World Smile Day

One simple way to raise your mood is to raise someone else's mood. This is a way to raise your mood that's available to you almost anywhere and almost anytime.

Today is the first Friday in October. And the first Friday of every October is World Smile Day, a celebration created by Harvey Ball, the man who invented the original "smiley face" back in 1963.

To celebrate this day, all you have to do is make someone smile today. And notice how it improves your mood when you do.

A Fountain of Youth

Our bodies haven't changed genetically in a very long time. But we're getting fatter. What changed?

We now have a steadier supply of food than any of our ancestors had for the last three billion years. And the steadiness and regularity of our food supply is unnatural. Our bodies didn't evolve under such opulent conditions.

There is only one thing to do about it: Artificially induce lean times. That is, fast occasionally. Go without food occasionally. Your mother might have always tried to get you to eat regularly, and you often hear how bad it is for you, but when it's done right, going without food is very healthy indeed.

Learn more about it here: Fasting Articles.

Simple Goals Improve Your Mood Best

When a waiter at a restaurant has one table, he usually isn't stressed at all. He can concentrate and do a good job, and it is no problem. Two tables, okay. Still no problem. Three tables, and he has to start paying attention, because it's like juggling — the more balls you have in the air, the easier it is to drop one. When he gets up to seven or eight tables, it can become very stressful. The juggling of tasks becomes too complex to handle well.

In the same way, the number of purposes you have is directly related to your stress hormone level. Depending on how you handle your goals, a strong sense of purpose can help you manage stress well, or it can make your general stress level much worse.

The problem is that the natural drift for people is toward complication. In other words, if you don't try to do anything about it, your life will get more and more complicated; you will collect more and more purposes. So you have to make a continuous effort to simplify your purposes. Your life will naturally and constantly drift toward complication, just as a rose bush will constantly try to sprawl. You must continually prune. You can't prune once and for all. You have to keep pruning.

For example, the waiter had several goals. He wanted his guests to be happy. He also wanted to get along well with his fellow waiters. And he wanted to please the cooks so interactions with them were pleasant. And, of course, he wanted the managers to be happy with him. And so on. Too many purposes. His attention is scattered in too many directions. If he knew about simplifying purposes, he would have trimmed his purposes down to something manageable: To make the guests pleased with his service. That's enough to concentrate on, and that would keep his tension level lower, because it is manageable.

Manage your purposes. Make a list: What are your most important purposes? Trim the list down to something manageable; something simple enough that you can manage it without stress. Get few enough purposes that it feels good.

Having strong purposes can improve your mood tremendously, but only if you keep your purposes trimmed down enough to feel good.

Be aware that after you trim your purposes, complexity will gradually creep back in. Simplifying your purposes is something you'll need to do once in awhile for the rest of your life.

Keep your purposes strong and clear, simple and heartfelt, and you will find the most powerful source of self-generated happiness that exists in this world. As George Bernard Shaw said, "the true joy in life is being used by a purpose recognized by yourself to be a mighty one." Experience the true joy in life. Be used by a mighty purpose. Find yourself a concrete assignment that demands fulfillment and get to work.

Adam Khan is the author of Self-Help Stuff That Works and Cultivating Fire: How to Keep Your Motivation White Hot. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.

National Thank You Day, September 24th

Have you thanked anyone today? The day isn't over yet! Even if it's late, you can send a heartfelt email. Not only does it make the other person feel good, it makes you feel good too.

Back in August, I told you about the first National Thank You Day. It has finally arrived: Monday, September 24th. The original post I made, Who Deserves a Thank You, has some suggestions for how to make a good acknowledgment and why appreciation is such a good thing to do.

I first heard about this event at the Good News Network. They had this to say:

National Thank You Day, to be held annually on the last Monday of September, was inspired by the findings of a recent survey conducted by merci and The Emily Post Institute that found that while 87.3 percent of Americans said they are bothered when people don’t say thank you, 90.2 percent feel that they don’t say thank you enough. The 1,088 people surveyed believed saying please, thank you and you’re welcome are the most important good manners to observe, followed by practicing patience while waiting in lines.

One hundred first prize winners will receive an autographed copy of Post’s latest book, "Excuse Me, But I Was Next...": How to Handle the Top 100 Manners Dilemmas, and a box of merci Finest Assortment of European Chocolates. All nominators who submit an eligible entry will receive two boxes of merci — one to enjoy and one to pass on to the person they would like to thank.

The winners will be announced Monday on the merci site. The grand prize winner will be selected by Peggy Post, among other judges, and presented with their prize in person by the celebrity etiquette expert. The winner will be selected based on having the most inspirational and sincere story, and being the most deserving nominee.

National Thank You Day hopes to encourage you to recognize everyday acts of kindness shown to you by offering a heartfelt thanks – in any form – to all those whose good deeds have gone a long way to help or inspire you.

Sponsored by merci Finest Assortment of European Chocolates in collaboration with the Emily Post Institute, National Thank You Day is held annually on the last Monday of September.

Who Deserves a Thank You?

Giving appreciation to someone raises her mood, and it raises yours at the same time, which is why I'm talking about it here. It is a simple and easy way to feel better.

Because of your brain's naturally negative bias, you tend to notice what's wrong easier than you notice what's right. But you can override that tendency fairly easily. Simply find a system that reminds you to look for what you appreciate.

Here's one such system: Put five pennies in your left pocket at the beginning of the day. Make five good acknowledgments or thank-you's during the day. Every time you make a one, move a penny from your left pocket to your right.

Having this game keeps you on the lookout for what you appreciate. Which means it keeps your attention focused on the good stuff. And when you find something and express your appreciation, you'll feel even better.

To maximize the impact of an acknowledgment, follow these guidelines:

1. Be specific. People have a tendency to write off general acknowledgments as merely someone "being nice." But when you talk about something specific the person did and how you specifically feel about it, you make your appreciation almost impossible to write off.

2. Talk about what the person did. If you acknowledge an action, you're acknowledging something she had a choice about. If you acknowledge her height, it doesn't mean as much because she didn't have any choice in the matter.

3. Talk about what you feel. Describe your feelings about what the person did. This is what really makes your thank you meaningful.

One of the most important things you can do to become happier is say thank you, show your gratitude, and give good acknowledgments often.

You know this already. But could you do better at it? Starting today? Try it, and then leave a comment letting us know how it worked (did it make your day more enjoyable?) and what worked best.

Adam Khan is the author of Self-Help Stuff That Works and Cultivating Fire: How to Keep Your Motivation White Hot. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.

10 Ways to Squash a Bad Mood

The Achieve It blog has a list of ten ways to improve your mood. The one I liked best was:

"List 20 things you are thankful for...You can’t be genuinely thankful and grumpy at the same time. Try it and see!"

If you've never done this, I think you'll be surprised at how well it works. And it really has to be done by writing. Try to do it in your head and your mind will probably wander, and whenever the mind wanders, it tends to drift into something negative and then it sticks there, bringing you down. So get paper and pen and spend a few minutes writing down what you're thankful for.

Researchers have been trying to find out what makes people happy, and this exercise has been one of the most effective and easiest for people to do. In one study, spending a mere five minutes writing down what they're grateful for every day made people measurably happier.

And you don't have to wait for a reward. You don't have to do it every day as some sort of burden. You can do it today and you will feel better...today.

Why does it work so well? Because the human brain has a negative bias. Your brain is better at noticing what's wrong than what's right. It pays more attention to what's wrong, and thinks about it longer. This may be a good strategy for survival in dangerous times, but doesn't help us feel great.

By deliberately trying to think of what you're glad about, you change the focus of your attention to the good stuff you've been overlooking. It works like magic on your mood.

Further reading: One of my favorite books on the research on happiness and how you can apply it is Martin Seligman's Authentic Happiness: Using the New Positive Psychology to Realize Your Potential for Lasting Fulfillment.

Adam Khan is the author of Antivirus For Your Mind: How to Strengthen Your Persistence and Determination and Feel Good More Often and co-author with Klassy Evans of How to Change the Way You Look at Things (in Plain English).

Does Dirt Need Saving?

What does it mean to "save the topsoil?" Dirt is just dirt, right? When some washes away in the rain, there's just more underneath, isn't there? Isn't the earth made of dirt?

The dirt beneath your feet is only the top layer — maybe only one or two feet thick. Maybe not even that much. It is made mostly of small particles of rock, some clay, and dead plant material. And if it is healthy soil, it also contains an astounding amount of life. One handful of healthy soil contains more living organisms than there are people on earth. These living things include worms, bacteria, very small insects, and fungi.

Underneath the topsoil is subsoil, also about a foot or two deep. It has less life in it, and some plant roots don't penetrate into it. Beneath that is bedrock.

It takes a long time for topsoil to build up into something that plants thrive on. Erosion naturally and inevitably removes topsoil by wind when it's dry and by washing some away some topsoil when it rains. If the topsoil is building up — by falling leaves decomposing and feeding the microorganisms, and by the action of plant roots feeding fungi, which feeds other soil organisms, and by earthworms and other creatures — if the topsoil is building up at the same rate as soil is eroding, then everything is fine. But if soil is eroding faster than it's being built, eventually plants won't grow very well on it.

Have you seen what the Middle East looks like? When you see the vast areas of bare ground, you're seeing what happens when erosion happened faster than topsoil accumulation. Eventually nothing can grow in it. The topsoil is gone and the subsoil is gone. This is not unique to the Middle East, but that's where agriculture originated, so they got a "head start."

The same thing is happening everywhere. "Around the globe," says Judith Schwartz, "we're losing topsoil somewhere between ten times (in the United States) and forty times (China and India) faster than we're generating it..."

When a field is plowed (and before crops have taken root) it is vulnerable to erosion. If it dries out and the wind starts blowing, some of that topsoil blows away. If it rains, some of that topsoil washes away. When it rains and you see a river that looks muddy, you are usually looking at topsoil on its way to the ocean.

When grasslands are grazed unnaturally, bare ground starts to show. That bare ground can also blow away in the wind or wash away in the rain. Much of the living organisms in the soil die off, releasing their carbon back into the air.

All of us have a stake in the health of soil. Topsoil is a thin barrier between survival and starvation. History is a broken record playing the same thing over and over again: Agriculture in fresh land is productive, and the human population grows. Farming practices expose and exhaust the soil, causing diminishing agricultural returns, which eventually causes people to move somewhere else and do it all over again. Read the book, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilization for the history of the world as seen through the ultimate driving force behind most historical events — soil erosion.

And here we are in the present, still doing the same thing. The population is growing and we're losing topsoil. But we are all out of new places to move.

One long-term solution to this is to reduce the human population. Luckily, the best way to achieve that is something that ought to be done anyway: Make sure women everywhere have human rights.

But in the meantime, we need to restore our precious topsoil. Holistic Planned Grazing does exactly that. Here's how it works.

Adam Khan is the author of Self-Reliance, Translated and Principles For Personal Growth. Follow his podcast, The Adam Bomb.