When I smile approvingly at myself in the mirror, I signal to my body a social approval closer to me than any other society.

A study by Carolien Martijn and Marlies Vanderlinden from Maastricht University investigated whether body satisfaction can increase when women learn to associate their appearance with social approval. “The positive effect we witnessed for women with a high level of body concern supports the idea that body satisfaction may be linked to the idea of social approval. Simply showing these women photographs of themselves followed by a smiling face – signalling social approval – increased their body satisfaction and self esteem significantly,” Carolien Martijn said.

It occurs to me that the first “society” we face every day is our own – me, myself, and I. When I smile at myself in the mirror, I signal to my body a social approval closer to me than any other society.

Here’s a quick and easy imagery you can do to improve your self-esteem and perhaps your physical health.

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Just seeing the letter “A” before an exam can significantly improve a student’s results.

Just seeing the letter “A” before an exam can significantly improve a student’s results. Contrarily, exposure to the letter “F” may make a student more likely to fail. A study by Dr Keith Ciani and Dr Ken Sheldon at the University of Missouri, found: “The letters A and F have significant meaning for students, A represents success and F, failure. We hypothesized that if students are exposed to these letters prior to an academic test it could affect their performance through non-conscious motivation.”

“Non-conscious motivation,” huh? Awesome! Do they mean to say that I (you) can be influenced by sub-conscious external motivator cues? Who’d a-thunk it?

Although the number of test subjects was small – only 131 students took part in three experiments – I like their hypothesis. The results were interesting, too.

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Look into the mirror and say, “Oh, wow! You are so amazing!”

Everybody deserves to have at least one person in their life who is totally, completely, wonderfully in love with them. Someone who realizes how magnificently awesome they are…. Someone who understands their unique beauty and one-of-a-kind personality….Yes, someone whose heart thrills at the sight of them and whose eyes light up and say “OH. WOW! YOU ARE SO AMAZING!”

I call it, understandably, the “OH WOW attitude.” Babies need to have this attitude expressed to them many, many times in order for them to pick up the message that they are wonderful, worthwhile human beings. With repetition, they will begin to make it a part of themselves.

How does this apply to me as an adult?

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While it’s important to be very precise about your goals, it’s far more important to find REASONS WHY those goals are important to you.

Maybe you’ve read piles and piles of books and taken course upon course on how to set and achieve goals. While it’s important to be very precise about your goals, it’s far more important to find REASONS WHY those goals are important to you.

The WHY is your motivation. Motivation is the gas to drive you to your goal. Without motivation, there is insufficient fuel to achieve. EVERYTHING you have ever achieved, you achieved for a REASON – a WHY.

You see, objects do not motivate – emotion about an object can. A new car may seem like a great goal, but if you have no place to go, nobody to see, and nothing to do IN the car, you may not have sufficient motivation to achieve it.

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How the actor behaved influenced the behavior of the other participants in the game.

A rather interesting experiment was conducted some years ago in which an actor played the part of a contestant in a betting game with unwitting participants. Participants knew they were involved with an experiment but had no idea what the experiment was.

Each participant was introduced to the actor as though the actor was another participant. The participant and actor were to compete in a betting card game in which all winnings would be given to the winner.

Bets would be placed up to a maximum level for each “hand” played – the game was played one card at a time – face down – the larger card wins each hand. Neither participant could see the other’s card until after all bets were made.

The interesting part was in how each participant reacted to the actor.

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