So today, I’d like to hear YOUR point of view. What piece of advice changed your life the most? What single insight made the biggest impact on your quality of life?

It could be something you read on a blog or in a book, a quote from a famous person, or even something your grandfather told you when you were a kid. Any advice that really changed your life.

I don’t want to skew your answers by sharing my personal answer – so I’ll share that in a few days, when I sum up the most interesting answers I get from you.

Please share your answer below in the comment form (you can do it anonymously). (If you’re reading this in your RSS reader, click through to the site.)

Thanks for your input! I’ll see you again in a few days.

So today, I’m putting that in order. I’m going to give you 5 at once! 5 great ways to bring tons of fun into your everyday life. Let’s rock!

1. Associate mundane objects you see every day with fun ideas/memories

Imagine you walk past a bakery, and smell the freshly baked bread…

Does it bring back memories? Or maybe it’s the sound of a cow moooing, or the feel of a feather pillow, that brings back the best memories in you. It makes you feel great, far out of proportion to what’s happening in the moment.

Like Pavlov, who got his dogs to associate ringing a bell with food, you can associate pretty much anything to anything, just by having them happen one ater the other repeatedly.

So let’s use that to have fun! First I’d like you to think of a couple of ideas or memories that always make you smile . It can be movies you’ve seen, jokes you’ve heard, or something that happened to you personally. Pick somewhere between 3-5 of these.

(Personally, I picked FPS_Doug shouting “BOOM HEADSHOT!”, the Monty Python sketch about Four Yorkshiremen, and a couple of personal memories that would take too long to explain.)

Next, we’re going to pick everyday objects to associate these with! For example, you could pick your bathroom door, or a chair in your room, or something you see out of your bedroom window. In any case, pick something you see several times every day. We’ll turn these into your fun triggers.

Okay? Let’s get started! (If you haven’t yet, pick at least one fun memory and one mundane object, right now!)

Take one of your fun memories. Take one of your everyday objects. Look at the object, then close your eyes and think of the fun memory until you crack a huge smile. Then open your eyes and shake it off – think of something completely unrelated (If a quiz is quizzical, what is a test?).

Then look at the object again, and think of your fun memory until you have a huge grin on your face. Then break your state again by looking around and thinking of something unrelated. Repeat 10 times, which should take you a few minutes in total.

If you’ve done this right, now every time you look at your boring everyday object, you get a huge grin on your face because it brings back that fun memory!

Repeat this with the other fun memories you picked, and you’re done! You’ve just brought a ton of fun into your life for every day in the foreseeable future… and it only cost you a few minutes of your time and a bunch of happy thoughts!

2. Talk to random strangers

If you’re shy and introverted, this can be a tough one. But I’m putting it here anyway, because there’s so much fun potential in it!

We’re talking about having fun here, so forget for a moment that meeting random strangers can be great for your business and personal life. Let’s just focus on the fun part of it.

The first step would be to not take yourself too seriously. You’ll likely never see this stranger again, so forget about what they think of you.

Second step – realize that weird/crazy is much more fun than boring. So don’t try to stay inside your comfort zone by having boring conversations about the weather. Instead, start talking to a random stranger, and immediately go for a completely crazy topic! For example:

[scene: you're standing at a road crossing, waiting for the light to turn green. You turn to the person next to you.]
You: Excuse me, can I ask you a question?
Stranger: Uh-huh.
You: Who do you think would win a fight between Iron Man and Godzilla?

If they just look at you like you’re crazy, don’t worry about it. They’re just a stuck up bore. And even if they look away and ignore you, they will later get to their office, say “Guys, you won’t believe what happened to me today!” and have a good laugh with their friends at your expense. You just brightened up their day!

As long as you have a fun and positive attitude with it, you can’t go wrong. And if someone answers “Duuuude! Are you nuts?! Of course Iron Man would win, he can frickin’ fly!” – you might have just found a friend for life!

3. Use your senses in unusual ways

I first started playing around with using my senses after reading Feynman’s experiments with smelling. In fact, I wrote about this here on FLD before:

Richard Feynman read that people are a lot better at smelling than they think. So he proposed a little experiment to his wife. In her room, there was a shelf with old books she hadn’t touched in a while. Feynman would go out for two minutes, she would take a book off the shelf, hold it in her hands and then put it back. Feynman would then come back in and try to figure out which book she took by smelling them.

He got it right.

Later he got three of his friends to try a similar experiment. Each of the friends would touch a book, and Feynman would try which friend handled which book. He got it right again!

Of course, after hearing this story, I had to try it myself. So I got a friend, and we both took turns going out of the room as the other held one book in their hands. Then we tried guessing which book it was, just by smelling them. We both got it right on our first try.

As Feynman said, the books that havent been handled in a while have a dry, uninterested smell. But the ones that have been touched, they have a sort of moist smell. More alive.

Try it yourself sometime. It’s silly, it’s fun, and at the same time it’s quite amazing!

You’re a lot better at smelling than you think! And while we’re talking about smelling… try thoroughly smelling other things. Ever tried smelling your computer screen? (Do it right now!) A glass of mineral water? A fresh newspaper? An old newspaper?

There’s a lot more fun you can have with using your other senses in unusual ways (like blindfold eating), but this article is already long as it is, so I’ll leave that for another time.

4. Leave secret messages to friends (and strangers)

When I was a kid, we used to ring strangers’ doorbells and run away, or leave coins on the ground, propped up on a small stone, with the underside covered in mustard. And we used to laugh when we thought about how annoyed the strangers would get.

Then I grew up.

I know that because now instead of doing small things that will annoy someone I’ll never see, and giggling about that, I do small things that will make someone I’ll never see feel good, and I giggle about that!

A very simple fun way of doing this is put-pocketing (do this to friends):

Put-pocketing is like pick-pocketing, except instead of stealing stuff, you put something in the pocket. So take a small piece of paper, write (or draw) some positive message, and try slipping into one of your friends’ pockets without them noticing. For added fun, write that they’re supposed to pass it on to someone else, again without the recipient noticing.

5. Smile for no reason

I describe my experiences with this in detail in my article Read Minds and Lift Your Mood – Body Language Basics. But the basic idea is that smiling makes you have fun! So just put a big grin on your face, and fun will follow shortly

(Random note – when psychologists want you to feel happy without realizing they’re making you do that, they’ll ask you to hold a pencil in your teeth, without letting it touch your lips. This forces your lips into a smile, which makes you happy!)

Oh, and since we’re having fun with this – if anybody asks why you’re smiling, make up some crazy reason! Like…

“My doctor discovered an imbalance in my blood chemicals. He prescribed me one hour of forced smiling each day.”

or…

“I’m scaring away polar bears.”
“Polar bears?”
“Well, do you see any polar bears around?”
“No…”
“See? It’s working!”

And that’s all for today. Have a funtabulous day!

But whenever the rudder hit a rock, the neck would break because it was so rigid.

Nowadays, the rudders are attached with flexible rubber hosings, because although it’s nowhere near as strong as cast iron, it’s more flexible and ultimately lasts longer.

And flexibility is what I want to talk to you today. How you can increase your flexibility so that adverse circumstances don’t break you, and make full use of life opportunities!

The buffer zone – what stands between you and utter despair

Nod along with me if you ever ran out of toilet paper while on the toilet. Yes? Then nod again, if you thought something like “Oh, s***! Why didn’t I buy more toilet paper? I’ve seen it running out ages ago! Damn, damn, damn…”

Hopefully, your story had the same happy end as mine – I found a pack of tissues in my pocket.

Anyway, my point is… the time to buy toilet paper isn’t when the last roll is just about to run out. You naturally create a buffer zone. If you go buy new toilet paper when your second-to-last roll runs out, you’ve got a buffer zone of one toilet paper roll (or an average 241 sheets, claims my toilet paper packaging). If an unexpectedly demanding… umm, you know… turns up, you’ve still got 241 sheets of toilet paper between you and utter despair.

Why keep a buffer zone

So you don’t think I’m completely obsessed with toilet paper (see Understanding (or why some people put the toilet paper roll in the holder facing the wrong way)), I’ll switch to a different example.

Savings.

Let’s say you’re working at a job you’re reasonably happy with. But a unique chance to earn a living doing something you absolutely love turns up. Your dream job… but you’ll first need to quit your old job and live off your savings for 3 months.

If you have 6 months’ salary in the bank, you’ll say to yourself “Hell, yeah!” (or “Helheim, yarrrr!” if you’re a viking), and go for it. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll have another 3 months’ savings left to find another temporary good-but-not-fantastic job.

But what if you’re living paycheck to paycheck? What if you can’t even afford to get ill, let alone quit, or your mortgage, student loan, car payments, and all the other bills will run you over better than an 18-wheeler truck?

Right. You’ll pass on the opportunity to get your dream job.

And that’s why a buffer zone rocks. It gives you flexibility.

(And great power comes with great flexibility.)

Like the rudder attachment, you can bend to evade adverse life circumstances, instead of running into them head on. With savings in the bank, you can look for a job you love, or take some time off to figure out what you really want to be doing. With extra toilet paper waiting, you can afford to skip shopping on Saturday if a really fun day-trip comes up.

Oh, and because your buffer zone gives you flexibility, it helps you build an abundance mentality. You no longer feel like money is horribly scarce if you always have several months’ salary in the bank – and that lets you relax about money, and thus earn more. (Abundance mentality is a funny thing.)

Keep a buffer zone. Flexibility rocks!

I would sometimes get invited to a friend’s party, or friends would go out on Friday nights – but I was afraid to go with them, because of the uncertainty. I had no idea what it would be like, if I would like it, if I would have fun… so I usually stayed home alone.

Then I would hear people talking about “last friday”, and I thought they all had an amazing blast and I was really missing out. But I was too afraid to go.

Then, one day, I finally decided to come along. And lo and behold, those “amazing” friday nights usually consisted of people just standing around, drinking a little, talking a little, and generally being pretty bored. I went another one or two times, and had the same impression every time.

And yet for months, because I was so afraid of the uncertainty of going out with my friends, I created this idealized idea of what an amazing time everyone was having, how much I was missing out, and made myself feel really bad.

That was the last time I let uncertainty stop me from living a full life.

To let you learn from my mistakes, here are a few insights:

1. Uncertain situations are often the most fun

When you go into a situation where you don’t know what will be going on – sure, you’re scared as hell. But everything’s new, everything’s interesting… and it’s a ton of fun! Think back to when you were a kid, and went exploring a forest with your friends. It was big. It was amazing. And it was uncertain.

2. 90% of the time, you will have fun and be just fine. The other 10% make great stories.

Really. Most scary things you imagine never come true.

Strangers don’t shout at you angrily for approaching them. They’re usually really warm and receptive… and the worst thing I’ve seen happen is that they ignore you. (unless you’re being an obnoxious ass)

People don’t boo you off the stage if you suck at public speaking. The worst that happens is that people get bored and start checking their watches and daydreaming. The best that happens is that you share some interesting information, get a laugh or two, and get off the stage leaving the audience wanting more.

And when you DO get into an embarrassing situation or get an way-out-in-the-left-field response from people, you get a great story to tell!

3. Uncertainty is scary. Overcoming scary means courage. Courage leaves you feeling confident and empowered.

I covered this in detail in my post How to Conquer Fear.

Basically, you can’t think your way out of fear. The only way is to do courage and face the fears. And once you do that, no matter what happens, you will have more confidence and feel empowered afterwards.

So the next time you’re faced with an uncertain situation, feel the fear, and then go through with it anyway. You’ll see afterwards that you’re completely fine, and have a good laugh about how you were afraid for no good reason.

May you face a ton of uncertainty!

Well, they’re right. But that’s great news! Think about it; a completely fair life would be like hard-core communism. No matter what you did, you would still do exactly the same as everybody else. Your actions wouldn’t matter.

But because life isn’t fair, your decisions matter! You can make a huge difference to your life by making the right decisions, finding your mission in life and values etc.

Most people go through life like a sea boat without navigation. They occasionally stumble across a tropical island of bliss, but then leave again, and spend most of their days just floating around aimlessly.

You, on the other hand, can become an experienced captain, set on a course for a treasure island. And you’re already well on your way – hey you’re reading a personal development blog! You have taken the first and most important step – learning to improve yourself.

You could say that life being unfair is great because you can easily get ahead of all those people who sleepwalk their way through their lives. That’s definitely a point, but I don’t think that really matters.

It doesn’t matter that you can easily do better than others.

What matters is that you can easily do great, in absolute terms!

So don’t worry about life being unfair. On the contrary – celebrate it! In this unfair world, you can truly make a difference with your actions.

Then, one day, we got to a topic called “indifference curves”. And straight away, the teacher told us he really doesn’t like them. He dropped his usual excitement and only feebly attempted to joke around. For the next lesson or two that we covered this, the energy level of the whole classroom went down several notches, pretty much down to the usual dreary boring high school class levels.

I always remember this teacher not only because he managed to get absolutely everybody excited about economics… but also because I saw what a difference his attitude made on the one topic he didn’t like. I actually thought indifference curves were pretty interesting (I even drew a Chuck Norris joke relating to them in my notes), but his attitude just dragged the whole class down.

Funnily enough, most people act the exact opposite way. Most of the time, they make everything sound dreary and boring, and only occasionally get really excited about what they’re saying. Let’s change that!

Excitement is contagious

You’ve probably heard someone describe a topic in such a passionate way, you just couldn’t help being interested. Hell, I’ve heard a friend tell a completely fascinating story about making a tomato-lettuce-bacon sandwich!

Excitement is incredibly catchy! One of my favorite examples of excitement is FPS_Doug – thinking of this video always cracks me up, no matter how down I’m feeling

…

When I was younger, I talked very monotonously, and didn’t let much emotion through. So even when I was talking about something I was absolutely passionate about, I made it sound about as exciting as watching paint dry.

Eventually, I took the time to figure out what makes interesting passionate people so interesting… and here’s a simple 3-step method to help you do the same!

How to get people excited about what you have to say

1. Pick a topic you’re passionate about

I could probably keep you entranced with stories and fun little experiments about psychology and the human mind for a good few dozen minutes, but ask me to talk about football, and I’ll put you to sleep faster than a professional hypnotist.

It’s all about picking something _you_ are absolutely passionate about. Yeah, I know, you’re always told to talk about what the other person is interested in. That’s great advice, but for the sake of this experiment, we’ll have you talking about something YOU love!

2. Find an interesting angle to explain it from

You can make anything sound boring. What if I told you something’s all about sitting motionless for an hour and a half, barely moving your arms, and occasionally wiggling your fingers?

Not too exciting? I’m talking about driving a Formula 1 race!

Similarly, you can make anything interesting if you approach it from a good angle. In fact, this whole article was inspired by Benny’s comment on my article on how to stop boring conversations:

(…) Instead of lying or avoiding the question I exaggerate the answer. I dont say I’m a translator; I say that I bridge gaps between cultures — sounds pompous, but technically its true.

Instead of “Maths” you can say that you study the rules of the universe and the greatest achievement of mankind. You could say how passionate you are about particular specialities (e.g. how statistics comes up in such obscure and interesting parts of life etc.) and not use the word “Maths”, which they would associate with their boring secondary school teacher. I used to be a Maths teacher and always introduced my job with such drama that you’d swear I was a lion tamer…

You can make anything sound exciting if you pick the right angle to approach it from.

3. Put a LOT more excitement into your voice than you’re used to

Did you watch the FPS_Doug video above? When I first saw it, I showed it to some friends, and then we were joking around, running around, crouching and jumping, saying “BOOM HEADSHOT!” like Doug in the video.

Or at least that’s what we thought. But when a friend recorded me on video, I saw that I was actually saying more of a “boom headshot” as opposed to Doug’s BOOM HEADSHOT!!! YEAH!!!

Moral of the story? You’ll sound a lot less excited than you think. So don’t be afraid to go completely overboard at first.

In fact, do this exercise with a friend. You both find a topic you’re passionate about and an interesting way of explaining it, and then try saying it to each other again and again, getting more and more excited every time!

It’s hard to get excited by yourself, but once you start getting into it with a friend, you will just feed off each other’s excitement, to ridiculous proportions! Soon you’ll be saying things like “So you TOTALLY try differentiating the function and YOU’RE GOING ALONG THE X AXIS, going along the x axis and OH NO!!! there’s a discontuity at x=0!!! But WAIT, there’s hope…”

If you can’t find a topic that you find super-exciting that your friend would understand, then by all means, talk about brushing your teeth or something! You really don’t need an inherently exciting topic to practice this. It’s all about letting go of your inhibitions, and putting as much emotion as possible into your talking.

…

And that’s all for today. Go find a friend to do this with (feel free to send them a link to this article so they know what you’re on about), and practice the 3 steps. Soon you’ll get people excited about what you have to say just by opening your mouth!

“So, what do you study?”
“Maths.”
“Ah… errr… I used to hate maths at school.”
“Uh huh.” [awkward silence] “So… what do you study?”
“Philosophy.”
“Ah… so… found the meaning of life yet?”
[forced smile] “Not yet.”
[more awkward silence]

All along we could both be esperanto-speaking jugglers who write a personal development blog, and we’d never find out.

Here’s something I found out – you don’t always need to answer questions directly. It all depends on the question…

The 2 Types of Questions

For simplicity’s sake, there are 2 main types of questions you will get asked:

1. Genuinely want to know the answer

You’d think that if your conversation buddy really wants to know the answer, you should answer. And often that’s the case.

But sometimes, you’re better off answering a different question…

I got this concept from one copywriter. (someone who writes those long sales pages online). Here’s roughly what he said:

I was approached by a guy asking how much I charge for a sales page. Now, I know exactly where that question leads to. You tell him your regular rate, he thanks you, and then he’s off to ask the next copywriter. Just browsing for price. He’ll end up getting one of the cheapest, and get exactly what he’s paying for.

But after that happened several times, I found out how to handle that question. *Don’t answer it.* Instead, start asking them for more details on exactly what they need.

Because you know what? They don’t really want to know how much you charge. They’re only asking that because it’s the only thing they can think of asking. They want to appear knowledgeable, but they don’t know any other questions to ask. Hey, they’re not copywriters, they don’t much about the industry.

So instead of answering the price question, start steering them in the right direction. Find out what type of product they’re selling, what their customer base is, how much traffic they’re getting. Those will all lead them to find exactly the right copywriter to look for.

And, as a bonus, by asking all those questions, you’ve now established value as an expert. If you find they’re a good fit for you, you now have a good chance of getting paid your quote, even if it’s higher than what they were expecting to pay.

And if you find they’re not a good fit, just pass them along to someone you think will fit well with them. A win for everybody involved.

Did you catch the main point?

This happens especially when you’re the expert on something, and they aren’t.

2. Just want to talk to you

Then there’s the small-talk type of questions. The other person just wants to talk to you, they don’t really care that much what your job is or where you grew up. Those are just ways to find common interests to talk about.

I’ll be honest. I’m still experimenting with this one. Sometimes I answer directly. Sometimes I tell people who ask me what I study that they’re asking the wrong question – what I study won’t tell them much about me. Sometimes I instead ask them what’s their mission in life. That usually leads to interesting conversations.

Also, if you have any good ways to deal with boring small-talk questions, please let me know!

And that’s all for today. Remember – just because someone asks you a question, it doesn’t mean you should answer it directly.

###

Quick update – How to Be Rich and Happy now only $47:

A few days back, I posted a review of Tim Brownson’s book How to Be Rich and Happy. A few of you did a double-take at the hefty price tag of $97. While I believe the book is worth that, some people just can’t wrap the mind around the concept. As Tim summed it up:

We’re not just trying to sell a book, we’re trying to sell the concept of paying $97 for an e-book first and that makes it twice as hard.

So Tim decided to drop the price to $47. If you bought the book at the original price, don’t worry, Tim will personally refund you the difference. And if you got turned off by the high price, you might want to give it another thought. The 365-day money back guarantee of course still holds.

Now take a few moments to imagine they’re standing in the same spot… but turned towards you and looking straight into your eyes. How close do they feel now?

(really, imagine the scene)

Too close? Actually, way too close? Like, 2 or 3 metres too close?

The physical distance is the same in each case. But the psychological distance is very different. And that’s what I want to talk to you about today. What influences how “close” you feel to people (and certain events).

Visualisation

You’ve probably already heard that visualisation helps you feel happier and achieve more (in sports, and in life). By imagining success, you program your mind to seek that success and make it happen.

But many authors leave out that it’s not just about what you visualise, but how you visualise it. Here’s a story from Paul McKenna, a leading NLP expert:

A number of years ago an Olympic champion came to me who was experiencing a loss of confidence. His sports psychologist had told him to visualise winning the race as often as he could throughout the day.

Although he had imagined winning the race hundreds of times, he didn’t feel any more confident. In fact, he was now really worried about two other competitors. When I asked him how he imagined winning, it turned out he was dissociated, standing outside the picture. Esentially, he was telling his brain the winning was for someone else.

But when I asked him to think about the competitors who worried him, it turned out he was making big bright pictures of them looking confident and strong. I simply told him to step in (associate) to the picture of winning while taking the pictures of his competitors and shrinking them into tiny black-and-white images. He practised a few times until he could do it automatically. The next day he went out and beat his personal best in practice.

The athlete’s story shows an important point. You want to decrease the psychological distance from positive visualisation, and increase the psychological distance of negative visualisation.

To decrease the psychological distance, you can:

• step in (see it from first-person perspective)
• make the images brighter, more colourful, more vibrant
• make the images into a movie
• imagine powerful background music

All that increases the visualisation’s impact. There’s a reason why cinemas use huge screens and booming sound. It grabs you and pulls you into the experience.

Similarly, to increase the psychological distance:

• drain the colour from the images
• if you’re imagining a movie, freeze it on one frame
• shrink the image
• dissociate (see it from a 3rd person perspective)

Just try it a few times. You’ll be blown away.

Psychological distance from other people

When you’re talking to acquaintances, the key to keeping comfort is the psychological distance. You can vary the physical distance quite a lot, but the psychological distance is key.

The 3 main factors influencing psychological distance are:

• eye contact
• body orientation (Are you facing away towards them or away from them? Or at a 45 degree angle?)
• touch

For example, when you’re pointing out something cool to a friend, you will stand next to them, put your arm around their shoulder and point towards the cool thing. This is fairly comfortable, because you’re at a 90 degree angle to them, and not making any eye contact.

If you then want to talk to them again, you will need to take at least a step or two back to keep the same psychological distance when you face them and make eye contact.

Also, have you ever thought of someone as “creepy”? A creepy person simply pushes the psychological distance way beyond what you’re comfortable with. This might be a drunk guy getting in your face, hugging you by the shoulders and telling you random stuff. Or, it might be a creepy guy always facing your way and making incessant eye contact. Although he might be far away, the psychological distance is too small, and he’s making you feel uncomfortable.

Anyway, have fun using the ideas of psychological distance!

So when Tim offered me a copy for review on my blog, I snatched up the offer faster than you could say antidisestablishmentarianism. And despite my high expectations, I was still blown away by the content!

I’ve read probably two dozen personal development books before this one, so I thought nothing much new would come out of this. I was just expecting a very clear, humorous, concise rehash of everything I know.

I was spot on with the “clear, humorous, concise” bit. But boy, was I wrong about the “rehash” part!

Sure, the book covers a lot of good concepts I know already, and often stress on my blog. For example – just reading a book by itself won’t change your life for the better, you have to take action as well.

But there were a LOT of new concepts to me too, or some old things explained in a way that finally made them click on a deep level. And despite the cheesy title, it’s a cool an fun book!

In the book, you will learn:

• how to find out your core values (I’ve never seen this explained even half as clearly. You can really see Tim has years of life coaching experience.)
• how to tackle any negative beliefs about money that are keeping you poor
• why doing less often means getting more done
• why be a quitter
• how to calculate the Rich and Happy return of things you spend your money on (this was completely new to me, and pretty damn awesome!)
• and a ton more!

At over 200 pages, separated into 31 chapters, the book covers a ton of ground. And yet I haven’t found a single page of fluff! It’s all pure content.

Overall, the book is very well written. It has short, easy-to-read chapters, and combines the best of John’s storytelling and clear concise style with Tim’s humorous writing. And, of course, the combined knowledge of the two guys!

It’s an e-book download, so you could buy a copy and be reading it literally 5 minutes from now.

The book costs $97 $47. (Update: Tim decided to drop the price to $47, because apparently people couldn’t wrap their minds around paying almost 100 bucks for a book. To be honest, I’m more comfortable with a $47 price tag too!)  Yes, that sounds like a lot of money if you think about it as an entertainment spending.

Except it’s not an entertainment spending. It’s an investment. And by investment standards, it’s dirt-cheap. You’ll get your money back many times over just by following the money bits of the book. And then you get all the happiness bits of the book on top of that! (In truth, the two go hand in hand, but you’ll find out more about that in the book.)

On top of that, it’s a risk-free investment! Why? Because you get a 365-day money back guarantee! That’s right, you buy the book, and then get 365 days to decide if it was worth your money. If you decide it wasn’t, you can simply ask for your money back (you don’t need to give a reason), and you get it. Hassle-free.

In fact, if I was in the authors’ place, I would go a step beyond that. The book is so awesome, I would quite happily ask you to ask for you money back if you feel you didn’t get at least 10 times as much value from the book as you paid for it. Seriously.

You can get more info (as well as real people’s experiences of the book) right here: How to Be Rich and Happy. Go on, grab your copy now.

And six months from now, when you wake up in the morning with a big smile on your face, looking forward to making money doing something you absolutely love, and then spending the afternoon and evening doing whatever you want, you will think back to this moment, and realize buying this book was one of the best decisions you ever made.

Have a great day, and whether or not you decide to get a copy of How to Be Rich and Happy, I will be back with you on Saturday. Ciao!

Granted, it wasn’t a major upset. But every time I saw that, I got a little shot of anger, thinking “Can’t she see she’s putting it in wrong?!”, and then turn the roll around. That was until I read one online article…

Apparently, men like to place the toilet roll facing outwards, while women like it facing inwards. (Update: I heard cat-owners place the roll facing towards the wall (for obvious reasons). My mom used to own a cat when she was young… so this could be another explanation.)

So I had a good laugh about that, because I finally understood why my mom was placing the roll the “wrong” way. Every time after that, I just got a little chuckle out of it instead of getting upset. (I still switched the roll to face outwards though, because I like it that way :p)

Different but equally correct

Another related story involves light switches. I grew up in a country where up means lights on and down means lights off. When I occasionally went on holidays and saw light switches that worked the other way, I just chuckled at the foreigners who got them working wrong.

Then I moved to Belgium, where down usually means on and up means off. I realized there’s no logic supporting one way or the other. It’s just a matter of convention.

The two conventions are different, yet both equally correct. (As opposed to the toilet paper incident. Obviously, outward-facing toilet paper is far superior!)

And the same applies to people’s beliefs.

Just because someone believes different things than you do, it doesn’t mean they’re wrong. You are both equally correct.

I’m quite happy with people believing whatever they want. I don’t like it when they start forcing their beliefs on others. Like anti-abortion folks who manage to get abortion outlawed in their country, so people who believe in choice can’t exercise their beliefs.

Understanding others helps you accept them

In my toilet paper incident, I stopped being upset once I understood my mom’s reasoning.

The same applies in many other cases. There’s a brilliant video on TED talks explaining the difference between democrats and republicans. It shows how democrats and republicans generally think differently (because they have different values), yet they are both equally correct. I really recommend you watch it.

And that’s the best thing to do when you’re upset with someone’s beliefs or actions. Understand their reasoning. Ask someone to explain it (in an open-minded way, not an attacking-their-beliefs way), or find an explanation online.

You probably still won’t agree with them. But you will no longer be upset, because you will understand.

There’s a reason why understanding (as in “an understanding person”) means tolerant and open-minded. Because once you understand someone’s point of view, you really become much more tolerant towards them!

Try it. Then you’ll understand.