On the control of hot emotions

I read a really interesting article on a psychologist who is interested in personality. There are a lot of pop psychology personality tests on the web and the underlying premise is that personality is a fixed thing. Well, this may not be quite true, personality may be different in different situations. Some features of a person's character however seem to be very important and this he says is the ability to control emotions...he carried out an experiment with children who were given marshmallows which they could either eat straight away or wait a bit and get another one. they were left in a room with the marshmallow and given a bell to ring when they could not wait any longer. Some of the children waited and got the reward while others rang the bell in almost no time. He followed these children into adulthood and found a high correlation between those who waited and those who were successful in life! Its not so much the ability to resist temptation for a longer run payoff thats important but the ability to control their desires. The successful kids did this in a variety of ways but essentially they did it by suppressing thoughts of marshmallows and distracting themselves with other things. Moreover this ability can potentially be learnt but requires diligent practice. Having the right parents can help a lot!

I've only recently become aware of this ability and it certainly rings true to me. People who are able to turn off their hot emotions are much more advantaged.
So, go on, I would say" Dont eat the marshmallow" !!

Happiness

I follow various happiness blogs now. Important things I learnt: (1) Flow activities are important: like writing a blog. The end is unimportant, only the process matters. So also, climbing scary mountains will qualify, matter of life and death activitities too (bungee jumping?, sky diving) (2) Heard the story about the wise guy...a man came to him asking for help in being happier. He told him to buy some goats and keep them inside his house for a week and then come back. So thats what the man did. He came back in a week totally sick of the smell of the goats and their little pebble shaped turds all over the house...and complained about this to the wise guy (WG). Well WG says" Now get rid of the goats. You will be happy!" .(3) Connections to others: close emotional bonds, good friends.

Also funny: from facebook: one of my friends posted this: a cure for very happy people:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/fda_approves_depressant_drug_for