That dream job, promotion, mate, house, car, or dreaded breakup, surprise job loss, devastating diagnosis may not matter as much as you think.   Most of us dream about or alternatively worry about how big events in our lives are going to make us happy or bring us down.  A lot of research though actually indicates that it isn’t those big events that really matter as much as we might credit them.

The fact is that we usually bounce back from adversity and come down from our temporary highs relatively quickly and return to our baseline level of happiness in a process known as hedonic adaptation.  These big life events are quickly overwhelmed by the more mundane daily ups and downs.

It’s counter intuitive that the jammed up traffic, slow people in front of you in line, a rude clerk, overheard catty comment, argument with your teenager, etc. bring you down more than the big events, but counter intuitive or not, that’s what research shows.  These smaller and daily constant hits on your mood accumulate to overwhelm the big stuff.  The same thing applies to the positive events but it is worth pointing out that negative stuff matters more than positive stuff.  That’s why you need many more positive events than negative ones to thrive.

The takeaway is not to sacrifice your daily happiness for that big dream.  It will quickly be the norm and you will then be looking for then next big thing to satisfy your “I will be happy when …” fantasy.  You can deal with the small stuff by adjusting your response to them.  Maybe somebody should write a book called “Don’t Sweat the Big Stuff”.

Actually someone did write the book but the author Sonja Lyubomirsky called it The Myths of Happiness: What Should Make You Happy, but Doesn’t, What Shouldn’t Make You Happy, but Does

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Several years ago I wrote an article explaining The Sunk Cost Bias Mind Trap.  Since we are starting a fresh new year I thought it would be appropriate to remind everyone to avoid this costly trap.  I recommend you follow my link and read the original article because it is a better article, but I will summarize it here.

This is one of the hardest traps for me personally to avoid and I think for most others as well.  For example I love to read books and watch movies.  For many years if I started a book, I finished it even if I didn’t like it.  The same thing if I plunked down cash to go to a movie.  I never walked out of one.  After all my investment would be “wasted” if I didn’t finish right?  Wrong.  In fact it couldn’t be more wrong.

The central point is the past is the past and any investment that occurred in the past is already sunk, therefore the term “sunk costs”.  If you continue something because you have already invested time or money or some other resource in it, you are simply compounding your original mistake.  If I paid for a book and have read ½ of it and don’t like it, why should I continue to invest my valuable time doing something just because I have already sunk costs into that activity?  Those are gone.  I can’t get them back.  Then only important thing is what do I want to do now?  Where can I most enjoyable or profitably invest my time NOW.

I think my epiphany was Jim Carrey’s movie Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events.  Since I liked some of Jim Carrey’s movies (something I don’t really understand), I went to this movie.  I hated it so badly I could hardly stand it.  After about 20 minutes I left the theatre because I realized that continuing to punish myself for my original mistake was irrational.  It was the first time I had done that and at the time I was going to multiple movies a week.  While it was obvious with such a bad movie, I realized the same thing applies to virtually anything.  If there is something better to be doing, it doesn’t matter what I’ve done up to this point or what money or time I’ve invested.  It’s all sunk costs.  It’s gone.  It’s what I do from this point forward that’s important.

So as you look forward in 2013 and beyond I encourage you to drop all of your attachments to your sunk costs from the past.  Those costs may have been sunk into relatively trivial things like books and movies or much more important things like relationships, jobs, etc.   However, the trap applies to the latter as well.  In fact the more important the issue, the bigger mistake it is to chase sunk costs.   It doesn’t matter how trivial or important the something you have invested in is in your life, the costs are still sunk.  Don’t compound your original mistake.

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This is a short article on probably the best book on health and diet I’ve ever read and I’ve read a lot of them.  I read it some time ago and a new edition has just been released.  It has “diet” in the name but that term is used in the sense of what you eat as opposed to how to lose weight.  This is NOT a weight loss book although there is a chapter on that and it is part of the subtitle.

We worry about the most unlikely things most of which are totally out of our control and yet most of us don’t do the one thing that we have almost total control over – eat healthy.  Even most of us who think we are eating healthy are not.  Therefore I cannot recommend this book highly enough.  It far surpasses most diet books and it carefully explains the most important issues regarding what you should eat and more importantly why.  It is heavily footnoted and is supported by a mass of scientific literature which is explained in terms everyone can understand.

This book is not your typical paleo book although the diet looks fairly paleo.  The authors explain some critically important facts about toxicity of carbs and proteins.  Its chapters on the toxicity of grains, vegetable oils, and fructose are simply outstanding.  The material on supplements and why you should take certain ones is very carefully documented with much care given to safe levels.   Every single person should read this book.

Please note the average Amazon review is 4.7 out of 5 stars.  Those are well deserved and I would give it 10 stars if I could.  The paperback version I first read is not available although you may find it in the library.  The new hardcover edition is $17.27 cents on Amazon.  The kindle version is $12.59.  It is 400 pages long.  If you and your spouse went to lunch you couldn’t get out of the restaurant for $17.27.  If you take your family to a movie it will probably cost you $30 – $60.  This $17.27 will be the best and most inexpensive investment in your future that I can imagine.  Read it.

Perfect Health Diet: Regain Health and Lose Weight by Eating the Way You Were Meant to Eat

Happy holidays!

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This article is not a 20 second read and that is the point.  You can’t explain something complex without spending some time on it.  A couple of weeks ago I was moving around in the house in the morning with the TV tuned to the Today show.  I heard them introduce a story with something along the lines of “We are used to seeing the stories of elderly drivers putting the car in drive instead of reverse or stepping on the accelerator instead of the brake and driving through a store front.  But are elderly drivers really unsafe drivers?”.  I probably have that wrong, but that captures the gist of it.  Basically the story went on to promote how safe elderly drivers are  by quoting some statistics saying drivers over 65 cause fewer crashes than other age groups.  The shocker was that they brought in a 97 year-old man as the poster boy for safe elderly drivers!

I’m positive that 97 year-old drivers are not safe drivers as a group.  It’s simply a matter of physiology  Brain processing speed, ability to deal with complex situations, flexibility, vision, quickness in movement, and many other things that significantly degrade in old age make dealing with rapidly changing traffic situations much more difficult.

The report had someone on who quoted some stats like that mentioned above and then claimed that since older drivers drive slower and are more careful they are actually safer drivers.  It ended with some feel good impressions that the elderly drivers are not unsafe after all.

Part of the problem is the way terms like “elderly” were used.  When most people think about old or elderly drivers they are not thinking about the 65 year-old who just retired.  Instead when people imagine elderly drivers they probably have in mind 80 or 90 year-olds.

A big problem with this story is the misleading way “driver” was used.  An unsafe driver implies the act of driving.  I really don’t care about how safe a driver is when he isn’t driving.  What I do care about is their actions when they are behind a wheel.  So if you claim that older drivers cause fewer accidents that other age groups you would be claiming something that is technically true  but highly misleading. This is due simply to the fact that they driver far few miles.  You can’t cause an accident sitting on your sofa. However, per mile driven the story is something else entirely.

If you look at the actual detailed numbers collected by the National Highway and Traffic Safety Administration you can come to some of the following conclusions.

Per person the number of accidents decreases as age increases.  This is simply due to less miles driven.  It says absolutely nothing about how safe someone is when they are when actually behind the wheel.

Looking at crashes per mile we see the following.  Drivers between 35 and 65 are the safest and the rate is pretty flat between them.  Between 25 and 35 and  between 65 and 80 the rates are noticeably worse but nothing to get too worried about.  Between 20 and 25 and between 80 and 85 the rates are significantly worse than the safest ages.  Drivers under 20 and 85 or older are magnitudes worse in the number of crashes.  The elderly are 3 times more likely to be involved in a crash and the teenagers are 5 times more likely.  There isn’t a 90+ or a 95+ category but looking at the numbers that are available you can imagine the accident waiting to happen that exists in those age categories.

The other thing that is significant is fatality rate for drivers by age.  Young drivers are much much more likely to survive a crash simply because of their more resilient physiology.  An 85 year-old who is involved in a wreck is more like to be killed than a 25 year-old.  The numbers here show a dramatic effect with older drivers killed at many times the rate of younger drivers.  Apparently they are killing themselves.  So aside from the fact they are likely to harm others, perhaps the elderly drivers need to get off the road for their own sake.

