Micro Class: News + Mood

You're listening to Optimize with Bryan Johnson. More wisdom in less time. Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another micro class. This one's on news and your mood. It's inspired by an interview I did with Michelle Gewen, her great book Broadcasting Happiness. Broadcasting Happiness, where she shared Michelle Gieland's a former CBS News anchor turned positive psychology researcher. She's married to Sean Acor, another leading positive psychologist. And she, Sean and Arianna Huffington did some research on the effect of news on your mood. And of course, your mood affects your overall productivity, well being, et cetera. Here's the basic nuts and bolts of this study. If you look at even three minutes of news, negative news, which is kind of redundant because that's pretty much what news is these days, right? Three minutes of negative news in the morning, your mood will be down significantly eight hours later in the day. Like five to eight hours later or something like that, right? Just three minutes of news early in the day, boom, mood's down five, eight hours later. That's interesting. And one of the things they did to counteract this, by the way, was to take this news. So imagine the groups come in, right? One group gets the negative news, another group doesn't get the negative news. The group that does get the negative news, their mood goes down, but another group got this negative news. And then they were given a simple tip to think about what they can do in their own lives to positively affect the people around them. Basically, kind of an antidote to the negativity, well, shoot, this is going on in the world, but I can do this. This is the small little thing that I can do right now to play my part in making the world a little bit better, a little bit brighter. Then they move from hopelessness and helplessness, which is how we often feel when we digest news, right? Particularly digitally, get bombarded by it into empowerment, and we, we can actually do something positive in the world. So if you're going to ingest, and when you ingest news, make sure you do it and at the end of it, you do it with a view toward what you can do and how you can improve the world. Again, doesn't need to be huge, but do something to get out of this negative state and remember the fact that our brains did not evolve to experience the flood of information that we have now. We are bombarded with more information in a week, some researchers say, than we used to be in our entire lives. We were evolved to deal with one lion attacking us. Now it's as if the jungle is rising up against us every single minute of every single day. That's unsustainable. So pay attention to that. And if you can move this news time to closer to the end of your day and remember this little positive intervention and remember our whole you can be reactive. If you're starting your day loading up news, ah, you're wasting the best energy in your day. Move that seat to the front and be creative first. Do this work in giving yourself to the world first. Then we don't want to ignore everything that's going on in our lives. Obviously, Michelle jokingly called that her niece described it as ostrich sizing yourself from the world. You don't want to be an ostrich with your head in the sand, right? But you also don't want to be completely reactive to it all day long. And most importantly, you want to figure out what positive thing you can do in your world to make a difference today. News and Mood Hope you enjoyed and hope there's some ideas there that you can use to have another awesome day. See you. Hi, this is Brian. I hope you enjoyed that micro class. If so, I think you'll enjoy everything else we offer at BrianJohnson me. Two basic things one our free newsletter. It's called the Optimizer. Over 50,000 people start their day with it and they tell us it's pretty awesome. And 2 our optimal living Membership program. This is where I put all my best stuff. 10 bucks a month for a ton of wisdom. Two primary things in there philosopher's notes plus optimal living 101 classes. When you sign up, you'll get instant access to 250 philosopher's notes, which are basically six page PDFs and 20 minute MP3s which where I capture my favorite big ideas from great books. The PNTV episodes are kind of a mini version of all that goodness. You'll also get instant access to all my Optimal Living classes. This is where I take all the ideas we cover in the Philosopher's Notes and boil it down to the most practical stuff you can apply today. Classes include Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Relationships 101, Habits 101, etc. You'll also get access to what we call micro classes that I think you'll love. We aim to astonish and we're blessed to have thousands of members telling us we're helping them change their lives and that this is the best 10 bucks they invest in themselves every month. Go to BrianJohnson ME membership to learn more. Thanks for your support and have an awesome day.