My World..... Your World.... Together in this World... !!!

You Are Tired (I Think) by ee cummings

2012-02-01T21:38:00.001Z

You are tired,

(I think)

Of the always puzzle of living and doing;

And so am I.

Come with me, then,

And we’ll leave it far and far away—

(Only you and I, understand!)

You have played,

(I think)

And broke the toys you were fondest of,

And are a little tired now;

Tired of things that break, and—

Just tired.

So am I.

But I come with a dream in my eyes tonight,

And knock with a rose at the hopeless gate of your heart—

Open to me!

For I will show you the places Nobody knows,

And, if you like,

The perfect places of Sleep.

Ah, come with me!

I’ll blow you that wonderful bubble, the moon,

That floats forever and a day;

I’ll sing you the jacinth song

Of the probable stars;

I will attempt the unstartled steppes of dream,

Until I find the Only Flower,

Which shall keep (I think) your little heart

While the moon comes out of the sea.

Love Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda

2011-12-06T23:14:00.003Z

I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love you as the plant that never blooms

but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;

thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,

risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.

I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;

So I love you because I know no other way

than this: where I does not exist, nor you,

so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,

so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

we are 7 bilion!!!

2011-12-02T21:08:00.000Z

Recently, the world's population surpassed the 7 billion mark. Highlighting a few surprising figures, this infographic illustrates the path to 7 billion and what we can expect in the future.

Created by: Masters Degree Online

Google it!

2011-11-26T18:35:00.003Z

It goes without saying, Google is a powerful tool. Many are not aware of the shortcuts and tricks that help define a Google search. This infographic lays out a few tips that enhances a search when you want to "Google it."

Created by: HackCollege

Free your feet!

2011-11-14T22:43:00.003Z

The tendency to equip your feet with the latest running shoes may result in a few health problems. In fact, running in running shoes exerts more strain on joints than walking in high-heels! This graphic exposes a few negative affects of using running shoes

Created by: X Ray Technician Schools

What might happen without the Digital Promise Infographic

2011-11-09T22:14:00.000Z

Educators are challenged to prepare future generations with skills to keep up with current and future jobs. The "Digital Promise" is a partnership that will help prepare these future generations. What would happen if this promise is not kept?

Created by: Online Schools

Mythbusters

2011-11-05T11:19:00.000Z

"Mythbusters" is a popular show where the truth behind common myths are explored. Myth-busting also occurs within educational research and departments. This graphic highlights common myths discovered by those in the academia field.

Thanks Peter Kim

Created by: Online PhD

Infographic: Generation Mobile

2011-10-31T23:16:00.000Z

We are all aware of cell phone use in everyday life, but how are cell phones, and smartphones, shaping student lives? You may find some interesting stats from this graphic, detailing mobile use by students.

Created by: HackCollege

Peter Kim
Twitter.com/awesomepeter

Why Wealth Insurance is Still Unaffordable.

2011-10-30T17:25:00.000Z

Created by: Medical Billing and Coding Certification

Best Schools in America

2011-10-24T20:36:00.000+01:00

Social Media and internet interaction is large part for online businesses to be successful. The same can be said for education. Universities and colleges have dived into Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, adding value to their online presence. This infographic ranks educational sites based on a number of web statistics. Be sure to try out the interactive part at the bottom.

Thanks to Peter Kim

Created by: Best Education Sites

World Food Crisis

2011-10-18T22:52:00.000+01:00

A major issue in recent news is global food shortage. How concerning is this issue? Alarming statistics on global food shortage and the amount of food wasted are detailed in this infographic.

Created by: Public Health Degree

Planet Text: How sms messaging is changing the world

2011-10-11T22:37:00.001+01:00

The use of text messaging has noticeably been a standard. The rise in convenience of texting has also made an impact around the world. This infographic illustrates the astounding numbers behind text messaging and its implemented uses for medicine, government and banking.

Created by: MBA Online

Thanks to:
Peter
Twitter.com/awesomepeter

How important are taxes?

2011-10-04T23:04:00.002+01:00

Taxes have always been a political debate, but how important are taxes? U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren recently addressed this issue, highlighting the affects among business, government and the people. This infographic details facts and statistics, while breaking down her quotes.
Thanks Peter Kim
Twitter.com/awesomepeter

Created by: Online MBA Programs

Infographic: how to Get a Job in Tech

2011-09-27T22:41:00.001+01:00

Google, Apple and Facebook are few of the highly sought out companies to work for, but how often are they hiring and how do you get a job there? This infographic details the types of positions available and what may help land a job at one of these reputable tech companies.

Thank you Peter Kim for your wonderfull infographics!

Created by: Masters Degree

Cheaters: Students and Professionals

2011-09-24T16:35:00.002+01:00

Created by: Online Masters Degree

Thanks to Peter Kim
www.Twitter.com/awesomepeter

In my mind

2011-09-22T16:53:00.001+01:00

Psychological Properties Of Colours

2011-08-30T17:51:00.003+01:00

There are four psychological primary colours - red, blue, yellow and green. They relate respectively to the body, the mind, the emotions and the essential balance between these three. The psychological properties of the eleven basic colours are as follows.
RED. Physical Positive: Physical courage, strength, warmth, energy, basic survival, 'fight or flight', stimulation, masculinity, excitement. Negative: Defiance, aggression, visual impact, strain. Being the longest wavelength, red is a powerful colour. Although not technically the most visible, it has the property of appearing to be nearer than it is and therefore it grabs our attention first. Hence its effectiveness in traffic lights the world over. Its effect is physical; it stimulates us and raises the pulse rate, giving the impression that time is passing faster than it is. It relates to the masculine principle and can activate the "fight or flight" instinct. Red is strong, and very basic. Pure red is the simplest colour, with no subtlety. It is stimulating and lively, very friendly. At the same time, it can be perceived as demanding and aggressive.
BLUE. Intellectual. Positive: Intelligence, communication, trust, efficiency, serenity, duty, logic, coolness, reflection, calm. Negative: Coldness, aloofness, lack of emotion, unfriendliness. Blue is the colour of the mind and is essentially soothing; it affects us mentally, rather than the physical reaction we have to red. Strong blues will stimulate clear thought and lighter, soft blues will calm the mind and aid concentration. Consequently it is serene and mentally calming. It is the colour of clear communication. Blue objects do not appear to be as close to us as red ones. Time and again in research, blue is the world's favourite colour. However, it can be perceived as cold, unemotional and unfriendly.
YELLOW. Emotional Positive: Optimism, confidence, self-esteem, extraversion, emotional strength, friendliness, creativity. Negative: Irrationality, fear, emotional fragility, depression, anxiety, suicide. The yellow wavelength is relatively long and essentially stimulating. In this case the stimulus is emotional, therefore yellow is the strongest colour, psychologically. The right yellow will lift our spirits and our self-esteem; it is the colour of confidence and optimism. Too much of it, or the wrong tone in relation to the other tones in a colour scheme, can cause self-esteem to plummet, giving rise to fear and anxiety. Our "yellow streak" can surface.
GREEN. Balance Positive: Harmony, balance, refreshment, universal love, rest, restoration, reassurance, environmental awareness, equilibrium, peace. Negative: Boredom, stagnation, blandness, enervation. Green strikes the eye in such a way as to require no adjustment whatever and is, therefore, restful. Being in the centre of the spectrum, it is the colour of balance - a more important concept than many people realise. When the world about us contains plenty of green, this indicates the presence of water, and little danger of famine, so we are reassured by green, on a primitive level. Negatively, it can indicate stagnation and, incorrectly used, will be perceived as being too bland.
VIOLET. Spiritual Positive: Spiritual awareness, containment, vision, luxury, authenticity, truth, quality. Negative: Introversion, decadence, suppression, inferiority. The shortest wavelength is violet, often described as purple. It takes awareness to a higher level of thought, even into the realms of spiritual values. It is highly introvertive and encourages deep contemplation, or meditation. It has associations with royalty and usually communicates the finest possible quality. Being the last visible wavelength before the ultra-violet ray, it has associations with time and space and the cosmos. Excessive use of purple can bring about too much introspection and the wrong tone of it communicates something cheap and nasty, faster than any other colour.
ORANGE. Positive: Physical comfort, food, warmth, security, sensuality, passion, abundance, fun. Negative: Deprivation, frustration, frivolity, immaturity. Since it is a combination of red and yellow, orange is stimulating and reaction to it is a combination of the physical and the emotional. It focuses our minds on issues of physical comfort - food, warmth, shelter etc. - and sensuality. It is a 'fun' colour. Negatively, it might focus on the exact opposite - deprivation. This is particularly likely when warm orange is used with black. Equally, too much orange suggests frivolity and a lack of serious intellectual values.
PINK. Positive: Physical tranquillity, nurture, warmth, femininity, love, sexuality, survival of the species. Negative: Inhibition, emotional claustrophobia, emasculation, physical weakness. Being a tint of red, pink also affects us physically, but it soothes, rather than stimulates. (Interestingly, red is the only colour that has an entirely separate name for its tints. Tints of blue, green, yellow, etc. are simply called light blue, light greenetc.) Pink is a powerful colour, psychologically. It represents the feminine principle, and survival of the species; it is nurturing and physically soothing. Too much pink is physically draining and can be somewhat emasculating.
GREY. Positive: Psychological neutrality. Negative: Lack of confidence, dampness, depression, hibernation, lack of energy. Pure grey is the only colour that has no direct psychological properties. It is, however, quite suppressive. A virtual absence of colour is depressing and when the world turns grey we are instinctively conditioned to draw in and prepare for hibernation. Unless the precise tone is right, grey has a dampening effect on other colours used with it. Heavy use of grey usually indicates a lack of confidence and fear of exposure.
BLACK. Positive: Sophistication, glamour, security, emotional safety, efficiency, substance. Negative: Oppression, coldness, menace, heaviness. Black is all colours, totally absorbed. The psychological implications of that are considerable. It creates protective barriers, as it absorbs all the energy coming towards you, and it enshrouds the personality. Black is essentially an absence of light, since no wavelengths are reflected and it can, therefore be menacing; many people are afraid of the dark. Positively, it communicates absolute clarity, with no fine nuances. It communicates sophistication and uncompromising excellence and it works particularly well with white. Black creates a perception of weight and seriousness. It is a myth that black clothes are slimming: Which of these boxes do you think is bigger/heavier? The truth behind the myth is that black is the most recessive colour a matter of not drawing attention to yourself, rather than actually making you look slimmer.
WHITE. Positive: Hygiene, sterility, clarity, purity, cleanness, simplicity, sophistication, efficiency. Negative: Sterility, coldness, barriers, unfriendliness, elitism. Just as black is total absorption, so white is total reflection. In effect, it reflects the full force of the spectrum into our eyes. Thus it also creates barriers, but differently from black, and it is often a strain to look at. It communicates, "Touch me not!" White is purity and, like black, uncompromising; it is clean, hygienic, and sterile. The concept of sterility can also be negative. Visually, white gives a heightened perception of space. The negative effect of white on warm colours is to make them look and feel garish.
BROWN. Positive: Seriousness, warmth, Nature, earthiness, reliability, support. Negative: Lack of humour, heaviness, lack of sophistication. Brown usually consists of red and yellow, with a large percentage of black. Consequently, it has much of the same seriousness as black, but is warmer and softer. It has elements of the red and yellow properties. Brown has associations with the earth and the natural world. It is a solid, reliable colour and most people find it quietly supportive - more positively than the ever-popular black, which is suppressive, rather than supportive.

Remorse

2011-08-21T18:49:00.000+01:00

Why do we sometimes do stupid things?
Sometimes I don't understand myself...
Sometimes I think that I am a strange person :-(

No title

2011-08-19T00:28:00.000+01:00

Words lost in space
words beloved by the wind
and thrown to the ground.

The whisper of the wind next to my ear,
told me your deepest secret.
I could not believe it was true,
the truth that you love me.

My lips joined yours,
in a ballad, danced and made love.

Top 10 Things That Determine Happiness

2011-08-10T23:12:00.000+01:00

photo: meddygarnet

Happiness is, by nature, a subjective quality with a definition like a moving target. There is scant evidence — qualitative or quantitative — to lend convincing support to those life variables most critical in determining individual happiness, which is likely why past researchers committed to the scientific method rarely tried to tackle the subject.

This is changing. Take, for example, the World Database of Happiness in Rotterdam, self-described as a, “continuous register of scientific research on subjective appreciation of life.” Also, take the positive psychologists, a movement whose “members” perform scientific research into the nature of happiness and who published Character Strengths and Virtues: A Handbook and Classification, an 800-page behemoth that outlines all the characteristics, behaviors and conditions that lead to happiness.

While we’re not entirely convinced of this marriage between science and subjectivity, we can still offer up a top 10 of things that determine human happiness, as supported by this growing body of research.

No.10 – Having a short memory

Are you one to hold grudges? Do you need the jaws of life to pry forgiveness out of you? Well, don’t expect these attributes to contribute to your happiness or to your overall health for that matter. This ability to forgive and forget, to go with the flow, is frequently cited by researchers of centenarians as being a key factor in their ability to live to see their 100th birthday.

No.9 – Exacting fairness

According to a recently published study in the prestigious journal Nature, people derive more happiness from scenarios and situations that result in a perceived fairness for everyone involved, even when this fairness goes against self-interest or comes at some personal cost. In short, researchers at Rutgers found that the reward centers in the brain light up in situations in which people are treated equally.

No.8 – Having lots of friendships

Extroverts are happier than introverts and they live longer lives, in part because they can spend time in the company of friends and family or they can spend time alone, according to happiness researcher Ed Diener. Like letting go of grudges and going with the flow, being extroverted and having a wide social circle is a major factor in whether someone considers themselves happy or not, as well as an often-cited reason to explain how some people live to be 100 or older. At any rate, it’s a reason to justify spending a little time at work on social networking sites.

No.7 – Being spiritual

The results of a collaborative, multinational study that involved over 166,000 people showed a clear correlation between a person’s “strength of religious affiliation and frequency of attendance at worship services” and their self-reported levels of happiness and satisfaction with their lives. How is this correlation explained? Researchers postulate that this increased involvement in a spiritual circle means more friends, a wider support network and a higher degree of hopefulness.

No.6 – Thinking ahead

In his book Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert argues that happiness is derived from the ability to accurately project what will in the future make us happy — not those things that actually do. He notes that we are the only species that truly considers the future, and this ability to think ahead and to imagine the future is “the defining aspect of our humanity.”

According to Gilbert, studies support the idea that we enjoy thinking into the future because more often than not, it’s something of a daydream, and in daydreams we are at our most successful. Furthermore, because imagining the future and what actually happens in that future are often at odds, many people derive far more happiness from the anticipation of a future event than the actual event.

No.5 – Developing a skill

According to psychology professor Dr. Timothy A. Pychyl, the route to happiness is simple enough, “Live it, don’t buy it.” This is especially relevant in the modern world, where instant gratification can be purchased — but only to a point, before it hits a wall.

He quotes a professional base jumper, who says, “You’ve got to have the passion to do your time. If you haven’t done the time, you just can’t get there.” He goes on to argue that only by paying one’s dues through time, effort, devotion, and experience can we, “develop the rich experiences that make life meaningful.”

No.4 – Having personal control over one’s life

Where might you find unhappy people with low morale? Those places where people no longer feel in personal control of their lives, whether it’s a nursing home or a prison, because control equates to happiness. In his book Satisfaction, Emory University psychiatrist Gregory Berns makes the point by distinguishing between pleasure and satisfaction, “While you might find pleasure by happenstance, satisfaction can arise only by the conscious decision to do something. And this makes all the difference in the world, because it is only your own actions for which you may take responsibility and credit.”

No.3 – Defining success

There’s a saying that no matter how talented or successful you think you are, there’s always someone who’s got a leg up on you. People who compare themselves against those people will always come out the loser, even when the comparison is neither appropriate nor consequential. A skilled dentist with a thriving practice can’t reasonably compare his level of success to Robert De Niro and expect to feel good. If he made comparisons within his own peer group or against his own expectations, however, he’ll not only come out more favorably, but he’ll be happier too.

As Gallup psychologist Shane Lopez explained to Psychology Today writer Abby Ellin, “Self-referential people see themselves as the marker. They care about their own performance, not how they measure up compared to that guy over there…. The only competitor is the self.”

No.2 – Good genes

According to “The Science of Lasting Happiness,” an article by Marina Krakovsky published byScientific American in 2007, “studies of twins and adoptees have shown that about 50% of each person’s happiness is determined from birth”, what’s loosely termed as a “genetic set point.” The weight of this variable on determining our happiness is supported by hedonic adaptation; according to this theory, even if we win the lottery, within a year or so of coming into this kind of material good fortune, we adapt to it and revert back to whatever level of happiness we were at before.

No.1 – Liking yourself

Liking oneself is arguably the principal characteristic of happy people. It’s been revealed in study after study after study: happy people like themselves. They think they’re pretty great people. They have high self-esteem, meaning they think highly of their own intelligence, they consider themselves to have strong ethical standards and to have far fewer prejudices than others.

Top 10: Things That Determine Happiness provided by AskMen.com.

http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/things-that-determine-happiness-10152010/

Lisbon revisited (1926)

2011-08-05T17:45:00.003+01:00

Nothing binds me to anything.
I want fifty things at once.
With an anguish of longing hunger for flesh
What I do not know who is -
By undefined definitely ...
Restless sleep, and live in a restless dream
For restless sleepers, half dreaming.

I closed all the doors and abstract required.
Curtains ran every chance I could see the street.
No cross found in the port number they gave me.

I woke up to the same life that had fallen asleep.
Until I dreamed armies suffered defeat.
Even my dreams felt false to be dreamed.
Until the desired life just fills me - until this life ...

I understand the disjointed intervals;
I write for lapses of fatigue;
And that is boring to the boring throws me to the beach.
I do not know what fate or future incumbent upon my affliction without a rudder;
I do not know that the southern islands can not wait for me shipwrecked;
or palm of literature at least give me a verse.

No, I do not know this, or something else, or anything else ...
And deep in my spirit, where I dreamed the dream,
In the last fields of the soul where memory without cause
(And the past is a haze of tears natural false)
Roads and shortcuts distant forest
Where I assumed my being,
Flee dismantled the last remnants
End of illusion,
My hosts dreamed of, without being defeated,
My cuts for existing, broken up in God.

Again I look back on you,
City dreadfully lost my childhood ...
City sad and happy again dream here ...

I? But am I even lived here, and here I came,
And here I again go back, and back.
And here again ever return?
Or are all I have been here or have been,
A number of accounts linked by a loved-wire memory
A series of dreams from me for someone outside of me?

Again I look back on you,
With the heart more distant, less my soul.

Again I look back on you - and everything Lisbon and Tagus Valley -
Transient useless to you and me
Foreign here as everywhere,
Casual in the life and soul,
Ghost in the wrong room of memories,
At the noise of the rats and the boards that creak
In the castle you have to live damn ...

Again I look back on you,
Shadow that passes through the shadows, and glows
A moment to light a memorial unknown
And the night comes as a wake boat is lost
In the water which is no longer listening ...

Again I look back on you,
But, alas, not me I identify!
Gone is the magic mirror in which I was reviewing the same,
And every piece I see only a bit ominous to me -
A lot of you and me! ...

10 Psychological Effects of Nonsexual Touch

2011-07-27T00:05:00.000+01:00

Psychological research on how a simple (nonsexual) touch can increase compliance, helping behaviour, attraction, and signal power.
To get around in the world, we mainly rely on our eyes and ears. Touch is a sense that's often forgotten.

But touch is also vital in the way we understand and experience the world. Even the lightest touch on the upper arm can influence the way we think. To prove it, here are 10 psychological effects which show just how powerful nonsexual touch can be.

1. Touch for money

A well-timed touch can encourage other people to return a lost item. In one experiment, users of a phone booth who were touched were more likely to return a lost dime to an experimenter (Kleinke, 1977). The action was no more than a light touch on the arm.

People will do more than that though; people will give a bigger tip to a waitress who has touched them (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984).

(Stop giggling at the back there!)

2. Touch for help

People are also more likely to provide help when touched. In one study, strangers who were touched lightly on the arm were more likely to help an experimenter pick up things they had dropped (Gueguen, 2003). The percentage of people who helped went up from 63% to 90%.

3. Touch for compliance

The power of a light touch on the upper arm often extends more broadly to compliance.

In a study by Willis and Hamm (1980), participants were asked to sign a petition. While 55% of those not touched agreed to sign it, this went up to 81% of those participants touched once on the upper arm. A second study asked people to fill in a questionnaire. The same touch increased compliance from 40% to 70%.

4. Touch twice for more compliance

And you can increase compliance with a second light touch on the arm.

Vaidis and Halimi-Falkowicz (2008) tried this out when asking people in the street to complete a questionnaire. Those touched twice were more likely to complete the questionnaire than those touched once. The effects were strongest when men were touched by a female surveyor.

5. Or, touch for a fight!

However, the acceptability of touch, especially between men, depends a lot on culture.

When Dolinski (2010) carried out a compliance experiment in Poland, he got quite different results for men and women. In Poland men asked to do the experimenter a favour reacted badly to a light touch on the arm. This seemed to be related to higher levels of homophobia. Women, however, still reacted positively to touch.

6. Touch to sell your car

Unlike Poland, France has a contact culture and touching is acceptable between two men. So French researchers Erceau and Gueguen (2007) approached random men at a second-hand car market. Half were touched lightly on the arm for 1 second, the other half weren't.

Afterwards those who had been touched rated the seller as more sincere, friendly, honest, agreeable and kind. Not bad for a 1-second touch. We can safely assume the results would have been quite different in Poland!

7. Touch for a date

You won't be surprised to hear that men show more interest in a woman who has lightly touched them. But here's the research anyway: Gueguen (2010) found men easily misinterpreted a light nonsexual touch on the arm as a show of sexual interest.

Perhaps more surprisingly women also responded well to a light touch on the arm when being asked for their phone number by a man in the street (Gueguen, 2007). This may be because women associated a light 1 or 2-second touch with greater dominance. (Bear in mind, though, that this research was in France again!)

8. Touch for power

Touch communicates something vital about power relationships. Henley (1973) observed people in a major city as they went about their daily business. The people who tended to touch others (versus those being touched) were usually higher status. Generally we regard people who touch others as having more power in society (Summerhayes & Suchner, 1978).

9. Touch to communicate

Touch comes in many different forms and can communicate a variety of different emotions. Just how much can be communicated through touch alone is demonstrated by one remarkable study by Hertenstein et al. (2006).

Using only a touch on the forearm, participants in this study tried to communicate 12 separate emotions to another person. The receiver, despite not being able to see the toucher, or the touch itself, were pretty accurate for anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude and sympathy. Accuracy ranged from 48% to 83%.

To put it in context, that is as good as we can do when we can see someone's face.

10. Massage for maths

So, if you can do all that with a touch, imagine what you could do with a massage!

Well, one study has found that it can boost your maths skills (Field, 1996). Compared with a control group, participants who received massages twice a week for 5 weeks were not only more relaxed but also did better on a maths test. Once again, witness the incredible power of touch.

Boring disclaimer

All of these studies rely on the touch being appropriate. Being touched can have quite different meanings depending on situation, culture and gender. Generally the touch referred to is a light touch on the upper arm—the safest place to touch someone you don't know.

Also, research has identified a small proportion of people—both men and women—who don't like to be touched at all during everyday social interactions. These people are not likely to respond positively in any of these situations.

Image credit: Julian Coutinho

don't even need a translation... this is universal !

2011-07-26T23:56:00.001+01:00

Body Language: Understanding the basics

2011-07-11T23:56:00.001+01:00

UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS

This is 'good' to Westerners, 'one' to Italians, 'five' to Japanese and 'up yours' to the Greeks

Everyone knows someone who can walk into a room full of people and, within minutes, give an accurate description about the relationships between those people and what they are feeling. The ability to read a person's attitudes and thoughts by their behaviour was the original communication system used by humans before spoken language evolved.

Before radio was invented, most communication was done in writing through books, letters and newspapers, which meant that ugly politicians and poor speakers, such as Abraham Lincoln, could be successful if they persisted long enough and wrote good print copy. The radio era gave openings to people who had a good command of the spoken word, like Winston Churchill, who spoke wonderfully but may have struggled to achieve as much in today's more visual era.

Today's politicians understand that politics is about image and appearance and most high-profile politicians now have personal body language consultants to help them come across as being sincere, caring and honest, especially when they're not.

It seems almost incredible that, over the thousands of years of our evolution, body language has been actively studied on any scale only since the 1960s and that most of the public has become aware of its existence only since our book Body Language was published in 1978. Yet most people believe that speech is still our main form of communication. Speech has been part of our communication repertoire only in recent times in evolutionary terms, and is mainly used to convey facts and data. Speech probably first developed between 2 million and 500,000 years ago, during which time our brain tripled its size. Before then, body language and sounds made in the throat were the main forms of conveying emotions and feelings, and that is still the case today. But because we focus on the words people speak, most of us are largely uninformed about body language, let alone its importance in our lives.

Our spoken language, however, recognises how important body language is to our communication. Here are just a few of the phrases we use —

Get it off your chest. Keep a stiff upper lip.

