Doctor in neuroanatomy Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: one morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. She describes her experience, her feelings, her thoughts, her actions, in a very plastic and touching manner. Although it took her 8 years to completely recover from the stroke, the experience was priceless, as she discovered Nirvana, she discovered the real peace of mind, and now she knows that love and understanding can be the choice of each human, if we only wanted to. She thinks this message is worth spreading, and this is the purpose of my post here: get Jill’s words out there, so more people see that world could be looking different, if only we chose that.

I wanted to find out and I did an experiment: for two months, I did not call anybody (except my family, as they would not understand such experiments) and I waited to see how many of them would call me, just to see how I am, just to say “hello, I wanted to hear your voice”. During the experiment, I was not employed and I did not start any major project that may have attracted people to participate.

With nothing to offer and hidden in my house, I had a very big surprise: during the two months, only two persons called me to see how I am. Two!

When I used to work as marketing manager for a big company, I received such phone calls every day, from many people, just wondering “how are you, my dear?”, but in reality chasing my willingness to give them some projects to work.

When I used to take initiative and call people, they would respond gladly, the connection would be maintained. When I took no initiative, then I found out that very few people care about the others. Sometimes, even what seemed to be a 10 years friendship faded away facing my decision of not keeping those contacts anymore. When I remember the times when my friends and I were shopping for Born shoes and Coach bags in Vienna, this makes me sad a little bit, you know?

Here I am, worth three phone calls, and wiser: if you want connections, then keep them, don’t wait for people to call you, because they won’t and don’t make yourself any illusions they care for you. They don’t really care for anybody, life is rushing them too fast, so they don’t have the time to stop and think of people they like. Usually, they stop only to think of people they need. I don’t think this is good or bad, it’s just the way it is.

Then I put is the other way around: how many people do I call without wanting something, just to check they are OK? The answer is five. In this difference of three people between the called and the callers resides the disappointment.

So, how many phone calls are YOU worth?

You can reap these benefits if you know what a real smile is and learn how to create one.

In basic training, a salesman is taught to master smiling and have it end just as eye contact is made with the clientele. The reason is that it makes you look like a decent person. Additionally it puts the person being greeted at ease.

Let’s Get Real

Actually there are a total of 47 different individual facial expressions. The most commonly seen are smiling and winking. There is such a thing as a real smile.

Among the expressions, a less known but often observed are such expressions as the eyebrow wink.

As to smiling, it is even felt that babies have the ability to make this facial expression. This is based on 3-D scans of babies in the womb. It is interesting that most babies don’t have this ability after delivery until they are about 6 weeks old. Maybe it says something about how much pressure life puts on the new entrants into the human race.

So, what is a real smile?

Smiling is a facial expression created by the contraction of muscles near the ends of the mouth and can include or extend into the muscles near the eyes.

Most often it is an expression of delight, pleasure, happiness or love. For some it is an involuntary expression of anxiety as laughter can be some times. Smiling can be found in all cultures and can even be seen in children born blind from birth. It is a human attribute.

Smiling as a Stress Reducer

Here is the good news. Not only can it put others at ease, it can also do the same for you. By smiling our brains produce endorphins which are like drugs inside our body that help with physical and emotional pain and stress. They can even help produce a feeling of well-being and composure.

But, this only works if you have a real smile.

Real vs. Fake

So what is a real smile?

As stated at the outset, it requires the use of the muscles starting at the ends of the mouth and that extend to the eyes. The so called real smile actually has a name. It is called the “Duchenne Smile.” It is named after the French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne. If you’re a Doctor or Nurse you know his name from a Muscular Dystrophy he also discovered.

This is not a new science. His studies started in this field in the 1840’s.

It is a production of the autonomic nervous system. In other words, it is something that just happens involuntarily. So it is said the smile is real if it reaches the eyes.

A fake or voluntary smile used to show politeness or to feign smiling involves just the muscles of the mouth and not those extending to the eyes.

