Link: Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

A decade ago, I set out to investigate luck. I wanted to examine the impact on people's lives of chance opportunities, lucky breaks and being in the right place at the right time. After many experiments, I believe that I now understand why some people are luckier than others and that it is possible to become luckier.

Read the full article here... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/3304496/Be-lucky-its-an-easy-skill-to-learn.html

Contagious Love Experiment

Let me start at the begining…

I was in middle school when I saw 9/11 on the news. I saw the hole in the Pentagon firsthand. For months afterwards, I’d wake up early before school to watch the news and better understand the situation. I understood that there were people out there who wanted to destroy my country and hated my religion. My religion (church, religious school) promoted war and I made a deal with God that if the war was still going on when I graduated high school, I would be honored to enlist in the army as an infantryman.

Well, the war was still going on and I was somewhat glad that I hadn’t missed out on the action. I left for basic training in July of 06 and was deployed to Baghdad by Feb of 07.

I had grown up hearing ideas like “love your enemies”, “return evil with good”, and “judge not lest you be judged”. But I treated these sayings that the central figure of my religion taught as if they were just nice sounding lines, but not practical. But slowly, my excuses started to fade away. I learned that the military trains people to hate and dehumanize entire people groups, not showing sadness for the difficult task of “removing evil”. I learned that the Iraqis weren’t waiting for us with open arms, men, women, and children from the town we were in protested our presence. I learned innocent people die. I learned that it doesn’t matter what uniform you have on, it’s about what’s inside. And sadly, the military tries to rob you of what’s inside and the result is people treating killing like a joke and showing little care for human life.

Read the full blog here... http://contagiousloveexperiment.wordpress.com/about

Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy?

Incline Your Mind Toward Joy

“One evening a Cherokee elder told his grandson about the battle that goes on inside of people. He said, “My son, the battle is between the two ‘wolves’ that live inside us all. One is Unhappiness. It is fear, worry, anger, jealousy, sorrow, self-pity, resentment, and inferiority. The other is Happiness. It is joy, love, hope, serenity, kindness, generosity, truth, and compassion.”The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, “Which wolf wins?” The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.” ~ Marci Shimoff from Happy for No Reason

Read the full posting at...
http://personallifemedia.com/podcasts/503-philosophers-notes/episodes/47894-incline-mind-toward

Forgive

To tolerate someone else's mistakes is one thing. To forgive them is even greater.

www.thoughtfortoday.org.uk

Choosing to Live Fully

John is the kind of guy you love to hate. He is always in a good mood and always has something positive to say. When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would reply, 'If I were any better, I would be twins!' He was a natural motivator.

If an employee was having a bad day, John was there telling the employee how to look on the positive side of the situation. Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up and asked him, "I don't get it! You can't be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?"

Read the full posting here...
http://www.helpothers.org/story.php?sid=12901

Train Yourself to Be Positive in 5 Simple Steps

For a girl like me, being positive is not easy. When I think of the world, I tend to see it through a negative perspective, looking for the bad and ignoring the good. But, lately, I’ve discovered that it is possible to change that perspective. Earlier this year I decided that I was going to make a change in my life. I was going to start looking for the good, seeking the positive, and striving to make every day a joyful experience. As you can imagine, this wasn’t an easy task

Read the full post here...
http://calmandcool.com/130/be-positive.htm