Your brain on happiness!

Have you ever had to do something that you were just dreading? You say things to yourself like "this is going to be horrible" or "I wish I didn't have to." Then as it turns out, it was a horrible as you suspected? I can be blamed of this type of behavior or thoughts just as much as the next person. I have often enjoyed learning about human psychology and I recently stumbled across an interesting article about the placebo effect. "Your Brain Is A Pharmacy" at utne.com brings up the idea that you will believe what you are told, and therefore react appropriately. In a study Utne references, participants were given two glasses of wine. The glasses had the same wine in them. The drinkers were told that one glass had a more expensive wine than in the other glass. The wine that the participants were told was more expensive taste better to them. Are you surprised? We really are very complex as humans, but yet it is so simple to talk yourself or be persuaded into believing something is a certain way. Do you think you could change the way you feel just by how you think?