It is also known in literature as the “Pan American Smile” and the “Professional Smile”

How to really smile.

How can someone learn to produce a real smile at will?

Since it is an involuntary response, it is impossible to recreate it. However, it is possible to create a memory that will result in the feeling that will result in a real smile.

What was the happiest time in your life? What was one of the most pleasurable moments you ever experienced? If you’re thinking of that special moment at this time, you’re smiling a real smile. Why? That memory of that pleasurable moment is bringing it on.

Remember that feeling.

Now to perfect this technique, practice doing it. Walk into the break room or a group of people you associate with and just moments prior to your meeting, create a flash of that pleasurable moment in your memory. Watch as they read your body language and comment or query you.

The memories can be replayed from this morning or 30 or more years ago.

Learn to do that and you will learn the art of really smiling.
Learn to master the skill and you will find other things that will bring it on.

This is really quite a wonderful thing when you think of it. You will start your presentation with a pleasurable thought. You will end up with a smile that will put your audience at ease. You will release endorphins that help emotional stress which will help with performance.

It is a win-win-win situation.

So keep smiling, it is not only good for your health, it is good for your wealth.

And if you are depressed of too many extra pounds gained while eating with your new friends, remember that a grapefruit diet or any other weight loos method needs to be approved by your physician before you start it, so don’t buy into all sites claiming you can lose 10 pounds in 3 days and never gain them back. This is too good to be true, and it probably would trouble your metabolism.

Jonathan Steele is a Registered Nurse, Artist (Painter, Sculptor, and Photographer) and host of a public speaking site that helps visitors master public speaking skills. His expertise includes memory enhancement and stress reduction through diet, simple mental and physical exercises.

http://www.speechmastery.com/stress-reducers.html

Some sports would do good for your mind and body, so make sure you grab some fancy hot kicks and get the ball rolling.

Well, the honest answer is that I don’t know. All I know is that Agloco is the successor of AllAdvantage, a site that paid you for the hours that you and your referrals spent to surf the Internet. That site no longer exists; it disappeared some years ago, with the dot com crash.

The new system, called AGLOCO (an acronym for A Global Community) is founded by the same people who owned AllAdvantage. For the moment, the system is in beta testing, but people can sign in and start building their referrals network. All I can say is: the sooner, the better. Why not jump in and be one of the pioneers?

What if it does not work? It is completely free, it takes only two minutes to sign in and this is all the investment you have to make so far. Plus one more minute to validate the link in your confirmation e-mail (don’t forget to check also the bulk folder).

How it works: You get paid an hourly rate for surfing the net while having the viewbar installed, as well as for the people you reffered into the program and for those referred by them, down to 4 levels of referrals.

When you tell other people to join AGLOCO after you, do the following trick, in order to make sure they don’t forget to put your ID in: in all the links you send people to the sign up page, build the URL like this: http://www.agloco.com/r/BBBB3857, but replace my ID, which is BBBB3857 with yours (you’ll know it when you first log in AGLOCO after receiving the confirmation mail).

I hope this was clear enough. I wish all my readers to make a lot of money out of this.

Update: AGLOCO has failed in keeping its promises, so I no longer endorse it.

About the Author: Amirah, Intuitive Coach, Author, Speaker works with individuals who want to make positive life changes and
experience a deeper connection to self. Author of eBook, GET
Better LOVE and MORE of IT! Get a Free monthly newsletter at
http://www.soulmystic.com/newsletters.html
Email her at Amirah@soulmystic.com

(for some situations above, a book can be an alternative to iPod)

I read a post today, on Problogger, in which Darren Rowse brings into attention the power of the virtual space, which makes possible things such as successful associations or close friendships between people who never met in real life. He challenges the readers to name the five bloggers they would like to meet in real life. I see this invitation as an opportunity for me to thank a few people who changed the course of my life, although I never met them in person. Here is my list of bloggers I would love to have a chat with:

Later update: I was way ahead the times with this enterprise. Nobody saw the need to have a corporate blog in 2006 in Romania. Today, in mid-2008, even the country’s president has a blog!

I have a special mention here: many thanks to Steve Pavlina for his outstanding work. Actually his blog determined me two months ago to shift the direction of my personal business, from training and consultancy in real life, to blogging full time, with a strange certitude that I’ll reach some profit before all my savings were gone for good on the deep blogging waters. When I came across his blog, I spent about one week staring at his words and realizing that this is what I want to do from now on, at least for a while.
Yet, I would not want to meet him in person, because I have the strange feeling that he writes for a million people audience and not for one person at a time. I’m not saying this is bad, but it just happens that I’m not very fond of crowds.

If I’ll ever meet one of the persons on this list, I’ll remember once more that everything is possible. All we have to do is grab the opportunities as they pass by.

Other articles:
How many phone calls are you worth?
Give me something to do
Forgiveness Day: one small step to a better planet

One reader had this comment: “I don’t understand what’s wrong with negative thinking. Some things really suck and should treated or thought of as such.

I have a question here: if those things suck, then why should our feelings suck, too? Anger and frustration do not fix things faster, actually they do not fix things at all. Blaming also is not constructive. It doesn’t matter is we blame others or we blame ourselves, it is still a state of pure complaining, which prevents things from moving on.

What if, instead of thinking of the past, we shifted our thoughts to future: OK, this annoying thing happened; what can I do to fix it?
Let’s take for example Archimedes: what if instead of crying EVRIKA, he would have started to think: “Oh, I spilled water all over the bathroom; my wife is going to kill me!? We would have never heard about Archimedes’ law, would we?

My point here is that winners in life never complain or blame. They just think solutions and act, and this is routing fortune and happiness their way.

Thank you Naren for asking Questallia. The lack of sleep is really a problem, as if your body feels not having enough sleep, this can result in concentration problems, making you less efficient at work or even at home, with your family. Statistics show that you are not alone. Causes are various, though it seems that 65% of Americans are losing sleep due to stress.
In an earlier edition of The Hindu, India’s National Newspaper, Uday Murugod, consultant neurologist at Manipal Hospital, says that
sleep disorders are to be expected in a city that leads such a chaotic and fast life. A complicated lifestyle is a big contributor to sleep disorders.
Dr. Murugod says the cause for the sleep disorder has to be diagnosed before proper treatment can be given. “We need to analyze reasons for sleeplessness by process of elimination before we can diagnose the reason,” he adds.
So, in order to sort it out, some medical investigations would be the best. Meanwhile, there are some tricks for getting a better sleep which are worth trying:

• Practice a relaxation technique for 15-30 minutes before falling asleep
• Try not to smoke before going to bed
• Don’t go to bed with an empty stomach (hunger leads to a poor sleep)
• Give up coffee or other caffeine products. Even if you drink it in the morning, coffee affects sleep behaviour. If you think you can’t do it, check the article “how to give up coffee of Steve Pavlina. He is sharing his own experience of giving up coffee, and he has some good insights there.
• Exercise can induce sleep, but it should not be done in the evening, before going to bed
• Try to listen to some soothing music before falling asleep. A study has found that people sleep better and longer if they listen to soothing music at bedtime.
• Don’t refrain from buying the things you love. This happened to me once: I’ve seen a gorgeous pair of Born shoes in a shoe store and I didn’t buy it,because I thought it was too expensive for me. I was not used to spend that much on designer shoes or label clothing. Then I could not sleep all night long, fwearing that somebody else bought that pair of shoes which I liked so much. I went next morning and got my shoes, so I can get some rest.
  

If you want to know more about your sleep habits, you can take this test and see what is your sleep profile. It is free and it may reveal you some solutions for overcoming your sleep disorders.

It was an interesting, funny and instructive reading (which took quite a while to do), out of which I selected the following entries as my favourites: