Image courtesy of Rumpers.

Everyone smiles.  From industrialized nations to remote tribes, studies have shown that smiling is universal.  Even more stunning is that people from all over the world smile the same way.  Even blind children begin to smile without seeing others smile.  It’s ingrained in the very code that makes us human.

Although smiling comes in many forms, most are actually fake.  In fact, there is only one smile that is genuine. When the corners of the mouth go up, the eyes narrow slightly creating crow’s feet, and the upper half of the cheeks rise, you are experiencing the Duchenne Smile, named by Paul Ekman, an emeritus professor of psychology at the University of California at San Francisco after Guillaume-Benjamin Duchenne, the French physiologist who first studied the muscle that surrounds the eye in 1862.

The Duchenne smile is the one true smile that is a direct result of feeling happy.  But, how do we FEEL happy?  When we receive or give a gift, or see our children smile and laugh, physiological changes take place.  Our hearts beat faster and the flow of blood increases. Skin temperature rises, which makes the skin slightly damper and our fingers tremble.  The experience of a compliment or gift is a trigger.  The trigger sets off changes in the body, which signal the brain to feel happy.

Although this may sound odd at first, try forcing yourself to feeling happy when your muscles are tense, your face is frowned and your brow furrowed.  The involuntary emotions cause our body reaction to signal our brain, which means that happiness arises as much from our body as it does from our thoughts.

The emotions associated with feeling happy are involuntarily controlled by our automatic nervous system.  This is why we cannot simply decide to be happy by influencing involuntary body function.  It is impossible for us to command our blood to flow faster.  We do, however, have the ability to bypass the automatic nervous system.  We have the ability to smile, even without a trigger.

Ekman’s work corroborated that if feelings can come from the body, then happiness can come from a genuine Duchenne smile.  Ekman trained his subjects to control the movement of the muscles that surround the eye to achieve the Duchenne smile.  The result was a signal of happiness without a trigger sent to the brain thereby proving that happiness doesn’t flow in just one direction, and smiling alone can make us happy.

I suggest that we take the work of Ekman to the next level.  If the bodily movement of smiling can make our brains experience feelings of happiness, then why not use the smile as a trigger for others.  What you put out into the world comes back to you.  The next time you are introduced to someone, just give your first name and watch what happens.  More likely than not, they will return the introduction with their first name.  Offer your first and last name, and you will receive the same.  Try it with a smile.  I’m sure you will find a smile in return.  This effect can influence your happiness and the feelings of everyone you come into contact with throughout your day.  By smiling more and passing it along, you truly put the Duchenne smile effect into action.

Tommy Galan is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain. He is the author of HappyUniverse.com, a blog dedicated to designing happy lives through exciting goals and healthy lifestyle.  A few of his many adventures include performing on Broadway, earning a Juris Doctorate, finishing marathons, and traveling the world.  He lives in New York City with his wife and son.

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Image courtesy of Hacksomia

Ahh, motivation hacks!

If you’re anything like me, you have tried dozens of motivation hacks in your life, with varying degrees of success. (Ever tried the one of spinning a dead cat around your head thirteen times in a graveyard at midnight during full moon? No? Weird, I thought everybody knew that one…)

Thankfully, your search is now over! You have reached Vlad’s Ultimate Motivation Hack Formula! (I was going to throw in a few other fancy words, like “passion” and “synergy”, but if I ever decided to trademark it, the paperwork would kill me.)

I’m not just going to throw a simple technique at you. Oh no. We’re going to dig deeper into the STRATEGY of motivation. And from there, I will help you build the ultimate Motivation Hack that works for YOU personally!

Okay, ready?

Why do you need a motivation hack anyway?

Let’s face it. If you’re looking for a motivation hack, that means there’s something you feel you HAVE TO do, or SHOULD DO, but you don’t feel like doing it.

Pause for a moment and think about it. It’s so obvious you probably never even considered it. And yet it holds the key to motivation.

When I was a kid I used to jump out of bed at 6 am on the weekend, all excited. Why? Because the morning cartoons were on! And yet during weekdays, I would be hard pressed to drag myself out of bed by 7:30.

Notice something? During the week, I HAD TO get up. On the weekend, I WANTED TO get up!

So if you’re looking for a motivation hack, that means you don’t really WANT TO do something. You logically know you SHOULD be doing it, but your emotions tell you otherwise. You associate pain with doing it.

In a moment, I will share the Ultimate Motivation Hack with you. But first, there’s one more thing you need to understand. It might even shatter your model of reality. I’m going to show you why bribing yourself is directly COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE as far as motivation goes!

Why bribing yourself doesn’t work:

Let’s say you have some writing that you want to get finished. But you don’t feel like doing it. So what would most people immediately do? Bribe themselves! They decide to stick it out, and then reward themselves with a cold beer or a chocolate bar or any other kind of reward.

Nooooo! That absolutely KILLS motivation in the long term!

“But it works!” I hear you say.

Well, yes and no. Bribing yourself might get the task done this time. But it also associates even more pain to doing the task, because you now see it as this annoying painful thing you need to get through to get your reward. The next time you want to do the same task, it will be even harder to get motivated.

Through bribing, you don’t get yourself to the point where you WANT to do something. You only reinforce the notion that it’s something you HAVE TO suffer through to get a reward.

Remember when I told you it’s all about what you WANT TO do vs. what you HAVE TO do? It’s a deep principle. Remember it every time you struggle with motivation.

Okay, now let’s move on to the grand finale! How to build your own motivation hack for every situation!

The Ultimate Motivation Hack

Hold this in mind – you want to get to the point where you WANT TO do the task.

The best way I found was… to make the task itself FUN!

Like this one time, I had to sweep the living room floor. I spent hours procrastinating and thinking up excuses for not doing it. Then I stopped myself! I realized I was procrastinating because sweeping the floor was bloody boring! (i.e. painful). So I thought about how to make it fun for myself, and I came up with a solution! I decided to make it more challenging!

I stood on one leg, lifted the other one up while bending my body forward (forming a T-shape) and swept the floor like that, hopping around on one leg! (I also started talking in weird voices and eventually fell over from laughing at myself.)

Don’t take yourself too seriously . In fact, making a fool of yourself is a great way to start enjoying the task again.

A couple of months back, I started really strugging with writing. It became a painful chore, and I even thought of quitting blogging. But when I stopped myself and thought deeply about the problem, I realized I simply started taking myself too seriously! I had built up a readership, and I started caring about what they thought. (As in, “What would they think of me if I wrote this silly stuff?”)

Then I realized it doesn’t matter. If somebody doesn’t like my writing style, they’re free to stop reading. Being myself is more important than impressing strangers. And once I realized that, and stop censoring myself, the floodgates opened! Writing became easy again, because I was having FUN while doing it! (Plus, I got a lot more positive responses from readers!)

So if you want to build a motivation hack for yourself, just remember: It’s about making the task FUN.

You can make it more challenging, or more silly, or more ridiculous (I had a friend in high school who hated how formal the essays had to be. One day he decided to instead make it AS FORMAL AS POSSIBLE, using incredibly long convoluted sentences and fancy words, to see if the teacher caught on to the irony. She never did…)

I’m not going to give you “the one hack”. Because no one technique works for every person in every situation.

Instead, I will let YOU create hacks that work for YOU in each particular situation! Based on the principles I shared in this post, you can create your own motivation hack for every situation. And THAT is the Ultimate Motivation Hack.

Vlad Dolezal is a guest blogger for PickTheBrain. Check out Vlad’s blog Fun Life Development for more fun and exciting personal development tips. He’s even got a few posts waiting there especially for you!

Image courtesy of: Clarity25

You dusted off your resume. Polished it up. Killed it in the interview. And Congratulations, you were hired!

Initially you are excited, relieved and proud – (as you should be!) – but as the starting date of your new position looms ever closer, often these first feelings are overshadowed by a growing sense of nervousness and anxiety, climaxing five minutes before you walk in that front door for the first time. Natural insecurities and doubts prevail: Why did they hire me? What if I don’t know what I’m doing? What if I don’t fit in?

Before you let these nerves get to you, it is important to know that if you care about this job even remotely these feelings are far more common than not, and it is a fact that everyone at the office you’re about to walk into had a first day there at some time or another. Having said that, though the first day on a new job won’t define your entire existence there (cumulative hard work and results will), it sets a tone that will either work for or against you, depending on how you play it. And like most things in life, a little upfront planning will go a long way to ensuring your ultimate success.

Getting There: “Nobody plans to fail, they fail to plan.”

Plan your route: Nothing is more important on that ominous first day than simply making it on time. Seems easy enough. But though you can count on your own punctuality, often times it seems like every other car on the road is conspiring against you. Plan for that. Plan for the broken down Civic in the middle of the intersection. Plan for the grandmother with Cataracts oblivious she is driving in the fast lane. Make sure you leave with ample time to get there and plan your route in advance. This is valuable time that can be used to get calm and focused, instead of weaving through traffic at break-neck speeds, cursing out everybody in you’re way because you’re now late.

Dress right:  When you’re looking good, you’re feeling good. Plan what you’re going to wear, being conscious of your new environment, the night before so you don’t have to make frenzied and hurried decisions in the morning. Putting on something that feels and looks good has a tremendous positive effect on our psyche and confidence, and is essential to a first impression. Conversely, wearing something ill planned or inappropriate can leave you feeling awkward and out of place all day.

Do your homework: Learn as much as you can about your new employer/company before you start – partners, managers, clients, any press on the company. This will allow you to get a sense of how the company works before you ever step in it. (This is also good advice for all jobs you’re interviewing for, so you can prioritize your choices should you start getting offers. Some companies will be a far better personal fit for you than others.)

Making a Connection:

The routine: Be vigilant of your new office culture – there are often very obvious hierarchies if you take the time to check it out. Every office has its little eccentricities and specific ways of doing things, the quicker you spot them the quicker you’ll be welcomed in. And remember to be flexible. Just because you did something a certain way in your past situation, doesn’t mean it’s going to fly here. New environment, new protocol.

Introductions:  Make a concerted effort to get to know your colleagues. Often co-workers will go out of their way to be welcoming on your first day. Be open to this. A warm smile and a firm handshake will go a long way. As well, if there are people that you haven’t formally met, introduce yourself. It is important to get to know people at all levels. Though you would never want to forget your superior’s names, it is just as advantageous to get to know the assistants, temps and interns, as more often than not they’re actually the ones getting things done and a sincere introduction by you will be noticed and appreciated.

Information: On day one remember you are student not a teacher. Know you know enough to be there (you were hired after all!) but also know enough to know you can always know more. Don’t regale your mentor with stories of the way you used to work, you’re in a new environment and that comes along with a whole new set of work practices. Inevitably as you’re being whisked around for a tour many names and information will be thrown out to you: You’re not expected to remember everything on day one, so be inquisitive and ask questions – be a good student.

The water cooler: Positivity breads positivity. Often in an attempt to make you part of the group, some employees will try and bring you up to speed on all the office gossip. While this can be funny and entertaining, try not to engage in this. Often conversations like this come back to haunt you down the line. Remember they’re not your friends, they’re your co-workers – be professional. Conversely, if asked about your old job, even if you had a really bad experience, pull from the positive – it puts you in a better light and generates far more long-term respect.

First Day Work Ethic: The first day at a new job is often like the first day back at school. There will be a lot of action, a lot of information, but you will probably be expected to get very little actual ‘work’ done, as you’re getting the lay of the land. This does not mean however that you should leave right at 5pm sharp. Symbolic actions like putting in that little bit of extra time, even if you’re not swamped right off the bat, are often noticed and appreciated. Slipping out 5 minutes early because you don’t have much to do will undoubtedly have the opposite effect.

Making Connections Last:

Ultimately you will be judged on your job performance and productivity. Work not only hard, but smart. Creating a comfortable, flowing work atmosphere is often imperative to maximum efficiency. Though you may have first day jitters, setting the correct tone – professional and engaging – from day one, will go a long way to helping create the best environment for you.

Finally, a special thanks to everyone at PickTheBrain that made my first day at work truly joyous!

In a 41-17 loss to the Minnesota Vikings football team near the end of the 2007-8 season, New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning threw four interceptions, three of them returned for touchdowns. But he would go on to lead the Giants through the playoffs and on to victory in Super Bowl XLII.

What accounted for Manning’s incredible turnaround? Psychologists would say it’s a trait called resilience. Resilience is the ability to bounce back after any kind of defeat and become a winner again. The ability to overcome adversity is considered a crucial element to success in life because troubles are something no one can avoid. When we know that circumstances can bend, but never break us, we gain the confidence to pursue difficult tasks with unreserved enthusiasm. We believe in ourselves. A lack of resilience is one of the chief causes of depression because it permits life to overwhelm us.

Clearly, having resilience is desirable. But is it something we can control? While some psychologists believe that at least a part of our ability to cope with life’s stresses is an inborn trait, most feel we can also cultivate resilience. Here are some ways how:

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Are you rationalizing your decisions? Let me answer that for you real quick. Yes, you are.

There, you can stop reading now. Really. That’s the whole article.

…
What, you want more? Okay, okay … let me dig into it in a bit more depth.

In this article, I will show you:

• Why we humans rationalize our decisions;
• The difference between what we think influences our decisions, and what REALLY influences our decisions;
• How being aware of this can help you make better decisions;
• How it can help you influence others, by appealing to the right motives.

Why We Rationalize

We humans rationalize our decisions. All of us. Every day.

But I can show you how to spot when you’re rationalizing your decisions, and how to discover the real reasons behind your decisions. Then I will show you how to use this to ACTUALLY make rational decisions!

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At any given moment, we are held hostage by something we seldom acknowledge—our thoughts. The things we think about the breakup of a romantic relationship, a fight with a friend, or even about something as miniscule as getting a parking ticket dominates our lives without us ever really recognizing it.

As humans, we have the unique ability to reflect on events and circumstances, and while that is a good thing, it carries with it, a risk– the way we think about things has a profound affect on how we feel. Negative thinking can adversely impact not only our mood, but our physical health, too. Therefore, it is imperative to examine what we are thinking and treat our thoughts as mere constructs that we have the power to harness with a little effort.

Analyzing our thoughts is particularly crucial for those of us who have the tendency to be depressed. This is because those of us who suffer from depression regularly form inaccurate thoughts that we convince ourselves are true. These irrational thoughts, which are repeated over and over again, are known to therapists who practice cognitive behavioral therapy as cognitive distortions. Mental health professionals disagree on whether cognitive distortions cause depression or whether depression causes cognitive distortions, but it is universally recognized that such patterns of thought make us feel terrible about ourselves.

Common Cognitive Distortions

There several different cognitive distortions or mind traps that we can fall into. Here are some of them:

Over-generalization: one negative thing occurs and you convince yourself that it is going to happen in all other similar situations.

Emotional reasoning: you feel a certain way, so you think it must be the truth.

All-or-nothing thinking: you see things in black and white. Either things are totally great or a disaster.

Mental filter: you only remember the negative things that have happened to you during the course of life and shut out all the positive things.

Should statements: you try to motivate yourself by dwelling on the things you think you should be able to do.

Mind-reading: you conclude that someone is thinking something negative about you.

Mental health professionals believe that there are about ten cognitive distortions to which depressed people repetitively subject themselves. But it’s important to note that you are not stuck and that these patterns of thought can be changed.

Changing Your Thoughts

One of the most helpful things you can do is to give all of your negative thoughts a reality check. For instance, if your partner has just ended a romantic relationship and you think that you will never be loved again, you can ask yourself, “What evidence do I have that I will never be loved again?” Since you’ve been in romantic relationships before this one, there should be no reason why you won’t find another partner who will love you when you are ready. In addition, you can think of all the friends and family members who still love you. In this way you can realize that you are committing the cognitive distortion of over-generalization because you are taking one event and magnifying it to apply to all situations.

Another way to battle cognitive distortions is to engage in reframing an event. Perhaps something negative happened to you, but you must ask yourself if anything positive came out of it. In the case of the end of a romantic relationship, you can tell yourself that you learned many new things from your ex-partner that have made you a much more interesting and well-rounded person and that you can bring this to your next relationship. If you can think along these lines, you might not feel as though you are at a dead end, but at the precipice of a new beginning.

Training your mind to challenge irrational thoughts and replace them with more accurate thinking is extremely difficult, particularly for people who suffer from depression. But the reward justifies the effort you will have to put into it. Instead of walking around feeling unhappy and that the world is out to get you, you’ll have a different outlook on life—one that will fill you with enthusiasm for the day at hand and not affect your mood when things don’t go exactly your way.

About the writer: Wendy Aron is the author of Hide & Seek: How I Laughed at Depression, Conquered My Fears and Found Happiness.

I was sitting in my car in bumper-to-bumper traffic and I was not happy about it. I was due into my office for a 9 a.m. meeting and I knew I would never make it on time. All sorts of thoughts started to run through my head. Wasn’t I a fool for not leaving enough time for my drive? What if my boss reprimanded me for being late, or worse yet, fired me? Why shouldn’t I be on time when my co-workers were going to be? As my mind raced from one thought to the next, I started to get a headache. My heart was thumping and the back of my neck was beginning to sweat. All in all, I felt terrible.

We’ve all been in situations where things don’t go according to plan. But that’s not what is important. What is essential is the way we talk to ourselves about these situations. Talking to ourselves negatively, like I was doing, can make us feel awful about ourselves and make a difficult situation worse. What if I had accepted the fact that I was going to be late and instead of worrying about the consequences and beating myself up over it, turned the experience into something positive? I could have switched on a news radio station and had something interesting to discuss with my co-workers when I arrived. I could have used the time to think about the things I was going to contribute to the meeting, so that I would have had something to tell my boss if I did arrive late.  Or, I simply could have put on some music that I enjoyed and did some deep breathing while listening to it.

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Many people find it hard to forgive. As we go through life, it’s inevitable that we’ll come across people who wrong us in one way or another. From the one who cuts you off in traffic to the one who puts you on hold and forgets about you, there’s no shortage of people out there who aren’t treating us exactly the way we’d like. Unfortunately, we’re rather limited in our ability to influence their behavior. But the good news is that we have a lot of control over how we react to them.

Why forgive?

First of all, keep in mind that it’s generally in your best interest to forgive people. Choosing to carry a grudge forever keeps you from ever repairing the relationship. Long after you’ve forgotten what the other person actually did, you’re still focused on being mad at them because you’re stuck in that habit. It’s very easy to blow something way out of proportion because you think too much about what went wrong instead of how to make it right. Don’t be too attached to your anger.

Another thing to consider is what you accomplish by not forgiving. You might decide never to forgive Hitler, and I can’t really object to that. In that case, many people would consider forgiveness to mean compromising their integrity. But what about someone who just made a rude comment about you? Do you really need to be mad at them forever? Is it really worth the stress and the higher blood pressure, or can you just let it go? Just because you might be justified in being mad, doesn’t mean it’s your best option.

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More and more people are becoming aware that they have two distinct minds–the conscious and the subconscious. We are generally more aware of the conscious mind, because we spend most of our waking hours there, while we spend our sleeping hours in the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is like the tip of the iceberg that you see above the water, while the subconscious is below the surface.

We think, reason, decide, compute, and reason with our conscious mind. That would make it seem indispensable and far superior to whatever the subconscious mind does. And until recently, the vast powers of the subconscious mind remained fairly untapped. As science continues to explore its depths, we continue to learn more about its capacity as the quiet dynamo behind the conscious mind.

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It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that limiting beliefs are, well… limiting. Duh, right?

Well, they’re not just limiting. They ruin lives. They keep us from being authentic and living the way we really want to live.

There are many times where I’ve wanted to say something, tell someone how I really feel. But I hold back. Why? Because I’m afraid of how they’ll respond. I’m afraid they’ll think I’m weird. What’s worse, is they might have similar beliefs. That could make things even more uncomfortable. So I keep my mouth shut. I stay quiet and try to forget about whatever it was that I really wanted to say. Or I just say something expected, something safe. And I feel like a little bit of my soul is repressed.

A more specific example is with my music. I play drums, djembe to be specific. I’ve always wanted to be a musician, and I’ve always liked rhythm. (Just ask my wife how much I tap on things.) For the longest time, I thought I didn’t have any rhythm. I thought because I was a white boy, it would be really hard for me to play the drums (white boys supposedly can’t dance, so why should they have any rhythm?). Anyway, I had all these limiting beliefs about what it was I could and couldn’t do and it held me back. I would practice and practice but I would still fumble and be off-beat. It wasn’t until I let go of my limiting beliefs about whether or not I had rhythm, that I started to really improve my playing.

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