The millions of problems with millions of dollars

Before you buy that lottery ticket for tonight's Mega Millions jackpot that is an estimated $640 million dollars, remember your mental health and what that getting that much money that fast can not only make you one of the happiest people on the planet, but it can also make you one of the saddest.
Looking quickly around the Internet, you can see the multitude of stories where people who won the big jackpots were miserable after.
Like this article in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. Mark Berton reached out to many lottery winners and contacted author Jessie O'Neill, who wrote the book, "The Golden Ghetto: The Psychology of Affluence,"
In the article, O'Neill explained that with that kind of money comes expectations form family, friends and even total strangers.
"There are a lot of personal expectations that come with the myth of the American dream that money brings happiness," O'Neill said. "It's a myth that our culture has propagated, and they say, 'What's wrong with me that I can't be happy with this money?' After about six months of golf, people will say, 'Is this all there is?'"
With tonight's drawing over half a billion dollars, you can expect that the winners of tonight's jackpot will have plenty of people coming out of the woodwork to try to get their piece of the pie.
There is also the story of Jack Whittaker in a 2005 Washington Post article where Whittaker lived it up to the tune of $50,000 strip club benders, and giving away money like candy until he went bankrupt.
So what should you do? What do you do when you look over those numbers and realize that six sets of numbers has just taken a $1 bet and turned it into $640 million?
The Huffington Post delivers a set of five pretty good ideas you should always remember. Here they are, recounted quickly.
1. Sign Your Golden Ticket
2. Don't Call Your Friends
3. Keep Your Anonymity
4. Find Yourself a Great Lawyer and Financial Planner
5. Consider How You'll Spend It  

Check out that link to get more in-depth into those five things, all of which are very good ideas.
Also remember that even if you do win the money, you are no different deep down then you were before. You are the same person with money or without money because you can lose your winnings just as easily as you won it.
Good luck everyone tonight, and remember to stay positive.

Holding a gun makes you think others are too

You know the feeling, the uneasiness of a certain part of town or a certain situation.
You get the notion that the people around you are holding firearms.
To counter the notion, you did your homework, got your license and carry a firearm yourself.
For safety.
But did you know carrying a firearm tricks your brain into thinking that more people around you are carrying firearms as well?
A new study from Notre Dame Associate Professor of Psychology James Brockmole, who is a cognition specialist, that will be published in an upcoming issue of Journal of Experimental Psychology: Perception and Performance says that when we hold a gun, we think we are not the only ones.

"One reason we supposed that wielding a firearm might influence object categorization stems from previous research in this area which argues that people perceive the spatial properties of their surrounding environment in terms of their ability to perform an intended action," Brockmole said to Medical News Today.
If you can perform an action in an environment, it tends to be the case that others in the same environment can do the same action.
With Oklahoma having 24,018 concealed carry licenses issued last year this new report makes one think about the affect that carrying a firearm has on the mind.

This finding could have broad-reaching implications, but also opens the door to our perceptions, that part of the brain that is unique to us all.
We shall see what this impacts the future of aspects of life like public safety or law enforcement.

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