The conclusions here are all about AVERAGES.  I’m certain despite the group averages that there are some incredibly safe teenage drivers.  The same thing may be true about some elderly drivers, but a careful teenager is simply a safer driver than a careful 80 year-old for the physiological reasons mentioned above.  People my age are supposed to be safe drivers but my wife probably has a different opinion.

I’m not all that worried about drivers of any age (except people like the 97 year-old dare devil).  I am pretty worried about the misleading stories that are foisted upon us by daily by media organizations that have seemingly have lost all ability to explain anything even slightly nuanced.

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A couple of weeks ago a NYC policeman saw a homeless man sitting on a sidewalk in Time’s Square in freezing weather without socks and shoes.  He went into a shoe store nearby and bought the man a pair of fairly expensive boots with his own money.  Some tourist recorded it and the video went viral and made the national news. The woman who recorded the whole thing teared up as she described it to the national media.  The whole nation seemed to be touched by this act of kindness.

At the time I thought to myself I would have never done that.  Yes, I’m very cynical and I admit it.  While I love the idea of random acts of kindness, I believe they should not be mindless.  There has to be some criteria and that criteria needs to be more than if something is lacking it should be provided.  That’s what the government does and it creates all kinds of unintended consequences.  Some things may be a no brainer – an elderly woman struggling with a heavy package of some kind is a stereotypical example that comes to mind.  But when it comes to a man sitting on the street without shoes, the situation is a little more complicated.

I think the intent of the policeman was nothing but pure and that seems to be what touched everyone, however that does not mean it was the right thing to do.  I would argue that the failure to think about who you are helping and why is self-defeating.  That is unless you just want to feel good about yourself regardless of the consequences.  When I first saw the story I thought to myself that there has to be a reason he doesn’t have shoes in the first place and I would argue virtually anyone in the U.S. could have a pair of shoes and socks.  Therefore I’m not sure it is a good idea to give them to someone sitting on a sidewalk.  If you give them some cheap old used pair that might be a different story, but to go into a store and buy a new pair seems to be going across the line.  A cynic like me would think they will probably just sell them and buy wine.  Would you have bought him a bottle of wine?  If not and that’s what he does with the shoes you have effectively done the same thing.  On what basis do you have the information to make that judgment?  I don’t know what would happen one way or the other, but don’t kid yourself about what people laying on sidewalks are likely to do with any money you give them.  I’m not trying to be a scrooge at Christmas so bear with me a little.

I heard this morning the same man was found out on the cold streets again without his precious shoes.  Reportedly he said “those boots are worth a lot of money.”  Supposedly he is afraid someone is going to harm him in order to steal them.  Right.  I suspect he intends to profit from them, but even if you take him at his word the point is that despite the policeman’s personal gift and sacrifice, the shoes aren’t warming his feet.  The resources spent on providing them to him could have been put to better use.  If you believe the homeless man, they are stashed away and thus totally useless.  I’m extremely disturbed by something else he said.  Apparently he’s upset that the video went around the world and he is not getting “a piece of the pie.”  Regardless, the act of kindness did NOT accomplish its intended purpose, unless the purpose was for us all to feel good about a lovely story.  Give the money to a soup kitchen and let them feed a bunch of people for the same cost as the now useless boots.  You might give all your old shoes to the Salvation Army and buy yourself some new ones.

Everybody was able to get off on the beautiful story but for all we know it just fed a sickness like alcoholism.  A friend of mine time told me one time he had just left the dentist’s office with a bag containing the usual floss, toothbrush, etc.  He said while waiting at a corner he put a $5 bill in the bag and handed it to an apparently homeless man.  The man looked in the bag, evidently missing the $5 bill, then tossed it back at my friend with a disgusted look on his face.  I had a man tell me the same sob story about “just being released from the hospital” twice several months apart in the same B&N parking lot.  The second time, knowing for certain the story was a complete load of crap, I watched as the man hit up a couple of other guys.  As I entered the book store, one of them pulled out his wallet and handed the man some money.

People standing on corners panhandling or sitting on cold streets without shoes are probably not just people “down on their luck”.  It’s possible but not likely.  The vast majority of them have serious issues that are not going to be helped by thoughtless acts of kindness.  You can actually hurt people by trying to help them in ways that are not really helpful.  Most parents eventually learn this lesson even with their not-so-helpless children.  Bailing them out may actually hurt them in the long run.

