ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10) — Amanda Rivenburg was one of the 20 people killed in the 2018 Schoharie limo crash. Living Resources, the non-profit where Amanda worked for over seven years, has established a scholarship to honor her memory.
The Amanda R. Rivenburg Memorial Scholarship Fund was established with an initial investment from Amanda’s father, Thomas Rivenburg, and is being matched by the Living Resources Foundation. Anyone who wants to honor Amanda’s legacy can also make a donation to the fund.
“Amanda loved her role at Living Resources and believed deeply in the potential of others, which is why this scholarship fund is tailored exclusively to benefit the dedicated individuals who work tirelessly at Living Resources supporting those with developmental disabilities,” said Thomas Rivenburg.
The Amanda R. Rivenburg Memorial Scholarship Fund is currently offering three annual scholarships of $500, $1,000, and $2,500 to Living Resources staff members who are pursuing an Associate’s Degree, Bachelor’s Degree, or Master’s Degree, respectively. Awards will be paid directly to the recipient’s college or university.
As the fund balance grows, more scholarships may be added. Living Resources said the Scholarship Committee will include three members appointed by Thomas Rivenburg, two members of the Living Resources Foundation Board of Directors, and two members of the Living Resources Corporate Board of Directors.
Applications will be available during the month of June each year. Living Resources said preference will be given to students pursuing a degree in Social Work or a related field.
Living Resources works to support and empower those with disabilities or other life-challenging conditions. At the time of her passing, Amanda was Assistant Director of the Day Community Opportunities Program.
“Living Resources is proud to partner with Tom Rivenburg in establishing the Amanda R. Rivenburg Memorial Scholarship Fund,” said Living Resources CEO Elizabeth Martin. “Together, we believe that investing in and nurturing a culture of learning, growth, and excellence within our organization is crucial.”
Grape juice and whole grapes are put to the test for brain function, including cognitive decline in early Alzheimer’s.
In 2010, the first controlled trial was published that examined how the brain responds to grape juice. It helped aged rats, but what about people? “Concord grape juice supplementation improves memory function in older adults with mild cognitive impairment”—or so says the title. The problem is that the study was funded by Welch’s, and, though the authors claim they have no financial interest in the outcome, that seems disingenuous. I mean, do they think Welch’s would ever fund them again if they found grape juice wasn’t good for you? And, indeed, that title is a bit of industry spin. I’m sure that’s what they wanted to find.
Older adults with memory decline (but not dementia) were randomized into a placebo-controlled, double-blind trial with Concord grape juice versus a similarly looking and tasting Kool-Aid type of drink with the same calories and same sugars. That’s a solid study design. And, berries have those wonderful polyphenol phytonutrients, which have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties, so it certainly could help brain function and it did seem to help with verbal learning, as you can see in the graph below and at 1:21 in my video Friday Favorites: Benefits of Grapes for Brain Health.
The odds you’d get such notable results just by chance are like 1 in 25, whereas the higher recall scores are not considered to be statistically significant, since even if there wasn’t an effect, you might get those kinds of results by chance 1 in every 8 or 10 times you’d run the experiment, as shown in the graph below and at 1:38 in my video. And, by convention, we like at least 1 in 20—a p-value of 0.05 or less—especially if we’re looking at multiple outcomes, which increases the likelihood that something will pop up as a fluke. The bottom line is that we’re less confident in these memory outcomes. If this study hadn’t had industry funding, I imagine it would be titled more accurately. Perhaps “Concord grape juice supplementation improves verbal learning in older adults with mild cognitive impairment”—which is still an important finding, and we have the Welch’s corporation to thank for it. Without industry funding, a study like this might never get done.
The findings suggest that drinking grape juice is superior to drinking a grape Kool-Aid type of beverage, not necessarily for helping memory, but maybe for helping with learning. When the study was repeated, though, it did seem to help one measure of memory, but no benefit was found for verbal learning, even when using the same test as before, which calls the previous results into question. So, we’re left uncertain about what effects, if any, grape juice has on the aging brain.
What about the brains of middle-aged mothers? The Welch’s-funded researchers noted significant improvements in one measure of memory and driving performance as measured in a fancy driving simulator, suggesting you might be able to stop a dozen yards earlier on the highway after drinking grape juice than if you had instead had a grape Kool-Aid type of drink. I do like how they tried to translate the cognitive effects into more meaningful metrics, but it’s important to acknowledge, as they did, that no effects were found for the majority of cognitive consequences. And, when you study 20 different outcomes, the odds are pretty good that you’d just get a statistically significant result or two by chance, as you can see below and at 3:33 in my video.
The latest study involved giving a single dose of a cup of purple grape juice or white grape juice (to which flavor and color had been added to disguise it) to young adults with an average age of 21. In this way, researchers could see if there’s something special about those deep purple polyphenol pigments in Concord grape juice. Their findings? They got the same kind of results: two cognitive measures just reaching statistical significance, but that’s out of seven different outcomes, as you can see below and at 4:12 in my video. So, instead of a p-value of 0.05 as the cut-off for significance, we’d really like to see closer to 0.007, and none hit that. Maybe it’s because they didn’t use whole food like in that blueberry study I profiled before.
There was a study that looked at actual grape consumption by utilizing freeze-dried grape powder to capture the whole food (instead of just the juice) versus a sugar-matched placebo. The researchers used PET scans to track changes in brain metabolism associated with early Alzheimer’s in a group of older adults already suffering from mild cognitive decline. Although the changes couldn’t be picked up on neuropsychological testing, in those early-stage Alzheimer’s regions, the placebo group continued to worsen, but the grape group “was spared such decline,” suggesting a protective effect of grapes. You can see these points illustrated in a graph and brain mapping pictures below and from 5:11 in my video. You can see locations where brain metabolism declined after eating six months of placebo grapes (colored red in the video), compared to the level of decline in a brain after six months of eating actual grapes.
When commercial entities fund studies, it’s more for marketing purposes than science. That doesn’t necessarily mean the findings are invalid, but you do have to pay special attention to things like the framing of the research question, the experimental methods, statistical analysis, biased interpretation of results, or spin.
When should young children drop their afternoon nap? University of Maryland researchers are looking to better understand why the transition happens.
When should young children drop their afternoon nap? University of Maryland researchers are looking to better understand why the transition happens.
“We know sleep is very good for the brain, and it’s very good for our memories,” said University of Maryland professor Tracy Riggins. “Preschoolers are sponges that soak up a bunch of information about the world. They learn so much every day. Isn’t it interesting that that’s also the same time they’re transitioning out of the afternoon nap?”
Riggins and her colleague Rebecca Spencer, from UMass Amherst, are conducting a first-of-its-kind study on preschoolers, sleep, memory and the brain.
Riggins said children typically drop the nap between two and eight years of age. They want to understand why the transition happens, and why it might occur at different points in time for different kids.
“We hope it’s a first step in understanding those intricate relations between memory, sleep, and the brain,” Riggins said. “We know they’re tied together, but we don’t actually know how they’re tied together.”
She hopes the research provides more answers for educators, day care providers and parents. Riggins said there are currently no scientifically-based recommendations for napping in preschoolers, which is why daycares handle naptime differently.
“Some of them have a mandatory two-hour rest period. Others have a 45-minute optional rest period, and some have no rest period at all,” she said. “And they might not remember anything from that class if they’re not able to take a nap, which will help them consolidate the information.”
Riggins says they are looking to recruit about 180 children, ages 3-5, to participate in this study. Those children should be napping on average five days a week or more. Researchers would measure memory and brain activity while the kids are awake as well as when they’re sleeping. Participants will be compensated.
Movies can be an excellent social bonding experience in a variety of situations, including first dates, family movie nights, group watches, couples therapy, and professional settings. Learn more about the emotional dynamics behind watching films together.
Beyond being a source of entertainment, films have the power to foster social bonds and create shared experiences among individuals.
Whether it’s getting together at a friend’s house on a weekend night, embarking on a first date at the theaters, or upholding a family tradition of watching the same movie during holidays, watching movies together is one of the most common ways we connect with others.
But what’s the psychology behind these cinematic connections? Let’s dive into the many social benefits behind movie watching and how they can improve our relationships in a number of different social settings.
Shared Experiences
Every time you press “Play” on a new movie, you are starting a collective journey with whoever you are watching with. No one knows what will happen, so you are both entering the unknown together and experiencing it for the first time.
Every film is a rollercoaster of different emotions – joy, laughter, surprise, fear, suspense, disgust, sadness, anger – and everyone is experiencing those emotions together as a “hive mind.” Research shows emotions are contagious, and when multiple people are experiencing the same emotion in unison, feelings are often amplified more than if you were just experiencing it by yourself.
Movies create new shared experiences that mark new chapters throughout our relationship. “Remember that one time we saw Wolf on Wall Street? That was fun!” A memorable movie can become a distinct event in our relationship’s storyline, especially if it symbolizes a special day like a first date, birthday, or anniversary, giving us a positive memory to look back on and reminisce about.
Watching movies together doesn’t require much work, it effortlessly creates a sense of unity among the people watching. Even if everyone hates the movie, it still creates a shared bond, “Wow, that movie was really stupid!” and then you can all laugh about it.
Icebreaker and Conversation Starter
Watching films together serves as an excellent icebreaker, especially in situations where individuals may be meeting for the first time or trying to strengthen new connections.
The movie theater, often considered a classic venue for a first date, provides a natural conversation starter. After the credits roll, initiating a conversation becomes as easy as asking, “Did you like the movie? Why or why not?” Ask about favorite scenes or whether they’ve seen other movies featuring the same actor or actress.
Use the film as a springboard into other topics to talk about. If you’re skilled at conversation threading, you should be able to take one thing from the film and branch off into more important subjects. If it’s a film about music, inquire about their musical preferences or whether they play an instrument. For sports-themed movies, explore their favorite sports or childhood sports experiences.
Icebreakers aren’t exclusive to first dates; they’re equally helpful in building connections in various scenarios, whether it’s getting to know a coworker outside the office or deepening a friendship.
One fair criticism of movies as a bonding experience is that you don’t get to do much talking during them. It’s a passive experience, not an active one. But there are also benefits to this: it’s a shared experience with little effort (no pressure, just sit and watch), and it gives you a convenient starting point for more meaningful conversation later on.
Nostalgia and Tradition
For many, watching films together is not just an occasional activity but a cherished tradition that spans multiple generations.
Family movie nights play a pivotal role in strengthening the bonds between parents and children. Holiday film marathons, especially during festive seasons, elevate our collective spirit and enhance the joyous atmosphere. Revisiting favorite childhood movies creates a profound sense of nostalgia, keeping us connected to our past.
One popular family tradition may be during Christmas, such as having A Christmas Story playing in the background as you decorate the tree or watching It’s A Wonderful Life every Christmas eve.
These traditions are about more than just the movie; they’re about creating a whole family experience. Infuse your own unique twist by turning it into a game, baking homemade cookies before watching, or simply enjoying jokes and good company. The film itself is just one aspect of a complete family ritual and bonding experience.
When families embrace these shared traditions, they contribute to a profound sense of belonging and unity. These rituals become the threads weaving together the fabric of family ties and friendships over long periods of time.
Team Building and Group Bonding
Beyond personal connections, watching films together can be an effective team-building activity in professional settings.
Organizational unity can be difficult to achieve for many companies, especially when workers have radically different jobs and skillsets, often being assigned to work within one department of a company but being siloed off from the organization as a whole.
Movie nights and film screenings can be an effective way to provide employees with a stronger sense of unity and camaraderie. Different departments that normally don’t see each other get to cross-pollinate and make connections with faces they don’t often get to see. Scheduled events like this can foster a team of teams mindset, helping to interconnect different departments into a cohesive whole.
Perhaps certain movies depict an idea, philosophy, or mindset that an organization wants to embrace more of. Requiring every employee to watch a movie together is more than just making friends at work, it can also tap into a deeper meaning behind the organization’s mission and purpose.
Couples Therapy
Movies can serve as bouncing points to important conversations that need to be had between spouses and loved ones.
It’s not always easy to bring up certain topics of conversation, but through film you can organically dive into subjects that otherwise wouldn’t get brought up in everyday discourse, like mental health, sex and intimacy, or experiencing grief after a tragedy or loss.
It’s common for a couples therapist to recommend a specific movie to their clients. You may already know of a movie that you’d like to share with someone. You can also ask friends or seek recommendations online. Ask yourself, “What’s something I really want to talk about with my partner?” then “What’s a good movie that can introduce this topic?”
A powerful film can help couples process their relationship more clearly. It shows the universality of humanity – you’re not alone with whatever you are going through – and brings ideas out in the open that need to be expressed or talked about.
One exercise you can try together is to each take notes or fill out a movie analysis worksheet while watching.
Communal Bonding and Bridging Social Divides
On a larger scale, film watching can help bridge cultural and social divides, as well as be used as a tool for communal bonding.
Social events such as public screenings, outdoor showings, movie festivals, or drive-thru theaters are great settings to watch a movie among a large and diverse group of people within your community.
These days with easy access to streaming services at home, most people watch movies all by themselves, but there used to be a time when movie-watching was an intrinsically social activity done in public spaces.
As we continue to see a decline in community feeling, movies may be one avenue to start bringing people together again as a cohesive group.
One idea is for local organizations to throw more public events with film features to celebrate holidays or special events – or you can set up a projector on your garage door and invite some neighbors for a weekend movie watch.
Conclusion
Watching films together is more than just a passive form of entertainment; it is a dynamic social activity that brings people together, creating lasting bonds and shared memories.
Films are universal connectors. Whether it’s with family, friends, or colleagues, the act of watching a movie together creates an automatic bond and sense of unity.
Are you a big movie watcher? In what situations can use film watching to improve your relationships with family, friends, loved ones, or coworkers?
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Study finds link between PCOS and cognitive decline in mid-life.
Photo by kevin turcios on Unsplash
Statistically, you know someone — or several someones — who have it. It affects an estimated 8–13% of reproductive-aged women, according to the World Health Organization, and continues to be one of the most ubiquitous yet mysterious conditions in modern medicine.
Polycystic ovary syndrome, or PCOS, is a female hormonal disorder defined by irregular menstruation and high levels of the hormone androgen. It comes with a slew of undesirable, uncomfortable, and even dangerous symptoms, from irregular periods and ovarian cysts to type 2 diabetes and endometrial cancer. There are so many symptoms associated with the condition that it is often difficult to diagnose, as many of these symptoms could have a variety of causes, according to Women’s Healthcare of Princeton
Researchers followed 907 women for 30 years, according to the study published Jan. 31 in the journal Neurology. At the beginning of the study, all participants were 18-30 years old, and 66 of them had PCOS. 30 years later, at the end of the study, the researchers gave the women tests to measure memory, verbal abilities, processing speed and attention.
The researchers found that the people with PCOS scored lower (about 11% lower) on tests in memory, attention and verbal abilities, compared to those without PCOS.
The study also included brain scans of a subset of the participants. Analyzing the scans, researchers noticed that the participants with PCOS had significantly reduced integrity of the white matter in their brains.
White matter “connects regions that send and receive signals, affecting the ability to focus and learn, solve problems, and stay balanced when walking,” according to the Gillings School of Public Health. “It’s a significant area of interest for public health experts since conditions that impact white matter can lead to significant cognitive impairment and increase the risk of long-term neurological problems.”
According to the study, this could be further evidence of early brain aging among participants with PCOS.
In a news release, study author Heather G. Huddleston spoke about the impact this kind of decline could have on people’s lives, aside from just forgetting where they put their keys.
“This could impact a person on many levels, including quality of life, career success and financial security,” she said.
But all is not lost. Next, Huddleston said future studies should examine how to possibly mediate the adverse cognitive effects of PCOS for those who live with it.
“Making changes like incorporating more cardiovascular exercise and improving mental health may serve to also improve brain aging for this population.”
What are the six aspects of a balanced person? Physical, mental, emotional, social, work/financial, and meaning/spiritual. Learn more about each one and how to improve it!
In life, there isn’t one single area that we need to focus on that is going to magically fix all of our problems.
Instead there are multiple dimensions behind every “good life.” Each dimension requires our attention and each contributes to our overall happiness and well-being.
Here are six aspects of life that come together to create a “balanced person.” By being more aware of these different dimensions in life, we can determine which areas we need to focus on more and work to improve.
The different aspects of a balanced person include: 1) Physical, 2) Mental, 3) Emotional, 4) Social, 5) Work/Financial and 6) Meaning/Spiritual.
If we focus too much on any one area, then we risk neglecting another one. For example, if you become solely focused on just work and money, you may end up spending less time taking care of your physical and mental health, or less quality time with family and friends.
This is a common trap people fall into. They focus all of their energy and effort into one area in life while completely ignoring another. Often they need to reconfigure their core values and priorities before making a meaningful change.
This is why practicing balance in all things is so important.
Each of these areas is one piece of a much larger puzzle, and only when you have all of these areas working together harmoniously can you finally build a complete life that serves all of your needs.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of each aspect of a “balanced person,” along with tips, tools, and practical advice on how you can start improving each one.
While reading ask yourself, “Which aspect do I need to focus on the most right now? What’s one small change I can make to improve that area?”
Now let’s dive in…
1. PHYSICAL WELL-BEING
The “physical” aspect of life is all about taking care of our health, especially exercise, diet, and sleep.
This includes what types of foods and drinks we consume on a daily basis, how often we exercise and keep our bodies moving, personal hygiene and cleanliness, as well as minimizing alcohol, smoking, and other harmful habits to our physical health.
Our body is one of the most precious gifts we have – and without it we can’t exist. If we don’t stay healthy, we often can’t fully enjoy all the other aspects of life such as family, work, traveling, or leisure.
Our health can often have a spillover effect into all the other aspects of our lives – for that reason, taking care of our physical health is often an essential first step on any road to self-improvement.
No matter what the current state of our health is, it’s never too late to start changing our habits, even if it’s something small like stretching in the morning, taking daily walks outside, or starting an active hobby like Yoga, marathon running, or playing sports.
A healthy body is a healthy mind. When we take better care of our bodies, we also feel more confident, motivated, and energized overall. That’s the beginning of bringing out your best self.
Things to do:
Identify small ways to be more physically active. Often our days are filled with opportunities to be more active, we just need to take advantage of them. Try to cultivate an “everything counts” mindset when it comes to exercise, even if it just means taking a walk around the block, or stretching in the morning, or doing push-ups before lunch. Any physical activity is better than none at all – so seek out small and convenient ways to keep your body moving throughout the day. If you find yourself sitting for long periods of time, get up and do chores, take a walk around the office, or make a phone call while standing up. A sedentary lifestyle is one of the biggest risk factors when it comes to poor health, so finding any reason to stand up more is better than sitting.
Find exercise that “clicks” with you and your personality. Different things work for different people. Some people need to commit themselves to a gym membership to get themselves off the couch, while others prefer to work out in the comfort of their own homes. Your personality shapes what exercise you like, so it’s important you find activities that resonate and “click” with you, rather than trying to force yourself to do something you really don’t enjoy. All you need is that one hobby to take your fitness to the next level, whether it be finding an enjoyable sport (like Tennis, or Baseball, or Basketball), or even exercising through video games (such as Wii Fit or Dance Dance Revolution). Try to think of physical activities you enjoyed as a kid, that can often be a good place to rekindle motivation.
Keep a healthy and consistent sleep schedule. Sleep is one of the most important habits when it comes to your overall physical and mental health. Research shows that those who don’t get sufficient sleep (between 6-10 hours every night) often suffer worse health outcomes like a weaker immune system, higher risk of obesity, lower energy and stamina, and more stress and anxiety. If your sleep habits aren’t healthy or consistent, it will likely have a negative “ripple effect” on almost every other aspect of your day. When you’re tired and fatigued, you’re more likely to make mistakes at work or argue with your spouse. It’s important not only to get between 6-10 hours of sleep each night, but also to maintain a consistent schedule. If you don’t sleep much on the weekends, it’s difficult to “catch up” on those lost hours throughout the week. Try to go to bed and wake up around the same time each day if possible. Here are more important lessons behind a good night’s sleep, including recognizing that some people are natural “early birds” or “night owls,” and that’s something you need to recognize and work with.
Pay attention to your food and diet. There are many different diets out there to choose from – and people can have long debates about which one is better – but the most important thing is to not eat too much, especially junk food, fast food, soda, sweets, and lots of processed food. Use your commonsense. Experiment with different diet changes and see what works best for you. Different diets work better for different people – so there’s no “one size fits all” solution to what exactly you should eat or not eat. One simple diet change is to substitute all your soda/juice/sugary drinks with water instead. Drinking plenty of water is never a bad place to start – most people don’t recognize how dehydrated they can be throughout the day and how it effects them. If you’re trying to lose weight, one popular option you can consider is intermittent fasting where you allow yourself to eat for an 8 hour window each day and fast for the remaining 16 hours. You can also try the “One Meal A Day” approach, where you restrict yourself to just one big meal (with minimal snacking). In general, pay attention to how your body responds to the things you eat: What foods leave you tired and feeling like crap? What foods make you energized and feeling good?
Take care of personal hygiene and cleanliness. Proper hygiene is another important aspect of physical health. While it can seem like commonsense, basic habits like taking a shower, brushing your teeth, getting a haircut, trimming your nails, and washing your face are are all important things not to neglect. Not only does cleanliness prevent you from catching germs and getting sick, you also feel better about yourself when you present yourself in the best way possible (and smell good). Often we are surprised by how much better we feel after a fresh new haircut, or clean new clothes, or new cologne/perfume. When mental health is low, we sometimes neglect these basic habits out of laziness or apathy, which is why they are a crucial first step in self-improvement if we aren’t paying enough attention to them.
Minimize your bad habits. No one is 100% perfect and we all have a couple bad habits, whether it be eating too many sweets, or drinking alcohol, or staying up late, or smoking cigarettes. In general, it’s important to quit (or minimize) our unhealthy habits as much as possible. “Choose your crutches wisely.” Keep in mind the long-term consequences of your habits – while it may not feel like they are hurting you right now, their effects can often catch up to you in the future. When trying to quit any bad habit, identify your triggers and work from there to change to change your patterns. Often by creating more boundaries between you and your bad habits, you can overcome your urge to do them (until it’s no longer an automatic habit anymore). If you find that you have a serious problem with addiction or drug abuse, consider professional help (such as a therapist, psychologist, or counselor) – there are often local resources available in your area if you do a quick search.
Please don’t underestimate the importance of keeping your body in the best shape possible. As Socrates famously said, “No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”
Physical health is about much more than just looking and feeling good about yourself – it’s about living a life of vitality and longevity. You can have everything else in your life figured out, but if you don’t maintain your health you won’t be around very long to use or enjoy it.
2. MENTAL WELL-BEING
If you don’t take care of your body then it will slowly deteriorate – and the same is true for your mind.
Just because you don’t have to go to school anymore doesn’t mean you can’t keep learning new things, keeping your brain sharp, and challenging your intellect.
Reading books. Learning about new topics. Having deep conversations. Attending lectures and workshops. Following the news. These are all commonsense ways to keep our minds active and continue to update our knowledge and belief system as we move through life.
Learning is a lifelong endeavor. Balanced people are always seeking new things to dig into and learn more about like a new hobby, new game, or new skill such as painting, chess, learning a new language, or playing a musical instrument.
In addition, research shows that continuing to challenge our brain is an important way to prevent cognitive decline as we get older, including lower the risk of dementia and memory loss.
Things to do:
Read more books. Reading is one of the best ways to keep your mind sharp and learn new things. Nonfiction books about science, history, philosophy, or self help can grow your knowledge and broaden your perspective on life; and reading fiction has been shown to have many cognitive benefits such as boosting empathy, creative thinking, and expanding your vocabulary. If you haven’t read a book in awhile, try to make it a goal to read at least one book this year. You can start with a book you already own but never got a chance to read, or ask a friend for a book recommendation, or get a card from your local library and explore countless books for free. Find a topic or subject that interests you and start there!
Learn a new skill. Learning multiple skills is a hallmark of being a balanced and well-rounded person. It’s never too late in life to dive into something completely new, such as playing a musical instrument, learning a new language, writing poetry, painting, or playing chess. A jack of all trades mindset can make you stand-out from others in unique ways. Many people have a talent or passion for at least one thing, but when you start combining talents and cultivating multiple interests it shows your range and flexibility as a person. Don’t limit yourself. There’s no pressure to become a “professional” or “expert” in everything you do, just stay on a learning path, have fun while doing it, and enjoy seeing the growth as you go.
Watch documentaries. Documentaries are a fun and easy way to explore new topics and learn about interesting things you otherwise wouldn’t experience. Depending on what you like, there are many different subjects to choose from: history, sports, biographies, science, inspirational stories, or nature documentaries (which have also been shown to boost positive emotions like joy, gratitude, and awe). I’ve made a lengthy list of recommended documentaries which I try to keep updated as I discover new ones. Check it out and choose one that catches your eye!
Monitor your information diet. Our current world is overloaded with information, including a lot that is wrong, misleading, or straight up lies and propaganda. Now more than ever we need to pay close attention to the information we consume on a daily basis. Try to find trustworthy news and educational sites where you can easily verify what they are saying from other sources. Beware of going down esoteric “rabbit holes” where people only confirm their own biases and beliefs. Actively seek out information from multiple sides so you’re at least aware of different perspectives and counter-arguments. The information pyramid is a great guide on how you should prioritize certain sources over others. In general, a peer-reviewed scientific study should be given more weight than some random influencer on social media. Keep in mind it’s also possible to consume too much and become an information junkie, where you’re addicted to learning new things, but you never act on it or put it into practice.
Spend time in active reflection. Give yourself time to think and digest, even if it’s just for 10 minutes while sitting with your first cup of coffee in the morning. You don’t always need to be filling your brain with facts to be a smarter person, you also need to know how to step back and contemplate what you know. Active and engaged minds are always taking advantage of opportunities for everyday reflection when sitting on the bus, taking a shower, or walking the dog. Often your best ideas and insights come in moments when you’re not trying to solve a problem directly but just mulling it over in your mind. Schedule time for solitude every now and then and don’t be afraid to sit alone with your thoughts.
Learn how your mind works. One essential component to being a more intelligent thinker is knowing how your mind works. We naturally believe we understand ourselves best, but psychology and neuroscience can sometimes reveal counter-intuitive facts and tendencies. To start, our minds are very susceptible to cognitive biases and logical fallacies that can muddy our thinking and understanding of reality. One of the most common errors is black and white thinking, where we believe a situation needs to be either “A” or “B,” but a third perspective, “C,” is the more accurate view. Our minds like to over-simplify things when reality can often be more nuanced and complex. Show intellectual humility. Be open to being wrong and be open to changing your mind in the face of new evidence and experience.
Take your education seriously. Maintain a healthy and active brain. Even if you were never a good student in school, that doesn’t mean you can’t improve your knowledge and intelligence, especially once you find subjects you are deeply passionate about. Benjamin Franklin once said, “An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”
3. EMOTIONAL WELL-BEING
In the “Mental” section we covered how to keep our brains active and be more intelligent thinkers, but there’s also a whole other side of our psychology that we need to pay attention to as well: our “Emotional” side.
Emotions can often seem like something that we have limited power over, but being a more emotionally intelligent person means becoming more self-aware and learning how to better respond to our emotions in the moment.
We can’t ignore our emotions or push them aside forever, they are a necessary facet of life and we must learn to navigate our emotional world effectively if we want to live the best life possible.
Remember that emotions are a resource, not a crutch. Every emotion serves a function or purpose, and if we channel our emotions in a constructive direction we can make great things happen.
One important lesson is that even negative emotions like sadness, anger, guilt, or fear are helpful to a better life if we approach them from the right perspective.
Things to do:
Learn the basics of emotional intelligence. There are 4 fundamental pillars of emotional intelligence that we need to cultivate: 1) Self-awareness (recognizing our emotions when they happen), 2) Self-regulation (knowing how to respond to our emotions and channel them in a positive direction, 3) Empathy (being aware of other people’s emotions and internal states), and 4) Social Skills (knowing how to respond to other people’s emotions in a healthy and constructive way). Certain people may be strong at some of these and not for others. For example, someone may be really empathetic and caring, but not know how to regulate their own mood and emotions, leading to burnout and emotional fatigue. An emotionally intelligent person must work on all four of these pillars.
Improve body awareness. All emotions have a physical component to them. When you learn how to identify the physical sensations behind each emotion, you’ll be much more attuned to your feelings in the moment as you’re experiencing them. This helps you to be more aware of your feelings before acting on them, and to recognize how emotions often want to push or pull you in a certain direction (“do this” vs. “don’t do that”). Every feeling serves a different function depending on its emotional valence (“positive” vs. “negative”) and arousal level (“high energy” vs. “low energy”). With practice, this improved body awareness can also boost your intuition, making you a better reader of your “gut feelings” and what they are telling you.
Learn to channel negative emotions. Negative emotions can serve a positive function if you know how to respond to them in a constructive way. If you struggle with any specific negative emotion (sadness, fear, guilt, or anger), then create a plan for how you will respond to it the next time it arises. For example, “If I’m angry, then I’ll go exercise,” or “If I’m sad, then I’ll write in my journal.” Emotions are energy that can be channeled in multiple directions. Write a list of the many ways you can respond to any negative emotion. Remind yourself you have a choice, and you don’t have to keep following the same pattern between negative emotion → negative behavior. One popular technique is opposite action, where you intentionally do the opposite of what a feeling is telling you to do (to reverse the cycle of negativity).
Practice meditation and daily mindfulness. Meditation is a great avenue for better understanding and regulating your emotions. It teaches you how to step back and just observe your thoughts and feelings without needing to immediately react to them. This space between “feelings” and “actions” is crucial for being a more emotionally intelligent person; it’s the main principle behind discipline, willpower, and self-control. Never forget that just because you feel a certain way doesn’t mean you need to act on it. If you’re completely new to meditation, start with the 100 breaths meditation – a simple exercise where you just focus on your breathing. It’s also helpful to learn grounding techniques for when you feel overwhelmed, such as mindful stretching or a 5 senses meditation.
