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Science suggests that mind-wandering freely to more pleasant and playful thoughts may improve our mood and foster creativity. By Jill Suttie on behalf of Greater Good Science Center. I’m a big believer in daydreaming now and then — especially when I’m out hiking. There’s something about being in nature that helps me let go of daily cares and allows my mind to wander where it will, which feels great and often jumpstarts my creativity as a writer and musician. 
I admit, though, I’ve been troubled by research showing how mind-wandering could make me less productive or depressed — the last thing I need! But it turns out this gap between personal experience and science may best be explained by how researchers have lumped together different kinds of mind-wandering. Not all research has differentiated between depressive rumination (like replaying an ongoing disagreement with our spouse in our minds) and pleasant daydreaming (letting our minds wander freely). RELATED: How to stop ruminating with these 3 tcehniques Now, some newer science is painting a more nuanced picture of what happens to us when we let our minds wander. Though the research is young and growing, it suggests that daydreaming may actually make us happier and more creative — if we do it the right way. Daydreaming may be good for creativity Anecdotally, mind-wandering has been associated with creativity for centuries. But this link to creativity may depend on the type of mind-wandering you do, as a new study by the University of Calgary’s Julia Kam and her colleagues suggests. In this study, researchers used electroencephalogram technology to see what happens in our brains when we are engaged in different types of mind-wandering. To do that, they had people perform a mundane, repetitive task and interrupted them occasionally to see what they were thinking about, while continuously monitoring their brain activity. Some participants reported thoughts that Kam calls “constrained,” involving things like ruminating over a fight with a spouse or thinking about how to manage a work problem. While these thoughts were not related to the task at hand, they were still somewhat focused. Others reported thoughts that were “freely moving” — meaning, they skipped from thing to thing — perhaps daydreaming about a future vacation in Italy, then wondering if they needed a new bathing suit, then fantasizing about an old flame. Studies suggest daydreaming could make us happier shutterstock/HBRH When Kam and her colleagues matched people’s thoughts to their concurrent brain activity, they found signature patterns for different types of mind-wandering. In particular, freely moving thoughts were associated with increased alpha waves in the brain’s frontal cortex — a remarkable and novel finding, says Kam. “What’s really striking about finding this neural marker is that it’s been implicated during studies of creativity,” she says. “When you introduce alpha oscillation in the frontal cortex, people perform better on creative tasks.” This kind of brain activity maps well on to one particular aspect of creativity — divergent thinking or thinking “outside the box,” she says. When you’re generating ideas, you want to be able to go in many directions and not be constrained, which freely moving thought allows. Mind-wandering has also been shown to enhance convergent thinking: what happens after you’ve brainstormed ideas and have to pick the best of the bunch, she adds. So, it’s likely that mind-wandering serves a creative purpose. “If a problem has built up in your mind and you need to find a solution, letting it go into the background for a bit probably helps,” she says. “Mind-wandering facilitates the kind of solution that just comes to you, as in a lightbulb moment.” “The research is young and growing, but it suggests that daydreaming may actually make us happier and more creative — if we do it the right way.” This mirrors results from a 2015 study conducted by Claire Zedelius, formerly of the University of California, Santa Barbara. She looked at how mind-wandering affected people’s performance on a creativity test where they have to come up with a novel word (e.g., “food”) that fits with three seemingly unrelated words (e.g., “fish, fast, and spicy”). She found that people who mind-wandered performed better on this task, the answer coming to them in a flash rather than through methodically testing different solutions. “People don't even know how they got to the solution — it was just suddenly there,” she says. “Mind-wandering helps with ‘aha’ types of problem-solving.” In a more recent study, Zedelius looked at the contents of people’s thoughts to see how that related to everyday creativity (outside of a lab setting). Participants, including some creative writers, were prompted via cell phones throughout the day to report on the nature of their thoughts and, at the end of the day, how creative they had been. Findings showed that people’s minds often wandered to fairly mundane things — like planning for a later shopping trip — and that these thoughts had no effect on creativity. But when people’s minds wandered in more fantastical ways (playing out implausible fantasies or bizarre, funny scenarios, for example) or in ways that seemed particularly meaningful to them, they tended to have more creative ideas and feel more inspired at the end of the day, too. Interestingly, this was true for both writers and everyday people. “Writers probably do this for their creative process all the time — thinking through stories, considering ‘what ifs’ or unrealistic or bizarre scenarios,” says Zedelius. “But lay people will also do this more to be more creative.” This suggests that the link between mind-wandering and creativity is more complicated than previously thought. It seems to depend on how freely moving your thoughts are, the content of your thoughts, and your ability to be removed from everyday concerns. No doubt, this explains why my daydreaming on a hiking trail has led to song or story ideas that seem to bubble up from nowhere. Mind-wandering can help boost our mood Prior research suggests a wandering mind is an unhappy mind: we tend to be less happy when we’re not focused on what we’re doing. And that’s likely true, if you tend to rehash past mistakes or replay social flubs when your mind wanders, or if your mind-wandering keeps you from fulfilling your goals. Again, the content of wandering thoughts makes a big difference. For example, as one 2013 study showed, when people found their wandering thoughts more interesting, their moods actually improved while mind-wandering. Similarly, other studies have found that thinking about people you love or thinking more about your potential future than about what happened in the past produces positive results. Mind-wandering could make us more creative shutterstock/fizkes How you use mind-wandering may also be important. In some cases, people intentionally mind-wander — something that has been mostly unexplored in the research, but likely has distinct effects. As one 2017 study found, people who use daydreaming for self-reflection typically have more pleasant thoughts than people who simply ruminate on unpleasant experiences. 
 There is even some evidence that mind-wandering may be more of an antidote to depression than a cause. People who are depressed may simply replay events from their past to better understand what happened to cause their dark mood and avoid future problems. Also, when researchers studied whether a negative mood preceded or followed a mind-wandering episode, they found poor moods led to more mind-wandering but not vice versa, suggesting that mind-wandering may be helping people feel better. RELATED: Art for depression Now, findings from a 2021 study suggest that mind-wandering that is more freely moving can actually improve your mood. In this study, participants were prompted randomly via cell phone over three days to report how they were feeling (positive versus negative) and how much their thoughts were freely moving and related to what they were doing (or not). After analyzing the data, the researchers found that when people’s thoughts were off-task, they generally felt more negative — similar to what earlier findings showed. But if their thoughts were free-moving, it had the opposite effect, helping people feel happier. “Our findings suggest there might be positive aspects of mind-wandering,” the researchers conclude. Again, I find that science supports my own experience. If I simply put myself in a space that lets my mind move freely, I don’t get depressed. On the contrary, I’m happier because of it. Can we be better mind-wanderers? While the research on this is still young, it does indicate there may be a right and a wrong way to mind-wander. Kam warns that mind-wandering when you need to be focused on a task (or risk hurting yourself or others — like if you’re driving or doing surgery) could be problematic. But, she says, if you let your mind wander when you’re doing mundane tasks that don’t require focus — like knitting or shelling peas – it may help you feel better or come up with creative ideas. “The context and the content of your mind-wandering is actually really important. It plays a role in whether you get a good outcome or a not-so-good one,” she says. Though many of us have a default mode that takes our mind to dark places when we aren’t busily engaged, that doesn’t mean we have to stay stuck there. If we can divert our thoughts from those darker places, we’ll likely get more out of mind-wandering. “'The context and content of your mind-wandering is really important. It plays a role in whether you get a good outcome or a not-so-good one.'” Kam thinks practising mindfulness could help with that, as long as it increases awareness of our thoughts and alerts us when we’ve strayed into problematic thinking, which could then help us redirect our mind-wandering. “Just having more control over when mind-wandering happens and the kind of thoughts that you have would be very useful,” she says. Zedelius also says awareness matters. As many study participants told her, they had never paid much attention to where their minds went before being in her study, but found the process eye-opening. “They would say, ‘I’ve become aware of patterns in my thoughts that I never noticed before — what I get drawn to,’” she says. “It makes me wonder if the repeated probing we do in our experiments could not just be used as a measure, but as a type of intervention, to see if awareness changes over time.” Of course, even though daydreaming may be good for us, it gets a pretty bad rap in American culture. Americans tend to pride themselves on their strong work ethic — often translated as working hard for long hours with complete focus. But people are not built to be “on” all of the time. Taking a mind-wandering break might be good not just for our creativity and happiness, but also for our productivity, especially if we are in jobs requiring focused attention that is draining to maintain. And, as long as it’s employed during times when complete focus isn’t required, it may improve our well-being without hampering performance. We shouldn’t need an excuse to mind-wander, given that it’s part of our human inheritance. Besides, we’ve hardly begun to recognize what it can do for us, says Zedelius. “My hope is that people will explore the limits of mind-wandering a bit more and try to mind-wander in a way that is bigger, more fantastical, more personally meaningful, and further into the future,” she says. “If people just really allowed themselves to playfully use this tool, they might be able to focus on creative solutions to big problems.” • happiness.com | The fine art of being: learn, practice, share Are you a happiness.com member yet? Sign up for free now to: ■ enjoy our happiness magazine with practical life tips ■ share and support others in our happiness forum ■ learn with free online classes in our happiness Academy Work life balance | Painting | Poetry Written by Greater Good Science Center This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. happiness.com is honoured to republish them with the kind permission of the Greater Good Science Center. greatergood.berkeley.edu

Middle age can be a time of renewal, if you're willing to ask the right questions. By Michael F. Steger on behalf of Greater Good Science Center. I’m still having my midlife crisis, I think. It started when I one day realized that I had unconsciously imagined that my mid-20s self would simply grow into a middle-aged person who had nicer clothes, but would still go to gallery openings, weird theater shows, and feedback-drenched indie rock shows at dive bars. On top of that, I’d finally be able to speak and understand French. That’s what I had imagined. What is today’s reality? I answer emails 31 hours a day. The highlight of my personal edification is wandering into Trader Joe’s to uncover what kooky new thing they’ve infused with pumpkin. My mid-20s self would mutter “as if” at my precautions to make sure I don’t drink coffee after noon. I now carefully consider the health implications of shoveling snow too enthusiastically. Hopefully you’re as bored with my midlife crisis as my family and friends are. If you want to rescue me by launching a guerilla dance troupe in Fort Collins, Colorado, or by setting aside passes for me at your next gallery opening, be my guest. My midlife crisis is sufficiently nerdy that it leaves me plenty of emotional space to appreciate the blessings in my life. I adore my family, I’m pretty healthy, I don’t have any huge sins to atone for, and my job as a professor who travels the world researching and speaking about meaning and purpose in life is suitably weird and wonderful. Midlife can be a time of happiness Still, I wonder: What is a midlife crisis, anyway? Why should midlife be a time of crisis — and what do we mean by “crisis”? Is it a time of change, a fulcrum from the past to the future, or is it just a fabricated leftover from an earlier generation? Finally, how the heck am I going to get through my crisis without understanding French? Meaning, purpose, and midlife These are difficult questions to answer with research. If people believe that midlife is a significant time of change and reprioritization, then it is, even if there is no particularly good reason for it. Many of the reasons given for why we reach turning points, large and small, refer to hormonal changes related to testosterone or menopause, or the kids leaving home to become (semi-)independent adults, or to the ailing health of parents, or to the life cycle of a career in which many plaudits have been earned and the next advancement requires massive life changes or simply the mind-numbing drudgery of “more of the same.” Explanations for why crises happen in midlife often highlight that many of these factors can coincide. There is some recent evidence that happiness definitely dips in midlife. Whether or not a re-evaluation of one’s life is warranted by reaching a particular age, the themes of change — in our bodies, our family roles as providers, our careers or ambitions, our need to learn French — are all deeply relevant to our sense of meaning and purpose in life. If who we are and what we do and how others see us suddenly seems altered, or incomplete, or even dissatisfying, the basic building blocks of meaning can be threatened. Scholars tend to view meaning in life as being made up of three primary elements: Coherence is our ability to make sense of our lives. Significance is our perception that life is fundamentally worth living and that we ourselves matter. Purpose is our commitment to pursue very long-term goals that are deeply important to us and organize our choices and actions in life. Research does not always find that meaning declines as we age. A quite large study in California found that meaning in life peaked at around age 60 in their participants. My own research suggests that meaning in life does not necessarily peak like this, but it is tricky (to say the least) attempting to pin down trajectories of a complex human experience like meaning in life based on surveys that are only taken at one point in time. Additional studies would help us better understand whether and why meaning in life peaks, for whom, and if it is mainly the purpose element that seems most challenging for us in midlife and beyond. “Whether or not a re-evaluation of one’s life is warranted by reaching a particular age, the themes of change are all deeply relevant to our sense of meaning and purpose in life” Purpose gets the most attention of the three elements of meaning because it is the piece that actively expresses and enacts all the rest. Great purposes grow from the sense we make of the world and help us make the contributions that assure us our lives matter. If we feel we are “doing the wrong thing” with our lives, we probably don’t have a great sense of purpose. In the largest meta-analysis to date, Martin Pinquart reviewed 70 studies on purpose in life across the lifespan. This study concluded that there is a small drop in purpose that can be observed as people grow into old age. This was a study of the purpose element of meaning in life, and many of the instruments used to measure purpose ask people how much they have lots of goals or interesting things to look forward to. It seems somewhat logical that we have fewer future-oriented goals or activities as we get older, but that is not necessarily reassuring news. In fact, to many of us, having fewer goals can make it feel as if we have less to live for. That might be why finding a sense of purpose is the key to getting through your midlife crisis. There’s a nice review of the relevant research in another article in Greater Good, “How to Find Your Purpose in Midlife.” In that piece, leaders in the field like Patrick Hill and Eric Kim explain how purpose is reliably linked to better health, including agility, speed, and grip strengths among older adults, as well as better cognitive functioning and even longevity. In fact, there are dozens of studies like this now showing that we live healthier, happier, more cognitively capable, and significantly longer lives when we have meaning and purpose, and these studies are conducted with strong methodologies and excellent statistical control over other relevant factors. Through studies like these, a picture emerges of purpose after 50. It’s really good for us, and a lot of us have it. While some aspects of the meaning and purpose recipe fall away as we get into our later years, other aspects, as well as a general impression that one’s life is meaningful, may keep rising to new heights for many of us as we age, bringing numerous benefits for health and well-being. Find your purpose, save your midlife So, what do you do, if you find yourself in the midst of a crisis of meaning and purpose in midlife? Here are three suggestions based on the three elements of meaning in life, coherence, significance, and purpose: Figure out who you are, and develop some sense of how the world generally works that gives you a sense of consistency and predictability. After years of burning the candle at both ends, pause and reinvest time and attention in reflection and learning. Reconnect with your strengths, values, and what gives you joy. Discover and protect the sense that your life has value, and that being alive is worthwhile, and pay attention to ways in which you make a positive difference and that your life matters. If you are like most people, your relationships play a crucial role in making life feel significant. Spend time and attention understanding how your relationships have changed over the years. What needs to happen so that you and the important people around you can continue to grow together? Give your time and energy to the dreams and aspirations that are deeply important to you, that ideally improve life beyond you and around you, and that help you organize your goals and choices in life. This is the big Purpose item. To my mind, the best purposes are not strictly attainable. They aren’t dull items on a checklist to be ticked off and forgotten. They are dreams so important that simply working toward them is important and fulfilling. With purposes like these, it doesn’t matter how many years any of us have left; all of them can be infused with our pursuit of purpose. This is easier said than done, of course. (There just aren’t many things that are easier done than said… tech support maybe?) This list of priorities for a meaningful life is like an anti-shopping list. There are no shelves displaying prepackaged “know yourself” pods and no multipacks of “here’s how my life matters” to stock up on. I believe it really is the process of exploring the list for yourself that creates the meaning and purpose that nurture us in life. Part of the battle for meaning in midlife is to simply recognize that meaning is important for your well-being, as opposed to a distraction from the important stuff, like all those emails you need to answer. Meaning is not another nagging chore, either; it is a foundation for a fun and impactful life. How the middle-aged have found purpose I asked my LinkedIn connections what they thought about purpose after 50. Across public comments and private messages, an exciting and inspiring image came into focus. One of the leading themes was the re-examination of whether the systems people had lived by were still working for them. For example, one accomplished coach and entrepreneur told me that in her late 40s she recognized that the success and opportunity she had earned in her life as an executive came at a serious cost to her health. She launched a second career as the leader of a coaching company that helps people live a healthier, happier life. Similarly, another career-changing professional talked about recognizing her personal values were out of step with corporate values. She went on an around-the-world adventure, and shifted her skills and expertise away from optimizing the customer experience for profit, toward optimizing those experiences for well-being. Purpose is key to avoiding a midlife crisis shutterstock/sirtravelalot A second major theme involved turning away from financial incentives and turning instead toward helping others and being of service. Two very successful leaders in the world of happiness programs and coaching talked about the importance of giving back. One of these leaders devotes time to an organization that aims to smash stigmas around mental health, and the other organized his practice into a B-Corp, which is a formal business charter to build “B”enefits for people or planet into the revenue structure of a company. Other people commented on the importance of education, pursuing Master’s degrees, working to rejuvenate an interest in constant learning and growth, and building businesses or organizations that will last. Each of these paths helped people find and foster purpose after 50. “Having fewer goals can make it feel as if we have less to live for. That might be why finding a sense of purpose is the key to getting through your midlife crisis.” It might seem silly to engage in fretful navel-gazing about whether life has been everything we hoped for when we hit 50 (or any other random birthday). However, no matter how old you are, it does seem vital to regularly ask whether you are truly doing what you want and what you could do with your life. Having some degree of prosperity and privilege — as in some of the cases mentioned above — might make the quest for meaning easier, but “What is the meaning of my life?” is a question all people must ask, sooner or later. And the answer often seems to require sharing whatever resources you might have. Is there anything special about the age 50 or about midlife generally? I don’t know, but I do resonate deeply with the words of one of my LinkedIn commentators, Heidi Stone, who talked about an important moment in her own journey as a “catalyst for a fresh take on life.” I suspect it doesn’t matter if we pursue a fresh take on life at age 50, 62, or 76. What seems more important is that we try to be open for any catalysts that can help us take a fresh look at whether we are doing the work now, and living our lives now, in a way that builds the vital resource of meaning and purpose in life. I suppose that should put an end to my midlife crisis, but… encore, je ne peux pas parler français! ● Main image: shutterstock/Rido This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. We are grateful to republish it with the kind permission of the Greater Good Science Center. greatergood.berkeley.edu

More countries are measuring happiness – but are they measuring the right things? By Sam Wren-Lewis on behalf of Greater Good Science Center. Imagine two different societies. In the first, people tend to be stressed, tense, irritable, distracted, and self-absorbed. In the second, people tend to be at ease, untroubled, quick to laugh, expansive, and self-assured. The difference between these two imagined scenarios is vast. You’re not only more likely to be happier in the second scenario – you’re also more likely to be safer, be healthier, and have better relationships. The difference between a happy and an unhappy society is not trivial. We know that happiness matters beyond our desire to feel good. So, how can we create a happy society? The Buddhist nation of Bhutan was the first society to determine policy based on the happiness of its citizens, with the king of Bhutan famously claiming in 1972 that gross national happiness (GNH) was a more important measure of progress than gross national product (GNP). What makes a happy society? shutterstock/Illin Denis Many other countries have since followed suit – looking to move “beyond GDP” as a measure of national progress. For instance, the UK developed a national well-being program in 2010 and has since measured the nation’s well-being across ten domains, not too dissimilar to Bhutan’s approach. More recently, New Zealand introduced its first “well-being budget,” with a focus on improving the well-being of the country’s most vulnerable people. Such initiatives tend to broadly agree over the conditions required for a happy society. According to the World Happiness Report, there are six key ingredients for national happiness: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust, and generosity. RELATED: World Happiness Report Scandinavian countries – which typically top the global happiness rankings (Finland is currently first) – tend to do well on all these measures. In contrast, war-torn nations such as South Sudan, Central African Republic, and Afghanistan tend to do badly. So does happiness rely on these six key ingredients? The what, not the how I don’t think so. This approach is, ultimately, too simple – even potentially harmful. The problem is that it focuses on what happiness is, not how to achieve it. Clearly, things such as a good life expectancy, social support, and trust are good for us. But how we come to that conclusion may matter more than the conclusion itself. For instance, how do we know that we are measuring what is most important? The world happiness rankings largely rely on measures of life satisfaction. But it is far from obvious that such measures can account for important differences in emotional well-being. “According to the World Happiness Report, there are six key ingredients for national happiness: income, healthy life expectancy, social support, freedom, trust, and generosity.” Alternatively, perhaps we could ask people what they think matters. The development of the UK’s national well-being program took this approach, undertaking qualitative research to develop their ten domains of happiness. But this approach is also problematic. How do we know which of the ten domains are most important? The most important ingredients for one community may not be the same for another. Asking people is a good idea. But we can’t just do it once and then assume the job is done. Don’t get me wrong – I believe these kinds of initiatives are an improvement on more narrow ways of measuring national progress, such as an exclusive focus on income and GDP. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore their faults. There are parallels here with the pursuit of happiness on an individual level. We typically go about our lives with a list of things in our head that we think will make us happy – if only we get that promotion, have a loving relationship, and so on. Achieving these things can certainly improve our lives – and may even make us happier. RELATED: Why happiness is a choice But we are fooling ourselves if we think they will make us happy in a lasting sense. Life is too complicated for that. We are vulnerable, insecure creatures and will inevitably experience disappointment, loss, and suffering. By exclusively focusing on the things we think will make us happy, we blind ourselves to the other things in life that matter. Happiness 101 Psychologists are beginning to focus their attention not just on the ingredients of individual happiness, but also on the capacities people need to be happy within inevitably insecure and fragile circumstances. For instance, the so-called “second wave” of positive psychology is as interested in the benefits of negative emotions as positive ones. The mindfulness revolution, meanwhile, urges people to go beyond their notions of good and bad and instead learn how to accept things as they are. These approaches are less concerned with what conditions make people happy and more interested in how people can pursue happiness within conditions of insecurity and uncertainty. Family is one key to happiness shutterstock/Twinsterphoto The more we focus on our list of desired things, the more we fail to see what really matters. When we are certain of the things that make us happy, and urgently try to achieve them, we fail to appreciate the value of the things we already have and the multiple unknown opportunities we have yet to discover. When things inevitably go wrong in our lives, we blame others or ourselves instead of learning from what happened. Psychologists are beginning to understand the limits of this. Happy individuals tend to have humility as well as certainty; curiosity as well as urgency; and compassion as well as blame. We can apply these same lessons on a national scale. Creating a happier society requires not just promoting what matters, but also promoting the capacities for discovering what matters. “The more we focus on our list of desired things, the more we fail to see what really matters.” We know this on an institutional level. In education, we know that it is important to promote curiosity and a love of learning as well as good exam results. In academia, we know that, although we can discover important scientific truths, almost all of our current scientific theories might be surpassed by other theories and we should remain open-minded. We know that the appeal and relevance of religious institutions depends on balancing dogmatic teachings with mystery and curiosity — order and faith on the one hand, openness and flexibility on the other. Creating a happy society does not just depend on creating the right conditions. It also depends on creating the right institutions and processes for discovering those conditions. The irony is that members of the happy society described at the beginning of this article — who tend to be at ease, untroubled, quick to laugh, expansive, and self-assured — are probably less focused on what makes them happy and more focused on exploring what really matters — with humility, curiosity, and compassion. To actually create a happy society, we need measures and institutions that do much the same. ● This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. happiness.com is grateful to republish it with the kind permission of the Greater Good Science Center. greatergood.berkeley.edu

Among the coldest months of the year, February can appear to have little by way of happiness or positive news about it! However, the fact is that February 2018 has been a superb month from a news angle, with plenty of hope and human achievement to warm your heart. Ed Gould rounds up his top ten positive news story from the month. 1. Happiness is up in the UK The Office for National Statistics (ONS) announced a small but discernible amount of increase in happiness in the United Kingdom. According to reports in The Guardian in February, the ONS data – which covers the period up to September 2017 – shows that British people rated their happiness at 7.52 out of 10 on average, a rise from 7.29 in the previous survey, proving that there is hope for us all to feel happier. Where people were asked how 'worthwhile' they felt, the ONS survey revealed another upturn, which is even more positive news for people living in the UK. 2. Excessive supermarket packaging being addressed There's been plenty of media exposure in recent months to the concept that supermarkets are wrapping up our food in too much packaging. The war on excessive packaging in much of the Western world gathered pace in February when a Danish supermarket became the first ever to introduce a plastic-free aisle. Shoppers can now head there and buy wrapped, clean, healthy food, but in a retail environment that is devoid of all plastics. According to The Washington Post, the move was warmly welcomed by environmentalists and it's hoped the idea, which includes no less than 700 different grocery items, will be replicated elsewhere. That's (not) a wrap: a supermarket in Denmark has introduced a plastic-fee aisle 3. Fast food moves away from disposable cups It must be that food packaging became something of a hot topic in February, because one of the globe's largest fast-food suppliers, McDonald's, announced that its foam beverage cups and trays would be replaced in every territory it operates in throughout the world. The giant restaurant business plans to have totally recycled cups in place soon, according to Business Insider. The company's move is widely seen as a response to people power, whereby its own customers and pressure groups have informed the conglomerate's executives of what it should be doing to help protect the environment. 4. Circus animal ban in Wales looks likely According to Wales Online, a move to outlaw the use of circus animals in the region will come into force soon. Similar bans exist in other parts of Europe and, for many, the sight of a circus animal is one that only brings to mind welfare issues. Only travelling circuses operate in Wales, but the Welsh government confirmed in February that it's looking at the legal position that allows for such entertainment. The move follows a similar one put in place by another devolved administration in the UK, in Scotland, and an outright ban on circus animals in Ireland which came into force this year. 5. MIT says volcanoes will solve future construction needs The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is one of the world's leading scientific research centres. According to the Journal of Cleaner Production, MIT scientists working in Kuwait have begun developing ways of harnessing the power of volcanoes to make new forms of concrete which will help to build the cities of the future. Their work centres on the 'embodied energy' of volcanic ash which can be fashioned into concrete with much less energy than current methods. The result would be buildings that are constructed with a much lower carbon footprint than ever before. Blowing up: ash from volcanoes could be used to create new forms of concrete 6. Brussels set to improve airborne pollution A busy city in the heart of Europe, Brussels – like many other metropolitan areas – suffers from airborne pollution when there are lots of cars on the road. Add to this the city's inhabitants love of wood burning stoves and there's little positive news for people who are susceptible to particulates in the air. According to The Guardian, city officials will make public transport completely free to use on days when pollution is predicted to be high. The use of stoves may also be restricted on such days, according to the news story. 7. Mindfulness leads to better computer programming According to Science Daily, the practice of mindfulness is not just good for inner well-being and emotional intelligence and overall happiness, it's good for solving computer programming problems, too. Researchers from the University of Seville in Spain have demonstrated that frequent meditation sessions lead to improved performance with a variety of computer programming tasks. Students involved in the study did better with their subsequently set problems and often solved their tasks quicker than those who had not been involved with any meditation sessions. 8. Egypt announces world's most ambitious solar power station Egyptian authorities announced a joint private and public initiative to create the globe's biggest solar power complex in February. Officials said that the Benban Solar Park would create a photovoltaic plant that could generate up to 1.65 gigawatts of electrical energy. According to the Egypt Independent and other media outlets, the plant will boost the renewable energy supply in the country from a small fraction to 37 per cent by 2035. Panel power: the world's biggest solar panel plant looks set to be built in Egypt 9. A pessimistic outlook may be beneficial, study suggests According to a Reader in Health Psychology at the University of Sheffield, there's now an overwhelming body of work in the field of human science that suggests there are advantages to being pessimistic. Strictly speaking, Fuschia Sirois' work focusses on a certain kind of pessimism which harnesses negative thoughts for positive outcomes. She suggests that this is a human strategy that helps people to overcome things like anxiety that would otherwise hold them back. It shouldn't be confused, however, with the sort of pessimism that blames oneself for anything that goes wrong or is negative. Her work suggests that hope is there for all, no matter how you see the half-filled glass. 10. New research into peanut allergies is positive news for sufferers Anyone who has a peanut allergy or knows somebody with one will know just how severe the results can be. New research by an American company, Aimmune Therapeutics, has shown that a treatment may now be on the cards which will be able to help affected people. According to the Financial Times, around two-thirds of those who were involved with the trial responded well to it. More research is required before the programme can be turned into a fully-fledged therapy, but the company concerned is hopeful that one can be developed once the authorities sign off on further field trials. ● Written by Ed Gould Ed Gould is a UK-based journalist and freelance writer. He is a practitioner of Reiki.