Are you smarter than a 2 year old?

"Do you want a cookie?"

"Do you want to take off your shoes?"

"Do you want to watch the Wiggles?"

My granddaughter is so thoughtful, I thought. She keeps asking me all these questions.

Then I realized. These things she was saying were actually things she wanted me to say to her! Once I caught on, things went very well.

Sam: "Do you want a cookie?"
DocBrain: " Do YOU want a cookie?"
Sam: Nods head 'yes'!

So, I began to pay attention to what people around me say, and, surprise, that is exactly how most conversations go!

WifeBrain: "Did you feed the cats this morning?"
DocBrain: "You wanted me to feed the cats this morning?"
WifeBrain: Nods head 'yes'.

If you pay attention to what other people say, you will see that it is really related to what they want you to say back to them.

And surprisingly, you will find that it applies to yourself as well!

If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life...

No, this is not a paean to ugly women! This is statistics, baby!

http://pewresearch.org/pubs/301/are-we-happy-yet

The Pew research center did a survey of Americans and came to the conclusion that those who self describe themselves as happy have some interesting traits. Combining them, we get the following formula for happiness.

• Study in school, work hard and get a good paying job (or run your own business). The higher the income, the more likely you will be happy. A person who earns more than 100k/yr is twice as likely to be happy as one who earns less than 30k
• Get married. Married people are twice as likely to be happy as single people. However, if you are over 65 it is less important.
  
• Get involved in something spiritual. Those who attend regular religious services are 66% happier than those who do not go to services.
• Be a Republican. Republicans are 50% happier than either Democrats or Independents.
• Move to the sunbelt. The differences here are very minimal, less than 20%, so you can stay where you are if you want.
• Look to the future. We get happier as we get older. Life may not get better but it gets happier! Don't throw your life away when you are young because you believe that you won't be happier later. Men less than 30 are the most unhappy and this may explain why members of this group do the most antisocial things.
  
• Take care of yourself. Healthy people are 3 times as likely to be happy as unhealthy ones.
• Graduate college. Educated people are happier.
• Don't sweat the small stuff, and it is all small stuff. People who feel rushed are less happy.

All this is too tough to remember. So they did a regression analysis and found that the main things that mattered in being happy were to be: healthy, religious, married, working and Republican.

Yeah, she can be ugly.