The Secret, of course, is the huge best seller that makes a claim that on its face sounds delusional: You can get what you want by thinking about it. Years ago I stayed in a bed-and-breakfast room rented by a woman whose refrigerator had a collage with pictures and words showing money and prosperity. Clearly she believed that imagining these things would help achieve them.
Previously I described a cable-TV experiment that shows there is something to this. Here, in addition, is some self-experimentation:
Back in the 80′s when I first started work as a nurse, I decided to spend one week using only superlatives & compliments when dealing with my co-workers and patients. I 1st wanted to see if they would ‘call’ me on it & just tell me to stop the silliness. Then I wanted to see if it made a difference in my life, &/or theirs. . . . I freely complimented the docs, nurses, ancillary help, etc. At the end of the week, I had people telling me, ‘I don’t know what it is about you, but I just love spending time around you.’
My mom tells a similar story. In seventh grade she went to a new school where she didn’t know anyone. It was very bad year in terms of making friends. The night before the first day of eighth grade she had a dream. In the dream she was at school and it was just as terrible as seventh grade. She woke up and thought, “No, I can’t go through that again, it was too awful.” She wondered what she could possibly do to change things. Well, she thought, I could smile at everyone “like a damn fool” — whether she felt like smiling or not. In fact, this worked. Not much later a girl she admired said to her, “People say you’re a lot more friendly this year.” Eighth grade turned out a lot better than seventh grade.
The Buddhist meditation practice of metta, is a lot like this. In it, you wish to be free of suffering and the causes of suffering, and you wish to be happy and healthy. Then you wish the same for your family, friends, close neighbors, strangers, enemies, and finally all sentient beings.
I suspect, if you’re going around wishing all the best to everyone, then people would notice your positive affect, and return it, thus creating a good result for yourself.
I haven’t read The Secret. I have tried smiling a lot at people. There’s a huge positive difference between living in a world where people don’t make eye contact and smile at you, and one where they do. And all you have to do to live in the second world is to make eye contact and smile.
Maybe this is my secret. (I haven’t read the book.) I’ve always been one of those people that everyone says “hi” to and attempts to engage in conversation. When I was younger it used to really baffle me because I was mostly not initiating these conversations. I’ve concluded that there must be something in my “default face” that triggers this in others. I don’t think I smile all the time, but I do make eye contact with people when I pass them.
The only way I can make friends with some women, or even get them to talk to me after being introduced to them in some cases, is to compliment their clothing or accessories. Works like a charm. I don’t think a man could use that trick however. Men should compliment their intellect or reasoning, perhaps; works on me.
Dacher Keltner (https://psychology.berkeley.edu/faculty/profiles/dkeltner.html) did a study where he looked at yearbook photos of Mills college graduates from 1959 and 1960; they were a group that has been studied repeatedly over the years with personality inventories and such peridodically. Keltner controlled for attractiveness and a couple of other things and found that women who showed Duchenne smiles — big broad smiles where your eyes crinkle that are hard to fake — had in the next 40 years lived far happier lives than women who showed polite smiles or no smile at all. This is the thinnest slice of behavior imaginable, the split second of a photo, and it was strongly predictive of psychological well being in life.
Also, there are people who because of some muscular defect in their faces cannot smile, so when someone smiles at them, they cannot smile back; this is painful for others — it feels bad to smile and not have you smile returned. But it is devastating for their relationships. A way was found for them to clinch hard on their back molars to produce a little smile. Bob Levenson of the Berkeley psych dept worked with them, so they could do this. It changed their lives — they could share positive emotions with others in a facial way.
I find that smiling at people socially creates a friendlier environment. I’ve learned not to be offended if people don’t smile back; women smile back more than men. In fact women smile socially more than men. I think that as I get older — I’m 57 — people seem a little more willing to smile at me…
Seth, I think this is really one of your best posts. The use of italics and hyperlinks was highly effective. And I especially like the way the individual commenters added something special of their own.
I’m going to try this too
Tim