3 Habits of Positive People

1. Have an attitude of gratitude (they're appreciative/thankful).
2. Act on what they have control over and let go of what they don't.
3. Smile more.

Decide to Think Positive

"...the mind is a powerful thing and its power can be used to make us happy or miserable. We can concentrate on how the world has done us wrong or the ways it does right. We can focus on where we're stuck or how we're free. We can take the opportunity to notice the ordinary miracles around us. We can find ways to truly enjoy, even relish, the moments of our lives." ~M.J.Ryan, The Happiness Makeover

"How has God used you today?

Artist and professor Reinhold Marxhausen used to tell his students that they were tools in God's hands, and he'd ask them "How has God used you today?" If an artist has a good tool, he uses it a lot, to the point the tool becomes well-worn and very familiar. A tool is not made to just sit in a toolbox, ready to work, but not being used.
~Josh Duncan, http://marxhausen.blogspot.com

What does happiness depend on?

"Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have;
it depends solely on what you think."
~Dale Carnegie

Great formula for easing stress

1. If you don't like something, change it
2. If you can't change it, CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK ABOUT IT!

What are you waiting for?

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." - Anne Frank

Be Constructive

“We have enough people who tell it like it is- now we could use a few who tell it like it can be. ”
~Robert Orben (born 1927); magician, comedy writer

This quote brought to you by The Foundation for a Better Life at http://www.values.com

Which is more important to you?

“You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both”

 ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

all the good things

“When you wish someone joy, you wish them peace, love, prosperity, happiness...
all the good things.”

~Maya Angelou

Enjoy others and you will enjoy life

“Who is the happiest of men? He who values the merits of others, and in their pleasure takes joy, even as though t'were his own.”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Love is Vulnerable

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”

 ~C.S. Lewis

You bring me joy

I’ll be the first to admit it. Joy is a hard thing, especially this time of year. Joy is a sense of well being. If you’re like me, you don’t always handle stress well, or you suffer from bouts of depression. But you see, that’s all the more reason we need true joy.

French Philosopher Jean Paul Sarte once said that "Hell is other people." That may seem that way sometimes, but that's also pretty selfish and negative attitude.

And as a matter of fact, the physiological and neurological truth may exactly the opposite. Science seems to bear out the contention that we are here for each other, we're meant to be in relationship with other people- friends, family, co-workers, mentors, mentees, lovers, and casual acquaintances... we need them and they need us.
 

Where did I come up with this idea? My former Vice Principal. She's now a family counselor. She used to be a school counselor. She explained to me once that the true definition of joy is being in meaningful and reciprocated love-relationships. She says that joy is being glad to be with someone who’s glad to be with you.

“Having enough joy strength is fundamental to a person’s well being. We now know that a 'joy center' exists in the right orbital pre-frontal cortex of the brain. It has executive control over the entire emotional system. When the joy center has been sufficiently developed it regulates emotions, pain control and immunity centers; it guides us to act like ourselves; it releases neurotransmitters like dopamine and seratonin; and it is the only part of the brain that overrides the main drive centers -food and sexual impulses, terror and rage.*”

*Page 12, The Life Model; Living from the Heart Jesus Gave You, by Dr. James Friesen, Dr. James Wilder, Anne Bierling, Rick Koepke and Maribeth Poole. © 2000 Shepherd’s House, Inc. ISBN# 0-9674357-0-6


So the next time you're feeling down, don't think about a "happy place," try thinking about a person who makes you happy, a great aunt, a best friend, your grandpa, your children, a favorite teacher- anyone you remember always being excited to see. That might just activate your brain's joy center and bring you back to joy.

But don't be a joy hoarder. Try to deliberately perk up when you see people. Smile, open your eyes a little wider, say their name. This is powerful for teachers and parents especially, but everybody needs to be enjoyed.

"Happy to see you" shouldn't just be a flirtatious innuendo, it should be a way to make meaningful connections and a way to help each other through each day. Life isn't easy, after all, why not make it a little easier by making others feel like you're glad that you get to be with them?!

Weisenheimer

Be happy
It's one way
of being wise
~Colette*

*I have no idea who Colette is, I just saw this today on my wife's Mary Engelbreit calendar so I'm using it. My wife thinks that Colette is probably just one of Engelbreit's friends, maybe a lunch buddy or something. Whatever.

Try some Smile therapy

Originally posted on 'Prophet, Priest, and Pirate' in December 2008

“Sometimes your joy is the source of your smile,
but sometimes your smile can be the source of your joy.”
~Thich Nhat Hanh

"The French neurologist Guillaume Duchenne mapped 100 facial muscles in 1862. He pointed out that false, or even half-hearted, smiles involved only muscles of the mouth. But "the sweet emotions of the soul," he said, activate the pars lateralis muscle around the eyes.

Since then, physiologists have talked about the Duchenne marker in a smile. It's a slight crinkling of crows-feet and a droop in the eyelid toward the temples -- along with a lift of the cheeks and the corners of the mouth. You know the sign. You recognize true delight in a friend's face.

Now psychologist Paul Ekman has gone back to the smile and found out something very important about it. The Duchenne smile, it seems, is accompanied by increased activity in the left prefrontal cortex -- known to be the seat of positive emotions." ~by John H. Lienhard, The Engines of Our Ingenuity

That's right, the very act of smiling activates neurons in your brain that can help elevate your mood. Sounds absurd, but it's true. And, Duchenne would argue that you can sense when someone is just pretending to be happy or if they're pretending to be glad to see you just by looking at them. A few years back, I wrote about how what joy really is. Joy really, is being connected to others, being in relationship. Duchenne, Ekman and Lienhard would probably agree that joy is that "I'm so glad to see you" glint in one's eye.

No wonder the blessing in Numbers 6:24 says "may God's face shine upon you, smile on you, and look favorably upon you." I know when my children are excited that I've come home from work it makes my face "light-up." God is always glad to be with us, He loves us so much, just thinking about us makes Him happy.

Psychologists recommend interacting with others rather than isolation when we're depressed. No wonder. Joy is about feeling connected and unconditionally accepted.

But it's not just something you receive. Joy is one of the greatest gifts that you can give. Doctors and scientists have also discovered a thing called "mirror neurons." When you see someone with a genuine smile, it triggers the smile neurons in your own brain. When your parents warned you that if you lie down with dogs, you pick up fleas, they mean that if you hang out with negative people, you pick up negative attitudes yourself. If you're having trouble with the blues, surround yourself with positive, upbeat people and sooner or later, you'll probably start to come around too.

Likewise, if you want to affect the emotional climate around you, smiling and being positive is a great way to start.

Remember that scene in the movie 'You've Got Mail,' where Meg Ryan tries to use a credit card in the cash only lane of a supermarket and Tom Hanks comes to her rescue by treating the cashier with good manners, kindness and a smile? One thing about joy is that it is something you share. If others see you smiling and experience you as warm, they are more likely to believe you are a nice person and more likely to comply with your requests.

“There is now compelling evidence that smiling causes people to feel happy. Requiring people to smile, no matter how they really feel at first, results in increased positive feelings; frowning conversely decreases positive feelings. Robert Zajonc and his colleagues show that smiling leads to physiological changes in the brain that cool the blood, which in turn makes people feel happy." ~Gretchen Rubin, The Happiness Project

---

Anderson, C.A. “Temperature and Aggression: Ubiquitous Effects of Heat on the Occurrence of Human Violence”, Psychological Bulletin106 (1989): 74-96.
Zajonc, R. B., S. T. Murphy, & M. Inglehart, “Feeling and Facial Efference: Implications of the Vascular Theory of Emotion”Psychological Review 96 (1989): 395-416.

Who can you make happy today?

Feeling Blue? Just Sing this Song!

Hey Mr Grump Gills-
You know what you gotta do when life gets you down?
Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming
Just keep swimming swimming swimming
What do we do we swim, swim, swim
OH HO HO How I love to swim
When you WAAAAAANNTTT to swim you want to swim

Confidence

"You have to have confidence in

your ability, and then be tough
enough to follow through."
~Rosalyn Carter

It's that 90% that matters

Attitude Adjustment

“Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.” ~Kahlil Gibran

"Poetry is not the expression of personality 

but an escape from personality." ~T.S.Eliot

In honor of April, National Poetry Month,

I thought I'd share some of my own- such as it is 

(thus the title, Max Nix is German for "not much,"
we Midwesterners are known for our self-effacing modesty).

I hope that some of it may bring you joy!

Doc's poetry on Ted's Blog

Doc's poetry on Goodreads

Doc (Ted) on Lulu Poetry

Doc on OriginalPoetry.com 

But there is so much better poetry out there, so don't just read mine-

Poets.org

Poets&Writers

Poetry180

PoetryDaily

Its not what happens to you

"Its not what happens to you
that determines
how far you will go in life;
it is how you handle
what happens to you."

~Zig Ziglar