Embrace creative expression. It’s difficult to describe many emotions with only words so it’s important to embrace other ways of expressing yourself, such as through music, photography, dance, painting, drawing, acting, or film. Often when I meet people who don’t feel fully connected to their emotional self, they usually lack ways of expressing themselves through art and creativity. A creative outlet is often a prerequisite to better understanding and navigating your emotional world, even if you don’t typically think of yourself as a “creative person.”
Savor all of your positive experiences. Life is filled with many joys and pleasures throughout the day and we should try to savor them as much as possible. We have many positive emotions to choose from – joy, gratitude, peace, awe, excitement, laughter, and wonder – and there are a variety of activities that can lead to more positive emodiversity in our lives. Don’t just chase after the same positive experiences over and over again, seek new experiences, new hobbies, and new ways of enjoying life. Learn how to savor happiness as much as possible by being more present in the moment, creating positive memories, and reminiscing on good times.
Relax and manage daily stress. Last but not least, it’s necessary we cover stress management as an essential component to mental health and emotional intelligence. Stress is a normal part of everyday life, but if you don’t know how to manage it in a healthy way it can often have a negative influence on your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors by making you more sensitive, irritable, angry, and bothered (even by little things that don’t really matter). Recognize when to push yourself vs. when to step back and recharge. In the complete guide on daily stress, you’ll find a great framework for reframing your “fight, flight, or freeze” response by viewing stress as a signal to pay attention to and guide you throughout the day. Don’t underestimate the importance of your comfort zone and use it as a place to recharge after a challenging or overwhelming day.
Emotions can “make us” or “break us” depending on how emotionally intelligent we are. They are a fundamental part of life, but we often have more power over them than we realize. Learn how to channel your emotions in a healthy and constructive way – become a master of them, not a slave to them.
4. SOCIAL WELL-BEING
Healthy and positive relationships are an essential ingredient to happiness and well-being.
No matter who you are, you crave some type of social connection; even the most introverted person on the planet will have a tough time finding happiness all by themselves.
There used to be a time when I believed “I don’t need people to be happy, all I need is myself.” But over the years I’ve learned more and more that having social support and a sense of belonging is a basic human need that can’t be avoided.
How strong is your current social circle? Here’s advice to get you started.
Things to do:
Stay connected with friends and family. You should try your best to stay in touch with people who you already have a strong relationship with, especially family and old friends. There’s a simple power in checking in on people and preserving social connections you’ve already established. It doesn’t take much time or effort to show you’re thinking about someone: a simple text, email, or phone call is all you need to let people know you still care and value your relationship with them. You’d be surprised by how much other people appreciate you reaching out to them, even if you haven’t spoken to them in a really long time.
Embrace small social interactions. Every time you leave your home, there is opportunity for social interaction. To build your social muscles, embrace the power of 10 second relationships, such as saying “Hi,” to a neighbor or coworker, small talk with a cashier or cab driver, or sparking up a quick conversation while waiting for the train or bus. Research shows even super tiny social interactions can boost positive emotions and feelings of social connectedness. This can also be a great exercise for people who are very introverted (or have a lot of social anxiety) and want to start being a more social person. Make a plan to have a pleasant interaction with at least one new person every day.
Learn how to have endless conversations. One big concern for people when it comes to meeting new people is, “What do I say? What if I run out of things to talk about?” One popular technique known as conversation threading provides an excellent framework so that you never run out of topics to talk about. The basic idea is that every sentence contains multiple “threads” we can go down, and often the art of good conversation is being able to 1) Listen to what people say, and 2) Choose a thread to talk more about. Rinse and repeat and a conversation can go on forever. Also consider improvisation exercises so that you can be a faster and more creative thinker in the moment.
Improve communication and conflict resolution. It’s a cliché, but communication is everything in relationships. If you don’t know how to express your thoughts and feelings in an honest and constructive way, you’ll have trouble building genuine and healthy connections with others at home, work, or wherever you need to cooperate and work together with people. In romantic relationships, it’s important to know how to communicate your feelings without manipulating or being dramatic. In family and work environments, it’s important to know how to defuse heated arguments before they spiral out of control. The truth is people can be difficult and you’re not going to like everyone’s company. That’s natural. Conflicts have the potential to arise in any social situation, because people have different beliefs, values, and personalities that may be incompatible with each other. What’s most important is to teach yourself the best methods for conflict resolution so you can better navigate the complexities of your social world.
Find opportunities to meet new people. Most people make friends through work or school. Once we get older, it can become more difficult to find new connections or become a part of new social circles. Recent research shows that most adults claim to have “less than 5 close friends.” If you’re looking to expand your circle, there are many opportunities available to you. Depending on your likes, hobbies, and interests, consider going out more to music shows, bars, coffee shops, workshops, church/religious services, bowling leagues, adult education classes, sports events, or book clubs. Seek out local groups in your area or volunteer somewhere. You can also take advantage of websites like Meet Up to connect with like-minded people who live close-by. All it takes is one new friend to introduce you to an entirely new social circle. Be patient and don’t worry if you don’t initially hit it off with the first couple people you meet. Finding the right relationships that fit into our lives can take time.
Use social media and the internet to connect. The internet can be a great place to connect with like-minded people who we’d never meet in the real world. Online communities on social media, message boards, or video games can often provide a valuable source of social interaction, especially for people who don’t have many “real life” friends. The internet can be particularly helpful for connecting with others who have rare or eccentric hobbies, such as fans of a specific author, athlete, music genre, or comic book franchise. Unfortunately, many online communities can also become negative, competitive, and toxic (see the online disinhibition effect), so it’s necessary you build a positive digital environment that works for you. That doesn’t mean hiding in your own “echo chamber,” but it does mean cultivating a feed and followers who ultimately add value to your life and don’t subtract it. First focus on topics you’re naturally interested in such as science, technology, sports, or movies. Try not to be a passive consumer of information, actively enter conversations by asking questions or sharing knowledge with others. Often times we can build meaningful connections with people online that are just as important as those we find in the real world. However, while online relationships can have many benefits, we shouldn’t see them as a substitute for real world “face to face” interactions.
Always remember that quality of relationships > quantity of relationships.
You don’t need to be super popular or the life of the party to have a healthy social life. All you need is a couple really close friends who support you, trust you, and enjoy your presence. That’s everything you need to be socially satisfied.
Healthy relationships are a fundamental aspect of happiness and well-being for everyone. Our need to belong to a “tribe” or group is hardwired into our brain, biology, and evolution. Like every other aspect of a balanced person, it can’t be ignored.
Are your daily social needs being fulfilled?
5. WORK / FINANCIAL WELL-BEING
Another fundamental aspect of a balanced person is work, money, and material concerns.
At the most basic level, we depend on food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, and other necessities so we can live a healthy and dignified life.
People that struggle to make a living can often hurt in many other areas: physical health (can’t afford good foods, healthcare, or medicine), relationships (can’t support family, no money for dating), as well as our mental and emotional well-being (stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem).
Unless you win the lottery or have someone else to provide for you, finding a steady job or career is often one of the most focused on areas in life. From childhood up until we finish high school or college, we are constantly asked, “What do you want to do for a living?”
A few people find jobs they love, many find jobs they like, and most find jobs they can at least tolerate. Balancing psychological needs with financial needs can be a difficult task depending on your current situation.
While we don’t always get a choice in what we do for a living, there are important ways to give ourselves more power over our work life and financial life. Here are important guidelines to keep in mind.
Things to do:
Focus on your strengths. Everyone has a place in this world where they add value. Before you decide what type of work you’d like to do for a living, it’s important to know what your natural strengths, skills, and talents are. If you’re friendly and good with people, you may excel at managing, customer service, or human resources type jobs. If you’re more introverted and creative, you may want to focus on writing, graphic design, computer programming, or freelance work. What type of activities are you typically good at (or at least above average)? What were your best subjects in school? What do you enjoy doing and why? Complete the strengths worksheet to discover more about your natural skillset. Ultimately, knowing your strengths will influence what types of jobs or career choices will suit you best – including where you contribute the most value.
Value education and experience. No matter what your job is, there are always new ways to learn and improve. The best workers in life are those who are always growing and mastering their craft. College is still an important part of education, but what’s even more important is to stay self-motivated and continue learning after school. Many people I know have landed successful jobs that had virtually nothing to do with what they studied in college. In several cases, they were people who taught themselves coding/programming, built a portfolio to show their work to potential employers, and climbed their way up the company ladder from there. All self-taught. You can also consider going to trade schools, workshops, mentorships, internships, and other forms of gaining knowledge and experience that are outside of the traditional college model. Any work experience is better than none at all – you just need to start somewhere and begin building yourself up.
Make the most of your job. While it’s rare for any of us to get our “dream job,” we can always make the most of our work life by being a good employee and doing our best. Use nudges to keep yourself motivated and productive throughout the day, learn mental strategies for getting things done that you normally “don’t like” doing, and make friends at work with bosses, coworkers, clients, or customers, because those are the people you’re going to be spending a lot of time with and it’s crucial you have healthy and functioning relationships with them. No matter what your job is try to see the underlying purpose or meaning behind it. What value does it add to the world? Are you proud of the work you do?
Live within your means. Regardless of how much money you make, one of the most commonsense rules for financial well-being is living within your means. This includes keeping a budget that you can maintain (for food, rent/mortgage, bills, gas, clothes, and leisure expenses), and not buying too much stuff you can’t immediately afford. Debt can be common at some point in our lives (due to student loans, credit card debt, medical emergencies, etc.), but try to be mindful to not put yourself in a hole that you can’t climb out of. Avoid luxury expenses that put you at financial risk. We sometimes over-extend ourselves due to social comparison and a “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality. We think if our friend or neighbor gets a brand new car or goes on an expensive trip, then we need to “one-up” them with a similar purchase. Many times people fall into massive debt because they are trying to chase status, fame, luxury, or exorbitant pleasures. In general, keep track of all your monthly expenses and find ways to cut back on spending that isn’t necessary. Learn about spending biases that can lead to overconsumption (like the allure of “FREE!,” the “Relativity Trap,” and “One Click” purchases). Big corporations are masters of psychology and persuasion. If we aren’t vigilant about our spending habits (especially if you enjoy retail therapy), then we’ll often fall for tricks that cause us to spend more money than we should.
Create a healthy relationship with material things. This article is about being a balanced person. Work and money are very important aspects of life, but materialistic beliefs can also backfire to hurt us. No one lays down on their deathbed wishing they spent more time in the office. Work-a-holics can end up focusing so much on their career that they neglect giving enough attention to their family, health, and well-being. Never forget that there is a lot more to a good life than just money and material things, despite what you may see glamorized in movies, TV shows, or commercials. Psychology research shows that after a certain point, increased wealth and income has very little effect on our overall happiness and life satisfaction. Being rich sounds awesome, but it won’t necessarily make you any happier than if you earned less with a stable and secure life. Take the materialism quiz to see if you have a healthy relationship with money and stuff.
Remember, money is important but it isn’t everything.
Financial well-being will often look radically different depending on the person. Certain people may be content with modest and minimal living, while others crave more luxury, adventure, and pleasure. Whichever lifestyle you choose, it’s necessary that money finds the proper role in your life without being completely consumed by it.
One succinct way to define true financial well-being is “not needing to think about money all the time.”
6. MEANINGFUL / SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING
The meaningful or spiritual aspects of life can often be overlooked.
We may occasionally ask ourselves big questions like, “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” or “What’s my purpose?” but we rarely translate these questions into our daily lives through action.
For many people, religion is their main source of spirituality and meaning. Attending church, being part of a local community, prayer, and volunteering or giving to charities are common ways people boost meaning in their daily lives. Religion has been shown to improve happiness and well-being by creating a strong sense of purpose and community.
However, we don’t need religion to have a meaningful life. There are many other sources of meaning, including art, culture, philosophy, literature, music, relationships, activism, introspection, and creativity.
Where do you get your meaning in life?
Things to do:
Learn the pillars of a meaningful life. One excellent guide on how to live a meaningful life outlines five different pillars to focus on, including 1) A sense of belonging (having healthy relationships with those around you), 2) A sense of purpose (feeling that you contribute to a larger whole), 3) Storytelling (the life story we tell about ourselves, as well as stories and myths about the world we live in), 4) Transcendence (experiencing “awe” and “inspiration” in the presence of great things), 5) Growth (having a sense that you are evolving and moving forward as a person). All five pillars contribute to a rich and meaningful existence.
Spend more time in nature. Nature reminds us that we are part of something larger than ourselves, a whole process known as “life.” Nature is a fantastic source of meaning because it continuously inspires positive emotions like joy, amazement, gratitude, and awe. The best part is that nature is all around us – we don’t need to plan a weekend camping trip to experience it – instead just pay attention to everyday nature that is all around you: trees on the drive to work, birdwatching in your backyard, or spending time in your garden over the summer. Having pets to care for is another easy and wonderful source of nature and connection, even if it’s just a small fish tank to maintain. Nature also includes enjoying the beauty of a nice view such as sunrises, sunsets, mountaintops, storm watching, and star-gazing.
Take a complete picture perspective. Finding meaning requires being able to look at things from a big picture perspective. What influence do your actions have in the long-term? What type of impact will you leave on the world after you die? When you keep the complete picture in mind, you recognize that even super small actions can add up and have big results in the future. Your life doesn’t begin at birth nor end at death, you are part of an intergenerational chain of cause-and-effect that has stretched thousands of years. That’s a powerful thought if you can see the true significance behind it.
Embrace art, music, and culture. Artists are the creators of new meanings, especially famous painters, musicians, filmmakers, photographers, authors, playwrights, and dancers. Pursuing a creative hobby of your own is one fantastic way to infuse new meaning into your life. You can also embrace art and culture more by going to museums, art galleries, music concerts, and theaters. A lot of beautiful art is archived in online art and cultural exhibits, so you can discover a lot of new inspiration by just sitting in the comfort of your own home. Artists of all forms teach us how universal the human condition is. It’s a huge inspirational boost when you realize a book written over a hundred years ago resonates exactly with how you feel today. One of my strongest memories is attending a music concert of my favorite band with thousands of others listening and singing along. Creativity is one of humanity’s greatest gifts and there’s a lot of wisdom, beauty, and feelings of universal connection it can offer us.
Signs, symbols, and synchronicity. A meaningful life can be more about feeling inspiration and empowerment rather than thinking only logically and factually about the world. Embrace things you can’t always explain. If you feel like you’re getting a “sign” from the universe, accept it. Our minds often think unconsciously through the power of symbols, especially through reoccurring dreams or nightmares that may be trying to tell you something important. Meaning can be created anywhere if you have the right perspective. Many of my favorite moments in life are when I experience synchronicity, which is finding a connection between two things that seem completely unrelated at first. For example, if I start reading a book and then someone brings up the same book randomly the next day, I try to see that as a sign that I’m on the right path. It may or may not be true, but it is a simple and easy way to add more meaning to the little things in life.
Have faith that life is good. Faith may not have any role in science, but it does play an important role in good living. At the end of the day, one of the most important beliefs we can have is that “life is good” and things will generally work out in the end. One of my personal favorite quotes is, “Pray to God, but row to shore.” It shows us to have hope and faith in life, but still take action and try our best in the moment. Both faith and action are necessary ingredients to a happy and fulfilling life. A belief in God or a higher power can make this whole process easier. However, even if you can’t bring yourself to accept “metaphysical” or “supernatural” ideas, at least try to sense the oneness and interconnectedness of all things. These ideas are an endless source of power, strength, and resilience, even in the face of incredible hardships and tribulations.
A “meaningful life” can be one of the most difficult areas of life to improve, especially while living in a world that is filled with nihilism, hedonism, and materialism.
However, once you build a strong spiritual core you can withstand almost any difficulty or hardship. It can empower you to a whole new level that non-spiritual people don’t usually have access to.
CONCLUSION
To sum things up we must invest time and energy in all six of these aspects if we want to live a happy and balanced life.
Once again, these six aspects of a balanced life include: 1) Physical, 2) Mental, 3) Emotional, 4) Social, 5) Work/Financial, and 6) Meaningful/Spiritual.
Which area are you the strongest in? Which area are you the weakest in?
Keep this framework in mind as you embark on a lifetime of self-improvement. Try the Daily Routine (PDF) exercise and use this resource as a guideline.
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From ‘Bah, humbug!’ to redemption: Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ unfolds as more than just a festive fable, offering profound insights into self-discovery, kindness, and rewriting one’s life story.
Charles Dickens’ timeless classic, “A Christmas Carol,” isn’t just a heartwarming tale of holiday spirit; it’s a profound exploration of human psychology and the power of personal transformation.
Many of us have heard the story before through countless movie and TV adaptations, especially the infamous Scrooge, whose name has now become a common insult toward those who fight against the holiday spirit of joy, kindness, and charity.
If you’re interested, you can read the original 1843 novella A Christmas Carol for free at Project Gutenberg. There are also many free audiobooks you can find and listen to.
The story opens the day before Christmas with Ebenezer Scrooge at work, a strict businessman who is described as miserable, lonely, and greedy, without any close friends or companions. His nephew visits, wishes him a cheerily “Merry Christmas!” and invites him to spend dinner with his family, but Scrooge rudely brushes off the kind gesture and responds with his trademark phrase “Bah humbug!”
Scrooge’s cynical and negative attitude is on full display in the opening chapter. “He carried his own low temperature always about with him.” In one instance where he is asked to donate money to help the poor, the wealthy Scrooge asks, “Aren’t there prisons? Aren’t there workhouses?” and then complains about the “surplus population.”
It’s clear that Scrooge’s only concerns and core values in life are money and wealth. If it doesn’t help his profits or bottom line then he doesn’t care about it, especially the well-being of others which he claims is “none of his business.”
The archetype of Scrooge is more relevant today than ever, especially in our corporatized world where rich elites isolate themselves from the rest of society while income inequality, crime, and economic woes continue to rise for the average person. Dickens observed early signs of increased materialism, narcissism, and greed almost two hundred years ago, but these unhealthy instincts have only grown rapidly since then. Social media has particularly warped people’s perceptions of wealth, status, and fame, which has in turn blinded us to many other important values in life.
In many cases people like Scrooge live lonely and miserable lives until they die, clinging to their money as they are lowered into their graves. However the story of “A Christmas Carol” provides hope and inspiration that people can change their paths in life if they are given the necessary insight and wisdom.
As the well-known tale goes, Scrooge is haunted by 3 benevolent spirits on consecutive nights (The Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future), each teaching him an essential lesson on what really matters in life.
This breakdown of past, present, and future creates a complete picture of one’s life. It’s a powerful framework to spark self-growth in any person. Once we reevaluate where we’ve been, where we are, and where we want to go, we have a much clearer idea on what the right path forward is.
Keep in mind you don’t need to be religious to reap the benefits of this story. Its lessons are universal. While there are supernatural and spiritual elements, the wisdom is real and tangible.
Introduction: The Ghost of Marley
Before Scrooge is visited by the three spirits, he encounters the ghost of his former business partner Marley who had died seven years ago.
The ghost of Marley is shown to be in a type of purgatory, aimlessly roaming the town, entangled in many heavy chains with cash-boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses made out of steel, representing a lifetime of greed and selfishness:
“I wear the chain I forged in life,” replied the Ghost. “I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?”
“Or would you know,” pursued the Ghost, “the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!”
The ghost lets Scrooge know that his actions have far-reaching consequences too. He will suffer a similar fate if he doesn’t change his ways, but there’s still hope for redemption! He then leaves, announcing to Scrooge that he will soon be visited by three spirits that will guide him to a better path.
Marley’s ghost serves as a warning, but also a sign of hope.
The Ghosts of the Past: Forgiving Your Former Self
Scrooge’s first encounter is with the “Ghost of Christmas Past,” who serves as a poignant reminder that we must confront our history to understand our present.
The Ghost of Christmas Past transports Scrooge through various memories he had as a child and young adult, showing his psychological development over time.
The first scene brings Scrooge back to his childhood town, where he is immediately rushed with feelings of nostalgia, cheerfulness, and joy. These positive memories depict a very different Scrooge from present, revealing his once optimistic and hopeful disposition. What happened to him since?
The memories begin to grow darker. Multiple scenes show Scrooge spending Christmas alone as a young child, one time being left by himself at boarding school while his friends were celebrating the holidays with family, and another time sitting solitarily by the fire reading. Scrooge begins to shed tears and show sympathy toward his former, abandoned self.
One of the most pivotal memories is when young adult Scrooge is speaking with his past lover. She notices a fundamental change in him that has become a dealbreaker in their relationship.
“You fear the world too much,” she answered, gently…”I have seen your nobler aspirations fall off one-by-one, until the master-passion, Gain, engrosses you…”
She sees that money has become Scrooge’s God which he puts above all other values, including love. The young woman continues…
“Our contract is an old one. It was made when we were both poor and content to be so, until, in good season, we could improve our worldly fortune by our patient industry. You are changed. When it was made, you were another man.”
Here we begin to see Scrooge’s hardening into the man he is in the present.
His pursuit of wealth as his main source of comfort and satisfaction has damaged his relationship beyond repair. The lover sees no other option but for them to go their separate ways. The memory deeply pains Scrooge and he cries out for the ghost to show him no more.
In truth we are all a product of our past, including our environment and the choices we make in life. Scrooge has clearly gone through hardships and taken wrong turns that have influenced where he finds himself today; but it’s not too late.
The Ghost of Christmas Past forced Scrooge to remember events that he had long forgotten, neglected, or ignored because they were too painful to think about. While these old memories cannot be altered, you have to accept your past, be honest with yourself, and forgive yourself if you want to learn, grow, and change for the better.
One of the main lessons here is that you need to take responsibility for the past before you can take power over the future. Scrooge is suffering, but he’s learning.
Making the Most of the Present: Opportunities for Joy and Kindness
Scrooge’s next encounter is with the “Ghost of Christmas Present,” who teaches Scrooge all the opportunities for good that cross his path every single day.
The spirit is colorfully dressed with holly, mistletoe, berries, turkeys, sausages, oysters, pies, puddings, fruit, and punch surrounding him, a representation of the simple pleasures in life we can all learn to appreciate, savor, and be grateful for.
First, the Ghost of Christmas Present takes Scrooge for a walk outside in the town during Christmas Day, observing all the happiness, zest, and cheer overflowing through the streets. Everyone from all backgrounds is enjoying the festivities.
When two people bump into each other and start a small fight, the ghost sprinkles a magical substance on them which instantly ends the argument and brings both back to a more joyful demeanor.
“Once or twice when there were angry words between some dinner-carriers who had jostled each other, he shed a few drops of water on them, and their good humour was restored directly. For they said, it was a shame to quarrel upon Christmas Day. And so it was! God love it, so it was!”
On Christmas, all fights are optional.
The ghost then leads Scrooge to the home of Bob Cratchit, his current employee who he often treats poorly. Here Scrooge is introduced to Bob’s sick and disabled son Tiny Tim, who despite his illness is still excited to spend holiday time with the family. The poor family makes the most of the limited food and time they have together, including a fake “goose” dinner made out of apple sauce and mashed potatoes.
Scrooge looks on in sympathy and wishes he could do more to help them. He asks the spirit about the current state of Tiny Tim’s health:
“Spirit,” said Scrooge, with an interest he never felt before, “tell me if Tiny Tim will live.”
“I see a vacant seat,” replied the Ghost, “in the poor chimney-corner, and a crutch without an owner, carefully preserved. If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, the child will die.”
In another scene, Scrooge is transported to the home of his sister’s family, the same party his nephew invited him to the previous day. Everyone in the household is enjoying the Christmas holiday while singing, dancing, and playing games. Several times Scrooge is brought up in conversation and everyone can only laugh and shrug at Scrooge’s relentless misery and gloom.
“A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to the old man, whatever he is!” said Scrooge’s nephew. “He wouldn’t take it from me, but may he have it nonetheless. Uncle Scrooge!”
Scrooge knows that these events and perceptions by others are part of his own doing.
At every turn, Scrooge denies taking advantage of daily opportunities for happiness, including rejecting a group of children singing carols, responding rudely to acquaintances (“Bah humbug!”), and refusing to give to charities or help others when it’s fully in his power.
These events are small, but they build up over time. Whenever Scrooge is given a choice between kindness vs. coldness, he chooses to be cold. After enough tiny social interactions, Scrooge has cemented his reputation around town as being the miserable miser.
Can he still change it?
The Shadows of the Future: Shaping Tomorrow Today
The final spirit Scrooge meets is the “Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come” or the “Ghost of Christmas Future.” This ghost blends in with the darkness of the night, wearing a long black robe that covers their entire face and body, except for a boney hand it uses to silently point.
The ghost begins by showing men on the streets joking and laughing about someone who has just passed away. At a pawn shop, robbers are selling stolen property they recently seized from the dead man’s estate, saying it’s for the best since the items will no longer serve any use to him. Scrooge, perplexed by the meaning of these scenes, intently watches on. Another man jokes:
“It’s likely to be a very cheap funeral, for upon my life I don’t know of anybody to go to it.”
Scene by scene, people show ambivalence toward the death. Scrooge grows frustrated and asks:
“If there is any person in the town who feels emotion caused by this man’s death, show that person to me. Spirit, I beseech you!”
Now they see a family that was in debt to the dead man, and they are feeling humble gratitude and quiet glee that they no longer have to worry themselves about such an evil creditor:
“Yes. Soften it as they would, their hearts were lighter. The children’s faces, hushed and clustered round to hear what they so little understood, were brighter; and it was a happier house for this man’s death! The only emotion that the Ghost could show him, caused by the event, was one of pleasure.”
Already having suspicions on who this man is, Scrooge begs the ghost to finally reveal where his future lies. The ghost travels to a graveyard and points at a tombstone that upon inspection reads: Ebenezer Scrooge
Scrooge’s heart sinks. Next it’s shown that Tiny Tim hasn’t recovered from his illness and has also passed away, and at such a young age. Feeling completely hopeless at this point, Scrooge desperately begs:
“Answer me one question. Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of things that May be, only?”
“Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead. But if the courses be departed from, the ends will change. Say it is thus with what you show me!”
As long as you’re alive and breathing, you have the power to change.
When we think about death, it puts everything about life into perspective. Our time is finite in this world and we must make the most of it without being distracted by trivialities and lesser values. If you were laying on your deathbed right now, what would your main regrets be?
When Scrooge reflects on his own death and what influence he’d leave on the world, it shakes him at his core – but also transforms him.
The Power of Redemption: Transforming Scrooge’s Tale into Our Own
After the visitations of the three ghosts, Scrooge wakes up a changed man ready to start his new life. He rises from bed excited, hopeful, and giddy that he’s still alive and still has a chance to change his current course.
Upon finding out it’s still Christmas Day, he buys a prize turkey to send to the Cratchit family and begins giving generous amounts of money to children and the poor. He continues to walk around the town square, giving everyone warm greetings and a hearty “Merry Christmas!”
When he sees Bob Cratchit the next day at work, he immediately gives him a raise in salary and promises to take care of Tiny Tim and assist the family in anyway possible. He becomes a lifelong friend to the family.
This sudden change in Scrooge’s behavior confused the townsfolk at first, including many who made fun of this rapid transformation that was so uncharacteristic of Scrooge. But these words and gossip didn’t bother him:
“Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter[…] His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.”
At its core, “A Christmas Carol” is a story of redemption and heroism. Scrooge’s journey from miserly recluse to benevolent samaritan exemplifies the human capacity for change.
By reflecting on his past, present, and future self, Scrooge discovered the best path forward – a process that applies to all forms of self-improvement.
This story has insightful lessons that can apply to anyone’s life, no matter what situation they find themselves in. We can’t change the past chapters, but we can change how our story ends.
Never forget you have the power to rewrite your life story at any time.
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While having a good night’s sleep might help you to remember things you’re trying to remember, it can also help our brains make up entirely false memories.
The human brain’s memory is notoriously unreliable, often missing things that were glaringly obvious or remembering things happening that never actually did. New research in the journal Royal Society Open Science reveals that sleep might help us remember things, and also remember false memories.
These false memories often arise when people are given a list of related words to memorize, and falsely remember a word being there that would have fit the category but in fact was missing.
Stock image of a man sleeping. Sleeping has been found to make people better at remembering lists, but also more prone to false memories. ISTOCK / GETTY IMAGES PLUS
“We found that participants had better memory for the lists in terms of better recall of the words in the lists. But their errors were also revealing—they made fewer random errors (intrusions), and more errors that suggest that they had learned the gist of the lists,” Gareth Gaskell, a professor of sleep psychology at the University of York in England, told Newsweek.
The researchers tested 488 participants on their ability to recall a list of words 12 hours after seeing them, with some of the participants being allowed to sleep in the 12-hour interim.
They found that those who had slept remembered more of the words on the list than those who had not, but they were also more likely to give words that weren’t on the list, but were related. The related incorrect words are known as “lure words,” while completely unrelated incorrect words are known as “intrusions.” If a list contained words like nurse, hospital and sick, the false memories may include lure words like doctor.
“The results suggest an intriguing combination of effects. The sleep and wake groups were well-matched in the number of total responses after the 12-hour delay. Despite this, the sleep participants were more accurate in their veridical (truthful) memory of the studied list words, as well as more gist-like in their incorrect responses—a greater lure-to-intrusion ratio,” the authors wrote in the paper.
This suggests that sleep has a complex role in memory, influencing not only how well memories are retained but also potentially the nature of the memory.
“Memories in some ways are more about our future than our past. What we want is knowledge about our past that can be applied in a generalized way to help us to deal with future events,” Gaskell said.
“Future events won’t be identical to the past events, so a gist-like representation might actually be more useful than a ‘perfect’ detailed representation. So what sleep might be doing is helping us to store memories in a gist-like way that can then be better applied to our future interactions.”
The researchers also found that the results varied based on the time of day that the participants were remembering the list, with both groups suggesting more incorrect and unrelated words in the evening.
“We found an unexpected time-of-day effect, such that completing free recall in the evening led to more intrusions—neither studied nor lure words,” the authors describe in the paper.
“Above and beyond this time-of-day effect, the sleep participants produced fewer intrusions than their wake counterparts. When this was statistically controlled for, the sleep participants falsely produced more critical lures. They also correctly recalled more studied words, regardless of intrusions.”
