Do Something Good For the World and Feel Good

HIGH GAS PRICES are not good for your mood. On the other hand, taking action with a sense of purpose is very good for your mood. If you live in the United States, I have several actions to recommend that will lower gas prices, help reduce pollution, generate jobs all over the world (including or maybe especially in America), and reduce the amount of money going to political regimes that suppress their own people. Are you ready? Here it is:

Support The Open Fuel Standard Act.

A bill was introduced earlier this month in the House of Representatives that would make it mandatory for all cars sold in the United States to be capable of burning any type of liquid fuel. This won't cost the federal government any money, and it will only add about 200 dollars to the cost of a new car. But it will immediately kick companies into gear — companies that invent, manufacture, and distribute alternative fuels. They'll have the confidence they need to immediately start ramping up and making competing fuels available.

Gas prices have risen so much that many of these fuels could already be sold competitively (if only there were more cars that could burn them). With real competition, oil companies will have to bring down their prices or go out of business.

The most important thing that needs to be done right now is to increase the number of representatives who co-sponsor the bill. This brings us to what you can do:

1. Urge your representative to become a co-sponsor for the bill (click here to find out how to do it in three minutes).

2. Subscribe to email updates and share those emails with your friends and family (click here to subscribe).

3. "Like" the Open Fuel Standard Facebook page and "share" their Facebook posts with your Facebook friends and family (click here to go to the Facebook page now).

4. Educate yourself about the Open Fuel Standard (click here to see recommended books, DVDs, and online videos).

5. Print copies of the OFS Fact Sheet. Share them with friends and family, and use it for "talking points" when talking with your representative (click here to read the fact sheet).

Let's all take some action on this. It will be good for everyone if we do. And it will feel good too.

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Being in a Good Mood More Often Helps Prevent Colds and Flu

IN AN EXPERIMENT by Sheldon Cohen of Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, he and his colleagues followed 193 people by interviewing them every night on the phone for two weeks. Each person was asked how they felt that day. These were their options: lively, happy, cheerful, calm, at ease, sad, unhappy, tense, on edge, angry, or hostile.

Everybody has ups and downs, so the researchers averaged each person's responses over the two weeks to get a general measurement of the person's normal mood.

The researchers then put the volunteers in a quarantined facility and gave each of them nasal drops of either a cold or a flu virus, and then tracked their symptoms for a few days.

So what did they find out? "The people who expressed more positive emotions overall," said Cohen, "were much less likely to become sick with a cold or the flu than those who expressed fewer positive emotions...And when they did get sick, they reported milder symptoms."

Your immune system works better when you're in a better mood. And your immune system does far more for you than preventing you from getting a cold or flu. It is worth taking the time and expending the energy to do things that improve your mood. Here is a good place to start: Top Ten Ways to Raise Your Mood.

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