cartoon of man thinking of a happy place

Stressed out? It’s time to go to your “happy place” and remember a fond memory, like a great vacation. That’s the advice of two researchers at Rutgers University–Newark who claim that the mental exercise will cut a person’s stress response by 85 percent. In a study appearing in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, professor of psychology Mauricio Delgado and graduate student Megan Speer also discovered that anticipating a pleasing future event works, too. The study points out that recalling good memories is more effective than “mindfulness,” which emphasizes concentrating on the present.