Personal development covers activities that improve awareness and identity, develop talents and potential, build human capital and facilitate employability, enhance quality of life and contribute to the realization of dreams and aspirations. Not limited to self-help, the concept involves formal and informal activities for developing others in roles such as teacher, guide, counselor, manager, life coach or mentor.

A person’s facial features can determine the way they are perceived in society.

Even when most of us think that a person’s facial features shouldn’t matter, we rely on them far more than we imagine, to decide things like how trustworthy, how friendly and how dependable others are. In fact, there is a lot of evidence that people in roles of leadership in business, politics, military and sports, for example, are often given those roles based on their facial features and not necessarily based on their ability.
Cognitive neuroscientists at New York University, USA conducted a series of experiments to determine how much a person’s facial structure can affect the way others perceive them. The study was published in the Personality and Social Psychology bulletin in June 2015.
Researchers found that happier-looking faces ranked higher for trustworthiness and friendliness. A wider face gives people the impression of competency, and increases the perception of physical strength. There is a known correlation between testosterone levels and facial width, which can also predict aggressiveness and physical strength.

 

A similar study at the University of York, UK examined the faces of over 1,000 people from online photos, and examined the way our facial features affect the way people think of us.
Dr. Christopher Olivola of Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business, at Princeton, USA, says that facial features can predict “significant social outcomes in domains as diverse as politics, law, business, and the military.”

His team examined the faces of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies, and found that many of them had faces that were wide, thus considered more competent. Candidates with more competent looking faces were more often given the job, even when less competent-looking people performed better than them.

People with trustworthy and likeable faces generally find it easier to win elections, but an untrustworthy face means a greater likelihood of a criminal conviction. Having a trustworthy face also made it more likely that a person will attract investors or be offered a loan by a bank.

This facial bias is so strong, that researchers at the Warwick Business School, UK found that most people can correctly identify CEOs, sports coaches and military chiefs by their faces.
These and many other studies prove that facial features are a very significant factor in determining our perception of others, even though the perception may be completely wrong. These facial judgments are so strong, so ingrained, that it may actually change a person’s personality.
Take a look in the mirror. What are your facial features telling other people about you?

NON SURGICAL RHINOPLASTY….. Read more

 

  • Do happier people live longer—and, if so, why?These are the kinds of questions that researchers are asking as they explore a new—and sometimes controversial—avenue of public health: documenting and understanding the link between positive emotions and good health.A vast scientific literature has detailed how negative emotions harm the body. Serious, sustained stress or fear can alter biological systems in a way that, over time, adds up to “wear and tear” and, eventually, illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Chronic anger and anxiety can disrupt cardiac function by changing the heart’s electrical stability, hastening atherosclerosis, and increasing systemic inflammation.Jack P. Shonkoff, Julius B. Richmond FAMRI Professor of Child Health and Development at HSPH and at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Professor of Pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, explains that early childhood “toxic stress”—the sustained activation of the body’s stress response system resulting from such early life experiences as chronic neglect, exposure to violence, or living alone with a parent suffering severe mental illness—has harmful effects on the brain and other organ systems. Among these effects is a hair-trigger physiological response to stress, which can lead to a faster heart rate, higher blood pressure, and a jump in stress hormones.Focusing on the positive“But negative emotions are only one-half of the equation,” says Laura Kubzansky, HSPH associate professor of society, human development, and health. “It looks like there is a benefit of positive mental health that goes beyond the fact that you’re not depressed. What that is is still a mystery. But when we understand the set of processes involved, we will have much more insight into how health works.”

    Keys to a happier, healthier life

    Research suggests that certain personal attributes—whether inborn or shaped by positive life circumstances—help some people avoid or healthfully manage diseases such as heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, and depression. These include:

    Emotional vitality: a sense of enthusiasm, hopefulness, engagement

    Optimism: the perspective that good things will happen, and that one’s actions account for the good things that occur in life

    Supportive networks of family and friends

    Being good at “self-regulation,” i.e. bouncing back from stressful challenges and knowing that things will eventually look up again; choosing healthy behaviors such as physical activity and eating well; and avoiding risky behaviors such as unsafe sex, drinking alcohol to excess, and regular overeating

     

    Mapping happiness

    Drawing on recently compiled data from a nationally representative study of older adults, Kubzansky is beginning to map what she calls “the social distribution of well-being.” She is working with information collected on participants’ sense of meaning and purpose, life satisfaction, and positive mood. By tracking how these measures and health fall out across traditional demographic categories such as race and ethnicity, education, income, gender, and other categories, she hopes to understand in a fine-grained way what it is about certain social environments that confers better frame of mind and better physical health.

    The last thing she wants, Kubzansky says, is for her research to be used to blame people for not simply being happier—and therefore healthier. Referring to one of her first major studies, which found a link between worry and heart disease, she said: “My biggest fear was that journalists would pick it up and the headlines would be, ‘Don’t worry, be happy.’ That’s useless. Not everyone lives in an environment where you can turn off worry. When you take this research out of the social context, it has the potential to be a slippery slope for victim blaming.”

    Being in the moment

    Kubzansky, who is married and has two young children, says her work has made her think a lot more about finding balance in her own life. To that end, she says, she recently signed up for a yoga class. She also plays classical piano—both chamber music with friends and solo hours at the keyboard for her own enjoyment.

    “When I’m playing piano,” she explains, “I’m in the moment. I’m not worrying or thinking or trying to work out a problem. I’m just doing this thing that takes all my attention.”

    That insight is also at the center of her research. “Everyone needs to find a way to be in the moment,” she says, “to find a restorative state that allows them to put down their burdens.”