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What Your Taste For Adventure Means About You...

I always love learning the science behind why we behave the way we do. When a team of super-smart researchers is working on figuring out why we like to eat ice cream after a bad breakup, I can't help but be curious what they come up with.

A new scientific study shows that happiness makes us more adventurous. I think I've always associated feelings of happiness with being adventurous, but it's the order of the cause and effect that surprised me. Contrary to what I would have guessed, people feel adventurous because they are happy, not the other way around.

It makes sense. When everything is going well, I know I'll be okay if I try something new and don't like it. So if I order a weird fruit compote for dessert and don't like it, no big deal.  It was worth it to have tried something new. But let's say I just had my heart broken in a messy breakup. Then my attitude towards dessert completely changes. I don't want to try the exotic fruit compote. I mean, I don't know much about fruit compotes. What if I hate it? Then I'll have had my heart broken AND  my dessert will taste bad. It would be too much! I couldn't risk doing that to myself! If I'm in a bad mood, I need a dessert I can count on. Ice cream for me, please.

What does this mean? If you find yourself shying away from any kind of adventure and wanting only comfortable and familiar things surrounding you, don't blame the rut you're in for your glum feelings. Instead, look for other factors that may be contributing to your happiness level, and you'll know why you're staying in the rut.

- Brigitte

http://www.flickr.com/photos/joyosity/ / CC BY 2.0

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Comments

Blargal D. Alien Thursday, February 11, 2010

Hello,Brigitte.
I see your point. When we feel happy,our contentment level is up. And, possibly by feeling content,we feel as if we have room for another query into the unknown.

romeo Friday, February 12, 2010

my own personal choice of comfort food is a wholesome bowl of authentic spicy ramen.

a compote is definitely a variable cosmopolitan dessert that may lend itself to a much livelier beverage.

~ending any relationship does in fact require a mature intelligent and most delicate approach with a mutually copesetic deliberate decision to move forward without any emotional baggage or regrets.

perhaps best done over a warm cup of tea or by the ocean -in the event that a catharsis may be in order.

please respect your process and contemplate on the patterns that present essential insights to growth and refinement which ultimately leads towards a greater degree of self compassion and regard..

Joe436 Friday, February 12, 2010

I always like things to be the same and hate change.

romeo Friday, February 12, 2010

durian ice cream

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