Smile and the world smiles with you

Some people smile to make friends and they are right. New research suggests a good way to make a new friend is to smile. The visual display of positive emotions works because people are much more attuned to positive emotions when forming new bonds than they are too negative ones such as anger, contempt, or sadness.

Others smile to look younger and live longer, guess what they are wrong. When asked, most people would say that a smile takes years off your appearance. According to the latest study, it is quite the reverse. Research shows that, if you want to appear younger, a look of surprise is your best bet.

According to the latest study, smiling makes you look 1 year older. If you want to stay looking young, there are several things you might choose to do - exercising, eating right, and getting enough sleep. Also, you might try smiling less.

Smiling is typically associated with youth and vibrancy, and anyone who has ever watched a makeup commercial knows that. However, scientists have discovered that, if you smile, other people will, on average, rate you as older.

A new study from Western University in Canada, published this in the journal Psychonomic Bulletin and Review proves this point and probes a little deeper into our subconscious.

When the survey was over, the researchers asked the participants if they held the belief that they rated smiling faces as younger when, in reality, they rated them as older. 

From a psychological point of view, this is an interesting result. "People's beliefs don't necessarily correspond to the way they behave; they can hold a belief that's contrary to the way they behave," says Goodale. "This adds to that whole corpus of knowledge that one has to measure behaviour directly, rather than simply taking an attitude scale or a rating, because sometimes - though not always - you can be misled.

And then there are those, who so totally get a life, that smiling is all they know and they know that people react positively to your smile.

Turn, turn, turn, for everything there is a season

If summer resisted fall, it wouldn't really be summer or fall.

Better to celebrate the season you're in... especially those of your wonderful life. 

But maybe your life is not so wonderful now, maybe you’re in a season of transition, grief, conflict, illness, new challenges, or just trying to get by.

Ever tried to be a gardener? Many of have and those of us who have worked with the soil understand dirt holds a certain magic, cradling new life

Whatever season you’re in, there’s one way to live your season well: embrace it. Now, this doesn’t mean you have to love it; it simply means letting it be. Your past mistakes, your heartache, your circumstances, and the tension you feel right now in your season—every bit of it is part of your growing ground.

Here are some reasons to embrace the season you’re in:

1. Your season may turn into a time of growth if you are willing to dig in right and accept it. Fighting the seasons is like wearing shorts in the winter. I have done that but only when I have changed my winter for summer by changing hemispheres. Normally I would not recommend wearing shorts in winter.

2. Your season might be preparing you for what’s next.

After any struggle in life or battle with illness, we come out on the other side better prepared to face what is next. I talked to a person who had survived a fire with 40% burns all over his body. He said that his survival prepared him to face whatever would be thrown at him next. He was very positive.

3. Your season might surprise you!

Fighting your season and grumbling in your heart might make you miss the good things life is throwing at you: perhaps new opportunities, new relationships, new paths, or new dreams that are far better than anything you could imagine.

4. Your season may have something to not only to teach you, but also to teach someone else.

Productive relationships aren’t about us, and perhaps that trial you are going through was meant to grow you and others.

5. Your season may bring life-giving memories later on.

When my mother died, it was hard to cope, but she gave us a gift of herself through her journals and her diaries that she kept and which were shared with us after she died. Her death was hard, but through it, she gave us a glimpse of the person she was and I am thankful that she shared with us.

6. Your season may fly by when you begin to see it as a gift.

Now, let me say that this is hard to do. This is incredibly challenging. But those who accept the situation can perhaps begin to see a path through.

7. Your season may teach you an essential life skill: how to embrace change.

To grow what matters in your life, just as you grow flowers in a garden, get your hands dirty, digging in right where you are. Growing what matters takes doing something that is counterintuitive to how we usually operate: embracing change. We choose to embrace change, imperfect progress, and imperfect circumstances which allows us to embrace change.

8. Your season may help you come alive!

Humans need to grow, change, and learn over time, through different seasons—not all at once. The truth is, I like you am fearful at times I know I am not perfect but as I have faced many times of transformation in my life, I have learned to trust myself and embrace change

9. Your season will not last forever, but it might have something really good for you that you don’t want to miss by fighting the season you’re in, fighting the changes, or fighting what feels imperfect. Dig in right where you are.

For everything, there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted.

Remember, everything keeps getting better,

Family Tree of Vincent Van Gogh

His dizzy aunt ----------------------------------- -- Verti Gogh

The brother who ate prunes ---------------------------- Gotta Gogh

The brother who worked at a convenience store ----- Stop N Gogh

The grandfather from Yugoslavia -----------------------------U Gogh

His magician uncle ----------------------------------Where-diddy Gogh

His Mexican cousin -------------------------------------- -- A Mee Gogh

The Mexican cousin's American half-brother ---- Gring Gogh

The nephew who drove a stagecoach ---------- Wells-far Gogh

The constipated uncle ---------------------------------Can't Gogh

The ballroom dancing aunt ----------------------Tang Gogh

The bird lover uncle ------------------------------ Flamin Gogh

An aunt who taught positive thinking ------------- -- Way-to-Gogh

The little bouncy nephew --------------------------------- -- Poe Gogh

A sister who loved disco ---------------------------------- -- Go Gogh

The brother with low back pain -------------------- --Lum Bay Gogh

And his niece who travels the country in an RV --Winnie Bay Gogh

I saw you smiling. . .. there ya Gogh

Hindsight is 20/20?

Confirmation Bias refers to a tendency to look out only for information which supports our earlier beliefs or opinions about anything. Hindsight bias, also known as the knew-it-all-along phenomenon or creeping determinism, refers to the common tendency for people to perceive events that have already occurred as having been more predictable than they actually were before the events took place. So what exactly causes this bias to happen?

Researchers suggest that three key variables interact to contribute to this tendency to see things as more predictable than they really are.

First, people tend to distort or even misremember their earlier predictions about an event. As we look back on our earlier predictions, we tend to believe that we really did know the answer all along.

Second, people have a tendency to view events as inevitable. When assessing something that has happened, we tend to assume that it was something that was simply bound to occur.

Finally, people also tend to assume that they could have foreseen certain events.

When all three of these factors occur readily in a situation, the hindsight bias is more likely to occur. When a movie reaches its end and we discover who the killer really was, we might look back on our memory of the film and misremember our initial impressions of the guilty character. We might also look at all the situations and secondary characters and believe that given these variables, it was clear what was going to happen. You might walk away from the film thinking that you knew it all along, but the reality is that you probably didn't.

So, is there anything that you can do to counteract the hindsight bias?


Researchers Roese and Vohs suggest that one way to counteract this bias is to consider things that might have happened but didn't. By mentally reviewing potential outcomes, people might gain a more balanced view of what really happened.

Given the above, some of us still believe that only in hindsight, will the miracles become obvious, that we will see we were guided, and we knew there was order all along?

"Otherwise," as I once said, a long, long time ago, "it would all be too easy...