1. If you want to feel sexier, wear red.
It's not about how other people see you, though. It's about how you see yourself. A new study had participants rate their own attractiveness while wearing either a red or a blue shirt. The people who wore red rated their own attractiveness as higher compared to those who wore blue. Something to keep in mind next time you need a confidence boost. (PsyPost)
2. Are we trying to eradicate anxiety when we should be using it as a portal to creative awakening?
We've come up with tons of ways to treat anxiety—meditation, medication, and everything in between—but great philosophers of yore believed that anxiety was a gift. That is not to say anxiety should not be treated, but that perhaps self-exploration is a valid, more modern treatment in moving through anxiety. Gordon Marino, a philosophy professor at St. Olaf College, said, "Today, orthodoxy has it that sudden psychological changes are chemical in nature, but there was a time when we still believed that an idea, or an interpretation of your experience, could turn the page of that experience." (Quartz)
3. Olympian Alysia Montaño competed in the Track and Field Nationals last week while pregnant.
And that's not all: She also wore a "Wonder Woman" crop top while running, exposing her bare midriff the entire time. Even better, this isn't the first time she's taken on such a feat—Montaño ran the same race while eight months pregnant in 2014. (The Cut)
4. Is taking breaks the key to a successful workday?
The finding of this new study out of Columbia University certainly makes it seem like that. The results indicate that these breaks are especially effective when planned ahead of time. “Participants who didn’t step away from a task at regular intervals were more likely to write ‘new’ ideas that were very similar to the last one they had written,” the co-authors explain. (The Guardian)
5. Video games can change the way we think and act.
But for better or for worse? According to new research, frequent video game-playing can make the parts of our brain responsible for attention more efficient. But they can also activate regions responsible for feelings of reward, which is why video-game addiction is becoming more and more prevalent. (Science Daily)
6. With their love of libraries, millennials prove once again that they value the sharing economy.
They might not know how to use the Dewey Decimal System, but millennials are the generation most likely to use public libraries (not including on-campus libraries) according to a new report from Pew Research. More than half of millennials have visited a library or "bookmobile" in person in the last year, which we're all about—especially since research shows that reading is so good for you. (Pew Research)
Leigh Weingus is a New York City based freelance journalist and former Senior Relationships Editor at mindbodygreen where she analyzed new research on human behavior, looked at the intersection of wellness and women's empowerment, and took deep dives into the latest sex and relationship trends. She received her bachelor’s in English and Communication from the University of California, Davis. She has written for HuffPost, Glamour, and NBC News, among others, and is a certified yoga instructor.