Stay at arm's length. Keep your chin up.

Shoulder a burden. Face up to it.

Put your best foot forward. Kiss my butt

Some of these phrases are hard to swallow, but you've got to give us a big hand because there are some real eye-openers here. As a rule of thumb, we can keep them coming hand over fist until you either buckle at the knees or turn your back on the whole idea. Hopefully, you'll be sufficiently touched by these phrases to lean towards the concept.

In the Beginning...

Silent movie actors like Charlie Chaplin were the pioneers of body language skills, as this was the only means of communication available on the screen. Each actor's skill was classed as good or bad by the extent to which he could use gestures and body signals to communicate to the audience. When talking films became popular and less emphasis was placed on the non-verbal aspects of acting, many silent movie actors faded into obscurity and only those with good verbal and non-verbal skills survived.

As far as the academic study of body language goes, perhaps the most influential pre-twentieth-century work was Charles Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, published in 1872, but this work tended to be read mainly by academics. However, it spawned the modern studies of facial expressions and body language, and many of Darwin's ideas and observations have since been validated by researchers around the world. Since that time, researchers have noted and recorded almost a million non-verbal cues and signals. Albert Mehrabian, a pioneer researcher of body language in the 1950s, found that the total impact of a message is about 7% verbal (words only) and 38% vocal (including tone of voice, inflection and other sounds) and 55% non-verbal.

It's how you looked when you said it, It's not what you actually said.

Anthropologist Ray Birdwhistell pioneered the original study of non-verbal communication — what he called 'kinesics'. Birdwhistell made some similar estimates of the amount of non-verbal communication that takes place between humans. He estimated that the average person actually speaks words for a total of about ten or eleven minutes a day and that the average sentence takes only about 2.5 seconds. Birdwhistell also estimated we can make and recognise around 250,000 facial expressions.

Like Mehrabian, he found that the verbal component of a face-to-face conversation is less than 35% and that over 65% of communication is done non-verbally. Our analysis of thousands of recorded sales interviews and negotiations during the 1970s and 1980s showed that, in business encounters, body language accounts for between 60 and 80% of the impact made around a negotiating table and that people form 60 to 80% of their initial opinion about a new person in less than four minutes. Studies also show that when negotiating over the telephone, the person with the stronger argument usually wins, but this is not so true when negotiating face-to-face, because overall we make our final decisions more on what we see than what we hear.

Why It's Not What You Say

Despite what it may be politically correct to believe, when we meet people for the first time we quickly make judgements about their friendliness, dominance and potential as a sexual partner - and their eyes are not the first place we look.

Most researchers now agree that words are used primarily for conveying information, while body language is used for negotiating interpersonal attitudes and in some cases is used as a substitute for verbal messages. For example, a woman can give a man a 'look to kill' and will convey a very clear message to him without opening her mouth.

Regardless of culture, words and movements occur together with such predictability that Birdwhistell was the first to claim that a well-trained person should be able to tell what movement a person is making by listening to their voice. Birdwhistell even learned how to tell what language a person was speaking, simply by watching their gestures.

Many people find difficulty in accepting that humans are still biologically animals. We are a species of primate — Homo sapiens — a hairless ape that has learned to walk on two limbs and has a clever, advanced brain. But like any other species, we are still dominated by biological rules that control our actions, reactions, body language and gestures. The fascinating thing is that the human animal is rarely aware that its postures, movements and gestures can tell one story while its voice may be telling another.

How Body Language Reveals Emotions and Thoughts

Body language is an outward reflection of a person's emotional condition. Each gesture or movement can be a valuable key to an emotion a person may be feeling at the time. For example, a man who is self-conscious about gaining weight may tug at the fold of skin under his chin; the woman who is aware of extra pounds on her thighs may smooth her dress down; the person who is feeling fearful or defensive might fold their arms or cross their legs or both; and a man talking with a large-breasted woman may consciously avoid staring at her breasts while, at the same time, unconsciously use groping gestures with his hands.

Prince Charles finds a bosom buddy

The key to reading body language is being able to understand a person's emotional condition while listening to what they are saying and noting the circumstances under which they are saying it. This allows you to separate fact from fiction and reality from fantasy. In recent times, we humans have had an obsession with the spoken word and our ability to be conversationalists. Most people, however, are remarkably unaware of body language signals and their impact, despite the fact that we now know that most of the messages in any face-to-face conversation are revealed through body signals. For example, France's President Chirac, USA's President Ronald Reagan and Australia's Prime Minister Bob Hawke all used their hands to reveal the relative sizes of issues in their mind. Bob Hawke once defended pay increases for politicians by comparing their salaries to corporate executive salaries. He claimed that executive salaries had risen by a huge amount and that proposed politicians' increases were relatively smaller. Each time he mentioned politicians' incomes, he held his hands a yard (1m) apart. When he mentioned executive salaries, however, he held them only a foot (30cm) apart. His hand distances revealed that he felt politicians were getting a much better deal than he was prepared to admit.

President Jacques Chirac - measuring the size of an issue or simply boasting about his love life?

Why Women are More Perceptive

When we say someone is 'perceptive' or 'intuitive' about people, we are unknowingly referring to their ability to read another person's body language and to compare these cues with verbal signals. In other words, when we say that we have a 'hunch' or 'gut feeling' that someone has told us a lie, we usually mean that their body language and their spoken words don't agree. This is also what speakers call audience awareness, or relating to a group. For example, if an audience were sitting back in their seats with their chins down and arms crossed on their chest, a 'perceptive' speaker would get a hunch or feeling that his delivery was not going across well. He would realise that he needed to take a different approach to gain audience involvement. Likewise, a speaker who was not 'perceptive' would blunder on regardless.

Being 'perceptive' means being able to spot the contradictions between someone's words and their body language.

Overall, women are far more perceptive than men, and this has given rise to what is commonly referred to as 'women's intuition'. Women have an innate ability to pick up and decipher non-verbal signals, as well as having an accurate eye for small details. This is why few husbands can lie to their wives and get away with it and why, conversely, most women can pull the wool over a man's eyes without his realising it.

Research by psychologists at Harvard University showed how women are far more alert to body language than men. They showed short films, with the sound turned off, of a man and woman communicating, and the participants were asked to decode what was happening by reading the couple's expressions. The research showed that women read the situation accurately 87% of the time while the men scored only 42% accuracy. Men in 'nurturing' occupations, such as artistic types, acting and nursing, did nearly as well as the women; gay men also scored well. Female intuition is particularly evident in women who have raised children. For the first few years, the mother relies almost solely on the non-verbal channel to communicate with the child and this is why women are often more perceptive negotiators than men because they practise reading signals early.

What Brain Scans Show

Most women have the brain organisation to out-communicate any man on the planet. Magnetic Resonance Imaging brain scans (MRI) clearly show why women have far greater capacity for communicating with and evaluating people than men do. Women have between fourteen and sixteen areas of the brain to evaluate others' behaviour versus a man's four to six areas. This explains how a woman can attend a dinner party and rapidly work out the state of the relationships of other couples at the party - who's had an argument, who likes who and so on. It also explains why, from a woman's standpoint, men don't seem to talk much and, from a man's standpoint, women never seem to shut up.

As we showed in Why Men Don't Listen & Women Can't Read Maps (Orion), the female brain is organised for multi-tracking — the average woman can juggle between two and four unrelated topics at the same time. She can watch a television programme while talking on the telephone plus listen to a second conversation behind her, while drinking a cup of coffee. She can talk about several unrelated topics in the one conversation and uses five vocal tones to change the subject or emphasise points. Unfortunately, most men can only identify three of these tones. As a result, men often lose the plot when women are trying to communicate with them.

Studies show that a person who relies on hard visual evidence face to face about the behaviour of another person is more likely to make more accurate judgements about that person than someone who relies solely on their gut feeling.

The evidence is in the person's body language and, while women can do it subconsciously, anyone can teach themselves consciously to read the signals. That's what this book is about.

How Fortune-Tellers Know So Much

If you've ever visited a fortune teller you probably came away amazed at the things they knew about you — things no one else could possibly have known — so it must be ESP, right? Research into the fortune-telling business shows that operators use a technique known as 'cold reading' which can produce an accuracy of around 80% when 'reading' a person you've never met. While it can appear to be magical to naïve and vulnerable people, it is simply a process based on the careful observation of body language signals plus an understanding of human nature and a knowledge of probability statistics. It's a technique practised by psychics, tarot card readers, astrologists and palm readers to gather information about a 'client'. Many 'cold readers' are largely unaware of their abilities to read nonverbal signals and so also become convinced that they really must have 'psychic' abilities. This all adds to a convincing performance, bolstered by the fact that people who regularly visit 'psychics' go with positive expectations of the outcome. Throw in a set of tarot cards, a crystal ball or two and a bit of theatre, and the stage is perfectly set for a body-languagereading session that can convince even the most hardened sceptic that strange, magical forces must be at work. It all boils down to the reader's ability to decode a person's reactions to statements made and to questions asked, and by information gathered from simple observation about a person's appearance. Most 'psychics' are female because, as women, as discussed previously, they have the extra brain wiring to allow them to read the body signals of babies and to read others' emotional condition.

The fortune-teller gazed into her crystal ball and then started laughing uncontrollably. So John punched her on the nose. It was the first time he'd ever struck a happy medium.

To demonstrate the point, here now is a psychic reading for you personally. Imagine you've come to a dimly lit, smoke-filled room where a jewel-encrusted psychic wearing a turban is seated at a low, moon-shaped table with a crystal ball:

I'm glad you've come to this session and I can see you have things that are troubling you because I am receiving strong signals from you. I sense that the things you really want out of life sometimes seem unrealistic and you often wonder whether you can achieve them. I also sense that at times you are friendly, social and outgoing to others, but that at other times you are withdrawn, reserved and cautious. You take pride in being an independent thinker but also know not to accept what you see and hear from others, without proof. You like change and variety but become restless if controlled by restrictions and routine. You want to share your innermost feelings with those closest to you but have found it unwise to be too open and revealing. A man in your life with the initial 'S' is exerting a strong influence over you right now and a woman who is born in November will contact you in the next month with an exciting offer. While you appear disciplined and controlled on the outside, you tend to be concerned and worried on the inside and at times you wonder whether or not you have made the right choice or decision.

So how did we go? Did we read you accurately? Studies show that the information in this 'reading' is more than 80% accurate for any person reading it. Throw in an excellent ability to read body language postures, facial expressions and a person's other twitches and movements, plus dim lighting, weird music and a stick of incense, and we guarantee you can even amaze the dog! We won't encourage you to become a fortune-teller but you'll soon be able to read others as accurately as they do.

Inborn, Genetic or Learned Culturally?

When you cross your arms on your chest, do you cross left over right or right over left? Most people cannot confidently describe which way they do this until they try it. Cross your arms on your chest right now and then try to quickly reverse the position. Where one way feels comfortable, the other feels completely wrong. Evidence suggests that this may well be a genetic gesture that cannot be changed.

Seven out of ten people cross their left arm over their right.

Much debate and research has been done to discover whether non-verbal signals are inborn, learned, genetically transferred or acquired in some other way. Evidence has been collected from observation of blind people (who could not have learned non-verbal signals through a visual channel), from observing the gestural behaviour of many different cultures around the world and from studying the behaviour of our nearest anthropological relatives, the apes and monkeys.

The conclusions of this research indicate that some gestures fall into each category. For example, most primate babies are born with the immediate ability to suck, showing that this is either inborn or genetic. The German scientist Eibl-Eibesfeldt round that the smiling expressions of children born deaf and blind occur independently of learning or copying, which means that these must also be inborn gestures. Ekman, Friesen and Sorenson supported some of Darwin's original beliefs about inborn gestures when they studied the facial expressions of people from five widely different cultures. They found that each culture used the same basic facial gestures to show emotion, which led them to the conclusion that these gestures must also be inborn.

Cultural differences are many but the basic body language signals are the same everywhere.

Debate still exists as to whether some gestures are culturally learned, and become habitual, or are genetic. For example, most men put on a coat right arm first; most women put it on left arm first. This shows that men use their left brain hemisphere for this action while women use the right hemisphere. When a man passes a woman in a crowded street, he usually turns his body towards her as he passes; she instinctively turns her body away from him to protect her breasts. Is this an inborn female reaction or has she learned to do this by unconsciously watching other females?

Some Basic Origins

Most of the basic communication signals are the same all over the world. When people are happy they smile; when they are sad or angry they frown or scowl. Nodding the head is almost universally used to indicate 'yes' or affirmation. It appears to be a form of head lowering and is probably an inborn gesture because it's also used by people born blind. Shaking the head from side to side to indicate 'no' or negation is also universal and appears to be a gesture learned in infancy. When a baby has had enough milk, it turns its head from side to side to reject its mother's breast. When the young child has had enough to eat, he shakes his head from side to side to stop any attempt to spoon-feed him and, in this way, he quickly learns to use the head shaking gesture to show disagreement or a negative attitude.

The head-shaking gesture signals 'no' and owes its origin to breastfeeding.

The evolutionary origin of some gestures can be traced to our primitive animal past. Smiling, for example, is a threat gesture for most carnivorous animals, but for primates it is done in conjunction with non-threatening gestures to show submission.

Baring the teeth and nostril flaring are derived from the act of attacking and are primitive signals used by other primates. Sneering is used by animals to warn others that, if necessary, they'll use their teeth to attack or defend. For humans, this gesture still appears even though humans won't usually attack with their teeth.


Human and animal sneering — you wouldn't want to go on a date with either of these two

Nostril flaring allows more air to oxygenate the body in preparation for fight or flight and, in the primate world, it tells others that back-up support is needed to deal with an imminent threat. In the human world, sneering is caused by anger, irritation, when a person feels under physical or emotional threat or feels that something is not right.

Universal Gestures

The Shoulder Shrug is also a good example of a universal gesture that is used to show that a person doesn't know or doesn't understand what you are saying. It's a multiple gesture that has three main parts: exposed palms to show nothing is being concealed in the hands, hunched shoulders to protect the throat from attack and raised brow which is a universal, submissive greeting.

The Shoulder Shrug shows submission

Just as verbal language differs from culture to culture, so some body language signals can also differ. Whereas one gesture may be common in a particular culture and have a clear interpretation, it may be meaningless in another culture or even have a completely different meaning. Cultural differences will be covered later, in Chapter 5.

Three Rules for Accurate Reading

What you see and hear in any situation does not necessarily reflect the real attitudes people may actually have. You need to follow three basic rules to get things right.

Rule 1. Read Gestures in Clusters

One of the most serious errors a novice in body language can make is to interpret a solitary gesture in isolation of other gestures or circumstances. For example, scratching the head can mean a number of things - sweating, uncertainty, dandruff, fleas, forgetfulness or lying - depending on the other gestures that occur at the same time. Like any spoken language, body language has words, sentences and punctuation. Each gesture is like a single word and one word may have several different meanings. For example, in English, the word 'dressing' has at least ten meanings including the act of putting on clothing, a sauce for food, stuffing for a fowl, an application for a wound, fertiliser and grooming for a horse.

It's only when you put a word into a sentence with other words that you can fully understand its meaning. Gestures come in 'sentences' called clusters and invariably reveal the truth about a person's feelings or attitudes. A body language cluster, just like a verbal sentence, needs at least three words in it before you can accurately define each of the words. The 'perceptive' person is the one who can read the body language sentences and accurately match them against the person's verbal sentences.

Scratching the head can mean uncertainty but it's also a sign of dandruff.

So always look at gesture clusters for a correct reading. Each of us has one or more repetitive gestures that simply reveal we are either bored or feeling under pressure. Continual hair touching or twirling is a common example of this but, in isolation of other gestures, it's likely to mean the person is feeling uncertain or anxious. People stroke their hair or head because that's how their mother comforted them when they were children.

To demonstrate the point about clusters, here's a common Critical Evaluation gesture cluster someone might use when they are unimpressed with what they are hearing:

You're losing points with this man

The main Critical Evaluation signal is the hand-to-face gesture, with the index finger pointing up the cheek while another finger covers the mouth and the thumb supports the chin. Further evidence that this listener is having critical thoughts about what he hears is supported by the legs being tightly crossed and the arm crossing the body (defensive) while the head and chin are down (negative/hostile). This body language 'sentence' says something like, 'I don't like what you're saying', 'I disagree' or 'I'm holding back negative feelings'.

Hillary Clinton uses this cluster when she's not convinced

Rule 2. Look for Congruence

Research shows that non-verbal signals carry about five times as much impact as the verbal channel and that, when the two are incongruent people - especially women - rely on the nonverbal message and disregard the verbal content.

If you, as the speaker, were to ask the listener shown above to give his opinion about something you've said and he replied that he disagreed with you, his body language signals would be congruent with his verbal sentences, that is, they would match. If, however, he said he agreed with what you said, he would more likely be lying because his words and gestures would be incongruent.

When a person's words and body language are in conflict, women ignore what is said.

If you saw a politician standing behind a lectern speaking confidently but with his arms tightly folded across his chest (defensive) and chin down (critical/hostile), while telling his audience how receptive and open he is to the ideas of young people, would you be convinced? What if he attempted to convince you of his warm, caring approach while giving short, sharp karate chops to the lectern? Sigmund Freud once reported that while a patient was verbally expressing happiness with her marriage, she was unconsciously slipping her wedding ring on and off her finger. Freud was aware of the significance of this unconscious gesture and was not surprised when marriage problems began to surface.

Observation of gesture clusters and congruence of the verbal and body language channels are the keys to accurately interpreting attitudes through body language.

Rule 3. Read Gestures in Context

All gestures should be considered in the context in which they occur. If, for example, someone was sitting at a bus terminal with his arms and legs tightly crossed and chin down and it was a cold winter's day, it would most likely mean that he was cold, not defensive. If, however, the person used the same gestures while you were sitting across a table from him trying to sell him an idea, product or service, it could be correctly interpreted as meaning that the person was feeling negative or rejecting your offer.

Cold, not defensive

Throughout this book all body language gestures will be considered in context and, where possible, gesture clusters will be examined.

Why It Can be Easy to Misread

Someone who has a soft or limp handshake - especially a man - is likely to be accused of having a weak character and the next chapter on handshake techniques will explore the reason behind this. But if someone has arthritis in their hands it is likely that they will also use a soft handshake to avoid the pain of a strong one. Similarly, artists, musicians, surgeons and those whose occupation is delicate and involves use of their hands generally prefer not to shake hands, but, if they are forced into it, they may use a 'dead fish' handshake to protect their hands.

Someone who wears ill-fitting or tight clothing may be unable to use certain gestures, and this can affect their use of body language. For example, obese people can't cross their legs. Women who wear short skirts will sit with their legs tightly crossed for protection, but this results in them looking less approachable and less likely to be asked to dance at a nightclub. These circumstances apply to the minority of people, but it is important to consider what effect a person's physical restrictions or disabilities may have on their body movement.

Why Kids are Easier to Read

Older people are harder to read than younger ones because they have less muscle tone in the face.

The speed of some gestures and how obvious they look to others is also related to the age of the individual. For example, if a five-year-old child tells a lie, he's likely to immediately cover his mouth with one or both hands.

The child telling a lie

The act of covering the mouth can alert a parent to the lie and this mouth-covering gesture will likely continue throughout the person's lifetime, usually only varying in the speed at which it's done. When a teenager tells a lie, the hand is brought to the mouth in a similar way to the five-year-old, but instead of the obvious hand-slapping gesture over the mouth, the fingers rub lightly around it.

The teenager telling a lie

The original mouth-covering gesture becomes even faster in adulthood. When an adult tells a lie, it's as if his brain instructs his hand to cover his mouth in an attempt to block the deceitful words, just as it did for the five-year-old and the teenager. But, at the last moment, the hand is pulled away from the face and a nose touch gesture results. This is simply an adult's version of the mouth-covering gesture that was used in childhood.

Bill Clinton answering questions about Monica Lewinsky in front of the Grand Jury

This shows how, as people get older, their gestures become more subtle and less obvious and is why it's often more difficult to read the gestures of a fifty-year-old than those of a five-year-old.

Can You Fake it?

We are regularly asked, 'Can you fake body language?' The general answer to this question is 'no', because of the lack of congruence that is likely to occur between the main gestures, the body's micro-signals and the spoken words. For example, open palms are associated with honesty but when the faker holds his palms out and smiles at you as he tells a lie, his micro-gestures give him away. His pupils may contract, one eyebrow may lift or the corner of his mouth may twitch, and these signals contradict the open palm gesture and the sincere smile. The result is that the receivers, especially women, tend not to believe what they hear.

Body language is easier to fake with men than with women because, overall, men aren't good readers of body language.

True-Life Story:The Lying Job Applicant

We were interviewing a man who was explaining why he had quit his last job. He told us that there had been insufficient future opportunity available to him and that it was a hard decision to leave as he got on well with all the staff there. A female interviewer said she had an 'intuitive feeling' that the applicant was lying and that he had negative feelings about his forrnerboss, despite the applicant's continual praising of his boss. During a review of the interview on slow-motion video, we noticed that each time the applicant mentioned his former boss a split-second sneer appeared on the left side of his face. Often these contradictory signals will flash across a person's face in a fraction of a second and are missed by an untrained observer. We telephoned his former boss and discovered the applicant had been fired for dealing drugs to other staff members. As confidently as this applicant had tried to fake his body language, his contradictory micro-gestures gave the game away to our female interviewer.

The key here is being able to separate the real gestures from fake ones so a genuine person can be distinguished from a liar or impostor. Signals like pupil dilation, sweating and blushing cannot be consciously faked but exposing the palms to try to appear honest is easily learned.

Fakers can only pretend for a short period of time.

There are, however, some cases in which body language is deliberately faked to gain certain advantages. Take, for example, the Miss World or Miss Universe contest, in which each contestant uses studiously learned body movements to give the impression of warmth and sincerity. To the extent that each contestant can convey these signals, she will score points from the judges. But even the expert contestants can only fake body language for a short period of time and eventually the body will show contradictory signals that are independent of conscious actions. Many politicians are experts in faking body language in order to get the voters to believe what they are saying, and politicians who can successfully do this - such as John F Kennedy and Adolf Hitler — are said to have 'charisma'.

In summary, it is difficult to fake body language for a long period of time but, as we will discuss, it's important to learn how to use positive body language to communicate with others and to eliminate negative body language that may give out the wrong message. This can make it more comfortable to be with others and make you more acceptable to them, which is one of the aims of this book.

How to Become a Great Reader

Set aside at least fifteen minutes a day to study the body language of other people, as well as acquiring a conscious awareness of your own gestures. A good reading ground is anywhere that people meet and interact. An airport is a particularly good place for observing the entire spectrum of human gestures as people openly express eagerness, anger, sorrow, happiness, impatience and many other emotions through body language. Social functions, business meetings and parties are also excellent. When you become proficient at the art of reading body language, you can go to a party, sit in a corner all evening and have an exciting time just watching other people's body language rituals.

Modern humans are worse at reading body signals than their ancestors because we are now distracted by words.

Television also offers an excellent way of learning. Turn down the sound and try to understand what is happening by first watching the picture. By turning the sound up every few minutes, you will be able to check how accurate your nonverbal readings are and, before long, it will be possible to watch an entire programme without any sound and understand what is happening, just as deaf people do.

Learning to read body language signals not only makes you more acutely aware of how others try to dominate and manipulate, it brings the realisation that others are also doing the same to us and, most importantly, it teaches us to be more sensitive to other people's feelings and emotions. we have now witnessed the emergence of a new kind of social scientist - the Body Language Watcher. Just as the bird-watcher loves watching birds and their behaviour, so the Body Language Watcher delights in watching the non-verbal cues and signals of human beings. He watches them at social functions, at beaches, on television, at the office or anywhere that people interact. He's a student of behaviour who wants to learn about the actions of his fellow humans so that he may ultimately learn more about himself and how he can improve his relationships with others.

16 Things You Didn't Know About Sleep

2011-07-05T17:20:00.000+01:00

Via: Psychology Degree

buh

2011-05-08T16:45:00.000+01:00

The words in the wind escape from the heart,

and run away because I have not the courage to face the disappointment.

I'm not strong.

Fight

2011-04-05T16:45:00.002+01:00

Sometimes we want to go further but we can not,

we do not have enough strength. But why?

Is it because we are fools to the point of not wanting to fight?

Why so many obstacles, so many difficulties, we can not

enjoy the positive energy?

you are my world

2011-04-02T20:35:00.001+01:00

Honey,

in your arms I lose my senses,

I lose the sense of time,

your sweet kisses,

your strong hug,

your touch in my skin,

is absolutely unbelievable

I love you honey, your eyes hypnotize me

so deep, my feeling for you is real.

You do my life making sense.

By your side I see the world with

different eyes.

You mean a lot to me.

Death

2011-03-14T14:40:00.001Z

The good news and great news is that we don't

definitely leave the people we love.

And so there's no emotional pain involved in death to

the soul died. When we die, we find our loved

ones "still alive" on the Other Side - where most of them

dwelling place in No Time / No Space.

A truth that religions do not teach us is this: We

exist simultaneously on both sides of the veil that separates the

United Kingdom of Physics of the Spiritual.

We divided ourselves to experience the Kingdom of Physical

without letting the Spirit World.

Letting the Spirit World is not necessary for us

to experience as Who You Really Are. Simply

send a part of ourselves to the physical world, collecting and

attaching a portion of our energy at a given location of the Soul

the Here and Now, in order to identify with what we are

to be in a life given to us.

What really happens at death?

When we do something called "dying"we just

Identification dissipate energy (DIE), flowing our

Essence, once again back in Single and Soul

Individual identity that we are.

There waiting for us on the Other Side when we are the

Complete souls of all those we loved - in this life and

all lives. Complete these souls have the ability to

coalesce in any way you wish ... and they do it ...

taking the form of loved ones that have just left the

Physical World.

Quickly recognize these souls, of course! And then we laughed and

danced with joy, we learn that we never

leave each other completely - and this will never happen,

because We Are All One, there is always and in all forms

glory of life everlasting singling Unified (SOUL) that is

God, to know himself!

(CWG-newsletter 18FeB2011)

Famous World Ideologies, as explained by references to Cows

2011-03-01T10:08:00.002Z

Feudalism: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
Pure Socialism: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you all the milk you need.
Bureaucratic Socialism: Your cows are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs the regulations say you should need.
Fascism: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
Pure Communism: You have two cows. Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.
Real World Communism: You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the most “need”. Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.
Russian Communism: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
Perestroika: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.
Cambodian Communism: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
Militarianism: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
Totalitarianism: You have two cows. The government takes them and denies they ever existed. Milk is banned.
Pure Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
Representative Democracy: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
British Democracy: You have two cows. You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad. The government doesn’t do anything.
Bureaucracy: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
Pure Anarchy: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
Pure Capitalism: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
Capitalism: You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows, because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.
Enviromentalism: You have two cows. The government bans you from milking or killing them.
Political Correctness: You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallo-centric, war mongering, intolerant past) two differently – aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.
Surrealism: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less

2011-02-18T20:00:00.006Z

Quantum fluctuation. Inflation. Expansion. Strong nuclear interaction. Particle-antiparticle annihilation. Deuterium and helium production. Density perturbations. Recombination. Blackbody radiation. Local contraction. Cluster formation. Reionization? Violent relaxation. Virialization. Biased galaxy formation? Turbulent fragmentation. Contraction. Ionization. Compression. Opaque hydrogen. Massive star formation. Deuterium ignition. Hydrogen fusion. Hydrogen depletion. Core contraction. Envelope expansion. Helium fusion. Carbon, oxygen, and silicon fusion. Iron production. Implosion. Supernova explosion. Metals injection. Star formation. Supernova explosions. Star formation. Condensation. Planetesimal accretion. Planetary differentiation. Crust solidification. Volatile gas expulsion. Water condensation. Water dissociation. Ozone production. Ultraviolet absorption. Photosynthetic unicellular organisms. Oxidation. Mutation. Natural selection and evolution. Respiration. Cell differentiation. Sexual reproduction. Fossilization. Land exploration. Dinosaur extinction. Mammal expansion. Glaciation. Homo sapiens manifestation. Animal domestication. Food surplus production. Civilization! Innovation. Exploration. Religion. Warring nations. Empire creation and destruction. Exploration. Colonization. Taxation without representation. Revolution. Constitution. Election. Expansion. Industrialization. Rebellion. Emancipation Proclamation. Invention. Mass production. Urbanization. Immigration. World conflagration. League of Nations. Suffrage extension. Depression. World conflagration. Fission explosions. United Nations. Space exploration. Assassinations. Lunar excursions. Resignation. Computerization. World Trade Organization. Terrorism. Internet expansion. Reunification. Dissolution. World-Wide Web creation. Composition. Extrapolation?

If...

2011-02-11T22:34:00.004Z

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated don't give way to hating
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,
If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim,
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools,

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with cowards and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds worth of distance run
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son!

I am the SOUL

2011-01-18T13:16:00.002Z

I AM that I AM.
I AM not the body.
I AM not the emotions.
I AM not the thoughts.
I AM not the mind.
The mind is only a subtle
instrument of the Soul.
I AM the Soul.

I AM a Spiritual Being of Divine
Intelligence, Divine Love, Divine Power.
I AM one with my Higher Soul.
I AM that I AM.

I AM one with the
Divine Spark within Me.
I AM a Child of God.
I AM connected with God.
I AM one with God.
I AM one with All.

- Soul Affirmation by Master Choa Kok Sui

Hum...

2011-01-14T23:16:00.000Z

Why life is soooo hard? Or is us that becomes things bad? =(((
I would like things were different....

The Five Secrets of Life

2011-01-12T11:46:00.006Z

1. BE TRUE TO YOURSELF

- There is an inner voice inside of us that tell us what we want, but we must have the discipline to listen and the courage to follow.

2. LEAVE THE REGRETS

- Do not regret your failures, wish to risk more. The greatest fear at the end of life is not death or failure, but our last words will be " I wish I had"

3. LOVE

- Remember that love is the only thing that matters most. Love is the greatest source of meaning and the source of most regreat.
If there is something you have to say, say sooner, even if you don't feel ready.

4. LIVE THE MOMENT

- All goes by so fast , see each day as a gift. Choose not to waste it . Wherever you are, really be there.

5. GIVE MORE THAN YOU TAKE
- The things that we take from the world have no meaning, but we remember what we left behind.
Find something that matters to you and give all your heart to it: a cause, a child, a dream...
Happiness can not be sought, it is a byproduct of serving.

2011-01-05T00:41:00.000Z

Today i feel that i have to write something.
Even from my cell phone and its late! I should be sleeping but unluckily i dont know why , if i dont write i wont sleep. Sometimes we dont know what to write but tonight is something that comes from inside .
At night i feel inspired i dont know why but at night maybe because its dark we feel many things.
Why am i writing this things here? I have no idea! I dont use to expose my things but this time i am doing eheheh!
Anyway, is better i go to sleep.
Good night world.

2011-01-05T00:25:00.000Z

My contract finish here and now.
There is no longer business between me and you.
Im just tired of waiting and waiting and nothing.
Why is this ilusion?
Why is this suffering?
Why is this expectation?
I dont want it anymore!
I want to break free
I want to feel like a free bird
Because of you i have lost many words
Because of you i have lost much energy
Because of you i have falled in love...

The Holstee Manifesto

2011-01-03T22:59:00.004Z

After a While

2010-12-27T01:18:00.003Z

After a while you learn
The subtle difference between
Holding a hand and chaining a soul
And you learn that love doesn't mean leaning
And company doesn't always mean security.

And you begin to learn
That kisses aren't contracts

And presents aren't promises
And you begin to accept your defeats

With your head up and your eyes ahead
With the grace of a woman

Not the grief of a child

And you learn
To build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow's ground is
Too uncertain for plans
And futures have a way
Of falling down in mid flight

After a while you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much
So you plant your own garden
And decorate your own soul
Instead of waiting
For someone to bring you flowers

And you learn
That you really can endure
That you are really strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and you learn
With every good bye you learn.

Veronica A. Shoffstal

What Not to Say About Someone's Appearance

2010-12-08T00:24:00.001Z

Don’t say: “You look tired.”
Why: It implies she doesn’t look good.
Instead say: “Is everything OK?” We often blurt the “tired” comment when we get the sense that the other person feels out of sorts. So just ask.

Don’t say: “Wow, you’ve lost a ton of weight!”
Why: To a newly trim person, it might give the impression that she used to look unattractive.
Instead say: “You look fantastic.” And leave it at that. If you’re curious about how she got so svelte, add, “What’s your secret?”

Don’t say: “You look good for your age.”
Why: Anything with a caveat like this is rude. It's saying, "You look great―compared with other old people. It's amazing you have all your own teeth."
Instead say: “You look great.”

Don’t say: “I could never wear that.”
Why: It can be misunderstood as a criticism. (“I could never wear that because it’s so ugly.”)
Instead say: “You look so good in skinny jeans.” If you slip, say something like “I could never wear that…because I wasn’t blessed with your long legs.”

*

2010-10-24T11:52:00.004+01:00

I wanted to have you to myself,

I wish I could not throw more tears because of you,

I wonder why it still turns ....

And because it hurts, the hurt that kills me inside ...

To know that you are with someone else.

Eternal Moments

2010-06-20T00:03:00.005+01:00

Those moments that touch us so much, we never let escape,
each moment that pass, it seems that it is increasingly rooted in the heart.
That's why never leave my head this time we spent together and for which I
die of longing ...

