让生活更美好的八种特别方式

New scientific research offers surprising ways to shower yourself with tranquility, creativity, longevity and more。
新的研究发现有很多方式能让自己更加安静、富有创造力和长寿。

1. Optimism
乐观积极

Never mind if you don't have hours a day—even a few minutes spent in quiet contemplation once in a while yields noticeable benefits. A group of adults who meditated an average of six hours and 13 minutes over the course of five weeks developed patterns of brain activity typically associated with positive moods。
就算你每天没有太多的时间也没关系，仅仅几分钟的沉思就能让你获得不少好处。研究显示，在五周的时间里平均沉思6小时13分钟的成年人，有效地提升了脑力，心态也变得更加积极。

2. Serenity
平静

When mice were fed a strain of probiotics found in some yogurt, they became calmer under stress, Irish and Canadian scientists observed. The were less likely to panic like their broth-fed brethren, and they produced fewer stress hormones—effects similar to those brought on by antidepressants. Look for yogurt that has active probiotic cultures, and say, "Mmmm."
爱尔兰和加拿大的科学家观察发现，用某种酸奶里含有的活益生菌喂食老鼠，能让它们在压力之下显得更加冷静。相比那些食肉的老鼠而言，它们似乎更不容易陷入恐慌，还能分泌出较少的压力荷尔蒙——这和服用抗抑郁症药物的效果一样。喝喝那些富含活益生菌的酸奶吧，然后大赞一句“好喝”。

3. Creative Thinking
创造性思维

Volunteers who worked in rooms lit by a lamp with an incandescent lightbulb instead of overhead fluorescents solved problems requiring novel thinking more successfully. Scientists say the symbolism of the bulb (not just its light spectrum) led to the subjects' bright ideas, and cited "a growing body of research showing that perception of objects...can subtly influence our behavior."
房间里的灯泡对创造性思维有影响。相比头顶是日光灯的志愿者而言，头顶是白炽灯泡的似乎更能轻而易举的解决需要创新性思维的难题。科学家表示，灯泡的象征主义(不仅仅它的光谱)能帮助被试者想出不错的点子，并且“越来越多的行为研究表明对物体的感知能潜移默化的影响我们的行为”。

4. Belonging
归属感

Undergraduates who considered chicken soup a comfort food and then were fed some scored higher on a psychological test of social connectedness than those who weren't given any soup. When given a word fragment like incl, they converted it into a "relationship word" such as include, instead of a neutral term, like incline, because the dish stirred a sense of connection。
在社交连通性的心理测试中，我们给那些把鸡汤看成是安慰食物的大学生准备了一些鸡汤，结果显示他们的得分要比没有喝鸡汤的那群人更高。比如我们给出词根incl， 他们会迅速转化成“关系词汇” 比如include，而非中性词汇incline，因为鸡汤激起了他们心中的归属感。