SMILE !

This interesting video tells about how smiling can be beneficial to us.

Ron Gutman: The hidden power of smiling

How well you smile determines how fulfilling and long lasting your marriage will be.

How sincere you smile determines how successful you will be.

The span of your smile could determine the span of your life.

Humans are born smiling. Babies start smiling in the womb, and continue to smile during their sleep. Even blind babies smile to the sound of the human voice.

Even humans living in tribes disconnected from western culture, and also known for their cannibalism culture, would smile under circumstance that people like us would.

It's very difficult to frown to someone who smile. Why? Because smile is evolutionarily contagious, and it suppresses the control we have on our facial muscles.

Mimicking a smile and experiencing it physically would help us understand whether a smile is fake or real, so that we can understand the emotional state of the smiler.

"Even the simulation of an emotion tends to arouse it in our minds." ~ Charles Darwin.

Research has shown that one smile can generate the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2,000 bars of chocolates. The same study found that smiling is as stimulating as receiving up to £16,000 cash.

Smiling can help reduce the level of stress enhancing hormones like cortisol, adrenaline and dopamine, increase the level of mood enhancing hormones like endorphine, and reduce overall blood pressure.

Smiling can make you look good in the eyes of others. Research has found that when you smile you not only appear to be more likeable and courteous, but you actually appear to be more competent.

"I will never understand all the good that a simple smile can accomplish." ~ Mother Teresa

If you want to enjoy all the above...

SMILE!

Get More Sleep to Succeed?

The way to get more productive, more inspired, more joyful life, is getting enough sleep.

A high IQ doesn't mean you're a good leader. Because the essence of leadership is being able to see the ice berg before it hits the Titanic.

I need to get more sleep to be a more effective leader  :)

Arianna Huffington: How to succeed? Get more sleep

The Whole Health Cairn

Patients would get better from one symptom, and if we didn't treat the root cause, why they had that physical symptom in the first place, they just wound up getting a new symptom.

What really makes our body healthy? What really makes us sick?

What really matters to our health is...

• having healthy relationships
• having healthy professional lives
• expressing yourself creatively
• being spiritually connected
• having healthy sex life
• being healthy financially
• living in a healthy environment
• being mentally healthy
• having a healthy body

Your inner pilot light is that part of you, it's that esssence, that authentic deep true part of you, that spiritual divine spark that always know what's right for you. You're born it, it goes with you when you die, and it always know the truth about you and your body. It comes to you in whispers. It's you intuition. It's that beautiful part of you. It's your biggest fan, the part that writes you love letters. And that is the biggest healer you can tap into, better than any medicine, better than any doctor.

Find out more about "The Whole Health Cairn" from this video.

TEDxFiDiWomen - Lissa Rankin - The Shocking Truth About Your Health

3 Bold Steps to Transform Fantasy to Reality

"A solitary fantasy can transform a million realities." ~ Maya Angelou

What dream or vision do you want to turn into reality?

Watch this fantastic short video about the 3 bold steps you can take to transform fantasy into reality..

 

TEDxRainier - Patti Dobrowolski - Draw Your Future

Here are some quotes taken from the video:

You talk about your dream to your partner and your friends, but more often than not, you continue to do those same behaviours that keep you from making the change.

Research shows that the odds of you making a change in your life - 9 to 1. Even if you're facing a life threatening illness.

You can live the life you desire. It's right there in front of you. But in order to achieve it, you must first see it, then believe it, and then you must graciously ask and train your brain, to help you execute your vision.

How do we see our vision? Through picture. A picture can create movements. A picture can unite nations. A picture can pull at your heart, and fill you with a deep desire to do something.

We remember things better when they are attached to a picture, 65% better to be exact.

The left side of your brain, as you know, houses the critique, who is forever trying to keep you safe from harm, make sure you don't do anything dangerous or stupid.

Using your imagination activates the right side of your brain, which makes you creative and filled with possibilities.

You get the most power when you paint your own picture. You need to soak it in. You have to fill it with colour. You have to fill it with emotion. You have to get inside of it, as if you're on the inside looking out.

All you have to do is look at the picture, and close your eyes. This allows the brain to recycle whatever it sees, and reconstruct it, add to it everything you ever seen, heard, experienced or fantasized about. And then it will serve you up with the best possible solution. 

What's the boldest thing you can do to get from where you are to where you want to be? 

See it.  Believe it.  Act on it.

Start drawing your future now!

10 Minutes of Mindfulness A Day

Just 10 minutes a day to make our lives better. I'll try this!

 

 

Andy Puddicombe: All it takes is 10 mindful minutes

Some quotes taken from this video:

We live in an incredibly busy world. The pace of life is often frantic, our mind is always busy, and we're always doing something.

When did you last take any time to do nothing?

Our mind is our most valuable and precious resource which we experience every single moment of our life...and yet we don't take any time off to take good care of it.

The sad fact is that we are so distracted that we no longer present in the world in which we live, we miss out on the things that are most important to us.

There was a research paper that came out of Harvard recently. It said on average our minds are lost in thought almost 47% of the time. At the same time, the mind wandering is also a direct cause of unhappiness. We're not here for that long anyway. But to spend almost half of our life lost in thought and potentially quite unhappy, this kind of seems tragic.

Most people assume that meditation is all about stopping thoughts, getting rid of emotions, somehow controlling the mind, but actually it's quite different from that. It's more like stepping back and seeing the thought clearly, witnessing it coming and going in motions. And it's coming and going without judgments, but with a relaxed focused mind.

Meditation offers the opportunity, the potential to step back and to get a different perspective, to see that things aren't always the way they appear.

We can't change every single little thing in life, but we can change the way we experience it. That's the potential of meditation, of mindfulness...all you need to do is take 10 minutes out a day, to step back to familiarize yourself with the present moment, so that you get to experience a greater sense of focus, calm and clarity in your life.

Damaging Parenting Styles

It is important to know that sometimes what we do to/for our Generation iY children may not be good for them.

Here are 8 damaging parenting styles which this book has highlighted:

1. Helicopter Parents
• They hover over their kids obsessively, controlling everything their children do.
• Their kids are not allowed the privilege of learning to fail and persevere.
2. Karaoke Parents
• They try too hard to be cool in order to impress and be buddies to their children.
• Their kids are not given clear parameters that build security and self-esteem.
3. Dry-Cleaner Parents
• They drop their kids off for others to raise.
• Their kids don't get the mentoring and personal face-to-face time that they need.
4. Volcano Parents
• They will write papers and do homework for their children, then storm into the school office when the child gets a poor grade.
• They have unrealized dreams from their past, and try to fulfill them through their children.
5. Dropout Parents
• They let their kids down by quitting on the effort to raise their kids.
• They fail to provide a healthy role model of finishing what they start.
6. Bullied Parents
• They can't stand up to their kids.
• They lack the courage and strength to lead their strong-willed children and prepare them for a potentially harsh adult world.
7. Groupie Parents
• They treat their kids like rock stars.
• They fail to realize that kids need leaders, not servants.
8. Commando Parents
• They offer more rules than relationship to their kids.
• They are focused on attaining compliance and perfection instead of growth and improvement.

Do understand that these parenting styles are not doing the children any good. It's never too late to change. Be a leader to your children, find out what they want to be, and provide them mentoring in realizing their potential.

Your children deserve the same childhood that you have been through, which had actually groomed you to become who you are today.

Shut Up and Listen!

Thinking of helping people?

Instead of patronizing and paternalizing people, why not for once, learn how to shut up and listen to what the people have to say about what they want to do for their lives?

This video gives a new perspective in what works best in terms of helping people achieve their potential.

 

Ernesto Sirolli: Want to help someone? Shut up and listen!

Here are some important quotes taken from the video:

Above all the economic development, if people do not wish to be helped, leave them alone. This should be the first principle of aid. The first principle of aid is RESPECT.

I decided, when I was 27 years old, that I would only respond to people. And I invented the system called enterprise facilitation, where you never initiate anything, you never motivate anybody, but you become the servant of the local passion, the servant of local people who have a dream to be better person. So what you do, you shut up, you never arrive in the community with any ideas, and you sit with the local people, we don't work from offices, we meet at the café, we meet at the pub, we have zero infrastructure. And what we do, we become friends, and we find out what that person wants to do.

The most important thing is passion. You can give somebody an idea. If that person doesn't want to do it, what are you going to do?

The passion that the person has for his own growth is the most important thing. And then we help them go find the knowledge. 

Nobody in the world can succeed alone. The person with the idea may not have the knowledge, but the knowledge is available.

There is no point making people do something they don't want to do, even if that something could be beneficial to them, because at the end of the day, it may not be something that they are looking for and they won't appreciate it.

RESPECT their needs.