Gift Legacy

In 4 Ways to Find Purpose in Any Job, Steve Errey, talks about legacy as a 'gift of property, by will' (see Viscott's version here). People like Gandhi and Mother Teresa made their marks and we can make ours, in everyday life:

'[L]ook at your legacy as something you possess that you can gift to others, by your own free will. Time, consideration, skill, empathy, hospitality, experience—all of these things and more are things you can gift to others.'

This is not just for work but can pertain to all areas of life. There is so much we posess which we can gift to others: patience, love, peace, undertanding, joy, laughter...

And the simplest gifts at a time in need can be the best.

Sometimes all we need is a smile.

For more on the power of the smile check out 52x52: Smile

52x52: Smile

52 random acts of kindness that each take under 52 seconds. One action each week, over a year takes less than an hour of your life.

There have been many studies on the art of smiling and its psychological effects from its ability to release mood altering chemicals to its contagious effects to its ability to change a situation and portray co-operation, altruism and competence.

The cliched  art of making lemonade out of lemons is the art of smiling when you don't always feel like it. Standing in that long queue or when someone stops in front of you at the ticket machine and goes searching for their ticket or at the till they realise they have the wrong detergent and dash away leaving you and the cashier in awkward smalltalk. These are lemons...sour and distasteful.

You could be grouchy but that's not making anyone feel any better including yourself. Why not smile? Why not shrug your shoulders, sing 'Que sera, sera' and hope if that is you in the future that there is someone as understanding standing in the queue behind you.

And if you can smile when things go wrong then there is no excuse not to smile in general. You will feel better and make others feel better too. 

'British researchers found that one smile can generate the same level of brain stimulation as up to 2000 bars of chocolate,' (Ron Gutman).

Watch Ron Gutman's 7 minute Ted Talk: The Hidden Power of Smiling to find out more...

...and smile :-)

Perspective: Now You See it, Now You Don't

Douglas Adams in a speech in 1998 in told his audience in Cambridge, "There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world."

I rememember the year I felt old. The year I turned 27. It was the first age I rememembered my mother being. I hadn't known her age until I was 10 and she was 27. When I turned 27 I was, in my eyes, my mothers age. This meant I was old. So I wasn't phased by turning 30 or 40. 

Today my daughter turned 27. It made me smile to make the link. I still don't feel as old as I did. Perspective is a funny thing. I continue to smile at the idea.

Adams (1998) gave this example of the 'oddities' of perspective: 

"The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be..."

This made me smile.

As he tells us, "...we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions."

Smiling is one of them :-) 

 Adams, D. (1998) 'Is There An Artificial God?', Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge