Mind-bending Thoughts

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Incredible scenery on the road in Banff National Park

Every now and then in life we connect up with someone who causes us to stop and pause.

They cause us to THINK.  Deeply. 

When the words first hit you, you sit and ponder.  You look around.  Things suddenly feel different.  You sense this is not the usual conversation.

Perhaps it is that they ponder questions that you too have mulled around, but never shared with another soul.  Or they provoke and stir thoughts that you never dared to consider.

And it shakes you.

To the core.

Sometimes these interactions cause a blurred lens to come into focus on something you are passionate about, or something you didn’t see or perhaps forgot about.

And these discoveries ignite you, and renew your passion. They fill your sails.

That’s what recently happened to me.

I reconnected with a friend I made several years ago, and his passion and enthusiasm for life has just breathed excitement back into mine and awoke some of my own feelings within. We share a joy of living and we are both people who are willing to take risks, and walk off the “expected path” of life to live! We share a bond on that.

David decided to question his life and challenge himself to live his most authentic life, and his adventure is just inspiring! And he is writing a blog about his journey.

I couldn’t give any higher recommendation than to say this is a must read for all people.

David is incredibly intelligent, smart, creative and talented, and he is so beautifully articulate, you can’t miss a blog post of his, because he’ll challenge you to think outside of the box.

And we all need this challenge in life–to think beyond what we know and understand, and to question if there more to this life than doing what is given, or expected.

Are you living your life to the fullest?

Check out one of my favorite posts by David here and he will help you answer that question.  Then if you enjoy it, read the rest of his blog.  It won’t disappoint, I promise you! It’s phenomenal on so many levels.

Expression of the Day August 17, 2015

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There is a great expression in this MSN article:  A Milestone in Africa: One Year Without a Case of Polio

What expression do you see?

How Much You Smile Could Predict Your Divorce Potential

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Turn that frown upside down

In a 2009 study from DePauw University, researchers found that how much you smiled as a child and young adult could accurately predict your divorce potential. Check it out.

I find that fascinating because I believe emotional expressions are windows to our soul, and who we are as people. I also believe we are hard-wired to feel certain emotions. I suspect that our facial structure actually predisposes us to feel certain emotions more than others. The reason I say that is people who have what I call a very happy face structure (high check bones, broad smiles, and round faces) are typically happy people. Ask people with these faces next time, and they can’t help but smile! And people with heavy brows often stress and frown more. It’s just the way it is.

People who have droopy outer corners of their eyes will have more of a tendency to feel sadness.

So I absolutely believe people who frown more and smile less are much more likely to have a marriage end in divorce. Do you?

15 Signs A Marriage May End In Divorce

Personality-Based Emotional Intelligence Test

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Personality split

I have been spending time trying to understand more information about emotional intelligence, and how it combines with my ability to spot deception. Having read about emotional intelligence lately, I am finding the definitions fall short in describing the depth of my “tool set”, for a lack of a better term. While I do understand emotions extremely well, I believe there is more to reading people than just emotions. Emotions, to me, are a subset of my skills, as is deception detection. It’s one element, but not the largest element. Does that make sense?

The boarder picture is understanding people and human behavior, and one explanation that I have been exploring lately is personality intelligence. I seem to have templates in my head for understanding people. I feel like I live in a world without strangers.  Maybe its due to pattern-matching of facial features, emotions, and behaviors together?  I am trying to understand it more.

Today in my quest for more information, I took a test online, the Personality-Based Emotional Intelligence Test. When my score popped up, it said I scored higher than 96.2% of people who took the test. That caught my eye. I found the test easy and required little thought. I missed three answers. I wrote the website owner to find out more information about this test and the research behind it (see comments below–people are getting the same score for different answers–uh oh!).

I truly believe who wrote this test gets it! They understand what I am doing and I’d like to learn more about it!  This correlates to the “facial profiling service” I offer.

On the website where the test is given, it says:

This website has been offering a wide selection of psychological tests, mostly personality tests, since late 2011 and has given millions of results since then. It exists to educate the public about various personality tests, their uses and meaning, the various theories of personality and also to collect research data. This website is under continuous development and new tests and information are being added all the time.

This website also exists for the promotion of open source assessments and open data. A number of open source measures of popular psychological constructs have been developed and are made available under a creative commons licence on this website, see the full list. Also, at the end of every test users are asked if their data can be saved and used for research. The (anonymous) data that this yields can be downloaded from the data page. This data has already been used in several academic articles.

How did you score on the test?

Have you heard of Personal Intelligence?

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Brain stem

“Personal intelligence is defined as:  “the capacity to reason about personality and to use personality and personal information to enhance one’s thoughts, plans, and life experience.” (Mayer, 2008, p. 209)”

I find this utterly fascinating because I practice this in my life daily!  Understanding personalities, through the use of emotions, behavior, demeanor, words spoken, etc., is a key factor in every interaction in my life!

Someone has put words to it!

Check this out: