14 seconds of happy memories

Best reaction so far, which prompts this. Also, welcome! And 7 other things worth your time.

One of the most popular editions of this newsletter over the last six months or so was the one about the 8-minute hack to calm anxiety.

Basically, you listen to an audio track designed to trigger specific neurological reactions in your brain—and it works. At least, it worked for me!

I won’t rehash the whole story, since you can go back and read it if you missed it then, but the short version is that the song is the work of a British band that teamed up with a group of sound therapists. It’s called Weightlessness.

After the newsletter went out, I was happy to hear how many readers found it useful. It’s a pretty efficient way to restore calm and ease anxiety, right? Just eight minutes!

With that in mind, a friend reminded me of another hack: one that supposedly takes only 14 seconds. (That’s an oddly specific number of seconds, I grant you.)

Writing in the journal Nature, Rutgers University researchers say they found that spending exactly 14 seconds recounting happy memories after experi…