The authors do recognize several limitations of their study, namely that all participants were aged between 18 and 25, and that the tests were performed online, meaning that other distractions and environments could not be controlled.
However, they hope that their research paves the way to new discoveries regarding sleep’s role in memory.
“Our study provides a rich new body of evidence to help determine the contribution of sleep,” they wrote.
Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about sleep and memory? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
On a recent Friday at Gary Comer Middle School in Chicago, you had to squint to see signs of the pandemic that upended American education just a few years ago.
Only a handful of students wore face masks, and even then, some put them on to cover up pimples, staff said. The hand sanitizer stations outside every classroom mostly went unused, and some were empty. Students stopped to hug in the hallway and ate lunch side by side in the cafeteria.
“I don’t think it’s a big deal as much as it was before,” said 12-year-old Evelyn Harris, an eighth grader at Comer, whose lasting memory of pandemic schooling is that online classes were easier, so she got better grades. “The pandemic didn’t really affect me in a big way.”
But inside Nikhil Bhatia’s classroom, the evidence was on the whiteboard, where the math teacher was shading in slices of a pie to illustrate how to find a common denominator. That day, his seventh graders were working to add and subtract fractions — a skill students usually learn in fourth grade.
Maybe you learned this before, Bhatia began. “Or, during the pandemic, you might have been on Zoom,” — a few students laughed as he dragged out the words — “put your screen on black, went to go play a couple video games. Snap if that sounds familiar?”
Clicking fingers filled the room. “That’s OK!” Bhatia responded. “That’s why we’re going to do the review.”
As the new school year begins at Comer and elsewhere, many students and educators say school is feeling more normal than it has in over three years. COVID health precautions have all but vanished. There’s less social awkwardness. Students say they’re over the novelty of seeing their classmates in person.
But beneath the surface, profound pandemic-era consequences persist. More students are missing school, and educators are scrambling to keep kids engaged in class. Many students remain behind academically, leaving teachers like Bhatia to fill in gaps even while trying to move students forward. Rebuilding students’ shaken confidence in their abilities is especially important right now.
“It’s OK that you don’t know this,” Bhatia tells his students. “It’s normal right now.”
Nationally, many students remain far behind in math and reading where they would have been if not for the pandemic. There have been especially steep learning drops at schools that taught virtually for most of the 2020-21 school year, as schools did across Chicago and within the Noble charter network, which includes Comer. It’s an issue that’s even more pressing for older students, who have less time to fill in those holes.
At Comer, 28% of eighth graders met or exceeded Illinois math standards the year before the pandemic, not far off from the state’s average of 33%. But by spring 2022, that had fallen to just 2%, compared with 23% for the state.
In reading, meanwhile, 9% of Comer eighth graders met or exceeded state standards pre-pandemic, and that dipped to 4% in spring 2022, when the state’s average was 30%.
The school made gains they’re proud of last school year, with 10% of eighth graders hitting the state’s bar for math and 22% hitting it for reading, though school leaders say they know there is still work to be done.
“If you don’t have some foundational skills and basic skills, it will be almost impossible to keep up with the curriculum as the kids get older,” said Mary Avalos, a research professor of teaching and learning at the University of Miami, who has studied how COVID affected middle school teachers. “That’s a big issue that needs to be addressed.”
How teachers are addressing pandemic learning gaps
Most of Bhatia’s students missed key skills in fourth and fifth grades — the years that school was remote, then interrupted by waves of COVID — but they mastered more advanced concepts in sixth grade last year.
That’s left Bhatia, like many teachers across the country, with the tricky task of coming up with mini lessons to fill in those elementary gaps, without spending so much time on prior concepts that students fall behind in middle school.
On a day like Friday, that meant to get students ready to add negative fractions, a seventh grade skill, Bhatia first had to teach a short lesson on adding fractions, a fourth grade skill. At first, some students mistakenly thought they should use the technique for dividing fractions they learned last year.
“They’ll say: ‘Oh is this keep, change, flip’?” Bhatia said. “The gap isn’t exactly what you would expect it to be.”
This kind of teaching happened “once in a while” pre-pandemic, Bhatia said, but “now it’s like day by day I have to be really critical in thinking about: ‘OK what might be the gap that surfaces today?’”
Aubria Myers, who teaches sixth grade English at Comer, sees ways the familiar rhythms of school are just now returning, four months after federal health officials declared an official end to the COVID-19 emergency.
“This year, for me, feels the most normal,” Myers said. Students are saying: “Oh wait, what’s the homework again, can I get another copy?” she said. Last year when she mentioned homework, “they were like: ‘What is that?’”
On that recent Friday, Myers led an activity in her multicultural literature class that would have been impossible two years ago when students had to stay seated in pods of color-coded desks.
Her sixth graders huddled close to one another as they tried to hop across the classroom, an exercise designed to give her fidgety students a chance to move around, while exemplifying the communication and teamwork skills that would be at the center of Seedfolks, the novel they were about to read in class.
Still, Myers had chosen the book, with its short chapters and lines full of metaphors and irony, to meet the needs of this crop of sixth graders, who spent all of third grade learning online. Many, Myers knows, never logged on. They have shorter attention spans and doubts about their reading skills but love class discussions, she said.
“They remember that time in their life when they were stuck talking to only people in their house,” Myers said. “They’re in class wanting to engage with each other.”
Myers has tried to prevent her students from getting discouraged by their learning gaps. At the start of this school year, for example, she’s pointing out spelling and punctuation errors, but not docking points yet. She wants to make sure her students first have time to learn some of the key skills they missed in earlier grades.
“We have kids who don’t understand how to put a period somewhere in your sentence, or how to put spaces between their words,” Myers said. “I see these very beautifully strung together ideas, these really well thought-out explanations, but they’re missing some of those key mechanics.”
Student mental health and engagement still top of mind
Comer has responded to students’ post-pandemic needs in other ways, too. The school expanded its team of social workers and other staff who work with students to resolve conflicts and address mental health needs, a trend that’s been observed nationwide.
The school has long felt the effects of neighborhood gun violence and student trauma, but staff say having more adults focused on those issues has helped students open up and seek help. Now, more students are requesting verbal mediations to head off physical fights, staff say.
“If you follow us through the building, you’ll see,” said Stephanie Williams, a former reading teacher who now directs Comer’s social and emotional learning team. “Kids will seek you out, or find you, and let you know: ‘Hey, I need this.’”
And this is the second year the school has scheduled all core classes earlier in the week, so that students can spend part of Friday practicing math and reading skills on the computer, and the rest of the day taking two special electives. It’s a strategy meant to keep students engaged — and showing up to school.
The school offers classes that pique students’ interests, such as the history of hip hop, hair braiding, and creative writing. Brandon Hall, a seventh grader at Comer, blended his first smoothie in a “foodies” class and bonded with his basketball coach through chess. He came to see similarities between making plays on the court and moving pawns across the board.
“I learned a lot from him,” he said.
On “Freedom Fridays,” attendance is higher and student conflicts are rarer, school officials say. That’s been important as the school, like many others, has seen higher chronic absenteeism rates over the last two years. At Comer, 1 in 3 sixth graders missed 18 or more days of school last year. Before the pandemic, that number sat closer to 1 in 5.
The approach runs counter to the calls some education experts have made for schools to double down on academics and add more instructional time — not take it away.
A recent report by the Center on Reinventing Public Education, for example, spells out the numerous ways students are still struggling, and calls for “a greater urgency to address learning gaps before students graduate.” Harvard education researcher Thomas Kane noted that few districts have lengthened the school day or year and warned that, “The academic recovery effort following the pandemic has been undersized from the beginning.”
But JuDonne Hemingway, the principal of Comer, said devoting time to enrichment activities during the school day is worth it to ensure all students have access to them. These classes, she added, are helping students develop interests they may pursue in college or as part of a career.
“They’re not just random experiences for kids,” Hemingway said. “We think they are just as important as any traditional academic class.”
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education.
Episode five of HBO’s The Last of Us marks the midpoint of our nine-episode journey. That’s right, we’re halfway there, and Ellie and Joel are definitely living on a prayer. Look, I’m sorry for the bad Bon Jovi reference but man, this episode is The Last of Us at its most relentlessly bleak. I needed to do something to lighten the mood for myself, and unlike Ellie, I don’t have a book of awful jokes handy. At least this episode also features what I consider the most effective subtle nod to the game in the entire season. We’ll get to that in a bit.
At the end of episode four, Joel and Ellie were being held at gunpoint by two characters who players of the game likely immediately recognized as Henry and Sam. (If you need to catch up, you can find my recap of that episode here.) As episode five begins, we flash back a little while to meet these new characters and learn about what’s driven them into such desperate circumstances.
The Fall of Kansas City FEDRA
At first glance, this episode’s beginning seems like one of pure jubilation. Chants of “freedom!” are heard rising from a crowd that’s celebrating in the streets. But almost immediately, we’re shown the grim side of this happy occasion, with FEDRA officers being executed at point-blank or publicly hoisted into the air by the neck as they twitch with their final struggles for life. An armored vehicle the people have reclaimed roams the streets blasting the message, “Collaborators, surrender now and you will receive a fair trial.” Hmm, yes, somehow I don’t believe you. Maybe it’s the fact that you’re dragging a body behind you that’s stuffed with so many blades it looks like a pincushion, I’m not sure.
As the armored vehicle passes, we see Henry and Sam lurking in the shadows. Henry (Lamar Johnson, The Hate U Give) uses ASL to communicate with his brother, cluing us in to a significant change from the game: Here, Sam is deaf. (Sam is wonderfully played here by young actor Keivonn Woodard, who is also deaf.) In this brief exchange, you can already sense Henry trying to put on a brave face for his much younger brother. The two sneak away unseen by the patrolling resistance which, as we learned in last week’s episode, is hell-bent on finding them.
Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku
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In fact, even as the celebration rages on, Kathleen (Melanie Lynskey), the resistance’s leader, is working, interrogating a group of “collaborators”—civilians who worked with FEDRA before it fell—about Henry’s whereabouts. Lynskey remains chilling in the role, coating her comments in a tone that, on the surface, sounds reasonable and kind, but is so transparently cold and ruthless underneath. “Lucky for you, I’m not FEDRA,” she tells them, saying that if they cooperate, they’ll be put on trial, be found guilty of course, and then have to do some time, “easy.” She’s got her commando assistant Perry (Jeffrey Pierce, who voices Joel’s brother Tommy in the games) by her side, his silent presence lending her words an added threat of danger. Finally someone cracks and tells her that Henry and Sam are with Edelstein, the doctor we saw Kathleen interrogate in last week’s episode.
A moment later, she orders her men to go door-to-door until her prey is found. When Perry shows some hesitation and advises against this plan, we see that she can turn her condescending ruthlessness on him, too. “He’s not my seventh priority, Perry,” she says. “Is that what he is to you?” I’m starting to feel like the way she prioritizes finding Henry above all other concerns may backfire on her in some way. Remember last week, when Perry showed her the ominous, quivering sinkhole in the building, and rather than dealing with it in any real way, she told him to just seal the building off and remain focused on finding Henry? Yeah, I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
Perry asks if they’re really putting the arrested collaborators on trial. Of course they’re not. “When you’re done, burn the bodies. It’s faster,” she says, the way you might ask someone to pick up some milk from the grocery store on the way home.
Henry and Sam stay with Edelstein
Henry and Sam meet up with Edelstein, who takes them into the same cramped attic space we saw Kathleen investigate in last week’s episode. Here, it’s not yet covered with Sam’s drawings, as Henry and the doctor discuss their very limited food supply and total lack of ammunition for their guns. Everything that transpires here has an undercurrent of dread for us, since we already know that Edelstein soon gets captured and executed by Kathleen.
Sam, who can’t hear what they’re saying, sits in the corner, drawing on his little magnetic sketch pad. Edelstein seems like a kind and thoughtful man, showing genuine concern for Sam’s well-being. “He’s scared because you’re scared,” he advises Henry.
Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku
Henry goes to comfort his little brother, who has drawn a masked superhero on his pad. “Super Sam,” Henry signs. Sam is understandably afraid, and Henry tries to reassure him that they’re safe here. “There is one problem, though,” he says. “This place? Is ugly.” He then breaks out the big bag of art supplies that Sam uses to decorate the space. It’s an endearing moment, with Henry creating for his younger brother an alternate reality in which the only real problem facing them is the drabness of their surroundings, and not the army hunting them right outside.
The birth of Super Sam
We skip ahead ten days, to find the attic filled with images of Super Sam blasting evil FEDRA officers and flying protectively over the city. But now, a real problem is bearing down on them: they’re almost out of food, and Sam is hungry. Edelstein’s been gone a whole day, and their hopes rest on him returning with some. We already know he’s not coming back. And yet right out the window, Henry can see resistance officers scouring the city, making leaving a dangerous proposition. They’re in a tight spot.
Finally, Henry has to face the fact that Edelstein isn’t returning. He tells Sam that he’s studied the patterns of the resistance patrols and can guide them to safety. When Sam asks if they killed Edelstein, Henry is honest and says they probably did. Sam clings to Henry for a long time after that. He’s a child growing up in a world in which nothing is ever safe or assured. He must be terrified.
Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku
As he holds his brother and looks at the art decorating the walls, Henry has a flash of inspiration. He tells Sam to close his eyes, and paints a red mask on his face, just like the one Sam’s alter ego sports in all the drawings. Seeing it reflected in his brother’s knife, Sam nods with satisfaction. He’s ready to face the world.
They don’t get far, though. Just as they’re about to leave the building, a gunfight breaks out outside. It’s Joel and Ellie’s unceremonious arrival in Kansas City, and Henry observes as Joel kills the hunters attacking him. We see the wheels in his head turning. “New plan,” he tells his brother.
Meeting Joel and Ellie
Now we come back to the moment that concluded episode four, when the paths of these two duos intersect. Henry’s obviously been keeping an eye on Joel since earlier in the day, and he’s tracked him and Ellie to the apartment building where they’ve crashed for the night.
Joel isn’t exactly thrilled about waking up to the reality of being held at gunpoint, but soon they agree to a tentative truce, and Henry introduces himself as “the most wanted man in Kansas City.”
Over a quiet meal, Ellie asks Sam how old he is, and with Henry acting as an interpreter between them, he responds that he’s eight. (In the game, Sam is closer to Ellie’s age of 14, but him being younger here makes me even more sympathetic to how overwhelming and terrifying his experience of the world must be.) Joel, being Joel, says dryly that they successfully ate together and didn’t kill each other, so they should call it a win and move on. But Henry has a card up his sleeve. “I’m betting that y’all came up here to get a view of the city and plan a way out,” he says. “And when the sun’s up, I’ll show you one.”
“Welcome to Killa City”
The next morning, Henry provides Joel (and us) with some additional context for what went down in Kansas City. Looking out at the city, Joel is struck by the lack of FEDRA, especially since he’d always heard that KC FEDRA ruled with an iron fist. Henry confirms the rumors. “Raped and tortured and murdered people for 20 years,” he says. So if Henry wasn’t part of this monstrous FEDRA, Joel wonders, what, then, was he? When Henry replies that he was something even worse, “a collaborator,” Joel protests and says he doesn’t work with rats. Henry insists that today, he doesn’t have much choice, “‘cause I live here and you don’t.” They need each other, Henry argues. Only he knows where to go, and only Joel has the capacity for violence to get them out alive.
This is all quite different from the game, in which Henry and Sam weren’t native to Pittsburgh (where the game’s version of this storyline takes place), but had just come there from Hartford, Connecticut in search of supplies. They had no connection to the resistance that had risen up in Pittsburgh, but just happened to be people who could help Joel and Ellie get out of the city. In both stories, though, Sam lets us see new sides of Ellie by giving her a fellow kid to geek out with and play with, and having another duo traveling with them for a while illuminates Joel’s growing attachment to Ellie and his sense of himself as her protector, no longer just out of obligation but increasingly out of genuine care and concern.
As the two talk, the sound of kids laughing can be heard nearby. Ellie is showing Sam her tattered book of jokes, and a genuine smile stretches across Henry’s face. “Haven’t heard that in a long time,” he says, mirroring a moment from the game in which Ellie and Sam playfully eat blueberries together and Henry says it’s been a long time since he saw Sam crack a smile.
Perhaps counterintuitively, I find these moments of fleeting happiness among the most devastating in both the game and the show, because I know how things end for Henry and Sam. Their fate is so awful, so bleak, that it makes me think back to Ellie’s question to Joel in episode four: “If you don’t think there’s hope for the world, why bother going on?” I’m once again glad that the TV series at least offered us the reprieve of Bill and Frank, giving us one vision of lives lived well and with meaning, to temper how relentlessly hopeless it all gets for a while.
Henry’s plan
Henry sketches a map of the area showing how Kathleen’s forces have the area on lock. Still, there is a way out, he insists. Sam sits nearby sketching, but Henry doesn’t want him left out of the conversation. “How do we get across?” he signs at his brother. Sam writes intently on his pad for a moment, then holds it up. “TUNNELS.” It’s a great plan, but there’s a huge catch. Kansas City may seem strangely lacking in Infected, but there’s a reason for that. “FEDRA drove them underground 15 years ago,” Henry says. He insists, though, that FEDRA cleaned out the tunnels three years ago. Just what that means or how exactly they did that remains ominously unspoken, almost as if the show’s writers want to plant a seed in our minds about it. Nah, I’m sure it won’t come up again. Henry admits that the plan is “dicey-as-fuck,” but it’s also the only plan they’ve got.
Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku
As they head down into the tunnels, Joel tells Ellie to get her gun out, and it looks like Ellie has to suppress a smile as he’s finally fully shifted from relentlessly denying her a gun to asking her to be ready to use one. However, the tunnels do indeed appear empty, vastly, surprisingly empty, stretching hollowly before them as far as the eye can see. Joel stays on guard but nothing is stirring in these subterranean passageways, and at last they come to a place that looks quite different, where the walls are decorated with the kinds of colorful drawings you might see at a preschool. Passing through a door, they find an abandoned place where people—adults and children—clearly once lived. Amidst all the details—the toys, the posted signs laying out rules, all the other signs of life—one thing stands out: a child’s drawing of two smiling men in body armor, with rifles, labeled “our protectors,” Danny and Ish. And here’s where we come to the episode’s great little nod to the game.
Who is Ish?
First, a little background. In the game, Joel and Ellie’s journey with Henry and Sam briefly takes them along a beach where you can enter a battered old boat and find a note. (Considering that this is near Pittsburgh, that probably makes about as much sense as the beginning of episode two being set “10 miles west of Boston.”) The note is signed by someone named Ish (perhaps a reference to Moby Dick’s sea-faring narrator Ishmael) and details how, after spending some time at sea to hide from the outbreak, he eventually found himself running low on supplies and his boat in disrepair, and returned to shore to take his chances with humanity again.
Ish’s boat on the beach near Pittsburgh, which, yeah, probably doesn’t make a lot of sense. Screenshot: Naughty Dog / Kotaku
From there, you head into nearby sewers, where you can find a small area where Ish lived alone for some time after coming ashore. A note of his you can find there mentions that he met some people who had kids with them and who did not want to shoot him on sight. “Shocking I know,” he comments. The encounter puts the idea in his head that maybe it’s better for him to try trusting other people than it is to continue living alone. “What’s the point of surviving if you don’t have someone to laugh at your corny jokes?” his note reads, a question that cuts to the heart of The Last of Us’ themes. “Tomorrow, I’m going in search of them.”
Soon, you come to a place that’s very much like the one the party finds in the TV series, where Ish lived with other adults and children. In fact, the very same drawing of Ish and another adult named Danny that we see in the show is seen here in the game. Unfortunately, environmental clues also tell us that at some point, infected did get into the settlement, and the results were tragic, with another adult named Kyle and a few children getting trapped in a room by infected, and Kyle killing the children himself to spare them an even worse fate. Another note that you can find in the suburbs upon leaving the sewers reveals that he and a woman named Susan got out, but it’s excruciating to read. “She lost her children,” it says, “and I have no clue what to say to her.”
It concludes with Ish writing that every part of his being wants to give up, but he just can’t. “I’ve seen that we’re still capable of good. We can make it. I have to stay strong… for her.” What happened to him after that remains unknown.
Very often, I feel that Easter eggs are kind of exclusionary. They wink and nod to those people who are in the know, letting those viewers perhaps feel smug about picking up on cool details that fly over the rest of the audience’s heads. This drawing on the wall, though, works either way, I think. If you haven’t played the game, it offers some insight into what life was like here in this underground settlement at one time, and if you do know it from the game, it opens up a whole other narrative to you. A tragedy nested within a tragedy. Right about now, The Last of Us just feels like tragedies all the way down.
Savage Starlight
Sam finds a copy of a Savage Starlight comic, which in the game serves as a collectible Joel can find throughout and give to Ellie. Ellie is immediately stoked at Sam’s find, and the two of them bond over their shared enthusiasm for the series, trading details about which issues they each have. One particularly sweet moment sees Ellie quoting the hero’s catchphrase of “Endure and survive” and Sam teaching it to her in ASL. God, I want these kids to make it. (Around this same stretch of the game, Ellie will occasionally say “Endure and survive” after Joel has finished taking out a group of enemies and it seems like the two are safe for the time being.)
Ellie and Sam play soccer in the game in a moment referenced in the show.Screenshot: Naughty Dog / Kotaku
Other moments here are direct nods to the game, like one when Ellie and Sam play soccer using a makeshift goal painted on the wall. However, a conversation between Joel and Henry that sheds further light on his connection to Kathleen is totally new. Joel apologizes for having called Henry a rat before, saying that if Henry did what he did for Sam’s sake, he understands. Henry finally tells Joel exactly what it is he did do, and why. He paints a picture of a great man, one who “was never afraid, never selfish, and he was always forgiving.” He’s clearly talking about Kathleen’s brother, who he wanted to follow, and would have followed, if only.
“But Sam, he got sick. Leukemia.” And wouldn’t you know it, FEDRA had control of the very limited supply of the only drug that could treat him. So he made a deal, and gave FEDRA what they wanted. He’s still wracked with guilt about it, but the world presented him with an impossible choice that he never should have had to make in the first place. Rather than offer any words of comfort or understanding, though, Joel just says “We’ve waited long enough.” It’s time to move on.
Kathleen and Michael
We find Kathleen standing in her childhood bedroom, in a clearly abandoned house. And as she tells Perry about her brother—who we learn here was named Michael—and how he’d always comfort her during thunderstorms when they were kids, all I could think was, “Oh my god, shut up.” She’s the type of person who’s so convinced that her pain and suffering matter so much more than everyone else’s, that hunting down Henry is good and righteous because he took her brother from her, even though he only did it because it was the only way to save his own brother. Of course her pain and grief are real, but the extremes she’s going to in her pursuit of Henry make me lose all sympathy for her. She’s an egomaniac.
In fact, even her own brother’s wishes don’t matter to her, much as she might pretend to be honoring his life or his memory in this act. “He was so beautiful,” she says about Michael. “I’m not. I never was.” She knows Michael would want her to forgive Henry. He outright told her that when FEDRA had him locked up right before they killed him. But her pain is just too important to her for her to do that. And Perry is happy to validate her worst impulses. “Your brother was a great man. We all loved him,” he says. “But he didn’t change anything. You did. We’re with you.” Thanks, Perry. Big help. I’m sure that won’t encourage Kathleen to do something even more selfish and reckless than all the things she’s already done.
Sniper on the street
Joel and the gang emerge outside of Kathleen’s territory in a suburban neighborhood that seems safe at first glance, and the mood is relatively light as Ellie begins does her best Joel impression and encourages Henry and Sam to come with them to Wyoming. (In the game, Henry and Sam are already planning to track down the Fireflies, but here, they just want to get out of Kansas City for starters.) The calm is broken, however, when a sniper bullet strikes the ground near them and they dash behind a wrecked car for cover, plunging us into a sequence that owes a lot to the game.
The Pittsburgh suburbs section leading up to the sniper encounter is perhaps the game at its most ruinously beautiful.Screenshot: Naughty Dog / Kotaku
Sniper bullets continue to rain down on them, and just as in the game, Joel opts to sneak around and try to come at the sniper from behind. In the game, though, what you find in the sniper’s perch is a young man with a knife, prompting a grisly button-mashing sequence in which you ultimately turn the blade on the man and stab him with it repeatedly. Here, Joel finds an older man, one of Kathleen’s faithful, who refuses Joel’s plea to just drop the gun, instead cementing his own death by turning the gun on Joel. Just then, Kathleen’s voice crackles over a radio. “Hold them where they are,” she says. “We’re almost there.”
“It ends the way it ends”
In the game, the one repurposed Humvee the Pittsburgh resistance claimed from FEDRA soon arrives, but here, Kathleen’s forces are much more well-equipped, and a number of vehicles are soon barreling down on Ellie, Henry, and Sam. Just as in the game, Joel provides cover with the sniper rifle, and here he takes out the driver of the truck leading the charge, sending it careening into a nearby house where it promptly explodes.
Still, Kathleen’s forces close in. Perry sends men after Joel, and Kathleen begins to address Henry, revealing that her hypocrisy and self-importance know no bounds. “I know why you did what you did,” she says, “but did you ever stop to think that maybe [Sam] was supposed to die?” When Henry protests that Sam is just a kid, she replies that kids die “all the time.” That may be true, but it doesn’t change the fact that by her moral calculus, Sam’s life should have been totally disregarded, while Michael’s life should have been prioritized above all. In one truly staggering moment of cognitive dissonance, she says “You think the whole world revolves around him?” as if she isn’t acting like the whole world revolves around her quest for vengeance.
Finally, Henry emerges. “It ends the way it ends,” Kathleen says as she raises her gun to kill him. This calls for a deus ex machina, baby!
Something wicked this way bloats
Just then, the truck nearby teeters and falls as the earth beneath it yawns open, and an absolute tidal wave of speedy infected rise up out of it, a kind of cosmic retribution for Kathleen’s hubris. (A mob of infected also bear down on the group during this sequence in the game, but it’s nothing like this.) Huh, I guess FEDRA didn’t really deal with the infected problem after all, they just tried to brush it aside. Showrunner Craig Mazin knows a thing or two about writing stories where institutions do that, I guess, having worked on Chernobyl as well.
Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku
Suddenly Kathleen’s considerable show of force feels quite impotent, as the assault rifles have little effect in stemming the tide of death. Joel does the best he can to cover his allies amidst the chaos, but Ellie gets separated from Henry and Sam and climbs into an old SUV. Just then, a guttural growl unlike any sound we’ve heard an infected make thus far is heard, and a very different beast emerges from the sinkhole, a formidable, fungus-encrusted chonker of an infected called a bloater, a boss-type enemy from the game. Kathleen’s forces don’t have any of the molotov cocktails or nail bombs I usually use to take these bad boys down, so I think they’re pretty much fucked.
Perry peppers the thing with bullets but they clearly have little effect aside from making it mad. As it bears down on him, he urges Kathleen to get to cover, then turns to face his fate, which is having his head ripped clean off in a death consistent with one of the game’s most horrifying death animations.
Meanwhile, Ellie has a guest in her little SUV sanctuary: a creepy infected who was also a teenage girl before getting turned. Ellie heads out onto the street where she sees Henry and Sam pinned down by infected under a nearby car. With Joel’s help and a few stabs of her trusty switchblade—her signature weapon in the game—she gets them out and they make a run for it. Kathleen stops them yet again, but her success is short-lived, as a young infected—who I think but I’m not certain is the same one that chased Ellie out of the vehicle a moment before—leaps on her and absolutely shreds her to bits. It ends the way it ends.
As Joel leads them away from the chaos, we see the mob of infected, including the bloater, lurching its way back toward Kansas City. Nice going, Kathleen. Great job.
“I’m scared of ending up alone”
Joel and the gang have found shelter in an old motel for the night. In the game, there’s a nice moment here where Henry presses Joel for details about the time Joel and his brother Tommy rode Harley-Davidsons on a cross-country trip. That detail’s been omitted from the show, but the general arc of how things play out here is pretty similar.
“You think they’ll be okay?” Henry asks about the kids as they read Savage Starlight together in the next room, and Joel, in his own taciturn way, offers a kind of comfort to Henry, as a fellow protector of a young charge. It’s easier when you’re a kid, he says. “You don’t have anybody else relying on you. That’s the hard part.” Then comes a bit of playful meta-dialogue as Joel says, “What’s that comic book say? ‘Endure and survive’?” “Endure and survive,” Henry says. Then, after a moment: “That shit’s redundant.” “Yeah, it’s not great,” Joel agrees.
And now, as Ellie jokingly predicted earlier, Joel does indeed invite Henry and Sam to join them on the trip to Wyoming. It’s another one of those seemingly pleasant, hopeful moments that I find all the more painful because we’ll never get to see what might have come to pass if only the world they lived in were a little less dangerous and cruel. “Yeah, I think it’d be nice for Sam to have a friend,” Henry says. “New day, new start.” Okay, writers. Now you’re deliberately twisting the knife, jeeze.
Screenshot: HBO / Kotaku
Though Henry urges Sam to get some sleep, he and Ellie stay up for a bit, Ellie doing different voices as she reads Savage Starlight aloud. But Sam is preoccupied. “Are you ever scared?” he writes on his pad, a question he effectively asks her aloud in the game. (“How is it that you’re never scared?”) Just like in the game, Ellie first jokes that she’s afraid of scorpions, before admitting that what really scares her is the possibility of ending up alone.
In the game, when Ellie asks Sam what he’s scared of, he brings up infected. “What if the people are still inside?” he asks, and it’s the first time that the game directly engages with a terrifying idea that the show brings up early on: whether the person an infected once was remains somehow present and aware, even as they lose all control over their body. The game’s Ellie dismisses the idea, saying “that person is not in there anymore.” Her counterpart in the show, however, seems a bit more troubled by the idea.
The game’s Sam keeps his bite a secret, but in the show, after asking Ellie, “If you turn into a monster, is it still you inside?” he lifts the leg of his jeans to show her the nasty wound. Ellie here does something strange and sweet and hopeless: she cuts her own hand to draw blood and press it into the bite, telling Sam, “My blood is medicine.” If only it were that simple.
