Get rich AND die trying: Ambitious people earn more money - but they die younger and are no happier, says study

Career ladder: The new study found that ambitious people earned more money and had prestigious jobs - but died younger, and were not a great deal happier

Parents who teach their children  to value career ambitions over spending time with friends could be setting them up for an early grave, a study has revealed.

It found that go-getters who attend the best universities and secure high-powered jobs suffer poorer health and die younger than those with more modest aspirations. 

Over 70 years, the U.S. study tracked 717 high-achievers who attended universities, such as Oxford, Harvard and Yale, as well as those without university degrees, to the end of their lives.

The researchers found that highly ambitious people neglected key areas of their lives that lead to happiness, including building a strong network of friends and maintaining stable relationships. 

Professor Timothy Judge, who led the study at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, said: ‘Ambitious kids had higher educational attainment, attended highly esteemed universities, worked in more prestigious occupations, and earned more.

‘So, it would seem that they are poised to "have it all." However, we determined that ambition has a much weaker effect on life satisfaction and actually a slightly negative impact  on longevity (how long people lived).

 

'So, yes, ambitious people do achieve more successful careers, but that doesn't seem to translate into leading happier or healthier lives.’

Judge used a complex formula to judge ambition at every stage of life - and to divide high-ability individuals into 'ambitious' and 'less ambitious' groups.

The study didn’t address the underlying reasons for the higher mortality of ambitious people. 

Read more »

WHAT'S TAKING E.T. SO LONG TO FIND US?

E.T. would have had plenty of time to reach us by now.
Are we just being ignored?

• Alien civilizations starting from the oldest stars in the galaxy would have had more than enough time to reach Earth.
• Calculations show either we are alone in the galaxy, or ET is ignoring us.
• The study did not address life beyond the Milky Way.

Mathematically speaking, ET would have found us by now -- if he exists -- so we’re being consciously avoided for some reason, a new study concludes.

Read more »

Why we fall out of love

“When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that’s amore!” sang Dean Martin. We all know the delicious feeling of new love, but what about the flip side? Love doesn’t always last, and its retreat can leave us bewildered, confused or downright depressed.

Even if you were raised on a plentiful diet of fairy tales, you know that “till death do us part” can be a rare thing. Even staying with someone forever is no guarantee of experiencing lasting love. But why do people really fall out of love? Is there anything we can do to make love stay? Do some of us give up too easily? To understand the phenomenon of love’s end, we asked the experts’ opinions on the subject. Here are the top three reasons they shared with us:

1. A distancing “Wave” can topple a good thing if you let it. Ken Page, psychotherapist and author of the Finding Love blog for Psychology Today and founder of the Deeper Dating website, has identified a phenomenon that can destroy new love: “The ‘Wave’ occurs when we unconsciously push a caring and available person away by inwardly diminishing his or her worth.” Think about how Carrie Bradshaw behaved when she first started dating Aidan Shaw: Aidan was “too available” and Carrie freaked because she wasn’t used to being with someone so open.

Read more »

Coast To Coast AM - 19.10.2011 - Deathbed Visions & Grief

Guests: Carla Wills-Brandon, Jeff O'Connell
Deathbed Visions & Grief:

On Wednesday's show, licensed Marriage and Family therapist, Carla Wills-Brandon, discussed her work documenting and compiling evidence of contact with the afterlife through deathbed visions. Such visions of the dying typically include conversations and visitations from deceased loved ones or relatives, as well as religious figures, and beloved pets.

Read more »

Will President Obama and the House GOP ever agree?Science suggests no

 

President Obama and House Republicans may have narrowly averted a government shutdown last weekend, but as the two sides prepare to engage in another round of intra-party feuding over budget proposals, a new study suggests that basic brain science might stand in the way of bipartisanship.

Using data from MRI scans, researchers at the University College London found that self-described liberals have a larger anterior cingulate cortex--a gray matter of the brain associated with understanding complexity. Meanwhile, self-described conservatives are more likely to have a larger amygdala, an almond-shaped area that is associated with fear and anxiety.
"Previously, some psychological traits were known to be predictive of an individual's political orientation," lead researcher Ryota Kanai writes of the study in the latest issue of Current Biology. "Our study now links personality traits with specific brain structure."
Observers will notice a familiar name on the report: Oscar-winning actor Colin Firth, who commissioned the report while serving as a guest host of the BBC Radio 4's Today program in London last year. (Neurological sources of stammering don't come into play.)
The study, which was conducted with the help of 90 young adult volunteers, comes on the heels of other research that linked political beliefs to genetic differences between liberals and conservatives. Last year, a joint study by the Harvard and the University of California, San Diego, found there might actually be a so-called "liberal gene" that influences political leanings.
While the London study does find distinct differences between Democrats and Republicans, its authors caution that more research needs to be done on the subject. One unknown is whether people are simply born with their political beliefs or if our brains adjust to life experiences--which is a possibility, Kanai writes.
"It's very unlikely that actual political orientation is directly encoded in these brain regions," he said in a statement accompanying the study. "More work is needed to determine how these brain structures mediate the formation of political attitude."
(Photo of John Boehner and President Obama: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

Source

Tweet

Alien Experiences

Dr. John E. Mack appears only briefly in this film, his death having occurred soon after production began. More substantial are visits to the New England countryside with experiencers, including one couple who videotaped an unidentified flying object hovering above a lake a few hours before they were abducted from their lakeside cottage. Also in this film, is the New York artist and alien encounter investigator Budd Hopkins. Although this documentary is similar to other documentaries commonly seen on American cable television, it has a more leisurely pace and gives more time for the experiencers to explain themselves than is commonly granted in US productions. One of the best interviews in the program is not with an experiencer at all, but rather with the husband of an experiencer, who matter-of-factly explains how his family has come to terms with his wifes experiences.
Source

Project Camelot: Kerry Cassidy interviews Laura Knight

We were privileged to be guests there for a couple of days during the filming of this fascinating interview. Laura is a brilliant researcher into the nature of consciousness, the matrix and the underlying psychology of pathology. In addition, she has created a unique approach that she calls "critical channeling" to a recurring telepathic contact with an ET group who call themselves the Cassiopaeans who said to her "we are you in the future."

Using a Ouija board (also known as a spirit board) and a small group of people, she made contact and then in a series of controlled experiments verified the level of material she was receiving (whether her source could be trusted) by asking questions then researching the answers and checking on the veracity and intention of the source in predicting future events... In touch with this source for roughly 16 years, she and a small group of people have accumulated a vast amount of information. She has never stopped questioning or researching what she is getting.

Laura's intelligence is tenacious and uncompromising. Her inquiry into the supernatural, past lives, and the unknown has taken her down many roads. Along the way, she became a hypnotist, an exorcist and a highly perceptive chronicler of what it means to be human.

Highly recommended:
Thomas French article "The Exorcist", St. Petersburg Times,
Websites:
Cassiopaean Experiment
Sott.net
Laura's new breathing and meditation video

Source