I would rather give $5 to an organization that actually has some qualifications and experience in how to help people.  Organizations that give them something like a hot meal or a place to stay.  Your $5 bill handed to someone begging for it may not go to food, it may go to alcohol, drugs, a quickie in the alley, or something else not likely to to be recorded by a tourist’s camera and warm the hearts of the nation.  Driving by a corner or seeing someone sitting on the sidewalk, we’re in no position to make the kind of judgments necessary to do the right thing.  If you feel the need to help, think about it first.  Maybe you would be better off donating to an agency in a better position than you to decide what and for whom something needs to be done.

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There are 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars in the universe. The universe itself existed for hundreds of millions of lifetimes before you were born.  Most of the mass of your body is made of stardust from stars that exploded billions of years ago. Your parents could have had a quadrillion different children instead of you based just on the way their chromosomes could have come combined. So in your family you are a freak event and each of your parents were just as unlikely and so were your grandparents and so on. The odds of five thousand generations of humans producing you are so incredibly small we can’t even begin to imagine it. We are are unimaginably lucky to be alive in an unimaginable blink of time’s eye in an unimaginably small corner of an immense universe.

Don’t Throw It Away

I bring all that up because so much of what think about, stress about, get upset about, fight and argue about (like the elections we just went through),  is just a colossal waste of time. Your life is a colossal gift. You should be cherishing every precious moment because faster than you know it, it is going to be gone.   Every moment that is gone is one that you will never get back ever.  It’s real easy to say things like this, but it is pretty hard to keep it in mind as we go about our daily routines.   Perhaps we ponder on it more often.

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Friedrich Nietzsche said what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but I’m convinced what doesn’t kill you makes you afraid.  This article is about what doesn’t kill you.  I get so tired of the media inspired hysteria and hype.  We worry about these non-threats due to the availability heuristic of the human brain that comes from dramatic images and stories we see in the media.  We can easily bring to mind examples and it makes our brains think they are common occurrences.

The following numbers are approximations for deaths by various causes in the U.S. in the first decade of the 21st Century.  Don’t get caught up in exact numbers, but consider the magnitudes.  This is 10 years worth of data.

Total U.S. Deaths in First Decade of 21st Century

5 – Shark
500 – Airline Crash
500 – Lightning
500 – Children Abducted and Killed By Stranger
3,000 – Terrorism
210,000 – Homicide
250,000 – Accidental Falls
315,000 – Liver Disease
320,000 – Accidental Poisoning
350,000 – Automobile Accidents
385,000 – Blood Poisoning
480,000 – Other Accidents
525,000 – Kidney Disease
560,000 – Flu or Pneumonia
770,000 – Diabetes
800,000 – Alzheimer’s
1,400,000 – Any Kind of Accidents (included separately above)
1,430,000 – Lung Disease
1,470,000 – Stroke
6,230,000 – Cancer
6,685,000 – Heart Disease

So shark attack, airplanes, stranger danger, and terrorism are all in the same category as being struck by lightning – so remote as to be almost non-existent.  They aren’t even on the chart with everything else.

Some people will say well I’m not worried about my child dying of Alzheimer’s so comparisons to things like that don’t count.  OK, but it isn’t all about your kids, it’s about you too.  But anyway let’s look at kids only.

500 – Abducted and Killed By Stranger

30,000 – Homicide
75,000 – Automobile Accidents
350,000 – Natural Causes

Your child is 700 times more likely to die of disease than stranger abduction.  You should be a lot more worried about them being murdered by someone they know than a stranger in the park.   Every time you put them in the car you are much more likely to kill them.  I’m not saying drop your child off in a dangerous neighborhood at night and let them find their way home by themselves.  I am saying we are worrying about the wrong things.  I read a weird statistic once that probably isn’t correct, but it makes the point regardless.  It was that in order to get your child abducted and killed by a stranger you would have to leave them unsupervised in the park once a week for 750,000 years.

About the only thing on this list I worry about is cancer.  Since I’m about 2,000 times more likely to die of cancer than terrorism and 500 times more likely to die in any kind of accident, I shouldn’t spend one second thinking about terrorism.