What happens the next morning is so awful, I don’t even want to bring myself to write it. If you’re reading this recap, you probably know, and if you don’t, I think you can guess.
Screenshot: HBO
As they bury the bodies near the motel, Ellie sets Sam’s sketchpad atop his grave. On it, she’s written the words “I’m sorry.” She’s withdrawn and just wants to leave. You have to wonder if she isn’t starting to give up on the world herself. Meanwhile, as he looks at the message she’s written, Joel seems, if anything, more committed to Ellie than ever. Something in his face suggests that he wants to spare her an existence made up of this kind of relentless suffering. He collects his gear, picks up the sniper rifle (new weapon unlocked!), and they head west.
As I said above, I find this week’s episode excruciating, so miserable in its outcome that in retrospect, even the few bright spots make it more agonizing. I don’t know about you but good lord, after all this, I sure hope these two catch a bit of a break soon.
Nov. 23, 2022 – You may not think that children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, have a lot in common with older adults.
The kids struggle to sit still and focus on a task. The older adults are great at sitting still, but they often have a hard time following the conversation at a holiday dinner.
In both cases, the problem is one of attention.
Yes, that’s obvious for someone who’s been diagnosed with ADHD. It’s right there in the name. With ADHD, the brain is constantly searching for new and interesting ways to distract itself.
But older adults aren’t searching for distractions. They just can’t ignore the distractions that find them.
“Focusing attention has two sides: focusing and ignoring,” says Adam Gazzaley, MD, PhD, a professor of neuroscience at the University of California, San Francisco. “It’s the act of filtering out irrelevant information that declines with aging.”
That’s why Gazzaley invented EndeavorRx, a therapeutic video game you may have heard of, especially if your child has ADHD. In 2020, the FDA approved EndeavorRx to treat kids with ADHD between the ages of 8 and 12, making it the first digital therapy to get the green light for any condition.
What you may not know is that the game was originally used to help seniors. Or that therapeutic games are now being developed and tested for a wide range of conditions and populations.
Gazzaley calls it “experiential medicine” and says it has one major advantage over traditional medicine: It adapts to you. While the patient is learning to play the game, the game is learning to work with the patient.
How Video Games Work Like Exercise for Your Brain
This adaptive quality is the key to EndeavorRx and what makes it different from commercial video games. Gazzaley calls it an “adaptive closed-loop algorithm.”
Put simply, the game adjusts to the player. Better players encounter tougher challenges, while those with less skill can still work through the game’s levels and unlock its rewards.
Your brain, in turn, adapts to the challenges with structural changes, not unlike the adaptations your body makes when you exercise.
Just as your muscles respond to strength training by getting bigger and stronger, your brain adapts to challenges by forming new connections between and within neural networks. It works the same for all ages, whether you’re an older adult who’s never played a video game or a young person who’s possibly played too many. (It’s worth noting that too much gaming can hurt your mental health.)
The brain’s ability to adapt to new information, circumstances, or demands is called neuroplasticity, and it’s the key advantage that experiential medicine has over drug treatments. Changes in the brain not only translate to real-life improvements in attention, but they also remain intact after the patient has finished their prescribed time with the game.
“It just sticks, which is incredibly different from how drugs work now,” Gazzaley says.
Treating kids with ADHD is just one of many potential applications.
“The game has no specificity toward a particular pathology or age group,” Gazzaley says. “It challenges the brain in such a way that it leads to this benefit in sustained attention in any population we’ve ever tested.”
Case in point: He and his colleagues at UCSF have now tested closed-loop games with people who have depression, multiple sclerosis, and lupus, all of which may affect the ability to focus.
But it all started with one very specific population.
How Video Games Became Therapy
In the early 2000s, Gazzaley worked with older patients who were having problems with their thinking skills for the first time.
“They would often tell me they were distracted,” he says. “They just couldn’t hold their attention.”
That led to a series of studies on the source of the problem. In a study published in 2005, for example, his research team found that older adults could focus on a task as well as 20-year-olds.
“What they were failing to do was ignore,” he explains. “There’s so much irrelevant information that needs to be filtered out. That’s what was causing the impairment.”
A subsequent study that was published in 2008 found that the impairment was worsened by a slowdown in the brain’s processing speed. It took older adults longer to decide if an interruption actually required their attention, which meant each distraction was more disruptive than it would’ve been to their younger selves.
For seniors, those challenges are especially apparent when they try to multitask, when you rapidly redirect your attention from one thing to another. The ability to multitask typically peaks around your 20th birthday and declines throughout life.
That was the focus for Gazzaley and his game development team at UCSF when they published their initial findings in a landmark study in 2013.
After playing a game called NeuroRacer (the forerunner to EndeavorRx), seniors got much better at multitasking – improvements they retained in a follow-up 6 months later.
And that wasn’t all. The people in the study also improved their thinking skills in areas that weren’t targeted: sustained attention and working memory. It was the first evidence of the potential for therapeutic video games to target and enhance those abilities. But it wouldn’t be the last.
Which brings us back to kids with ADHD.
Is There a Therapeutic Video Game in Your Future?
Working memory – the ability to retain information long enough to use it – is a key to success in school, work, and everyday life. Like the ability to focus attention, it’s a higher-level executive function, which means the two processes share some of the same neural networks in the same parts of the brain. Not coincidentally, working memory deficits are one of the hallmarks of ADHD.
But so does playing video games, according to a recently published study. Nine- and 10-year-olds who played commercial video games for several hours a day had better working memory and response inhibition – stopping themselves before allowing a distraction to pull them off task – than kids who never played.
Fortunately, kids don’t need to play multiple hours a day to achieve benefits.
“We saw linear effects in pretty much everything we looked at,” says Bader Chaarani, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Vermont and the study’s lead author.
“Light gamers who played on average 1 hour per day showed the same improvements in cognition, response inhibition, and working memory, compared to those who never played video games,” he says. “These effects were intermediate between non-video gamers and the heavy video gamers.”
This helps explain why video games are getting so much attention in neurological, medical, and psychological research.
In addition to EndeavorRx, Gazzaley and his team have developed several others for different populations and preferences.
Rhythmicity, a musical game designed to help seniors improve short-term memory, also helps them remember faces. (Grateful Dead drummer Mickey Hart helped develop the game.)
Body-Brain Trainer, another game created for seniors, combines cognitive training with exercise, using the closed-loop algorithm to adjust both interventions to the user’s ability. Those who used the game for 8 weeks improved in two fitness measures (blood pressure and balance) as well as in their ability to sustain attention.
Gazzaley plans to explain in a future study how games with such different mechanics and tempos — from an obstacle-dodging run to drumming to slow-paced meditation — lead to similar improvements in attention.
Again, that’s similar to exercise, where almost any kind of training will lead to improvements in heart health, which in turn reduce the risk of premature death from any cause.
Because there are so many ways to get to the same destination, you can find effective exercise programs to fit just about any combination of abilities and preferences. You can also advance through a fitness program at your own pace.
That may be how we use therapeutic video games as the category develops.
“Now that we have so many types of games and so many populations, we’re getting a richer understanding of how you can push and pull these systems to get these outcomes,” Gazzaley says. “That’s what makes me so excited about the future.”
Games as medicine? Seems worth paying attention to.
Vincent Macaluso, MD, found out he had multiple sclerosis (MS) when he was in medical school. Today, he treats people who have MS at his clinic in New Hyde Park, NY.
He understands that MS can change the way you think, feel, and act better than most people. He also knows firsthand how hard it can be to explain this to others.
Symptoms like memory problems and depression happen because MS affects the way your brain works. Although these problems can have a huge impact on your life, other people may not always know you have them. Macaluso says it’s common for people with MS to look fine on the outside but not feel fine on the inside.
It can go the other way, too. Tim Vartanian, MD, director of the Judith Jaffe Multiple Sclerosis Center in New York, says family members or co-workers may notice the changes first.
Either way, it’s important to let those closest to you know what’s going on now and what could happen down the road. This helps them better understand any changes they see. They can also offer help when and if you need it.
Cognitive Problems
At some point, more than half the people with MS will have cognitive problems. (Some people with MS call it “cog fog.”) Vartanian says the most common symptoms are:
Slowed thinking
Fuzzy memory
Trouble with executive function — your ability to plan and do things
And sometimes you just might not feel as sharp as you used to.
People with MS can have some or all of these things. But for most, memory problems top the list. Vartanian says MS can affect recent memories or those in the distant past.
For many, though, day-to-day symptoms are often mild. But even minor lapses can be a challenge. (Memory problems are one of the main reasons people with MS stop working.)
To explain how this feels, try putting it in terms others can relate to. You could say, “Remember how upset you were when you couldn’t find your car keys yesterday? As my MS goes on, that could happen to me more often.”
People with MS should work with a doctor called a neuropsychologist who can suggest ways to sharpen the mind. This includes both mental and physical exercises. Things that can affect how well your brain works, like “depression, anxiety, and stress, all need to be addressed head-on,” Vartanian says.
Let your loved ones know things that can help you manage the memory problems that come with MS.
Keep it cool. Damaged nerves don’t work well in the heat. That’s why many (but not all) people with MS think and learn better when it’s cool. To improve focus, spend time with your friends in a cool, quiet place without distractions. (Step away from Netflix!) Let them know that’s the goal in case you forget now and then.
Make to-do lists. Many people with MS say they lose track of bits of paper. Instead, you may use a small recorder you can hang around your neck or the voice recorder on your phone. And let your friends know you’re doing it so they can help.
Set a routine. Put your car keys, phone, and glasses in the same place so you always know where they are. Let your loved ones know where that place is, so if they spot them someplace else, they can put them back.
Sound the alarm. Use bells and whistles on your phone or computer to remind you to do things. Loved ones can set the same alarms so they can remind you in case you forget what the alarm is for.
Put it on repeat. When someone tells you something, repeat it to them. That way, it’s more likely to stick in your mind — and theirs.
Depression
Depression is one of the most common MS symptoms. It can be hard to discuss. Some people see it as a sign of weakness. Others feel embarrassed or ashamed. And when you’re depressed, it’s normal to want to withdraw from others.
But it’s important to share how you’re feeling with people close to you. Explain that depression is a natural part of the process of MS and it needs treatment, just like any other symptom. It isn’t something you can snap out of. And despite their best efforts, your friends and family probably won’t be able to cheer you up.
Jessica Thomas is a social worker in Greensboro, NC. She has MS, as do many of the people she sees. She says that while a counselor can help manage the emotions of living with MS, people who are depressed may need medication, too. She also notes that people need an MS-free zone — “a part of life or a passion that MS may not interfere with.”
Exercise is a crucial piece, too. It’s important for your overall health and well-being. It also helps almost every aspect of MS and may work better for depression than antidepressant medicine. So you can tell a friend that a workout partner can really help you stay on track.
Also tell those closest to you that these things can help keep depression away:
In a nationwide Gallup poll of 18,552 U.S. adults 18 and older, researchers found that about 14% of the youngest group (ages 18-39) complained about their memory.
And the problem seems to be getting worse, thanks to increased screen time and bad lifestyle choices.
But you can fight back against forgetfulness.
On a recent episode of the Write About Now Podcast, Dr. Small laid out some memory-building techniques that will make your brain happy.
Why we’re so forgetful
To understand why we forget things, it helps to understand how we remember them in the first place.
“Memory has two major components: learning and recall,” explains Dr. Small. “You got to get that information into your brain, and you have to be able to retrieve it.”
But anyone who has ever played around with a smartphone, computer, or social media knows how distracting they can be. And this is a problem.
“If you’re not focusing your attention, you’re never gonna get that information into your brain,” Dr. Small says. “We are constantly bombarded with more and more incoming data. This often results in information overload that likely decreases the percentage of stimuli that enter our short- and long-term memory stores.”
Bad health equals bad memory
Unhealthy lifestyle choices are another major factor in memory loss.
Just as eating too many donuts and not getting enough sleep can lead to problems such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, those behaviors can also affect our brain health, according to Dr. Small. “They cause your brain to prematurely age.”
Our mental health is also suffering. Many of us feel overwhelmed because of the pandemic, job burnout, gas prices, and overall life in the 21st century.
“When we are experiencing feelings of depression and prolonged anxiety or stress, we become distracted, and our memory abilities diminish,” explains Dr. Small.
How to improve your memory
While many of us struggle with forgetfulness, there are effective ways to get our memory back into fighting shape.
Look, Snap, Connect
Dr. Small suggests a memory skill he and his former colleagues at UCLA developed called “Look, Snap, and Connect.”
The premise is if you can make something meaningful, it will become memorable. How does it work?
Look: First, slow down, notice, and focus on what you want to remember. Take in all the details and meaning, such as a new face, a conversation, or directions to a new location.
Snap: Create a mental snapshot of what you want to remember. The brain has a natural ability to remember things visually, so leverage that. Say, for example, you’re meeting someone for the first time and want to remember them. A mental snapshot might be their hairstyle or their smile.
Connect: Link up those mental snapshots to be remembered in a chain, starting with the first image, which is associated with the second, and so on. If you meet someone named Harry and notice he has a lot of hair. You connect Harry with hairy.
Get moving
Studies show that exercise increases memory function. Research from the University of Illinois found that when you exercise, your body produces brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), which Dr. Small describes as “fertilizer for your brain cells.” BDNF causes “your brain to sprout branches so they can communicate more effectively,” he explains.
You don’t have to adopt a rigorous regime, either. Even a brisk 20-minute walk daily lowers your risk of Alzheimer’s disease, according to Dr. Small.
Get more sleep
Insomnia is memory’s enemy. When we don’t get enough sleep, we shut down our ability to concentrate and remember stuff. Dr. Small recommends seven to eight hours of sleep each night. He also advises against too much caffeine, which causes us to become irritable and distracted.
Eat more foods with antioxidants and curcumin
Obesity can trigger late-life cognitive impairment, according to Dr. Small. He recommends avoiding processed foods, such as refined sugars, which are pro-inflammatory and bad for the brain.
Oxidation also causes wear and tear on your brain cells, so try to eat foods high in antioxidants, such as fish, nuts, olive oil, and avocados.
Dr. Small is also high on curcumin, a yellow pigment found in cumin, curries, and mustard.
In research done at UCLA, people taking curcumin improved their scores on memory tests by 28 percent over 18 months.
Do brain aerobics
Just like we work out our muscles, we also need to cross-train our brains. Think of it as 24-Hour Fitness for our hippocampus.
According to Dr. Small, “The information in our brains is passed through billions of dendrites, or extensions of brain cells, similar to branches of a tree. Without use, our dendrites can shrink or atrophy; but when we exercise them in new and creative ways, their connections remain active as they pass new information along.“
Mentally stimulating activities can include playing wordle and crossword puzzles, listening to music, writing in a journal, solving brainteasers, or watching Jeopardy!
In his book, Dr. Small suggests some brain builders, including this exercise:
Take a piece of paper and a pencil and try writing your first name using your non-dominant hand (i.e., left hand if you are right-handed). Now, take a second pencil and try writing your first name using both hands at the same time. Now, try it with your last name
To get more memory-sharpening skill, listen to the entire Write About Now Podcast interview with Dr. Gary Small:
Pick a memory. It could be as recent as breakfast or as distant as your first day of kindergarten. What matters is that you can really visualize it. Hold the image in your mind.
