My most dearest Shosh and Jaialai:
Watch the attitude. No one likes the dour and the negative. Be positive.
Have you noticed how interacting with negative people drains you while engaging with positive people lifts you up and inspires you? Let that knowledge guide your actions and behaviors. Be the “cup half-full” type of person to whom people are drawn.
Smile, even when you don’t feel like it. There’s magic in your smile, and the science to back that up.
How Smiling Affects Your Brain
Each time you smile, you throw a little feel-good party in your brain. The act of smiling activates neural messaging that benefits your health and happiness.
For starters, smiling activates the release of neuropeptides that work toward fighting off stress (3). Neuropeptides are tiny molecules that allow neurons to communicate. They facilitate messaging to the whole body when we are happy, sad, angry, depressed, or excited. The feel-good neurotransmitters—dopamine, endorphins and serotonin—are all released when a smile flashes across your face as well (4). This not only relaxes your body, but it can also lower your heart rate and blood pressure.
The endorphins also act as a natural pain reliever—100-percent organic and without the potential negative side effects of synthetic concoctions (4).
Finally, the serotonin release brought on by your smile serves as an anti-depressant/mood lifter (5). Many of today’s pharmaceutical anti-depressants also influence the levels of serotonin in your brain, but with a smile, you again don’t have to worry about negative side effects—and you don’t need a prescription from your doctor.
How Smiling Affects Your Body
You’re actually better-looking when you smile—and I’m not just trying to butter you up. When you smile, people treat you differently. You’re viewed as attractive, reliable, relaxed, and sincere. A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia reported that seeing an attractive, smiling face activates your orbitofrontal cortex, the region in your brain that processes sensory rewards. This suggests that when you view a person smiling, you actually feel rewarded.
It also explains the 2011 findings by researchers at the Face Research Laboratory at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland. Subjects were asked to rate smiling and attractiveness. They found that both men and women were more attracted to images of people who made eye contact and smiled than those who did not (6). If you don’t believe me, see how many looks you get when you walk outside with that smile you’re wearing right now. (You’re still smiling like I asked, right?)
How Smiling Affects Those Around You
Did you know that your smile is actually contagious? The part of your brain that is responsible for your facial expression of smiling when happy or mimicking another’s smile resides in the cingulate cortex, an unconscious automatic response area (7). In a Swedish study, subjects were shown pictures of several emotions: joy, anger, fear, and surprise. When the picture of someone smiling was presented, the researchers asked the subjects to frown. Instead, they found that the facial expressions went directly to imitation of what subjects saw (8). It took conscious effort to turn that smile upside-down. So if you’re smiling at someone, it’s likely they can’t help but smile back. If they don’t, they’re making a conscious effort not to.
Looking at the bigger picture, each time you smile at a person, their brain coaxes them to return the favor. You are creating a symbiotic relationship that allows both of you to release feel-good chemicals in your brain, activate reward centers, make you both more attractive, and increase the chances of you both living longer, healthier lives.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cutting-edge-leadership/201206/there-s-magic-in-your-smile
People are drawn to those with good attitude. So, have a good attitude.
Life is hard enough as it is for everyone. Why make it worse for yourself and those around you by displaying your frowns and angry faces? Smile.
More importantly, by having a positive mental attitude, you are mentally more open to the possibilities rather than restricting your focus to the limitations that hold back the dour and the negative. Success lies in the possibilities, not the limitations.
Thus, be positive, surround yourself with positive people, and work the possibilities. Be not limited by what is and that which restricts us — as unsuccessful people, who blames the world and others, are wont to do.
Look up. Look forward. Aspire for better.
That leads me to my second point: the folly of “good enough”. The question is good enough for what? Good enough to get you a job as a dishwasher? Good enough for admission to a crappy college where fewer then 10 percent graduate after 4 years of college?
Now, to be fair, to each his own. If that is your skill level, intellect, life situation, etc., there is nothing wrong with working as a dishwasher or attending a less selective college. (For example, I once worked as a waiter and a door-to-door book salesman to pay my way through college.) It is better than being lazy and uneducated.
However, those are not your limitations. You are both bright, hardworking, and imaginative boys. You have what it takes to succeed, but success will not come unless you work at it. (Now, success, like happiness, ensues and is not to be pursued — as Viktor Frankl posits — but that is discussion for another day.)
Always do your best under the circumstances. If it’s the best you can do given time limitation, resource limitations, etc., then — and only then — it is good enough. Those of quality and caliber will recognize your efforts and your winning attitude.
Too many in life do half-ass jobs and call it good enough. Good people also recognize these as the low-caliber people they are, and eschew them. Don’t be like them. Be extraordinary.
Today’s lessons comes with two caveats.
First, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. Like I said, do the best you can under the circumstances. We never have unlimited time to do anything in life, and the window of opportunity closes. Thus, do the best you can under the circumstances, then let go. Strive for perfection — within your time and resource limits, tolerance, etc. — but know that it is rarely attained. Don’t hold back and wait for the perfect. No one benefits from that.
Second, you are good enough as a person. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.
You have kind hearts and are of good manners and industry. Those are the things that truly matter in life. No matter our stations in life, our intellect, our abilities, etc., we can all be kindhearted, instead of cruel; we can all treat each other well, instead of rudely or brusquely; and, we can all work hard, instead of be lazy and reliant on the hard work of others.
Everyone has flaws. Everyone has room for improvements.
Life is the crucible in which we test our mettle and strengthen ourselves. Accept who you are at your core, and work to improve your skills and to improve life for yourself and for those around you.
Test your mettle. Strive for improvement. Be the Man in the Arena. Ignore the critics who live tepid lives, ridden with fear, and who kibitz from the comfort of their soiled and sunken couches.
You are the judge of you, and you know within your heart of hearts whether you are living up to your talents and expectations. Do your best. Don’t let others define you.
All my love, always and forever,
Dad
shoshandjaialai 