More Smiles...

According to the book Bluffer's Guide to Psychology by Warren Mansell (I know, don't ask, I was bored of the music on my iPod, so I listened to Jed Rubenfeld's psychological and somewhat fictional thriller based on Freud's theories of a murder mystery Interpretation of Murder, which led me to search for other such books, which led me here, sort of. So, anyway, keep reading...), Children laugh about 400 times a day, but adults apparently laugh only 18. Today I am sure I have laughed at least 18 times because my coworker is hilarious, but also because my daughter is the most purposefully (and sometimes not so purposefully) funny person I have ever met. So I was wondering if children laugh 400 times and normal adults laugh 18 times, if adults with children don't laugh more than a typical adult? I think you almost have to have a better sense of humor than average to have a child. I mean, anyone who has to stay up all night with a newborn, clean up spit up, throw up, and other such gross stuff has to have some kind of sense of humor.

So this made me wonder if adults with children aren't just more emotional in general than a typical adult. I mean, if children laugh 18 times a day, depending on their age, they also fall down and cry at least that amount. They also cry over toys, losing games, eating peas, etc. So essentially, they are living, breathing emotional roller coasters and I am just wondering if they are taking us along for the emotionally turbulent ride. I know there must be some reason that I am emotionally drained at the end of each day. So, I guess what is truly important is that the laughter outweighs the crying? In other words, there should be more ups in the roller coaster of life, than downs. So far, for me, there are...

Smile and Say Princess!

The Today Show just had a story recently about smiles in childhood photographs in correlation with the likelihood of divorce later on in life. Apparently the more you smiled in your childhood photographs can directly correlate to how well your marriage does. The theory, although there is nothing concrete, is that smiles are contagious and the attitudes of those around people who smile more are impacted for the better.

I thought this was an interesting story mainly for selfish reasons: Recently the new girl at work told another coworker and me that she thought my daughter looked "sad" because of the pictures I have hanging on my bulletin board at my desk. Mind you, she has never met my daughter, so she doesn't know anything different than what she has seen from those pictures. Obviously this is all about perceptions, but I can honestly say this never, ever occurred to me! I love my daughter and her smile, but artistically speaking, the pictures I love the best of her are the less traditional ones. I am soooo not a fan of awkward, cheesy school pictures that look like the child is being forced to smile at gunpoint. I do like pictures with my daughter smiling, but I especially like the ones that show her character, such as her "I am a princess and you should treat me as such" attitude or her fantastic sense of humor. That and it is very near impossible to get a candid picture of her smiling. When I point the camera in her direction, she constantly poses for pictures by doing her "pouty" look, or her "serious" look, or "surprised" look - you get the idea. So I guess, for the sake of her future relationships, we need to work more on her "happy" look. No problem! She has an incredible smile!

Another note on perceptions: I feel like I should have been more aware of how others view my daughter's pictures because this is basic human nature stuff here. For my work, I had to attend one of those personality seminars where they explicitly tell you that some 60% of your results will be what you think, but 40% is based on what other people think. The truth is, whether or not we like it, perception is everything. No matter what we see in ourselves, it does no good unless that is the image we are portraying to the outside world - often it is not. Often, we think we are this fantastic person that everyone should love, but in actuality we have idiosyncrasies that people really do notice. I can't speak for myself, because I am perfect (kidding, only kidding), but I work with people who definitely think they are much more agreeable and easygoing than they actually are. Anyway, it's all about perceptions and I am going to try my best to be more aware in the future!

The Power of Words...

So I was on the way to work this morning when the song "Creep" by Radiohead came on the radio. I was listening to a fairly edgy station, well, for public radio and I suddenly had a realization that I don't listen to normal radio that often. My husband has Sirius and I am usually listening to my iPod, kids CD's, or language CD's for my daughter, so I just don't really have the opportunity to listen to "normal" radio that often. Anyway...the point that I am trying to make is that while listening I noticed the radio station bleeped out the "F" word (Does Blogger let you say that word? Not sure) and I suddenly had an epiphany about language: We have the power to let language and words affect us. What if we just let people say the "F" word and other such words. Wouldn't these words lose their potency after awhile and, in turn, wouldn't these words lose the power they have over us? Why do we jolt when someone utters a swear word? Don't those "jolts" simply highlight the fact that these words have so much power in our language, which in turn allows the user of the words to have that much more of an impact on us?

I mean don't get me wrong, I swear my fair share, it's just that this fleeting thought I had about the power of language led to another thought about how this is true for a lot of things in life. The more we give in to these tactics that are designed to shock us, the more the "Shockers" will continue to get their kicks at our expense. For example, look at the way the media manipulates so many people into paranoia just for ratings. Or, what about teeny bop magazines that make little girls think they are less than perfect if they don't look like Taylor Swift? As long as we continue to let people get in our heads, they will. I mean, we might as well clean out some space in the insecure part of our brains and say "Hey, welcome, come on in." Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we as individuals or even as a culture allow people to impact how we think of ourselves and at what point are we going to take away the power others have over us? Another thing... What can we do to change this epidemic seeping into the minds of people all over the world? Sadly, I don't know... I guess I have some thinking to do...we all do. In the mean time, I recently rediscovered a relatively simple solution from my five-year-old daughter: "I'm rubber you're glue, what ever you say bounces off me and sticks to you." I mean, I can't really see saying this out loud to anyone, but there's nothing wrong with thinking it. It could be a secret mental inside joke used to repel negative thoughts. Who knows, it just might work!

Fear: Just Do it

Okay, so I was given an assignment by my Brief professor and was a bit anxious about it, so I relayed these fears to my professor in an e-mail. His response: "Please see the following link," which led to an Amazon.com page featuring the book Feel the Fear...and Do it Anyway by Susan Jeffers. It was a brief counselor's very brief way of telling me to get over myself. I laughed out loud at the e-mail because he is right. I mean , it's not that simple, but he is still right. I mean, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger, right?

So with that said... Sometimes the things that run through my mind don't make a lot of sense, but yet they still keep me awake at night. I guess that's what happens when a person has insomnia! Anyway... Recently I was thinking about what someone said about genetics and how everyone on earth at this moment got here because our ancestors were a little bit sharper than the rest of the pack, but then I was wondering where we are headed in a world that is changing to less caveman and club your dinner over the head to a world full of computer techies and corporate meetings. For example, there are a lot of people who are afraid of heights, right? This makes sense because being afraid of high places is your body's natural instinct to not want to fall down and die, but then, how (if natural selection got these people this far) are there people who are not afraid of heights? So I was thinking that these are the people who are willing to take risks and therefore discovered new lands, new foods, new medicines, etc. So you have these people who are here because they didn't fall off a cliff, but also because others were willing to take a chance and lived to tell about it. So with the new world as it is, the number one fear is a fear of public speaking. Is this a relatively new fear? I mean, clearly there were not public speeches being held amongst the cavemen and dinosaurs. Even the cowboys, who may have had public speeches, probably weren't timid about getting up in front of groups, picturing their audience in their underwear. So where did this fear come from? How do we as a collective group develop a new fear, just like that? It happens though. I mean, for a more obvious development of a new fear, look at World War II. People were building bomb shelters, having bomb drills in schools, placing innocent people in concentration camps, etc. It was fear and mostly likely fear that hadn't existed previously, but this had precipitating events that led to these fear. Public speaking fears just sort of popped up somewhere along the lines. I wonder...I bet some historian out there knows the answer, but until then, I just thought it was interesting...

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Another thing that crossed my mind today was how the DJ's on the radio were talking about the website DontDateHimGirl.com. I don't know anyone on this site, but I thought it was interesting hearing all of the callers talk about their previous relationships who they have posted on here. It's kind of sad actually because it kind of tarnishes people's reputations, but at the same time, it makes me wonder how awful these people must have treated these women to want to put this person on here. Anyway, interesting stuff...