isolated, and were fearful of other people — and eight people who said that they had great friends and social support. Out of the roughly 22,000 genes in the human genome, the researchers identified 209 that distinguished the lonely people from the sociable ones: they were either regulated up to produce more of an individual protein or regulated down to produce less. Any individual gene could easily look different by chance, but Cole was struck by the overall pattern. A particularly large proportion of the upregulated genes in the lonely group turned out to be involved in the inflammatory response, whereas many of the downregulated genes had antiviral roles. In sociable people, the reverse was true. It was a small study, but one of the first to link a psychological risk factor with a broad underlying change in gene expression.

The researchers have since replicated that result in a group of 93 people. Cole says that he has also seen a similar shift in gene expression in individuals exposed to various types of social adversity, from imminent bereavement to low socio-economic status.

The results make evolutionary sense, he says. Early humans in close-knit social groups would have faced increased risk of viral infections, so they would have benefited from revved-up antiviral genes. By contrast, people who were isolated and under stress faced greater risk of injuries that could cause bacterial infection — and thus would need to respond by ramping up genes associated with inflammation, to help heal wounds and fight off those infections. But modern stresses lead to chronic and unhelpful inflammation, which over time damages the body's tissues, increasing the risk of chronic diseases such as atherosclerosis, cancer and diabetes.

To a classical immunologist such as Smale, Cole's results are “intriguing, wonderful observations”, but not yet completely convincing. In future work, he wants to see the rest of the physiological pathway nailed down. “Until you put together a full understanding of that mechanism, you have this level of uncertainty and scepticism,” he says. That sentiment is echoed by Alexander Tarakhovsky, an immunologist at the Rockefeller University in New York City. Pinning down precise mechanisms — for example, which neurotransmitters cause which specific effects — is extremely difficult, he says, because the brain and the immune system are both so complex. Cole's research “makes you think about what the consequences of social hardship could be, but it doesn't really tell you how it works”.

Greg Gibson, director of the Center for Integrative Genomics at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, wants to see larger studies but argues that the big-picture “genetic architecture” that Cole is uncovering is worth studying, even if not every detail of the mechanism is yet understood. “A lot of people are taking a whole-genome approach, but they focus only on a handful of 'top hits'. They are missing the wood for the trees.”

Don't worry, be happy

In 2010, Cole received an e-mail from Barbara Fredrickson, a friend from graduate school who was now studying emotional well-being at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. “Remember me?” she said. She was interested in the biological correlates of happiness and other positive emotional states, and suggested that the pair collaborate. After years of looking at stress and adversity, Cole loved the idea. “I was bored as hell with misery,” he says.

If PNI as a whole has credibility issues, studying well-being is even trickier. It is more slippery to measure than stress — there is no biological marker such as cortisol to fall back on and no simple way to induce it in the lab, and mainstream biologists tend to look down on fuzzy methods of data collection such as questionnaires.

One approach is to test whether it is possible to reverse the adverse effects on gene expression caused by stress. Cole has collaborated in three small, randomized, controlled trials that attempt to do this. Studies involving 45 stressed caregivers and 40 lonely adults respectively found that courses in meditation shifted gene-expression profiles in the participants' white blood cells away from inflammatory genes and towards antiviral genes. A third trial, led by psycho-oncologist Michael Antoni at the University of Miami, Florida, involved 200 women with early-stage breast cancer. In those who completed a ten-week stress-management program, genes associated with inflammation and metastasis were downregulated compared with those of women in the control group, who attended a one-day educational seminar. Meanwhile, genes involved in the type I interferon response (which fights tumors as well as viruses) were upregulated in the women who took the stress-management course. “Our conclusion was that mood matters,” says Antoni. “If we change the psychology, physiological changes do parallel that.”

Cole and Fredrickson aspired to go further. Instead of looking at the benefits of blocking stress, they wanted to investigate what happens in the body when people are happy. To that end, they asked 80 participants 14 questions, such as how often in the past week they had felt happy or satisfied, and how often they felt that their life had a sense of meaning. The questions were designed to distinguish between the two forms of happiness recognized by psychologists: hedonic well-being (characterized by material or bodily pleasures such as eating well or having sex) and eudaimonic well-being (deeper satisfaction from activities with a greater meaning or purpose, such as intellectual pursuits, social relationships or charity work).

The researchers were surprised to find that the two types of happiness influenced gene expression in different ways. People with a meaning-based or purpose-based outlook had favorable gene-expression profiles, whereas hedonic well-being, when it occurred on its own, was associated with profiles similar to those seen in individuals facing adversity.

One interpretation is that eudaimonic well-being benefits immune function directly. But Cole prefers to explain it in terms of response to stress. If someone is driven purely by hollow consumption, he argues, all of their happiness depends on their personal circumstances. If they run into adversity, they may become very stressed. But if they care about things beyond themselves — community, politics, art — then everyday stresses will perhaps be of less concern. Eudaimonia, in other words, may help to buffer our sense of threat or uncertainty, potentially improving our health. “It's fine to invest in yourself,” says Cole, “as long as you invest in lots of other things as well.”

Perils of positive thinking

This is just the kind of advice that attracts some of the most vociferous criticisms of Cole's work. James Coyne, a health psychologist and emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, says that Cole and Frederickson's well-being study is simply too small to show anything useful. He also argues that the measures of eudaimonic and hedonic happiness are so highly correlated in the study as to be essentially the same thing. Coyne says that early results are being vastly over-sold. “They claim that if you make the right choices, you'll be healthy. And if you don't, you'll die.”

Coyne wants researchers across the field of PNI to stop publicizing claims about health benefits until the science is more solid. “They're turning it into books and workshops, telling people how to live their lives.”

Fredrickson, for example, is the author of two popular books, including Positivity: Top-Notch Research Reveals the 3 to 1 Ratio That Will Change Your Life (Crown Archetype, 2009), which posits that a specific ratio of positive to negative emotions (2.9013:1, to be precise) is linked to good health. The book has been praised by eminent psychologists such as Daniel Goleman and Martin Seligman, but the set of equations behind the ratio was criticized this year by Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University (who famously published a deliberately nonsensical paper in the journal Social Text in 1996, intended to expose the lack of rigour in the field of cultural studies). He pointed out that the equations are based on parameters from a 1962 paper on air flow, with no connection to psychological data at all. Fredrickson acknowledges problems with the maths, which she based on a peer-reviewed paper on the complex dynamics of teams, but says that she stands by the fundamental principles described in the book. “There seems good enough evidence to suggest that emotions contribute to health.”

Cole and Fredrickson agree that their study is small and needs to be repeated. But they say that extensive previous research has validated the questionnaire they used and confirmed that it measures two distinct, albeit highly correlated, emotional states. They also note that correlation does not necessarily mean that two states are the same: height and weight are also highly correlated, for example, yet describe different things. Each type of happiness tends to encourage the other, says Fredrickson, “but we can try to understand which is leading the way towards health”.

The researchers are not the first from the PNI community to face accusations of wishful thinking. Indeed, the story of the field's founder — hailed in the press as proof of the power of positive emotions — has been questioned. Immunologists have suggested that Cousins was not suffering from ankylosing spondylitis at all, but from polymyalgia rheumatica, which often clears up on its own. His “health probably coincidentally remitted”, says Cole.

Despite the criticisms, and the fact that his work is in its early days, Cole says that he is struck by the evidence that positive emotions can override the biological effects of adversity — enough to make changes in his own life. Although he no longer has time to engage in the art trade, he has embraced the ways that his hobby helped him. “I have spent most of my career and personal life trying to avoid or overcome bad things,” he says. “I spend a lot more time now thinking about what I really want to do with my life, and where I'd like to go with whatever years remain.”

~ This article is reproduced with permission from the magazine Nature. The article was first published on November 27, 2013.

Aaron Anderson - Five Signs a Man Needs to See a Counselor

From the Good Men Project, Aaron Anderson offers five signs that we might need to seek out therapy. I agree for the most part - and none of the reasons given here are indicative of serious psychological symptoms (like suicidality, audio hallucinations, panic attacks, or dissociation).

When I began therapy, it was because I was unhappy with my life, my relationships, and my future. Therapy helped me know who I am, understand how I had come to that point in my life, and how to change the things I was not happy with in my life.

Counseling can save your life, but it can also help you find the life you have always wanted to live.

Five Signs a Man Needs to See a Counselor

September 22, 2013
by Aaron Anderson

Men aren’t supposed to go to counseling, they’re supposed to be tougher than that, right?

—

For a lot of men, the thought of going to a counselor for therapy is silly. It’s just not part of the man code to go and see a counselor. Seeing a counselor means talking about feelings and your childhood and there’s always the potential of the counselor telling you that your problems are occurring because you’re still in love with your mother. It’s no wonder then, why a lot of men don’t seek out counseling. And then there’s always the question of ‘do I need therapy anyway’? Everyone goes through rough spots. But how do you know when you need therapy? Let’s take a look.

Five signs a man needs to see a counselor.

1) The ‘rough patch’ stays rough for a while. Everybody goes through rough patches now and again. Whether it’s a rough time at work, a rough time in your marriage or a rough patch in life. But if these rough patches stay rough for a while you probably ought to see a counselor. You could wait it out, but what’s the point? Seeing a counselor sooner than later ensures that you get back on track sooner and start enjoying life sooner, too.

2) Your wife/mother/significant other suggests counseling. As a counselor who specializes in marriage counseling, I dread phone calls from men. I dread them because they usually go something like this: Me: Hello? Him: Hi, I need to set up an appointment for my wife and I to come to counseling. She’s been threatening to divorce me for three years and she finally left this morning. Do you have any appointments later today? Me: I have an appointment for later this week if that will help. Him: Okay. Great. Let me call my wife and see if she’ll come.

They normally don’t call back. The ones who do call back are just being courteous to tell me that their wife has gone to the courthouse for the divorce papers and won’t be needing my services after all. Men, do yourselves a favor and go to counseling the FIRST time your wife/mother/significant other suggests it.

3) You want more out of life. In his book Real Boys by William Pollack, PhD, Dr. Pollack talks about the ‘boy code’ that we hear as young men. As young men we often hear to sit down, shut up, and don’t complain. We’re also told to suck it up, don’t cry and move on. So as grown men we often feel like we can’t want more out of life because we just have to suck it up and accept our life as it is. But counseling is a great way to get exactly what you want out of life and get the tools you need to get there. You may have to talk about your feelings but you shed those unwanted burdens that are keeping you down. And you get exactly what you want out of your life in the mean time, too.

4) You’re easily irritated. Men display mental health difficulties differently than women do. Women internalize their difficulties by feeling sad, quiet and guilty. Men are much more external in their displays of mental difficulty. This means they get irritated at others more, become more aggressive and even become physical at times. If this isn’t how you normally react to stress and you’re reacting this way more and more it’s time to see a counselor. If you do normally react this way to stress, you still need to see a counselor.

5) You just want to be left alone for extended periods of time. Everybody goes through spells where they just want to be left alone for a few hours, night a day or a weekend. But if you find yourself day after day just wanting to be left alone by your wife, kids and colleagues at work it’s time to see a counselor. Being left alone is a temporary solution. Sometimes being left alone temporarily is all you need to get your mind back in the game and get a fresh perspective on how to fix things. But if you find yourself wanting to be left alone day after day after day, that’s a big red flag that something more serious is going on.

Unfortunately, there’s still a stigma about seeing a counselor. And for some reason, many men wait until the last minute or just don’t go at all. But a real man does whatever a man has to do in order to be a man; including going to counseling.

About Aaron Anderson
Aaron Anderson is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and owner of The Marriage and Family Clinic in Denver, CO. He also writes for several publications online and in print all on the topic of marriages, families and men. In his spare time (whatever that is) he is secretly preparing to be the next great chef. You can find him on Twitter @MarriageDr and on Facebook giving great info without the psychobabble.

From Open Culture, this is an excellent reminder that making money is not the same as being happy. Watts encourages us to examine our lives and ask ourselves, Are we putting money ahead of happiness and meaning?

I faced this decision a few years ago and changed my life to fit with my purpose. I stopped working in the production sector (marketing for a giftware company) and shifted my life to the service sector (personal trainer). The world will not be a better place if more people buy coasters, but I can help one person at a time get healthy and, maybe, be happier.

And now I am creating even more alignment as I develop my career as a psychotherapist.

I had to give up income for a while and live more frugally as I realigned my life. But I have never been happier with the way I earn my living - to the point that if I did not need the money, I would still be doing what I am doing right now.

What If Money Was No Object?: Thoughts on the Art of Living from Eastern Philosopher Alan Watts

October 9th, 2012

 

Alan Watts came to San Francisco during the early 1950s, wrote his bestseller Way of Zen, and became one of the foremost popularizers of Zen Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and various forms of Eastern philosophy. His TV show, Eastern Wisdom and Modern Life (1960), introduced Americans to the seemingly exotic concept of meditation (watch here). And his radio show and lectures forced listeners to pause and look at their lives from a fresh perspective. Again and again, Watts challenged the Western emphasis on money-making to the exclusion of all else. We’ve heard Watts rail against this soul-crushing value in a lecture animated by the creators of South Park. (I’m not kidding you.) And, in the newly-produced video above, he continues along the same trajectory. So, as you drink your morning coffee and ponder your day, ask yourself: Are you putting money-making before happiness itself? Or are you pursuing the passions that bring happiness, achieving excellence, and then letting the money follow? With that, I’ll let you continue with your day.

H/T @KirstinButler

Related Content:

• The Art of Living: A Free Stanford Course Explores Timeless Questions
• Alan Watts On Why Our Minds And Technology Can’t Grasp Reality

Kicking Gender Stereotypes in the Teeth

The stereotype is that men are all about the sex and women are all about the cuddling. Makes sense from an evolutionary perspective - the selfish gene simply wants to replicate as much as possible, so men have no need for intimacy. On the other hand, women are dedicated to the survival of the offspring, so they need to be nurturing and it helps to have a man around to provide food and protection, so trying to bond with a male is useful.

New research, published in the August 2011 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior (I may have posted on this before), studied over 1000 couples, men from 40  to 70 years of age and their partners. The participants were from the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Japan and Spain.

What they found does not match up with our stereotypes for what men and women need from relationships. It's time to kick those stereotypes in the teeth and leave them in the 20th century, where they were more relevant.

This research review was posted at Psych Central's World of Psychology.

Cuddling Is For Men?

By YourTango Experts
 

 

This guest article from YourTango was written by Dr. Erica Goodstone.

Did you know that men, not women, are more likely to be happy in a relationship if they are in good health, if they are often cuddling and kissing with their partner, and if their partner tends to have orgasms during sex? Cuddling, it turns out, may be even more important than sexual satisfaction for long term relationships.

Women who remain in long term relationships are more likely to be satisfied with the sexual component and that satisfaction seems to improve over time. But for women, frequent cuddling and kissing does not necessarily lead to relationship satisfaction. Women often require romance as well as a sense of being heard, understood and appreciated.

This research, published in the August 2011 issue of the Archives of Sexual Behavior, studied over 1000 couples, men from 40  to 70 years of age and their partners. The participants were from the U.S., Brazil, Germany, Japan and Spain.

As a relationship healing expert, psychotherapist, counselor, mentor and coach working with individuals and couples for over two decades, I find some of the study statistics to be too simplistic and the generalization too vast. Researchers always focus on the statistical averages but clinicians focus on what is actually happening with individuals.

Some couples do become closer, more cuddly and more sexually satisfied over time. Other couples become more distant, less cuddly and more like roommates. Some couples are really cuddly, touching, hugging and even kissing often, but just like siblings, brothers and sisters, with very little sexual passion.

The reasons for their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the relationship may have very little to do with whether they are touching regularly or not. So many factors play into the equation. Some childhood issues may have never been resolved. Financial concerns may be looming heavily. Adult children may be creating insurmountable problems that tear at the couple’s intimacy. Aging parents and young children, for those in the sandwich generation years, can certainly interfere with feeling a sense of satisfaction with the relationship.  Sometimes one or both partners are wishing “if only” they could escape from their current real-life pressures.

What does it take to build long lasting pleasure, enjoyment, sexual satisfaction and relationship happiness?

For many men and women it takes the willingness to face their own issues, to learn what the other person wants and needs and values, and to truly share what is real for each. Often, counseling can bring two people much closer together after the problems and conflicts are presented and all the cards are out on the table. They can pick up the pieces, reshuffle the deck and create together the relationship of both of their dreams — at any age.

Are you ready, willing and able to restore the love and passion and joy in your long term relationship or marriage? Want to put some pzazz, passion and cuddling back into your daily routine?  Need some help? Schedule an appointment with DrErica.

Secret Lives of Men - The art of flourishing; Jeffrey Rubin

In this episode of the Secret Lives of Men, Chris Blazina interviews Jeffrey Rubin on the topic of flourishing - how we can live our best and most productive lives. Rubin's book is The Art of Flourishing: A New East-West Approach to Staying Sane and Finding Love in an Insane World, and it's really a handbook for conscious self-care, something we all could a little more of in our lives.

The Art of Flourishing - Jeffrey Rubin

In this original and deeply revealing exploration of the self and relationships, Dr. Jeffrey Rubin brings the art of flourishing to life. The idea is startlingly simple: self-care is the foundation of intimacy, and intimacy is the culmination of self-care. The Art of Flourishing provides the reader with the tools necessary to thrive, to live a life of meaning, passion, and fulfillment.

An expert on both Eastern meditative and Western psychotherapeutic traditions, Dr. Rubin draws on the best practices of each to create a new and accessible path to living authentically. His unique synthesis provides a remarkably lucid guide for handling our emotions wisely, discovering our purpose, and uncovering barriers to intimacy—the hidden emotional weeds that kill passion, such as conflicts over communication and power, boundaries and sexuality. Drawing from case examples and personal experiences, Rubin explains how to remove these obstacles to nurture empathy and mutual respect. Creating and cultivating a garden of love enables us to grow as individuals and nourish our connections with others. It widens our horizon of possibility, deepens our humanity, and helps us flourish, which is a priceless gift to the world.

Listen to internet radio with Secret Lives of Men on Blog Talk Radio

Tags: Secret Lives of Men, Chris Blazina, The art of flourishing, Jeffrey Rubin, men, happiness, self care, health, thriving, meaning, intimacy, relationships, communication, power, empathy, emotional weeds

Documentary - Children Full of Life

This is a moving short film (45 mins or so, in five parts) about a fourth grade teacher in Japan whose class learns more about how to live a happy life than any student is ever taught in the U.S. What a beautiful thing to teach children.

I think it's wonderful that this happens to be a male teacher - and that he is free to show affection for the kids without (it appears) any fear of being charged with child abuse.

Thanks to Andreas Thies for the link.

Children Full of Life

"In the award-winning documentary Children Full of Life, a fourth-grade class in a primary school in Kanazawa, northwest of Tokyo, learn lessons about compassion from their homeroom teacher, Toshiro Kanamori. He instructs each to write their true inner feelings in a letter, and read it aloud in front of the class. By sharing their lives, the children begin to realize the importance of caring for their classmates."

Part One:


Part Two:


Part Three:


Part Four:


Part Five:

Tags: children, education, happiness, schools, male teachers, documentary, Children Full of Life, Toshiro Kanamori, Japan, Kanazawa, compassion, life skills

Go to a Museum or a Play - You'll Be Happier . . . Seriously

In my skeptical mind, I'm thinking, "Yeah, these guys are happier because they are going to museums and plays and the ballet and their wives/girlfriends are thrilled, so they are getting more sex." But I'm sure that's just my cynical self - I actually love good museums, plays, classical music, modern dance, etc.

Seriously, research has shown repeatedly that arts - both creating and watching - are good for the mind and for general happiness and meaningful life.

Cultured Men Are Happier And Healthier

Men who visit art galleries, museums, and the theatre regularly tend to enjoy better health and are more satisfied with life, reveals a study published online in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health.

The study found that both men and women who play musical instruments, paint or visit the theatre or museums felt in better health, enjoyed life more, and were less likely to be anxious or depressed then people who do not participate in cultural activities.

However, the effect was most pronounced in men who were interested in watching and looking at culture rather than doing creative or active cultural activities themselves.

The Norwegian researchers used questionnaires to determine how frequently 50,797 adults living in Nord-Trøndelag County participated in cultural activities and to assess their perceived state of health, satisfaction with life, and anxiety and depression levels.

All types of cultural activities were significantly associated with good health and satisfaction with life, and people who engaged in cultural activities had lower levels of anxiety and depression.

Moreover, the more culture was experienced, the greater were the benefits to health and well-being. The greatest benefits were seen in men who did "receptive" cultural activities, such as visiting theatres and museums.

"The results indicate that the use of cultural activities in health promotion and healthcare may be justified," comment the authors.

Source:
The Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health

Tags: Cultured Men Are Happier And Healthier, Medical News Today, men, art, theater, music, happiness, culture, plays, films, museums, art galleries, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, Norway, better health, life satisfaction, less anxiety, less depression

Being Male and Being Tall Correlates with Happiness

Notice that I said correlates - there is no cause and effect here, only a pattern that taller men are happier than shorter men, and that while there is some similar pattern in women, it's not as consistent as it is men (as the graphs below will show). Interesting.

Taller People Are Happier, Especially if They’re Male

By CATHERINE RAMPELL

As I wrote recently in an article on the happiest person in America, taller people generally lead better lives than shorter people. How much better? Here are two charts showing the typical levels of well-being in 2010 for men of various heights, and then for women of various heights:

As you can see, there’s a pretty steady relationship between well-being and height for men. The taller men are, generally speaking, the happier they are. (Remember, as always, correlation is not causation.)

On the other hand, the connection between height and happiness is less predictable for women. Well-being levels for the very tallest women are higher than they are for the very shortest women, but well-being levels bounce around quite a lot in between, and actually seem to trend downward beyond a certain height.

I’ll let the sociobiologists among you out there theorize about why.

Tags: men, happiness, culture, tall men, male, Gallup-Healthyway Well-Being Index, sociobiology, research

Brene Brown - The UP Experience

Some of you may have seen Brene Brown's TED Talk that made its way around the internet a few months ago - a talk on what she has learned in spending the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness.

Sandra Kiume posted a Brown video I was not familiar with Psych Central's Channel N. This newer video (at least to me) deals with shame, an issue most men know all too well in our lives - it was often the tool that shaped who we became as men.

She also talks about worthiness - and this another topic I hear about in the men I talk to (the ones who are self-aware). A lot of men don't feel in worthy in many ways, whether it's financially, sexually, emotionally, physically, socially, or in some other way (including as fathers). And unfortunately, our culture doesn't do much to help men feel good about themselves.

The UP Experience

A researcher who studies shame talks about how it gets in the way of our “how to” happiness. She explores the roots of worthiness, “never good enough” and perfectionism, and the role of gender with shame. “Courage to me is the ability to tell your story and like yourself in the process of doing that,” says Brown.

Tags: brain, fear, Lecture, perfectionism, psychology, shame, social, psychology, shame, happiness, personal growth, Brene Brown, The UP Experience, worthiness

Sounds True - Matthieu Ricard: Happiness Is a Skill

Nice podcast from Tami Simon and Sounds True: Insights at the Edge - she interviews Matthieu Ricard, biologist (cellular genetics) and Buddhist monk, on the topic of Happiness Is a Skill.

I think we have a tendency to grow up thinking that happiness is a right, or a natural condition of doing the "right things," whatever those may be in our individual perspectives. But it seldom works out that way - few of us (in anyone) grows up without accumulating loads of pain and disappoint (or worse).

Being happy, then, generally requires us to get out from under false beliefs, emotional wounding, destructive cognitive scripts, or even mental illness. One of the best tools ever discovered for discovering happiness despite all the suffering (and we would never really know happiness without the suffering) is meditation.

Matthieu Ricard: Happiness Is a Skill

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Tami Simon speaks with Matthieu Ricard, an author and photographer who earned a PhD in cell genetics. He is also a Buddhist monk who has served as the Dalai Lama’s French interpreter since 1989. Matthieu has written several books, including The Monk and the Philosopher, The Quantum and the Lotus, as well as The Art of Meditation. With Sounds True, he has released an audio learning program based on his book Happiness. Matthieu speaks about the skill of happiness, as well as the conditions for happiness. He also discusses the physical and psychological effects of meditation, along with the ways to track the progress you make in your spiritual practice. (37 minutes)

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Tags: psychology, Buddhism, meditation, happiness, Tami Simon, Sounds True, Insights at the Edge, Matthieu Ricard, Happiness Is a Skill, skill of happiness, conditions for happiness, podcast

NPR - What Do Women Really Want? Oxytocin

A little post from NPR's health blog, Shots. on what women really need - women who release more oxytocin are happier. They are also more interested in sex. So, you might be wondering, how do we increase oxytocin levels in our girlfriends or wives? Answers below this article.

What Do Women Really Want? Oxytocin

November 15, 2010

by Jon Hamilton

This woman's body is probably pumping out a lot of oxytocin.

A male scientist says he's discovered what makes women happy.

It's a hormone called oxytocin, says Paul Zak, a researcher at Claremont Graduate University. Zak presented evidence to back his case today at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego.

Produced naturally in the body, oxytocin can trigger labor contractions and lactation in women. It's also been shown to boost feelings of trust and empathy in both men and women.

Zak, trained as an economist, was part of a team that studied oxytocin levels in college-age women before and after they received a $24 gift from a stranger.

Acts like this, which show kindness and trust, are known to cause oxytocin levels to rise. But the amount of increase varies widely from person to person.

In this study, women filled out surveys about their satisfaction with life before they received the gift. And comparing the survey results with oxytocin changes revealed a clear pattern.

"Women who release more oxytocin are happier," Zak told the audience at the neuroscience meeting. "They like being around other people more, they have more sex per month, and they have more resilience to adverse events."

The reason for these differences probably has to do with oxytocin's ability to encourage people to form relationships, trust other people, and empathize, he says.

Many studies have shown that people with strong relationships are happier.

Women in this study confirmed the link between oxytocin levels and efforts to bond with another person. Those who released the highest levels of oxytocin were also most likely to send some money back to the stranger who gave them the original gift.

OK, then, so I'm sure you read the article before you got down to this part, right? Because what really matters is that the woman you love is happy, right?

Seriously, if she feels that you are manipulating her, you might as well get a blanket from the closet and set up camp on the couch for the next few days.

Here are ways to naturally boost your body's oxytocin production:

• Walk this way. Just linking arms, holding hands, or draping an arm around your significant other, child, or person you care for can produce an increase in oxytocin. Don't be afraid to show affection, and if you want to stop and hug during the walk, hug! Really, it's that simple.

• Daydream about your significant other. Research out of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill discovered that happily married women quickly released a dose of oxytocin when asked to think about their husbands. But of course, try not to spend too much time apart. "While absence is said to make the heart grow fonder, from a neurophysilogical perspective there is little doubt that regular intimate contact with a loved one is preferable," says Crook.

• Count on your cat. Husbands and wives can be moody and go through affectionate dry spells, but it always seems like a loyal pet is there to make owners feel good. And because the release of oxytocin is triggered by touch, petting a dog or cat you love can also increase oxytocin levels, explains Crook.

• Find comfort in familiar favorites. The smell of your mother's signature chocolate chip cookies, hearing kind words from someone you care about, waking up early to hear the dawn choir chirped by chickadees and other backyard birds—these are all ways to boost oxytocin. Crook says immersing yourself in familiar and comforting smells, sounds, music, and even pleasant thoughts and memories can coax your oxytocin meter higher.

So there were five ways to increase oxytocin naturally - the fifth one is making love. The "cuddle hormone" increases quite a bit during sex, then peaks at double the normal levels at orgasm (one of the reasons having sex triggers birth contractions in pregnant women). It also generates the emotional intimacy and bonding of the post-coital bliss - unless you fall asleep right away.

• Have (good) sex. Adults seeking an oxytocin surge should head for the bedroom. The hugging and touching during foreplay fires up the love chemical, and orgasm spikes the hormone level to two times the normal amount. This opens the door to a relaxed feeling and a greater opportunity to bond with your partner.

Interestingly, among premenopausal women, oxytocin is naturally higher during ovulation because estrogen intensifies the love hormone. This may partially explain why women seem to be more prone to touch and other displays of affection during ovulation.

Tags: psychology, brain, oxytocin, relationships, happiness, sexuality, NPR, Shots, Jon Hamilton, Paul Zak, neuroscience, women, touch, intimacy, bonding, orgasm, daydreaming, pets, comfort scents

Tripp Lanier - Do this today and feel better about your life. Seriously.

Great post from Tripp.

Do this today and feel better about your life. Seriously.

I just answered an email to someone asking about how to accept praise and deal with the nagging feeling of “I’m not enough.” Good thing is that I’ve got some experience with these goblins. :-)

Here was my response:

There's a "law" that says, what you focus on grows. Right now, I'm imagining that you're focusing on one side of the story and in your world it eclipses what is positive.

Good news, is that you can actually train yourself to shift that and ultimately feel fulfilled and satisfied.

You just gotta pull your head out of your ass. :-)

Here's some tips I've used to own my value and feel satisfied:

EVERYDAY take five minutes to sit down and shut the fuck up. Make a mental list of all the things that are going well and are benefiting you (and others).

I usually use a sentence-stem like "I'm grateful for..." and just fill in the blank. Sometimes it is big (the latest NM episode that rocked) sometimes it is small (the ice cream cone after lunch).

When I started doing this it was challenging to find things to be grateful for. I had trained myself to only see "what is not enough".

This is a practice. Do it daily. I now find that I can sit there and go on and on and on for the things that make my life amazing.

Next, ask yourself, "What did I do to facilitate that positive event/thing?" Whatever it is, big or small, own your part.

Just like taking radical responsibility for when the shit hits the fan in life, take responsibility for the good stuff. For me it could be, "I'm grateful that Joel Harper was on The New Man. I was curious about his work so I emailed his publicist and asked if he would be on the show."

It doesn't have to be monumental. Nonetheless own your thoughts/actions and SEE that you are RESPONSIBLE.

You get extra points if you do this before you go to sleep at night, too.

There's also a this website which has a ton of easy practices to do. I highly recommend it.

Tags: life, personal growth, happiness, Tripp Lanier, Do this today and feel better about your life. Seriously., masculinity, men, gratitude

How Stuff Works - Are men or women happier?

Interesting look at the available research on happiness in men and women. On the bright side, we all seem to be happier as we age, which seems only fair.

Are men or women happier?

by Cristen Conger

Conger, Cristen. "Are men or women happier?." 20 May 2009. HowStuffWorks.com.

Inside this Article

1. Are men or women happier?
2. Do Men Get the Last Laugh?

3. Lots More Information
4. See all Science of Happiness articles

©iStockphoto/courtneyk
Women score slightly higher than men on happiness evaluations.

If girls just want to have fun, as Cyndi Lauper belted out in 1983, does that mean boys are serious stoics? Lauper probably wasn't trying to make a sociological statement in her head-bopping anthem, but her lyrics point to a much-debated question about gender differences. In studying the relative happiness of people across the globe, do men and women exhibit distinctive emotional characteristics? In short, is one sex generally happier than the other?

It's important to note that evaluating happiness isn't a highly precise scientific undertaking. For one thing, happiness is a subjective term, and there's no universal measurement for it. Though someone smiles on the outside, it doesn't mean that his or her apparent joy reflects internally. Similarly, a lot of studies related to happiness rely on self-reporting. One survey that economists from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania have used simply asks respondents to rate themselves on whether they are "very happy," "pretty happy" or "not happy." The resulting statistics don't take into account the nuances and background information of why and how people scored themselves.

Despite the potential pitfalls of empirical happiness studies, we can draw some conclusions about who the happiest sociological groups of people are. Generally, older people are happier than younger ones. Wealth and good health also give us something to smile about more often. Yet when it comes to the happiness gender gap, things aren't so cut and dried.

The 2003 Pew Global Attitudes Project that surveyed 38,000 men and women across 44 countries lends insight into the disparities between male and female happiness. Overall, women scored themselves as more satisfied with their lives than men [source: Pew Research Center]. Moreover, women from certain countries, including Pakistan, Japan and Argentina, appeared significantly happier. The differences between what affects men and women's levels of happiness explains this slight gender gap. Women, for instance, tend to focus on personal and domestic problems, while men concern themselves more with matters outside of the home.

This variation in values is also reflected in how the recent recession has affected people's happiness. According to a Nielson Happiness Survey conducted in 51 countries, men's happiness hasn't weathered the economic storm well since they attach more importance to financial success than women. On the other hand, the women surveyed indicated they appreciated quality relationships above all [source: Reuters].

But women shouldn't start celebrating the good news just yet.

Do Men Get the Last Laugh?

©iStockphoto/azndc
As they get older, men may experience more life satisfaction than women.

In the United States and other developed countries, women have a lot to be happy about. More than ever before, they can enjoy the same educational and career opportunities as men. Even at home, domestic dynamics have become more of a shared burden rather than women's work. Somehow, amid the progress, a 2008 analysis from economists at the University of Pennsylvania found that American women today aren't as happy as they were 30 years ago. The authors of the paper explain the decline in happiness in terms of skyrocketing unemployment rates -- from 4 percent to 12.5 percent [source: Wilson Quarterly].

Princeton economists have also come to the same conclusion about women's sagging happiness. By exploring how much women enjoy common activities, such as gardening or watching television, it seemed that they spend more time on less gratifying undertakings. In any given week, women spend an average of 90 more minutes than men performing "unpleasant" tasks [source: Leonhardt]. This trend likely relates back to women's achievements in recent decades. With more prospects outside of the home, many women are experiencing difficulty balancing a career and a family, which saps happiness.

Age has also emerged as a determining factor for whether men or women are the happier sex in the United States. A study in the Journal of Happiness Studies established 48 as the benchmark age when men's happiness overtakes women's. As younger adults, women find more joy in building families and lasting relationships, while men are struggling to climb the job ladder. By middle age, the tables supposedly turn as women face the disappointment of not realizing life goals and men reach theirs. Then, at 64, men begin to appreciate their families even more than women [source: Byner]. But that age-happiness correlation may be tied to geography. Across the pond, a 2008 University College London survey found that women 50 years old and older are more optimistic than their male counterparts [source: Alleyne].

So who wins the happiness battle of the sexes? At the end of the day, both males and females can look forward to sunnier old age. No matter the number of X chromosomes, adults show a consistent spike in reported happiness once mid-life crises subside.

Read the rest of this series.

Tags: happiness, psychology, men, women, Are men or women happier?, Cristen Conger, HowStuffWorks.com, Do Men Get the Last Laugh?, aging