Now consider: Do you see the scene through your own eyes, as you did at the time? Or do you see yourself in it, as if you’re watching a character in a movie? Do you see it, in other words, from a first-person or a third-person perspective? Usually, we associate this kind of distinction with storytelling and fiction-writing. But like a story, every visual memory has its own implicit vantage point. All seeing is seeing from somewhere. And sometimes, in memories, that somewhere is not where you actually were at the time.
This fact is strange, even unsettling. It cuts against our most basic understanding of memory as a simple record of experience. For a long time, psychologists and neuroscientists did not pay this fact much attention. That has changed in recent years, and as the amount of research on the role of perspective has multiplied, so too have its potential implications. Memory perspective, it turns out, is tied up in criminal justice, implicit bias, and post-traumatic stress disorder. At the deepest level, it helps us make sense of who we are.
The distinction between first- and third-person memories dates back at least as far as Sigmund Freud, who first commented on it near the end of the 19th century. Not for another 80 years, though, did the first empirical studies begin fleshing out the specifics of memory perspective. And it was only in the 2000s that the field really started picking up steam. What those early studies found was that third-person memories were far less unusual than once thought. The phenomenon is associated with a number of mental disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia, but it is not merely a symptom of pathology; even among healthy people, it is quite common.
Just how common is tricky to quantify. Peggy St. Jacques, a psychology professor at the University of Alberta who studies perspective in memory, told me that roughly 90 percent of people report having at least one third-person memory. For the average person, St. Jacques estimates, on the basis of her research, that about a quarter of memories from the past five years are third-person. (At least a couple of papers have found that women tend to have more third-person memories than men do, but a third study turned up no statistically significant difference; on the whole, research on possible demographic disparities is scant.) In certain rare cases, people may have only third-person memories. As you try to recall your own, be warned that things can get confusing fast. Perhaps you can call to mind early-childhood scenes that you picture from a third-person perspective. But it’s hard to know whether these are genuine memories translated from the first person to the third person, or third-person scenes constructed from stories or photographs. To some people, third-person memories are second nature; to others, they sound like science fiction.
Why any given memory gets recalled from one perspective rather than the other is the result of a whole bunch of intersecting factors. People are more likely to remember experiences in which they felt anxious or self-conscious—say, when they gave a presentation in front of a crowd—in the third person, St. Jacques told me. This makes sense: When you’re imagining how you look through an audience’s eyes in the moment, you’re more likely to see yourself through their eyes at the time of recall. Researchers have also repeatedly found that the older a memory is, the more likely you are to recall it from the third person. This, too, is fairly intuitive: If first-person recollection is the ability to adopt the position—and inhabit the experience—of your former self, then naturally you’ll have more trouble seeing the world the way you did as a 6 year old than the way you did last week. The tendency for older memories to be translated into the third person may also have to do with the fact that the more distant the memory is, the less detail you’ll likely have, and the less detail you have, the less likely you are to be able to reassume the vantage point from which you originally witnessed the scene, David Rubin, a Duke University psychology professor who has published dozens of papers on autobiographical memory, told me.
Less intuitive, perhaps, is the reverse: People are able to recall a scene in greater detail when they’re asked to take a first-person perspective than when they’re asked to take a third-person perspective. “Sometimes in a courtroom, an eyewitness to a holdup might be asked to recall what happened from the perspective of the clerk,” St. Jacques told me. But if her research is any indication, such tactics may blur rather than sharpen the witness’s memory. “Our research suggests that might actually be more likely to make the memory less vivid, make the eyewitness less likely to remember the specifics.”
Even without an examiner’s instructions, such an eyewitness might be predisposed to recall the robbery in the third person: Researchers have found that people often translate traumatic or emotionally charged memories out of the first person. This may be because first-person memories tend to elicit stronger emotional reactions at the time of recall, and by taking a third-person perspective, we can distance ourselves from the painful experience, Angelina Sutin, a psychologist at Florida State University, told me. It may also be a function of the information at our disposal. In charged situations, Rubin said, people tend to zero in on the object of their anger or fear. Take the bank-robbery scenario: The police “want the teller to describe the person who’s robbing them, and instead he describes in great detail the barrel of the gun pointed at his head.” He can’t remember much beyond that. And so, lacking the information necessary to situate himself in his original perspective, he floats.
This distancing effect has some fairly mind-bending potential applications, none more so, perhaps, than to the problem of near-death experiences. For many years, philosophers and psychologists have documented instances of people reporting that, in moments of trauma, they felt as though they were floating outside—usually above—their body. Rubin points out, however, that such reports are not in-the-moment descriptions but after-the-fact accounts. So he has a controversial idea: What in retrospect seems like an out-of-body experience may in fact be only the trauma-induced translation of a first-person memory into a third-person memory, one so compelling that it deceives you into thinking the experience itself occurred in the third person. The recaller, in this theory, is like a person peering through a convex window, mistaking a distortion of the glass for a distortion of the world.
Traumatic dissociations are dramatic but by no means isolated cases of what Rubin calls the “constructive nature of the world.” In a 2019 review article on memory perspective, St. Jacques noted that shifting your vantage and fabricating an entirely new scene rely on the same mental processes occurring in the same regions of the brain. So similar are recollecting the past and projecting into the future that some psychologists lump them into a single category: “mental time travel.” Both are acts of construction. The distinction between memory and imagination blurs.
At some level, people generally understand this, but rarely do we get so incontrovertible an example as with third-person memories. If you and a friend try to recall the decor at the restaurant where you got dinner last month, you might find that you disagree on certain points. You think the wallpaper was green, your friend thinks blue, one of you is wrong, and you’re both sure you’re right. With third-person memories, though, you know the memory is distorted, because you could not possibly have been looking at yourself at the time. If, without even realizing it, you can change something so central as the perspective from which you view a memory, how confident can you really be in any of the memory’s details?
In this way, third-person memories are sort of terrifying. But shifts in perspective are more than mere deficiencies of memory. In her lab at Ohio State University, the psychologist Lisa Libby is investigating the relationship between memory perspective and identity—that is, the way shifts in our memory play a role in how we make sense of who we are. In one experiment, Libby asked a group of female undergraduates whether they were interested in STEM. The students then participated in a science activity, some in a version designed to be engaging, others in a version designed to be boring. Afterward, when she surveyed the undergrads about how they’d found the exercise, she instructed some to recall it from a first-person perspective and others from a third-person perspective. The first-person group’s answers corresponded to how interesting the task really was; the third-person group’s corresponded to whether they’d said they liked STEM in the initial survey.
Libby’s takeaway: Each type of memory seems to have its own function. “One way to think about the two perspectives is that they help you represent … two different components of who you are as a person,” Libby told me. Remembering an event from a first-person perspective puts you in an experiential frame of mind. It helps you recall how you felt in the moment. Remembering an event from a third-person perspective puts you in a more narrative frame of mind. It helps you contextualize your experience by bringing it in line with your prior beliefs and fitting it into a coherent story. Memory is the—or at least a—raw material of identity; perspective is a tool we use to mold it.
Maybe the most interesting thing about all of this is what it suggests about the human proclivity for narrative. When we shift our memories from one perspective to another, we are, often without even realizing it, shaping and reshaping our experience into a story, rendering chaos into coherence. The narrative impulse, it seems, runs even deeper than we generally acknowledge. It is not merely a quirk of culture or a chance outgrowth of modern life. It’s a fact of psychology, hardwired into the human mind.
MCLEAN, Va., June 27, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Inspirit Senior Living (“Inspirit”) and Venue Capital (“Vencap”) co-sponsored a joint venture to acquire a portfolio of two properties located in the Knoxville, Tennessee MSA. Formerly operated by a national operator, these new Inspirit Senior Living communities are now individually recognized as Rain Forest Landings in Knoxville, TN, and Emory Ridge in Powell, TN.
Rain Forest Landings is an assisted living and memory care community on just under 10 acres in West Knoxville. Residents enjoy beautifully furnished common areas, including a grand dining room, numerous amenity spaces, walking paths, and more. Residents have multiple living options available with various suite types ranging from 285 to 725 square feet.
Emory Ridge is a freestanding memory care property on almost three acres in the heart of the Powell, Tennessee community. The 40-unit community offers residents around-the-clock nursing care, safe and secure courtyards, activity rooms, community patios, and large common areas.
Inspirit and Vencap plan to immediately begin renovations that will be highly customized to reflect each community’s distinctive characteristics. The renovations will transform the properties into welcoming and restorative environments for residents and visitors, with comfortable furnishings paired with artwork reflecting and celebrating everything Knoxville offers.
Like other Inspirit communities, properties offer assisted living and Inspirit’s Sage Program, specifically designed for the memory impaired. The Sage Program’s mission is to honor its residents — creating meaningful interactions in safe hands while working within its residents’ memories and abilities.
Dave McHarg, Chief Executive Officer of Inspirit, said, “We are excited about the opportunity to expand our Tennessee footprint with these fantastic communities. Rain Forest Landings and Emory Ridge are now part of the growing Inspirit family of properties. We are honored to work with the dedicated and highly skilled local teams to deliver superior experiences for our residents.”
Michael Goldberg, Chief Executive Officer of Vencap, added, “We’re thrilled to add these high-quality properties to our growing Tennessee portfolio and to continue expanding our partnership with a top regional operator in Inspirit Senior Living.”
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ABOUT INSPIRIT SENIOR LIVING
Inspirit Senior Living is an owner/operator of senior living communities in the Mid-Atlantic, Midwestern, and Southern regions of the United States. Founded in 2015 by some of the senior-care industry’s most respected leaders, Inspirit aims to identify under-performing struggling communities and acquire, modernize, and professionalize them, taking advantage of the network’s economies of scale while preserving each property’s home-like atmosphere and the individual attention to each resident that defines a successful senior living experience. Inspirit is committed to being a force for good in every community where it operates, creating good jobs, contributing to the local economy, and above all, providing senior care that respects the dignity and gifts of every resident. For more information, visit inspiritseniorliving.com.
ABOUT VENUE CAPITAL LLC
Venue Capital LLC is a New York City-based investment and asset management firm dedicated to the seniors housing sector. Vencap partners with premier regional operators to provide exceptional resident experiences while enhancing investors’ value. Vencap targets well-located properties that can be improved through superior operations, strategic capital improvements, and steadfast asset management oversight. The combined components of real estate, hospitality, needs-driven service, and demographic tailwinds make senior housing a unique asset class that offers the opportunity for both growth potential and consistent performance. Vencap currently owns 15 senior living communities in the Southern and Midwestern regions of the United States. For more information, visit venuecapital.com.
HINSDALE, Ill., March 30, 2022 (Newswire.com)
– Together at Peace invites everyone who has lost a loved one to spend the week of April 24-May 1 walking one mile or more anywhere in the world in memory of loved ones who have passed away while raising money for the four inspiring charities that are registered for the event. The partnered charities are Ronald McDonald House Charities of Chicagoland and Northwest Indiana, St. Mary’s Grief Support Essentia Health, Life Lessons Scholarship Programand Simply from the Heart.
Part of this special event is the “UP” collection curated by Cathy Ponakala from Virgil Catherine Gallery in Hinsdale, IL. The emerging artists featured are internationally collected: Guy Stanley Philoche, Gregg Emery, Larry Stewart and Ramona Nordal. 100% of the proceeds from the sale of these pieces will benefit the partnered charities.
Once registered, participants will be invited to attend a “Peace Party” open house in Hinsdale on May 1 to celebrate the end of the walk. A zoom link will be made available for those who are not able to attend. Bring a picture of loved ones, enjoy uplifting reflection stations, feel hope and support in gathering with others to share memories.
Together at Peace’s mission is to inspire healing and hope after loved ones pass away, through events, charitable giving and support. Registration is free.
SHORT HILLS, N.J., August 29, 2019 (Newswire.com)
– LearningRx (www.LearningRx.com), the world’s largest personal brain training company, is celebrating the success of Sam, who saw significant changes in grades, academic enjoyment and confidence after completing a LearningRx program.
Sam came to LearningRx at age 12 because he was struggling in school and unable to complete his homework. Although he tried tutoring, his parents realized that it wasn’t a problem that could be fixed by re-teaching the same information.
After completing his LearningRx personal brain training program, Sam achieved drastic improvements—and the changes have made him a successful student.
“I felt like my homework was easier to do, and I could understand it better,” says Sam. “My grades started to go up, and I started to do better in almost all my classes.”
His mother says his confidence went way up, and the changes happened quickly after he started LearningRx.
Sam says his memory and attention are so much better. He adds that he’d recommend LearningRx to his friends because they’d enjoy the brain games, and it can really help them with their academics.
“It was entertaining, but it also helped me with learning,” says Sam, referring to his experience with LearningRx. “I think it was a lot of fun!”
LearningRx, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is the largest one-on-one brain training organization in the world. With more than 70 centers in the U.S. and 48 international locations, LearningRx has helped more than 100,000 individuals and families sharpen their cognitive skills to help them think faster, learn easier, and perform better. Their on-site programs partner every client with a personal brain trainer to keep clients engaged, accountable, and on-task—a key advantage over online-only brain exercises. Their pioneering methods have been used in clinical settings for over 35 years and have been verified as beneficial in peer-reviewed research papers and journals. To learn more about LearningRx research results, programs, and their 9.6 out of 10 client referral rating visit http://www.learningrx.com/.
SHORT HILLS, N.J., June 11, 2019 (Newswire.com)
– LearningRx (www.LearningRx.com), the world’s largest personal brain training company, is celebrating the success of Sam, who saw significant changes in grades, academic enjoyment and confidence after completing a LearningRx program.
Sam came to LearningRx at age 12 because he was struggling in school and unable to complete his homework. Although he tried tutoring, his parents realized that it wasn’t a problem that could be fixed by re-teaching the same information.
After completing his LearningRx personal brain training program, Sam achieved drastic improvements—and the changes have made him a successful student.
“I felt like my homework was easier to do and I could understand it better,” says Sam. “My grades started to go up and I started to do better in almost all my classes.”
His mother says his confidence went way up and the changes happened quickly after he started LearningRx.
Sam says his memory and attention are so much better. He adds that he’d recommend LearningRx to his friends because they’d enjoy the brain games and it can really help them with their academics.
“It was entertaining, but it also helped me with learning,” says Sam, referring to his experience with LearningRx. “I think it was a lot of fun!”
LearningRx, headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colorado, is the largest one-on-one brain training organization in the world. With 80 Centers in the U.S., and locations in 45 countries around the globe, LearningRx has helped more than 100,000 individuals and families sharpen their cognitive skills to help them think faster, learn easier, and perform better. Their on-site programs partner every client with a personal brain trainer to keep clients engaged, accountable, and on-task—a key advantage over online-only brain exercises. Their pioneering methods have been used in clinical settings for over 35 years and have been verified as beneficial in peer-reviewed research papers and journals. To learn more about LearningRx research results, programs, and their 9.6 out of 10 client referral rating visit http://www.learningrx.com.