I’m 7,000 times more likely to die of one of the top 15 causes of death than I am to die of terrorism.  Every time you shove a French fry down the throat of your kid your are more likely to contribute to their early death than by turning your back on them in the park.  Once again don’t get caught up in these estimates and whether they are exact.  They are illustrations to show relative risks.

What doesn’t kill you is making you afraid and what does kill you is probably being ignored.  If you really want you and your child to be safe, stop eating donuts or those French fries and go play in the park.   If beyond all logic you are afraid of strangers in the park, then you shouldn’t go.  But it’s not because of the stranger it’s because of the much more likely possibility that you will be killed in an accident at the park or on the way to the park than by the stranger.  And don’t stop at MacDonald’s on the way home either.

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Holy crap, I just don’t remember it this way.  Maybe I wasn’t paying attention.

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This is a review of The Hour Between Dog and Wolf: Risk Taking, Gut Feelings and the Biology of Boom and Bust.

This strangely titled book is about how stress, excitement, and risky behavior triggers changes in body chemistry and by that our behavior.  The story is told with financial traders, but the same ideas apply to us all.  We are all susceptible to the same feedback loops that change our brain, bodies, and behavior even if we don’t work in the financial industry.  Most of us deal with the same kinds of issues to one degree or another.

This book has several main ideas.  One of them is that are brains and bodies are much more integrated than most people believe and that modern neuroscience proves it.  Another is that market booms and busts may be driven by feedback loops that drive financial traders, 95% of whom are male, to testosterone stoked irrational exuberance followed by cortisol (stress hormone) induced irrational pessimism.  And finally that by understanding these hormone cycles we may be able to intervene in them.

The Hour Between Dog and Wolf is quite fascinating.  The science is interesting and convincing.  We have this idea that our behavior is driven solely or mostly by our choices, choices that we consciously make.  Research in the last few decades is making this harder and harder to accept.  This book does an excellent job at showing how our behavior is much more complicated and that our body chemistry plays a big part in influencing our brain and our behavior.

I really liked this book and found it fascinating.  It’s ideas apply to much more than the trading context in which it is set.  If you are interested in science, human behavior, or the brain I can easily recommend it.

P.S.  The title is explained in the book.  It has to do with the difficulty of telling a dog from a wolf at dusk and transformation.

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Note from Stephen: I’ve been taking a break from posting.  Here is a guest article by  Mario Taylor II, Co-Author of Plan “B” Sucks: Work on Your Dreams, Not Your Boss’s

If I told you to meet me at the bank because I was going to give you a check for $10 million dollars, hopefully your first question is, “How do I get there??!!”

Why? Because anytime you want to get somewhere you have never been, you seek direction. If you choose to get there without directions you may get lost or not even try to go at all because you have no idea where to start. The exact same question should be used when you want to achieve something, especially your dreams.

Take this real world example: Craig Hurovitz, a psychologist at the University of Hartford, led several studies that showed people born without the ability to see reported no visual imagery in their dreams, only a heightened sense of smell, taste and touch.

Think about it like this: How can you fulfill something you cannot define? How can you become something you have never seen? It is impossible! The first step to achieving a goal is to find out who may have done it already (or at least who has done something similar). Yes, you will need to do some research. No matter how obscure you think your goal may seem, from selling chocolate covered ants to breeding and selling pigeons, information is out there.

Let me give you an example:
Preston’s dream is to become a doctor. The first thing he thought to do was to speak with someone who is already a doctor. Fortunately, his favorite uncle is a doctor, so he just gave him a call to ask him some questions. “Do you love what you do?” “What kind of doctor are you?” “How many years of schooling did you go through to be where you are now?” “Where did you get started?” Etc…

But, let’s say Preston didn’t have a favorite uncle who was a doctor…he still could get those same questions answered a different way. He could use the internet to find his answers. Granted, he would have to go through a lot of information, but by doing so it may open his eyes to things he would not have thought to ask.

Remember, “There is nothing new under the sun.” So more than likely whatever you want to do someone has already done it or at least tried in some form or fashion. This should be very encouraging NOT discouraging because now you know that there is a possible blueprint for what you want to do. Your job now is to do your homework aka MAVEN UP!

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