Chemicals that control your own brain, your own emotions, and your own energy.

 

Real power in life is not in controlling the world; it is in learning how to control your own brain, your own emotions, and your own energy. Chemicals that control your motivation, happiness, calmness, and connection are not locked inside success, money, or other people — they are hidden inside your daily habits.

Every time you finish a small task, you build confidence and momentum. Every time you move your body, laugh, or breathe deeply, you release stress and create energy. Every time you step into sunlight, sit in silence, or practice gratitude, you teach your mind how to feel peaceful instead of anxious. And every time you help someone, hug someone, listen to someone, or give a genuine compliment, you strengthen the bonds that make life meaningful.

The most important lesson here is simple but life-changing: you don’t always need to change your entire life to feel better — sometimes you just need to change what you do for the next 10 minutes. Make your bed. Go for a walk. Stretch your body. Clean a small space. Write a short to-do list. Drink water. Call a friend. These small actions look simple, but they are not small — they are powerful because they send a message to your brain that you are in control, that you are moving forward, and that your life is not stuck. And when you repeat these small actions every day, you don’t just change your mood, you change your identity.

You stop seeing yourself as someone who is tired, unmotivated, or stuck, and you start seeing yourself as someone who takes action, someone who grows, someone who shows up for life. And that is how real transformation happens — not in one dramatic moment, but in small, quiet, powerful actions repeated every single day.

https://tinyurl.com/34eesvwr

Emotional Equations

 

Good Touch, Bad Touch, No Touch

 

When you’re so afraid of bad touch that you pull away from everyone,
you end up with no touch and miss out on the good touch
that might have healed the pain and hurt from the bad touch.

I can’t prove it and neither can you, but I think you’ll agree with me that our skin has a memory separate from our minds of Good Touch, Bad Touch and No Touch.

No Touch – when you sleep on opposite sides of the bed with your backs to each other with one partner dead asleep and the other staring into the darkness thinking, “What am I doing here?” when it’s easier to have sex than it is to kiss; when you walk in the world one moment hoping no one will speak to you or touch you and the next moment feeling painfully alone.

Bad Touch – being hit in anger; honking your horn and yelling at that elderly driver who probably shouldn’t be driving or being that older person who shouldn’t be driving; being ridiculed; being looked at with disdain, disgust or repulsion from someone who once liked, cherished, admired, respected and even loved you; the moment you get up out of bed to sleep in a separate bedroom from your partner because you don’t want to feel angrier at them.

Good touch – the smile you see when you’re seeing someone you love after being away and all you see is each other; when you spoon in bed; that gentle touch you see between older couples when one taps the other on the arm to point out something they both enjoyed in the past; when your son or daughter helps your aging mom or dad walk to the car from a restaurant; when a loving wife of 60 years gently rubs her husband's wrist while the morphine drip is attached and tells him, “Just breathe through your nose and all the pain will all go away.”

What does your skin remember?

Being listened to and feeling not just understood, but feeling felt is good touch and your skins never even have to touch. In fact if you have read this far, I’m guessing that some of what you have just read have cause you to feel felt.

Mark Goulston M.D., F.A.P.A.

COMPUTER VISION IS BETTER AT SEEING YOUR SECRET EMOTIONS THAN HUMANS

DON'T EVEN TRY TO HIDE THEM

By Lindsey Kratochwill

A lot of people aren't able to perceive micro expressions. They're the tiny facial ticks that reveal what we're feeling when we're trying not to let it show. So, understanding those micro expressions could allow you to look deeper into peoples' faces and know what what's really going on inside.

But even people who can perceive micro expressions aren't always accurate.In 2012, researchers in Finland described what they claimed to be the first system that used a computer to detect micro expressions. In the paper, they write that computers are particularly attractive in this field, since humans are only correct about 47 percent of the time.

And computers have only gotten better at their craft. In a paper submitted to arXiv, Xiaobai Li and a team of researchers (also in Finland), share their new machine vision algorithm. And they say it's better at reading human faces than humans themselves. To test it, they first needed a database of what all of these micro expressions look like. To create the database, they asked 20 study participants to watch videos designed to elicit an emotional response. But, they were told, if they did demonstrate a response, they would have to complete a long questionnaire explaining those emotions (a brilliant deterrent). Turns out, it worked and the researchers were able to gather 164 micro expressions using a high speed camera.

Then, the algorithm needed to learn how to recognize and interpret those expressions. The algorithm gets its super powers by being able to "magnify" the micro expressions by isolating the parts of the face that are moving, and distorting that area to move further. The algorithm then learned which emotion is attached to those particular movements.

But the real test is how does it stack up. Li and the team pitted the algorithm against lowly humans, having both watch videos of just micro expressions. Participants were instructed to identify which emotion went with which expression. Team human was about 72 percent accurate, and the computer's best accuracy was about 82 percent. The second task involved picking out micro expressions from a longer video. The researchers made it easier on humans (allowing them to replay the videos, and only having them note how many micro expressions they saw, not when they saw them), since they felt the task was "too difficult." Even with that advantage, humans scored an accuracy of about 50 percent, while the computer earned a comparable 42 percent.

All of this means, we're going to have to get a lot better at hiding our feelings from our computers.

[Via MIT Technology Review]