If you’re not one, you probably know one: conscientious people are never late, they’re organized, and their word is their bond. They do things the “right” way. They like things in order. And they have a strong, nearly unbreakable sense of right and wrong.

They’re often good people. Very good. It’s hard to imagine there could be a downside to this personality type. But new research indicates there’s a little more to it than meets the eye.

New research reveals the costs of being too “good”

A recent study out of the University of Galway aimed to find out how personality traits affect the way we experience emotions.

Researchers began by measuring participants using a Five-Factor Model, which breaks personality into five key dimensions: Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Conscientiousness.

Then they exposed the volunteers to several video clips which were each designed to elicit a specific emotion: anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, and surprise.

Interestingly, the clip the team chose to elicit joy was none other than the famous diner scene from When Harry Met Sally: a comedy classic.

People who scored high in conscientiousness were among the only group to react negatively to finding the scene funny or enjoyable. It did not trigger nearly as much joy in this group as it did for the others.

The research team theorized that, with such a powerful correlation, it was relatively safe to say that extremely orderly, structured, and conscientious people may have a lower capacity for experiencing spontaneous joy.

But there’s still a powerful upside to being conscientious

Here’s the tradeoff: while highly conscientious people laughed less and felt less joyful during the comedy scene, they also reacted less powerfully to the scene that primarily stimulated sadness.

What scene was that? The Lion King, of course. You know the one.

The findings suggest that, perhaps, living a structured and highly-orderly life can protect against negative emotions—even at the cost of some of the good ones.

Think about it. Imagine a person who never misses a deadline, forgets to pay a bill, or runs a red light. They’re never in trouble. People don’t get angry at them. They don’t wind up on probation at work or, worse, in jail.

“How people structure their environment may be a key shield from experiencing sadness, which may represent a significant motivator for people high in orderliness if they are sensitive to this emotion,” the researchers wrote.

If that doesn’t sound like a worthwhile tradeoff, another recent study builds on these findings and explores even more of the upside to living a conscientious life.

“Good” people excel at finding meaning and satisfaction in their work

Psychology Today reveals details of another recent study where, again, the Big Five personality dimensions were used to sort people into buckets.

Researchers out of KU Leuven found that highly conscientious people were among those most likely experience a “flow state.”

Flow is a mental state where you become completely immersed in your work, to the point that you don’t even notice the passage of time. It’s sometimes known as being “in the zone,” a state of effortless momentum, and generally people find it to be an enjoyable and deeply meaningful feeling.

“The characteristics of Conscientious individuals are essential for maintaining focus, managing challenges, and regulating efforts toward meaningful tasks,” the study’s authors write.

Psychology Today sums up the cutting-edge research: “Being dutiful, organized, and especially orderly may have its limitations, at least in terms of joy. However, there is the advantage of being less likely to get into the type of trouble that would trigger negative emotions. Then there is the upside of being able to bury yourself in your daily tasks to the point of not becoming bored or finding them useless.”

One bummer for conscientious people: being structured and organized to the point that you’re less joyful and less likely to laugh at something funny might make you less likable overall. But, you probably won’t care: further research suggests conscientious people live longer and stay sharper and healthier into old age better than their peers.

If it all seems like a moot point—after all, you’re either conscientious or you’re not—think again. Personality can, and often does change, over the course of a person’s life. It is possible to dial down your structured, risk-averse ways of thinking and open yourself up to more spontaneous joy. And it’s also possible to become more orderly and reliable, minimizing negative emotions and getting more done.

It’s a worthwhile exercise for anyone to see the upsides of their personality, who they truly are, and to know that who they are never has to be set in stone.

A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a  gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing. 

Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold. 

A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen. 

Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing. 

Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to  loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth. 

Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:

Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis 

Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community

Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or  in one of 60   countries where we work around the globe

Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door 

Shop or donate at your local Habitat ReStore

Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone. 

Visit habitat.org/open-door to learn more and get involved today. 

We’ve all been there: it’s 90 degrees outside, absolutely sweltering, and you’re walking home from a new smoothie shop less than a mile away from your apartment, and everything is melting. The smoothie in your right hand. The açaí bowl in your left. Your old, broken headphones slowly slip off your head as a song you’ve never heard before blares through the speakers. Your willpower is diminishing by the second, and no one is around to help you.

Okay, that might be a bit specific (and precisely what happened to me about an hour ago). Still, you’ve likely had a similar experience: an encounter that left you annoyed, frustrated, or feeling hopeless.

But what if I told you that, according to Mo Gawdat, a former Google executive who has spent the last 20 years researching the mechanics of happiness, you only need to endure that emotional roller coaster for precisely 90 seconds?

Meet the man behind the 90-second rule

It’s time to meet the man who is revolutionizing our understanding of our emotions by giving us all a science-backed way to hit the reset button on our worst days.

Mo Gawat isn’t your typical wellness guru peddling crystals and manifestation journals. This is a guy who spent years as Chief Business Officer at Google X, the company’s “Moonshot Factory,” where he pursued ambitious, high-risk but potentially world-changing projects that tackled large-scale global problems like climate change, healthcare, and communications. But his most profound discovery about human happiness stemmed from his darkest hour.

When Gawdat’s 21-year-old son Ali died from preventable medical negligence during what should have been a routine surgery in 2014, he faced a darkness that would define the rest of his career. A clear choice emerged. He could either let this grief consume him, or honor his son by dedicating his analytical mind to a path Ali had always encouraged him to pursue: spreading happiness to as many people as possible.

Seventeen days after losing his son, Gawdat sat down and began writing Solve for Happy: Engineer Your Path to Joy. Through this book, he uncovered a revolutionary truth: our emotions aren’t permanent. They have expiration dates.

The fascinating brain science behind your emotional meltdowns

Here’s where things get fascinating. When developing what would later be known as the “90-second rule,” Gawdat stumbled upon the findings of Harvard-trained neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor. Similarly, her research was also formed in the pressure cooker of an unexpected, dramatic life experience: the moment when she underwent a massive stroke.

As Dr. Taylor’s left brain hemisphere shut down, she gained unprecedented real-time insight into how emotions function in the body.

What she discovered is that when something triggers you, be it a spilled smoothie or a coworker’s passive-aggressive “per my last email” message, your amygdala (think of it as your brain’s overly cautious security guard) floods your system with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Your heart starts to race as if you’ve just spotted a bear and begun to run, your muscles tense up, and that instinctual fight-or-flight response surges through your body.

The brain’s amygdala. Photo credit: Canva

However, this chemical cascade has a built-in timer. As Dr. Taylor discovered, it takes approximately 90 seconds for these stress hormones to be flushed from your bloodstream. Meaning that, after that initial surge, the physical component of your emotional reaction is over.

But why doesn’t it feel like that? Why do we marinate in our emotions (anger, sadness, confusion, delusion) for hours, days, or more? That’s because, after those 90 seconds, we make a choice, usually without realizing it, to keep those emotions going by mentally rewinding and replaying the triggering event.

Why do we keep choosing emotional suffering?

“What happens is, you run the thought in your head again, and you renew your 90 seconds,” Gawdat explains. It’s like poking a bruise that’s formed on your knee, or hitting refresh on your personal stress response button. Every time you mentally revisit a stressful event, analyzing what you should have said, reimagining confrontations, and crafting the perfect comeback, you’re essentially retriggering that same potent chemical reaction that occurred in the first place.

So, while that 90-second episode of emotions ends quickly, we end up ruminating about what happened: over and over and over and over again.

This is more than a mere annoyance. Ift’s rewiring our brains in a bad way. Research shows that rumination doesn’t just prolong our bad moods, it intensifies them and can lead to anxiety and depression. We’re thinking ourselves into extended mental states simply by focusing too much on the past.

The three questions that reality-check your brain

What happens when you’ve successfully coasted through those initial 90 seconds but still feel like the world is out to get you? Gawdat developed a handy three-question reality check that serves as an emotional fact-checker for your brain:

Question 1: Is it true?

Gawdat claims that “90% of the things that make us unhappy are not even true.” Think about it: your partner seems distracted during dinner, and suddenly your brain spins an entire narrative about how they’ve fallen out of love with you. But how much of that is real? And what percentage of your little daydream can be chalked up to your brain being its usual dramatic self?

At best, our brains are excellent storytellers. The problem is that they’re prone to writing fiction and presenting it as truth.

So, the next time you find yourself spinning up a stressful “what if?” situation in your head, take a beat, and ask yourself a different question: “Is it true?”

Question 2: Can I take action?

If the answer to question one is “Yes, it is true,” then move on to Gawdat’s second question. Are there steps you can take?

If you have a real problem on your hands, then perfect! Channel that energy into solving it rather than drowning in it.

Question 3: Can I accept it and still create a better life despite it?

Here’s where things get tricky. If you can’t do anything about the situation, the final question before you becomes about “committed acceptance.” No, not passive resignation, but actively choosing to move forward and build something better despite the circumstances.

This can be difficult........

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