You can manage cortisol with these three simple steps: Cortisol has a half life of twenty minutes, so do something fun for twenty to forty minutes and most of it will be metabolized. Don’t rush into problem-solving until then because you only see the negatives of every solution while cortisol is surging. Find the pattern in your past that matches

Personal agency is your power to design your own reward structure instead of just relying on the rewards that others put out.

You can blaze a new trail to your happy chemicals with these simple steps: Choose the new behavior or thought pattern you want. (The following chapter describes good options.) Break it down into small steps that you can actually take. Reward yourself in a healthy way for each step.

The animal brain learns from rewards. When you reward a step, the good feeling of the reward gets linked to that step. This is how an animal learns to do things it doesn’t know it can do, and it’s how your inner mammal builds positive expectations about particular behaviors.

THE News gives you the comfort of a big strong herd without the annoyance of dealing with actual people. It allows little poodles to bark at big dogs without the natural consequences. These happy chemicals are soon metabolized, alas, so you check the news again.

When you feel threatened, information about the threat helps you feel safe. The media feed our natural urge to predict threats by supplying a steady stream of threat-relevant messages.

Our brain gives priority to threat signals, so negative headlines get more clicks. It’s easy to see why the news is focused on threats. The more threatened you feel, the more motivated you are to check the media. If there were good news, you might stop scrolling and plan a picnic. So they don’t give you good news.

Our brain is designed to seek rewards, yet the mindfulness culture advises you to stop seeking. You have a right to your spiritual beliefs, but this is bad science. Our happy chemicals evolved to reward action, so a mindset that rejects action is not a realistic route to happy chemicals.

Mindfulness is good training for creating a neutral state. It helps you leave an old relief habit without rushing into a new relief habit. That leaves you in a neutral state, where you can choose your next step “consciously” rather than automatically. These are valuable skills, yet being stuck in neutral does not make you happy. The mindfulness