A Study Shows The Effect Of Smiling On Trust Toward A Recommendation Agent

Trust is a significant factor in e-commerce businesses. Lui et al. (2010) conducted an experiment to determine whether smile of an online recommendation agent affects the trust of users. 

A recommendation agent is software that determines the preferences of users and recommends products and services in online shopping activities. 

Naturalistic avatar, a humanoid in form of human-like appearance, was used as a recommendation agent in this study. The trusting beliefs were decided as ‘competence’, ‘integrity’ and ‘benevolence’. An experimental website was developed for shopping a laptop by participants. They were told that they were supposed to choose a laptop for a friend who does not know much about laptops. Before making a choice, they interacted with a recommendation agent.

After making a final choice of laptop, the conclusions were drawn. The smiling agents were perceived as more competent than non-smiling agents; while smiling agents were not perceived to have higher integrity and more benevolence than non-smiling agents. 

The trust can be built using facial expression of a recommendation agent. So, while designing avatars as recommendations agents for websites, design a smiling agent to interact with people. It will make them believe they are interacting with competent avatars who recommend them a better product.

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Reference - Siu Man Lui, School of Business (Information Technology), James Cook University, Cairns, Australia. And Wendy Hui, The University of Nottingham, Ningbo, China. 

Research paper name - Effects of Smiling and Gender on Trust toward a Recommendation Agent.

Published in - International Conference on Cyberworlds (2010)

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This Study Reveals How Smiling Helps People to Remember You For A Long Time

A smile consists of two differentiating periods of motions of mouth - neutral to smile and smile to neutral. Ning et al. conducted a study to determine discriminating power of a smile based on these two periods of motion. 

Landers et al. proved that people are more likely to recognize faces from real smiles than fake smiles as well as from moving images than static images of smiles. Using this conclusion, Ning et. al., prepared a video database of 30 to 40 video clips of 10 subjects. Each subject performed smile expression as naturally as they could. The expression begins with a neutral face, goes to smile, and from smile to neutral face again. 

After examining the features generated from neutral to smile and smile to neutral periods of motions separately, they found that both give the same information about identity. 

This implies that the discriminating power of smile based on neutral to smile and smile to neutral periods of motion is same. Motion doesn’t matter to people; what matters is whether they go flat on charm in your smile when your expression goes from neutral to smile.

A human face contains a lot of information about identity. In further investigation, they tried to know which part of face is more discriminating. As features were generated from smile dynamics, error rates of lower face and upper face were compared separately. 

They found that lower face is 3 times more discriminating than upper face. So, if you want people to remember you for a long time, smile more.

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Reference - Ye Ning, Terence Sim. School of Computing, National University of Singapore. Research paper name - Smile, You’re on Identity Camera. Published in - IEEE (2010)

Reference – K. Lander, L. Chuang and L. Wickham. Research paper name – Recognizing face identity from natural and morphed smiles. Published in – The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology (2006)

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Asymmetry of Spontaneous and Deliberate Smiles

Asymmetric facial expressions such as smirk express negative emotions in everyday communication. Asymmetry in smile shows emotions of contempt, doubt, disapproval, etc. Ekman et al. conducted a study to determine the dynamics of asymmetry of spontaneous and deliberate smiles on the sides of face. 

In the first part of study, 36 children were asked to imitate facial expressions shown on screen. Correctly imitated expressions were chosen to study asymmetric deliberate expressions. To study asymmetric spontaneous expressions, experimenter told them jokes to elicit spontaneous smiles. In second part of study, 35 female adults were shown a pleasant film and a stress inducing film. Their responses while watching these films were recorded.

The asymmetry in Zygomatic Major, which is a primary muscle involved in smile was evident in data collected from children and adults. 

The asymmetrical deliberate smiles occurred frequently on the left side of face; while asymmetrical spontaneous smiles occurred frequently on the both sides of face. Asymmetrical spontaneous smiles were evenly divided between left and right side of face. This implies that asymmetry is more prevalent on left side of face when it comes to posed expressions.

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Reference - P. Ekman, Wallace Friesen and J.C. Hager. University of California, San Francisco.
Research paper name – The Symmetry of Emotional and Deliberate Facial Actions.
Published in - American Association for the Advancement of Science (1980)

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Smiling Faces Are Better for Face Recognition

This challenges the common notion of using neutral face images for face recognition. As smile is the most common expression, it can be used for optimizing performance when tens of thousands or even million faces are to be recognized. 

To test this, Yakoob and Davis, from University of Maryland, conducted an experiment in two parts. Two databases containing neutral and smiling face images of same person in each database were used. For first part of experiment, 10 subjects from first database were used. The discrimination power was calculated for smiling and neutral faces. 

It was found that the discrimination power was more for smiling expression than for neutral expressions which showed that smiling faces are better in face recognition.

In second part of the experiment, more face images were added from second database. In first stage of second part, 0-15 faces were added. Then in second stage, 0-40 faces were added again. The average discriminating power was calculated. 

In both stages, the average discriminating power of smiling faces was more than the average discriminating power of neutral faces which again showed that smiling faces are better for face recognition. 

To detect a face of person in video clips, expressive faces such as smiles will be more cooperative for access applications as well as surveillance purposes.

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Reference – Yaser Yakoob and Larry Davis. Computer Vision Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20472. Research paper name - Smiling Faces Are Better for Face Recognition. Published In - Proceedings of the Fifth IEEE International Conference on Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (2002).

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How We Smile While Lying

Using a smile to conceal negative or genuine feelings can be a smart thing to avoid dispute or exposing honest feelings which can create problems. Ekman et al. conducted an experiment to know the difference between how people smile genuinely and how they smile when they are lying about pleasant feelings. 

47 student nurses were recruited for this study. They were videotaped while watching two short films. One short film was arousing pleasant feelings and another, arousing upsetting feelings.  Two scenarios were set to give their responses to an interviewer. In honest scenario, they were asked to discuss their honest feelings about film arousing pleasant feelings. 

In deceptive scenario, they had to convince interviewer that they experienced pleasant feelings while watching film arousing upsetting and depressing feelings.

Two types of smiles were distinguished as felt happy smiles and masking smiles. Felt happy smiles were identified by the activity of muscles around the eyes along with corners of mouth raised.

While masking smile is identified by raising corners of mouth only. It was found that when enjoyment was experienced, felt happy smiles occurred more often than masking smile. 

When subjects attempted to hide strong negative emotions, masking smile occurred more often than felt happy smiles. When you don’t see any activity around the eyes when someone is smiling; tell them you caught them lying and ask what is that they are hiding.

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Reference – Paul Ekman, Wallace Friesen, University of California, San Francisco. Maureen O’Sullivan, University of San Francisco. 

Research paper name – Smiles When Lying. 

Published in – Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (1988)

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The Ideal Duration Of Smile Between Performer And Observer

Smile is meant to make people feel pleased to see you. Making a positive impression on others is dependent on the duration of smile. Hanibuchi et al. did a study to determine how observers perceive smile based on the duration of smiles. The smile patterns differed in duration between was fast (275 ms), normal (550 ms) and slow (1100 ms). 6 actors who can express smiles easily were selected for smiling for different duration. Actors as well as 20 other participants who were university and graduate students were observers for evaluating the experiment.

They found different results for actors and other participants who were not trained for smiling. Actors had more positive impressions when duration of smile was normal, which is 550 ms, and negative impressions in slow and fast conditions. While participants had more positive impressions when duration of smile was slow and fast. The duration for which smile should be given depends on who is on the receiving end. So make sure whether your crush is an actress or not before you give a smile to her.

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Reference - Shumpei Hanibuchi, Shogo Nishida and Kyoko Ito. Graduate School of Engineering Science Osaka University. 

Research paper name - A study of impression differences between smile performers and observers -Toward the Significance of Smile Training. 

Published in – IEEE (2010)

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This Study Shows How Distinguishable Smiles Are

Having emotions in robotics is advantageous in various ways. Giving a pleasant experience in human-machine interaction will be practicable. For service providers, smiling makes a huge difference in order to create a friendly environment. Incorporating smiles in robots will lead to better performance as virtual agents. This study helps in using smiling to enhance the rating of users to performance of robot or virtual agents.

Borutta et al. (2009) introduced a psychological system-theoretic approach to generate various types of smiles in robots artificially. They also described seven different types of smiles and discussed the hypothesis whether smiles are distinguishable.

A system-theoretic approach was based on the Zurich Model of Social Motivation, which describe the effect of smiling on emotional state of a human. Each of the type of smile among seven types of smile was based on one of the three state dimensions – security, arousal or autonomy.

Security – 1. Trustful Smile 2. Smile of Relief 3. Embarrassed Smile
Arousal – 4. Anxious Smile 5. Surprised Smile
Autonomy – 6. Superior Smile 7. Inferior Smile

Total 20 participants, 10 male and 10 female, took part in experiment in which 126 videos were shown to each participant with 18 videos of each type of smile. The experiment was conducted in two parts. In first part, participants answered this question – “What happens in this situation and how does the person feel?” In second part, participants answered this – “Which kind of smile is shown?” and had to answer among seven types of smile.

The results of first part show that fearful and embarrassed smiles were identified rarely. Inferior smile was mixed with dominance. Best results were obtained for trustful and surprised smiles. The results of second part show that there was a great variation in accuracy of classification by participants. Some of them had accuracy of 19%, while some of them achieved up to 50%.

The overall results show that the classification rate is higher for some types of smiles, especially trustful, surprised and inferior smile. In comparison, superior and embarrassed smiles were classified worst. The frequency response for trustful and anxious smile was similar, so they had been mixed up frequently. 

The perception of smiling as a positive emotion, weaknesses in animation and presenting some situations in fast motion to participants were major challenges before researchers. But, they were successful to generate seven different types of smiles and some of those types of smiles were distinguishable.

This study gave helpful insights about how to design emotions of robots or virtual agent based on ability of people to distinguish smiles.

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Reference - 

Researchers - Isabell Borutta , Stefan Sosnowski , Michael Zehetleitner, Norbert Bischof and Kolja Kuhnlenz

Research paper name - Generating Artificial Smile Variations Based on a Psychological System - Theoretic Approach

Published in: The 18th IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication

Toyama, Japan, Sept. 27-Oct. 2, 2009

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Image Courtesy - 

Trustful - Image courtesy of adamr at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Surprised - Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Embarrassed - Image courtesy of stockimages at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Anxious - Image courtesy of Gualberto107 at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Automated System For Detecting Asymmetric Spontaneous Smiles

Asymmetric smiles show contempt, disapproval, doubt and defiance. When we see a guy not able to solve a simple mathematical equation or not aware in which foreign country the prime minister’s will be; only one corner of lip goes up while smiling on his lack of common knowledge. This asymmetry indicates a strong negative emotion.

To develop a system detecting spontaneous asymmetric smiles as people watched online videos, Senechal et al. did a study including one-sided and asymmetric facial expressions. The right facial nerve is independent of left facial nerve. When it comes to lower part of face, the muscles are contralateral which makes us easier to perform asymmetric expressions such as smirk. As muscles of upper face are bilateral, performing asymmetric movements is difficult. Try to raise only one eyebrow like the famous eyebrow-raising of ‘The Rock’.

Researchers collected and labeled 2265 videos of spontaneous data of clips ranging from 30 seconds to a minute. They also collected 200 posed videos in participants were asked to pose various asymmetric facial expression with slight variations like tilting their head. The template matching technique was used to identify asymmetric smiles in spontaneous data clips.

For each frame of video, the face was located, scaled, cropped and flipped around vertical axis to train and test. It was found that training with combination of mixed and spontaneous data gave best results.

After training and testing, they achieved 69% precision in detection which can be interpreted as only 1 false detection of asymmetric smile in every 85 videos. This system can be used for automatic detection of spontaneous asymmetric smiles. This provides valuable understanding of how people take part while watching videos or films. The emotions they convey while watching a fiction or real film gives insights about human nature through different aspects.

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Reference - 

Researchers - Thibaud Senechal, Jay Turcot and Rana el Kaliouby. Affectiva Inc., Waltham,

MA, USA.

Research paper name - Smile or Smirk? Automatic Detection of Spontaneous Asymmetric

Smiles to Understand Viewer Experience.

Published in: Automatic Face and Gesture Recognition (FG), 2013. 10th IEEE International Conference.

5 Reasons Why It Is Necessary To Take Risks In Life

Everybody wants to achieve something in life. We don’t want to go to our deathbed realizing our life didn’t mean anything, or we didn’t live the life we wanted, but lived the life what others wanted us to live. The regrets are so painful in the end, but the time has gone. We can’t do anything at that point of time. Only choice we left at that time is embrace the death with regrets.

There is always a choice to do what we always wanted to do and leave the life that we don’t find worthy of living. To lead the life we want to live, to become the master of our fate, we need to make some tough decisions. They might be unreasonable, but the most important ones. One of those decisions is taking risks. 

Taking risks does not only involve business, it also involves taking risk to chose the career we are passionate about, to take the unexplored path with no guarantee of success, fighting in a war for our nation, driving at speeds greater than average speed to experience the thrill or climbing a mountain and much more things that has uncertainty of outcome. Here are some reasons why taking risks is necessary in life:

1. We come out of comfort zone

When we take risks, we have to stretch ourselves. We have to do things we have never done before. Facing challenges and setbacks is inevitable. We have to overcome fear in order to get things done. It takes us out of our comfort zones and each time we come out of comfort zone, we grow. That growth leads us to the success. Due to taking risks, living at the highest potential is possible. We use every bit of us to get what we want. As we grow mentally and emotionally, it makes us a stronger person.

2. Thinking at a whole new level

When we play safe, we do not stretch ourselves, we do what is comfortable, and we think small. We do not explore the options that involve stretching out minds, thinking in a different way. We do ordinary things without realizing our true potential. But by taking risks, we put everything on the line, so we think at a whole new different level and we are astonished to know how we could even think that much. We surround ourselves with global thinkers who teach us how to think different in different situations to make the most of it. Thinking creates the outer environment and consequently the results of our actions. In the end, we realize the results are worth it.

3. Eliminates unnecessary things

We have the bigger fish to fry, so we don’t get attached to unnecessary small things. Sacrificing good things for great things can give staggering results, so we give more attention to what matters the most. A small diversion can ruin the efforts we took to reach certain level. So we eliminate unnecessary things, unnecessary conversions, and unnecessary relationships that waste our time. We focus on productivity, not the trash. Getting attached to small things or people can drain the productivity which causes failure. The mind will be trained to focus on things that are important and necessary.

4. Win big

Those who risk big, win big. Taking chances is necessary, because regrets cause more pain than a pain of failure. We cannot win every time, but the efforts are worth it. Because with each failure comes a lesson to try more intelligently next time. To win big, risking the failure is necessary. Walt Disney, founder of Mickey Mouse had faced bankruptcy seven times. He didn’t hesitate to risk failure next time. He took risks on his creativity and he is one of the greatest artists of all time. Those who risk big, win big and live extraordinary lives. The rewards are even greater than we can ever imagine.

5. People admire those with courage

People greatly admire those who have guts to take risks. We can uplift others to live the life they want to live. So it not only benefits us but also those around us and many more people who we don’t even know. The impact on lives on people in a positive way is a better currency there is. It is not about the money, but making an impact that will last long and inspire others to live life to their highest potential and make them free from mediocre way of living.

Risks not only make a better person but also teach many important life lessons. Even though we fail, we emerge as an improved person who is wise and can help others from the experiences he had.

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WHY DO I MAKE WRONG CHOICES EVERY TIME?

Why things go right when others make choices for me and go wrong when I make choices for myself? Do I not know how to predict what will work and what will not? We can’t be right every time when we make choices, but I am not able to any exception for that when I made a choice for myself. Or I get so desperate to prove myself right that I forget to do what is right, to enjoy the journey, not thinking about the consequences and proving others that I’m right. Or I make some irrational choices those are certain to fail because those are out of the world and don’t fit into the world or so called system.

When others make choices for me, they make it according to system and those will be right as those are according to system and system always wins. But what’s the point in going according to system if our beliefs differ from what system says. When we make choices those are against the current, the level of determination required to swim is greater than which is required for swimming with current. The dead fish can swim with the flow. A lot of people swim with the flow, because they don’t have reason to swim against the current. When those who dare to swim against and fail, they judge them on the same ability required to flow with the current.

Yes, swimming against the current is an irrational decision, an unreasonable choice. But is it necessary to make the right choices every time. If we start making the right choices every time, then from where we will learn? Either we are so intelligent that we tested everything that could go wrong or we are so fortunate that everything turns out to be as planned. But both of these things are irrational. To test everything we have to know what could go wrong and that wisdom comes from experience and experience comes from the wrong choices. The mistakes or wrong choices made as early as possible have an advantage. The more wrong choices we make, the wiser we become at early age.

When I make wrong choices, every time it makes me wiser. Let go what people think about it. Only those who are dissatisfied with themselves judge others. Instead of helping and learning from others’ bad choices, they are content with the failures to make them feel good about themselves. It gives them satisfaction that there are losers in the world other than me. But those who fail due to irrational decisions and learn something from it, which makes them wiser, are they failure? Should they be judged on the same scale as others who are right because they made choices based on what flowing with current says, what system says. Anybody can do that, even the dead fish. But that’s not a choice. That’s not taking any decision due to fear of failure. Actually it is not wrong to make choice to go with the flow. The types of difficulties are different on both paths. Flowing with current involves competition, crowd and unpredictability of existence. Swimming against involves fear of failure, isolation and uncertainty. What’s wrong is judging people who make choice of swimming against current and flowing with current on same scale.

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MAGNETISM - FEW MOMENTS OF ATTRACTION

We lose track of everything when we are immersed in a work we love to do. It feels that the time is passing so rapidly. But when we have to do the work we don’t care about, we question why the time is passing so slowly. We can’t help it. We need a reason for not doing that work. That’s when the excuses emerge. We start finding a ways to either procrastinate or avoid that work. Though, we know that we got no option for it. One day or another, we have to do it, willingly or unwillingly. Then why do we find excuses for not doing that work now? Why does our mind repel that work? Do we lack the sense of responsibility? A lot of people do not reach where they want, not because of lack of talent or skill, but they spend time doing things they don’t care about.

Yes, due to circumstances, we have to make those choices. We have to choose the work that we do not care about for the sake different reasons like feeding a family or we do not know what the work that we love is? We never go deep inside ourselves, because we are too busy running with the pace of the world. Even we know what that work is, we cannot find the courage to pursue it. If we pursue it, many obstacles try to stop us, and maybe we give up because we can’t take those. Not because we are weak, but we are naïve. We don’t know what it takes to get the job done. We don’t know what the future holds for us, so we hesitate while taking the bold step. But we never realize that uncertainty is the only certain thing. So, whatever the path we will choose, it will be there with us.

Still, we don’t take the path; maybe less travelled or not travelled at all, because we don’t get the approval. But deep inside, that thing which is so dear to us remains. It comes out in different ways. Thought it’s not the mainstream work, but it has magnetism. We get attracted to it through indirect ways. While doing anything, we think about it the moment we find any connection or reference to it. We forget the work in hand for some moment and lose ourselves in those beautiful experiences of thinking about it. It doesn’t matter whether we are getting something out of it or not, the experience is the biggest reward. It feels that it counts in our account of life. It makes us feel alive. The magnet has a force of attraction which attracts the truth. We may feel miserable all the time we are into the work that we don’t care about, but the few moments of attraction makes everything beautiful.

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This post is also a part of Ultimate Blog Challenge and A to Z Challenge. 

Today's letter is 'M'.

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To know more about yourself from your smile, send me photo of your smile. I respect your privacy, so I assure you that your identity will not be revealed anywhere. And this service is absolutely free!!

Email Id. - iwantsmileforme@gmail.com

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JUSTIFY - THE FALLACIOUS USE OF MIND

When the mind’s great ability, to reason, is used erroneously; the repercussions are unthinkable. When this way of thinking becomes habit, the great things are beyond our grasp. This happens when we don’t find anything worthy, so we try to avoid it by giving excuses or unnecessary justifications to prove that we are right. Sometimes, we justify our fears by giving excuses for not doing the work that should be done at any cost. That does not mean we should use another ability to justify our inabilities. This is what I was doing when I made a mistake and I couldn’t take a stand for myself because the odds were against me. The life didn’t knock me down; I knocked myself down by my own hands. Life wasn’t unfair to me; I was irresponsible.

I was literally discovering boredom in those days. I was not allowed to do anything about making a dream into a reality. Because I got 4 backlogs and my parents thought that my dream was the reason for my distraction. They were right. It was the reason for my pathetic result. My mind was so creative at that time. When I had to study and clear those backlogs, it was busy in creating excuses for my irresponsible choice of focusing on things that didn’t matter at that time over the things that was important at that time.

I used to think that they should not form an opinion about me based on the university mark sheet. The great ones had failed in schools and colleges, yet they were able to achieve something huge, beyond imagination. I can also do that. Why were they taking it so seriously? These sheets can’t decide my future. I create it, not the university. Three college drop-outs are now the most important people in the field of technology and they are self-made billionaires. I was not thinking about dropping out from college, I just wanted to do what I love. Why this sheet of papers will decide my fate?

Actually, they didn’t have problem with my result; they had problem with my irresponsible nature. They were ready to give me four months assuming that I had graduated from college. But still, I was busy in finding the justifications for what I had done. It was of no use. It was waste of creativity, use of mind for wrong purpose. It took me away from the right path. The habit of giving justifications is so harmful to man’s character. It yields nothing, but takes deep down to the place of misery.

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This post is also a part of Ultimate Blog Challenge and A to Z Challenge. 

Today's letter is 'J'.

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To know more about yourself from your smile, send me photo of your smile. I respect your privacy, so I assure you that your identity will not be revealed anywhere. And this service is absolutely free!!

Email Id. - iwantsmileforme@gmail.com

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AHA MOMENT - HOW I GOT THE UNIQUE BUSINESS IDEA

It was 31^st March, 2014. In the night, I went to sleep as usual. But, I wasn’t able to sleep because I slept in the afternoon. I was just lying on bed. Before the sleep and after waking up, our mind is calm and still. That is the time when we think about ourselves the most. That is the time for reflection. I was in final year of engineering. The only question in my mind was what to do after engineering. I chose engineering thinking that I’ll have a secured job and stable life, but I didn’t want to build a career in that because it does not articulate my inner feelings and aspirations.

I have been researching on how smile is related to human nature from 5 years. I wanted to do something related to that which will give me purpose as well as money. I had searching for an answer to question ‘what to do’ from 8-10 months. This field does not exist yet. No one knows about how it works, actually no one knew that something like this even exist. I had unique and different skill, but the knowledge without application is useless.

As I was just lying on bed, I was contemplating about what was happening in my life. The thought were centered to only one thing: Smile. I watched an inspirational video of an entrepreneur, D. S. Kulkarni, before going to bed. He said that he felt no shame while doing any kind of work, no matter how small it might be. I tried to relate that to my life. What was my work? Just researching and feeding my curiosity? Then how will I survive on it? And I don’t want to do work in engineering field.

Thinking about work and smile, from nowhere, an incident came to my mind when I explained my friend, how smile is related to his nature and how relationship problems can be solved using my theory. He had a break-up and I helped him get over that girl using my research. It happened six months ago. And it occurred to me, what if I do the same with people and get paid for it. That means I’ll do what I always wanted to do and make money. I’ll become a consultant, an entrepreneur and add value to people’s lives through my business. Wow! That makes me unique as well. I was wondering that why it didn’t occur to me before. I consulted him six months ago, I had an idea stored in my mind for those days, but it never occurred. I started thinking about the services I can provide through smile and my research, fantasizing interactions with clients and feeling happy for adding value to their lives. I was like a kid who got a bicycle as a surprise gift from his parents. He couldn’t believe that he was having his own bicycle and lost in fantasies.

I saw the timing in mobile. It was 4:55am. I was still awake. I couldn’t believe that I was going to have my own business. Seriously?! The feeling was so overwhelming that all the attempts to fall asleep failed due to excitement. I didn’t realize when I slept that night. The next day was never going to the same. Actually my life was not going to be the same again.

For this whole month, I’ll be sharing some important moments of my one year journey with you with no filtering, same as it happened. In addition to that, I’ll be sharing some insights in every post which I learnt along the journey that will help you in your life and business.

Some insights from this incidence:

1. Whatever we need is within us. No need to waste time searching for it outside.

2. We will get the answers, if we keep looking without loosing hope.

3. Two things that are in abundance in our mind: Ideas & Dreams.

4. We become the most powerful when we listen to our intuitions and decide to follow them.

Share your AHA moment in comments...

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This post is also a part of Ultimate Blog Challenge and A to Z Challenge. Today's letter is 'A'.

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To know more about yourself from your smile, send me photo of your smile. I respect your privacy, so I assure you that your identity will not be revealed anywhere. And this service is absolutely free!!
Email Id. - iwantsmileforme@gmail.com

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RUNNING A BUSSINESS: SHARING AN EXPERIENCE – FERGUSSON COLLEGE DAY 1 & 2

After one week gap of useless excuses, I went to Fergusson College, Shivajinagar, Pune for promotional campaigning. I wasn’t in flow, my confidence was down. In addition to that I had to do everything in college campus. It has a huge campus, so no one hangs out outside of college. On first day, I didn’t do anything. I could dare to do it in campus. The feeling of breaking the rules and not being in flow was overwhelming. I could not gather courage to show up. I knew everything what to do, but for 2 hours I was roaming in campus. I thought that I should not waste time for no reason. I observed everything, where people hang out, where are security guards, where are kattas, what kind of people study there, so basically I wanted to know the whole scenario. For the first day, I didn’t approach anyone due to no reason, but I gathered the information needed.

As I didn’t do anything on day one, I decided that today I will approach the first group I’ll come across. Before entering in the campus, I was ready with everything I needed to show up and saw the first group of 10 students. Without thinking twice, I approached them. This time I changed a strategy little bit. In modern college, it was explaining the whole file, all about my work, services I provide and then giving a demo of analysis of smile to a random person from the group. This time, after giving a short introduction about me & informing about what I do, I picked the most popular guy of the group using simple observations. The one who shows the most interest and first to take initiative to take the file from me to know what it is about. As I started telling about him, everyone was nodding in surprise and as soon as I finished telling about him, everyone in the group was like ‘wow, man! You got it all correct!’ Everyone was shocked and this reaction was so different than the reactions I used to get in modern college.

Then, I explained the whole file. Everybody got interested and wanted to know more about themselves. But I said that due to time limitations, I can tell about two or three, not more than that. They understood it. And a girl said pointing to a guy and a girl that they are in a relationship and wanted me to tell whether they have future together or not. I told them that I can’t reveal this information in front of everyone, it’s confidential, but I can tell about any one of them from his or her smile. They agreed. As I started telling that guy everyone’s attention was on him, but a girl from back side pointing towards the most popular guy secretly, avoiding anyone’s attention asked me whether their relationship will work or not. I was explaining a guy about him and she was signaling with her hand, pointing toward the most popular guy and wanted to know secretly without anyone’s attention. In my mind, I was ‘lol, what was that?’ But on face, I overlooked it, smiled at her and continued explaining. Then, explained about another girl, asked them whether they want to ask any doubts, cleared their doubts and left with a satisfaction that I got into flow.

I approached more groups in college. It went as usual. Before approaching any group, I used look around if any college officials were there and then approached. Breaking the rules is so much fun and exciting. Another thing that I changed from this college, whenever I approach any group, I used to look around avoiding eye contact and then go to them; but this time I started looking into the eyes of some of the students in the group. It increases confidence and it’s relaxing. Eye contact makes a lot of difference. I approached 30 students overall in various groups and left the college.

As I came out of gate, I saw group of 4 students. One of the girls was holding a book named ‘social psychology’. I thought that they would understand everything what I was about to present. Immediately, I opened my bag, took files out and thought that I shouldn’t approach them on street-side, I should approach them tomorrow. But I decided that I should not think twice. So I approached them, asked them whether they were psychology students. Only one girl was. I started explaining file, the same strategy I used for this college. To my surprise, as I started telling the girl about her from her smile, she was shocked; all of them were giving same amount of attention and listening earnestly. Their reactions were amazed me. We had an intelligent conversation. I was glad that I took the step. The street wasn’t the matter anymore. I gave my contact details and left. The day was over.

I am sharing some insights that would help you in your endevour to design the best life for me and yourself:

1. If we are not confident, just pretend and feel like we are confident. It makes a difference and more relaxing.

2. Look around before breaking the rule. When the field is clear, then take the step. It's fun but risky as well.

3. Do not procrastinate an important thing that is so close to you. We do not know whether we will get tomorrow.

4. Embrace what's uncomfortable. We will never be the same person as before. Stretching ourselves is not easy, but the self satisfaction is more beautiful.

Thanks for reading. Add your own lessons and express your views if I missed anything, give your feedback to improve...

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Email Id. - iwantsmileforme@gmail.com

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(Man Offering Hand Shake Image courtesy of imagerymajestic at FreeDigitalPhotos.net)