Buddha Bar Full Discography | RAPIDSHARE DOWNLOAD

2009-11-13T08:44:00.000Z

Buddha Bar Full Discography | RAPIDSHARE DOWNLOAD

...

2009-10-22T10:50:00.001+01:00

I made of myself what I did not know how,

And what I could have made of myself I failed to do.

The domino costume that I wore was all wrong

And I was immediately recognized as someone I was not and I did not deny it, and was lost.

When I tried to take off the mask,

It was stuck to my face.

When I took it off and looked myself in the mirror,

I had already grown old.

I was drunk, and I no longer knew how to put on the costume that I had not taken off.

I threw the mask away and slept in the dressing room

Like a dog tolerated by the management

Because it is harmless.

And I am going to write this story to prove that I am sublime. .

atitude

2009-09-26T11:15:00.004+01:00

This morning I waked up with this thought :

" The perseverance to maintain what we most desire is nothing more nor less than a matter of attitude."

Is it true?

ooooo

2009-09-05T21:52:00.006+01:00

In a quiet winter night where only the brightness of the full moon illuminates your face and where only the beating of your heart and your breath are the only sounds.

You are alone, almost as lost in your secret place ... The cold hurts you and freezes up the heart, you begin to lose conscious, leaves a tear from your eyes and suddenly your memories came to your mind , the times when you were happy ....

The cold freezes up more and more and you ask to yourself why it to end like this… dying alone under a full moon and cold?

No, you don’t want..

Wanted to realize more dream? You didn’t fight enough for them! Now is too late… it was given many opportunities, remember?

you were loved and you loved those you wanted good, friends were always by your side.....

Do not be afraid, do not cry, remember the good times ..

Yes, you were happy! And look at the night, the stars, the moon for the last time ...

Smile because now will be your last smile ...

My dear friend, it's your last breath, close your eyes ... Sleep in peace!

Numa noite silenciosa de inverno onde só o brilho da lua cheia ilumina
o teu rosto e onde apenas o bater do teu coração e a tua respiração são os únicos sons.

Estás sozinha, quase como perdida no teu lugar secreto...
O frio magoa-te e gela-te o coração, começas a perder os sentidos, sai uma lágrima dos teus olhos
derrepente as memórias aparecem, dos tempos em que eras feliz....

O frio gela-te cada vez mais, perguntas-te porque terá que acabar assim?
É assim que a vida acaba?
Morrer sozinha sob a lua cheia e o frio.

Não queres...

Queres realizar mais sonhos....
Não lutaste o suficiente por eles?
Agora é tarde demais...
Foram-te dadas muitas oportunidades, lembras-te?

Não foste de tudo mal,
foste amada e amaste aqueles que querias bem,
os amigos sempre estiveram ao teu lado...

Não tenhas medo,
não chores,
lembra-te dos bons momentos.

Sim, foste feliz!
Agora observa a noite,
as estrelas,
a lua,
pela última vez...
Sorri porque agora será o teu último sorriso...

Minha cara amiga,
o teu último suspiro,
fecha os olhos...
dorme me paz.

Recover deleted photos from sd card

2009-08-26T22:24:00.002+01:00

Today we live a charmed life with mobile phones, digital cameras and other such accessories which make it very easy for us to recollect the precious moments that we cherish . All we have to do is click a picture and can have it for the rest of our lives. Though a click is all it takes to encapsulate the moment, it also is a source of great agony when we accidentally pull out the memory card while our camera is on. Or, when we get a message that says “Memory card not formatted”. In most cases, you will come to know that the files and data on those memory card is completely deleted but you don't have to worry because it can be restored. Using some photo recovery tool , it is possible to
recover deleted photos with little fuss.

Stellar Phoenix Photo Recovery is one of the best freeware program by which you can even recover deleted photos from SD card . Here are few key features of this software :

* Recovery of pictures after removing memory card.
* Recovering pictures after corruption due to camera being switched off during write process.
* Recovers DATA lost when sharing media amongst different computers.
* Recovers pictures after accidental formatting of memory card.
* Recovers pictures after accidental deletion.

There are similar software available but what sets this apart is the fact that it is compatible with almost all the major camera manufactures like Sony, canon, Nikon, Olympus, Fuji, Minolta, Pentax, Sigma etc . So with the help of this software you can restore deleted pictures from memory card as well as It is compaitable with other audio formats too. Here are few file formats like JPEG, TIFF, BMP, GIF, PNG,WAV, MP3, AIFF, RPS, MIDI, M4A, M4P, AU, OGG, WMA, MOV, AVI, ASF, WMV and MP4 files . This software also gives you a content log for data recovery and displays thumbnail view for recovered photograph as well.

The software will also recover accidentally removed photo files, images and other stored data from a damaged or corrupt SD memory card. Download Stellar Free.

thnx!

2009-08-15T00:12:00.003+01:00

Since I have subscribed my blog some years ago....I can't remember when exactly, I didn't know I have so many visitors, it doesn't matter how many of them back( of course it matters) but it's interesting, all over the world!
But this simple blog is part of me, my world, my thoughts, my mood...
Sometimes I think we need to "confess" our feelings in something to feel better. But what matters?! Is always great that someone in this world may identify themselves with me =)

twins

2009-08-13T21:56:00.003+01:00

(Foto: Arko Datta/Reuters)

Rasheena M. and Sameena M. are twins and they are 11 years. Live in Kodinji, southern India, where there live about 2000 families have already been born and where more than 204 pairs of twins, which is trying to practice the doctors understand why there are so many twins in Kodinji where the inhabitants do not have specific diets, were not exposed to any chemicals and were not undergoing fertility treatments.

Sm:)le

2009-07-10T18:50:00.003+01:00

Smile
Though your heart is aching
Smile
Even though it’s breaking
When there are clouds in the sky
You’ll get by

If you smile
With your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just

Light up your face with gladness
Hide every trace of sadness
Although a tear may be ever so near
That’s the time you must keep on trying
Smile
What’s the use of crying
You’ll find that life is still worth while
If you just

Smile
Though your heart is aching
Smile
Even though it’s breakin’
When there are clouds in the sky
You’ll get by

If you smile
Through your fear and sorrow
Smile and maybe tomorrow
You’ll find that life is still worthwhile
If you just smile

That’s the time
You must keep on trying
Smile
What’s the use of crying
You’ll find that life is still worth while
If you just smile

- Michael Jackson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HsJ7CgmIVM

My World..... Your World.... Together in this World... !!!

You Are Tired (I Think) by ee cummings

Love Sonnet XVII by Pablo Neruda

we are 7 bilion!!!

Google it!

Free your feet!

What might happen without the Digital Promise Infographic

Mythbusters

Infographic: Generation Mobile

Why Wealth Insurance is Still Unaffordable.

Best Schools in America

World Food Crisis

Planet Text: How sms messaging is changing the world

How important are taxes?

Infographic: how to Get a Job in Tech

Cheaters: Students and Professionals

In my mind

Psychological Properties Of Colours

Remorse

No title

Top 10 Things That Determine Happiness

No.10 – Having a short memory

No.9 – Exacting fairness

No.8 – Having lots of friendships

No.7 – Being spiritual

No.6 – Thinking ahead

No.5 – Developing a skill

No.4 – Having personal control over one’s life

No.3 – Defining success

No.2 – Good genes

No.1 – Liking yourself

Lisbon revisited (1926)

10 Psychological Effects of Nonsexual Touch

don't even need a﻿ translation... this is universal !

Body Language: Understanding the basics

UNDERSTANDING THE BASICS

In the Beginning...

Why It's Not What You Say

How Body Language Reveals Emotions and Thoughts

Why Women are More Perceptive

What Brain Scans Show

How Fortune-Tellers Know So Much

Inborn, Genetic or Learned Culturally?

Some Basic Origins

Universal Gestures

Three Rules for Accurate Reading

Rule 1. Read Gestures in Clusters

Rule 2. Look for Congruence

Rule 3. Read Gestures in Context

Why It Can be Easy to Misread

Why Kids are Easier to Read

Can You Fake it?

True-Life Story:The Lying Job Applicant

How to Become a Great Reader

16 Things You Didn't Know About Sleep

buh

Fight

you are my world

Death

Famous World Ideologies, as explained by references to Cows

The History of the Universe in 200 Words or Less

If...

I am the SOUL

Hum...

The Five Secrets of Life

The Holstee Manifesto

After a While

What Not to Say About Someone's Appearance

*

Eternal Moments

Buddha Bar Full Discography | RAPIDSHARE DOWNLOAD

...

atitude

ooooo

Recover deleted photos from sd card

thnx!

twins

Sm:)le

don't even need a translation... this is universal !