Hasta La Gadget!

What if we told you that you were one of the wealthiest people in the world?

Before you scratch your head and check your wallet, pause for a moment and think about the assets in your life. Not just the dollar bills in the safe, but the other valuables you have. The ones that actually matter.

Sure, money can buy a lot of things — but that’s it. They’re just things. Material possessions are great, but happiness doesn’t come from the items we own. It comes from a toddler’s giggle or your mom’s cooking. It shows up on a sunny day or seeing your best friend walk down the aisle.

When it comes down to it, the riches in our bank accounts don’t compare to the seven riches below. Here’s evidence that the best things in life don’t cost a single penny.

Hugs.

Admit it, there’s nothing like a warm embrace from someone you care about. Hugs can do a lot more than just make you feel good for a split moment. Research shows they may lower your blood pressure and boost your heart. Not bad for a small (and free!) gesture.

Friends and family.

You can’t put a price point on your loved ones. They’re worth everything without costing a single dime (except for maybe those few bucks you let them borrow for that smoothie when they were short). It’s a small price to pay when you consider the real value they add to your life. Studies suggest that friendships bring huge health perks, from increased longevity to improved mood.

Smiles.

Pro-tip: The more you grin, the more joy you’ll feel. According to one 2012 study, people who received a smile from strangers felt a greater sense of social connectedness. And who doesn’t want to feel like they belong? Not to mention those “knowing smiles” you share with your best friends after an inside joke. So go on and flash those pearly whites.

Sleep.

Happiness is a satisfying nap or a good night’s rest. Sometimes there’s just no better feeling than crawling into a comfortable bed and letting our minds drift away to dreamland. The body and brain suffers dramatically without proper sleep. Better health for just a little more shuteye? That’s invaluable.

Laughter.

It’s hard not to feel your absolute best when you’re in the middle of a belly-aching fit of laughter. It also has incredible health benefits. Research suggests that laughing may boost our memory and can lower stress. Hey, the giggles look good on you (and they probably cost less than that shirt).

Happy memories.

Let’s be honest, who hasn’t replayed some of their best times in their head? (Bonus points if you let it play in a montage like a movie.) Nostalgia is one of our mind’s greatest indulgences — and it’s totally OK to embrace it. Studies have found that nostalgia can decrease loneliness and anxiety. Think back on your perfect prom or your wonderful wedding day. Research shows we spend 47 percent of our waking hours daydreaming, so why not put it to good use?

Love.

The Beatles were most certainly onto something when they crooned in their 1960s hit, “All You Need Is Love.” Feeling accepted is crucial to our emotional wellness. We’re happier, our immune system is stronger and even our heart health is improved when we’re around the people we love, Woman’s Day reported. Sounds like a richer, fuller life to us.

So, go hug your best friend, kiss your significant other, create good memories with your family and make a stranger feel loved with a simple smile (and then go to sleep). All without draining your pocketbook.

This GPS Guide is part of a series of posts designed to bring you back to balance when you’re feeling off course.

GPS Guides are our way of showing you what has relieved others’ stress in the hopes that you will be able to identify solutions that work for you. We all have de-stressing “secret weapons” that we pull out in times of tension or anxiety, whether they be photos that relax us or make us smile, songs that bring us back to our heart, quotes or poems that create a feeling of harmony or meditative exercises that help us find a sense of silence and calm. We encourage you to visit our other GPS Guides here, and share with us your own personal tips for finding peace, balance and tranquility.

“Sleeping Around” is a recurring blog post series where Dr. Winter, a sleep specialist, goes beyond the typical questions about healthy sleep and seeks out the most unique sleep circumstances to offer his assistance in how to tackle them. Even if your problems are not as extreme, hopefully the experience can help shed some light on your own sleep difficulties.

“Why are they staying in that creepy place? They should just leave!” For most viewers of scary movies, this is a common thought. In a house with strange whispering noises, possessed doll babies, and voices urging you to leave immediately, it is not really smart to stick around. Even if the spontaneously appearing blood stains and footsteps in the cellar are harmless, are they really going to lend themselves to a good night’s sleep? If you have the option to sleep in a domicile or other facility not inhabited with angry disembodied spirits of the undead, I’d recommend it. If no other options exist, here is how one can make the most of the accommodations.

To fully understand sleeping in a haunted dwelling, I needed to find one that was accepting guests and stay overnight. I immediately came up with two essential criteria for the location:

1. There must be well-documented evidence that the location is haunted.
2. The place must truly scare the hell out of me.

Starting with the latter criteria, I asked myself, “What hotel (that I know of) scares me the most?” The answer came astonishingly easily: The Shining. The Overlook Hotel is and forever will be the measuring stick for what I consider terrifying and deeply disturbing. “Perfect, I’ll take one queen room, non-smoking for two nights. Do you accept Marriott points?”

Unfortunately, there is no Overlook Hotel. Stanley Kubrick brought Stephen King’s fictional location to life on screen by combining exterior shots of the Timberline Lodge in Oregon with interior sets based upon the Ahwahnee Lodge in Yosemite National Park in California. While the Ahwahnee easily satisfied criteria #2, I could find no sound documentation that it was haunted.

In my search for a haunted place to stay, I was told of a hotel in Oklahoma City featured in a New York Times piece. In the story, numerous professional basketball players were complaining about their stays at the Skirvin Hotel when they visited the Oklahoma City Thunder. Countless stories of Effie the hotel housekeeper circulate within the NBA, scaring the likes of Derrick Rose. While the stories about the hotel are plentiful, I could not say from pictures of the place that it fit the “scared the hell out of me” criteria. So with two hotels identified, neither of which fit the profile perfectly, I decided to stay a few nights at both places.

My first visit was to The Ahwahnee, a truly magnificent hotel described by many as the crown jewel of our national park lodges. I was immediately struck by how similar the hotel looked compared to The Shining‘s Overlook, especially the main room of the lodge and the elevator doors. I expected a tidal wave of blood to come streaming through them as I carried my bags on board. I was already feeling uneasy.

Tip #1: Explore the location thoroughly during the day.

With my bags dropped off, I immediately got busy learning the hotel during daylight hours. Knowing the location of the ice machine and the stairwell prior to when the sun goes down is very helpful. With familiarity comes comfort, and that comfort will help you feel relaxed in the uneasy environment. While not usually advised for a good night sleep, sleeping closer to other guests might make you feel more comfortable. Try to position yourself closer to the ‘action’ of the hotel, if for no other reason that people might be more likely to hear you scream as you discover backwards messages on your bathroom mirror.

Tip #2: Choose your room wisely.

Many haunted locations feature nearly all or the majority of their happenings or sightings in a relatively specific or constrained space. For example, virtually all of the bizarre occurrences at the Skirvin happen on the 10th floor, where the owner’s wife at the time is rumored to have jumped to her death through an open window. Sleeping far from the 10th floor may help to alleviate anxiety.

Tip #3: Talk to people who know the haunted site.

If a hotel has a reputation for being haunted, find out more about the history of the haunting. I was surprised by how open staff members were about talking about these stories. While one staff member of the Skirvin told me the true key to seeing ghosts could be found only at the bar, an Ahwahnee employee said that more than one guest had reported seeing a deceased former caretaker looking in on them to make sure they were comfortable. Learning that a spirit inhabiting a dwelling might be friendly can help to calm your nerves prior to sleep. I increased my chances of having a good outcome by leaving a generous tip on the nightstand for any caretakers that might stop in, both living or in spiritual limbo.

Tip #4 Hit the gym.

Surprisingly, while the Hotel Skirvin is gorgeous, its perfectly replicated 1930s décor gave it a hauntingly scary feel, as if the ghosts of its first guests might sit down next to you in the parlor. Finding the hotel’s gym and grabbing some exercise helped the situation. Physical activity during the day can increase chemicals like adenosine in the brain. These chemicals are responsible for helping us fall asleep. Exercise also has anxiolytic effects that make us worry less. That treadmill session helped sooth me immensely when I discovered a brief video on my phone that I had no recollection of recording (true story).

Tip #5 Eat a smart dinner.

Think about Thanksgiving when you make your dinner reservations. The sleepiness you feel after eating as you sit on the couch watching football games is related to the carbohydrate load in your meal and its effects on your insulin. There is also the tryptophan, a sleep promoting chemical in the turkey. If you are looking for food with high amounts of tryptophan, order the elk. Avoid coffee after your meal and lots of wake-promoting protein. Instead, order a chamomile or passionfruit tea after you eat.

Tip #6 Do not drink alcohol.

“What’ll it be, sir?”
“Hair of the dog that bit me.”
“Bourbon on the rocks?
“That’ll do her.”
–Exchange between Jack Torrence and Lloyd the bartender, The Shining, 1978

While all work and no play may make one a dull boy, it’s not a good idea to unwind with alcohol. As tempting as it might be to pull up a chair in the Gold Room and have a drink to settle your nerves, remember that the strategy did not work out particularly well for Jack Torrence and it most likely will not work well for you. While alcohol can help relax some, it does not improve sleep quality, it in fact worsens it. It may also impair your ability to recognize the sounds of dripping faucets and the shadows of swaying trees for what they truly are. Moreover, alcohol can create disturbed dreaming in some people. With your mind already on edge, pressing your luck with alcohol can be a ticket for a nightmarish night.

Tip #7 Light you room thoughtfully.

With exercise out of the way and the meal complete, it’s time to retire to your room. There are several simple things you can do to a room to improve your sleep quality. Keep the lights in your room dim before bed while you shower and get ready for sleep. Spend time reading something light and positive before bed. When it is time to retire, turn your lights off. We sleep better in the dark. While it may be tempting to keep lights or the television on, you will sleep better if you cut the power.

I have to admit, in both settings, I slept surprisingly well. In fact, I found both The Awahnee and The Skirvin lovely places to stay. I was almost a little disappointed that not even a door suddenly slammed shut during the night. Haunted houses and creepy places thrive on anxiety and the fears we all have of unknown entities. The next time you are forced to sleep in an unsettling location, hopefully these tips will help you rest in peace.

Photography by Maeve Janelle.

“I know what it is, I just don’t know where it is.”

“Can I get a lifeline, please?”

“Are ‘uterus’ and ‘womb’ the same thing?”

These are some of the responses made by five women when Fusion asked them to draw their reproductive systems and the female genitalia. It was one of the those rare opportunities to shine a satirical light on very real problem: the poor state of sexual education in the United States.

While scientists and engineers are still racing to make solar panels more efficient and feasible, some are trying to make the technology more attractive. Literally. Researchers from the VTT Technical Centre of Finland have developed a process that creates solar panels that are not only flexible but also organic and recyclable and can be used on things like windows, walls, … Continue reading

Early general election trial heats tell us little, but pollsters have other questions to ask. Chris Christie’s negatives are higher than those of past nominees. And what’s the point of the margin of error, anyway? This is HuffPollster for Monday, January 26, 2015.

GENERAL ELECTION 2016 POLLS DON’T PREDICT MUCH, YET – Jason Linkins: “[L]eading up to any presidential election, there will be months in which the head-to-head polling of the race is very accurate and other months in which it’s very inaccurate. I’ve prepared a little guide here, ranking the 10 best months for polling accuracy for the next presidential election, in order from least to most accurate.

10. March 2016
9. April 2016
8. June 2016
7. May 2016
6. July 2016
5. August 2016
4. September 2016
3. October 2016
2. November 2016
1. December 2016

As you can see, if you’re a reporter and you want to obtain the most accurate possible snapshot of who is going to win a presidential election from a pollster, the best time to call him up is between twenty and fifty days after the election.…At this point, you may be wondering, ‘Well, if polling is so inaccurate until you get very close to an election, why do they continue to do it?’ The short answer is that pollsters ask many questions that are more interesting than ‘Who would you vote for in this head-to-head matchup?’ The answers just don’t make for banner headlines.” [HuffPost]

BUT EARLY NEGATIVES MAY BE A BARRIER TO CHRISTIE – Harry Enten: “We’re a long way from knowing who will be the Republican nominee for president in 2016. Early polling data, however, can give us a sense for who fits the profile of past nominees, and who doesn’t. Since 1980, two types of candidates have won presidential nominations when an incumbent president wasn’t running in their party: those who were unfamiliar to voters early in the campaign, and those who were both well known and well liked….no prior nominee had a net favorability rating more than 10 percentage points below where you’d expect given his name recognition. Christie is 25 percentage points off the pace. His net favorable rating among Republicans in an average of YouGov polls so far this year, a December Monmouth University poll and a late November Quinnipiac University poll is just +19 percentage points. That was despite 77 percent of Republicans being able to form an opinion of him.” [538]

‘WHAT’S THE POINT OF THE MARGIN OF ERROR?’ – After a online debate over the margin of error succumbs to a technical glitch, Columbia University political scientist and statistician Andrew Gelman posts his thoughts about the value of the margin of error: “[W]e often don’t need the margin of error at all. Anything worth doing is worth doing multiple times, and once you have multiple estimates from different samples, you can look at the variation between them to get an external measure of variation that is more relevant than an internal margin of error, in any case. The margin of error is an approximate lower bound on the expected error of an estimate from a sample, and that such a lower bound can be useful, but that in most cases I’d get more out of the between-survey variation (which includes sampling error as well as variation over time, variation between sampling methods, and variation in nonsampling error). Where the margin of error often is useful is in design, in deciding how large a sample size you want to estimate a quantity of interest to some desired precision.” [Gelman]

-Sponsors reschedule the webinar debate on the “margin of error’ for Wednesday, January 28. [Peanut Labs]

HUFFPOLLSTER VIA EMAIL! – You can receive this daily update every weekday morning via email! Just click here, enter your email address, and click “sign up.” That’s all there is to it (and you can unsubscribe anytime).

MONDAY’S ‘OUTLIERS’ – Links to the best of news at the intersection of polling, politics and political data:

-A rise in George W. Bush’s favorable ratings could help his brother, notes Andrew Kohut. [WashPost]

-Jonathan Bernstein surveys the field of 19 active Republican candidates.
[Bloomberg]

-The Upshot charts the shrinking middle class. [NYT]

-African Americans see the lack of diversity in this year’s Oscars as part of a longstanding problem. [YouGov]

-The U.S. still lags other nations in its percentage of female leaders. Pew