Category Archives: Love Life

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact

“Making eye contact with adults while dressed as a clown is risky.” Doug Coupland

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact  - Dress like a clown

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact – Dress like a clown

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact - Want a Cat's love

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact – Want a Cat’s love

someecards.com - I hope you understand that staring at you makes me anxious, mad and sad. I shoot the arrows and you get the girl.
When You’re feeling anxious, mad or sad.

How/When to Avoid Making Eye Contact: ♥When dressed as a clown – wear dark glasses or look down. Some people are deathly scared of clowns.
♥Apparently, Cats don’t like being looked at – Sneer instead or wink at them. Let them do the staring and save you the hassle. My cat has it down.
♥If you’re feeling anxious, mad or sad – stay away from the source of pain

It’s common knowledge that eye contact is an important part of communication. We make eye contact to establish trust, familiarity, confidence and even friendship with others. Some use eye contact to intimidate or stare down an opponent. For a shy person, making eye contact can be a challenge because it’s uncomfortable for some of us to look directly into the eyes of other people; especially the eyes of strangers. With some effort, we can learn to look without feeling terrified.

“If you go flying back through time, and you see somebody else flying forward into the future, it’s probably best to avoid eye contact” Jack Handy

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact  - Wear Google glass

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact – Wear Google glass

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact - Public stalls and urinals

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact – Public stalls and urinals

someecards.com - Listen, I had a dream and a guy on something called a TV was saying, Google me, tweet me, facebook me. Maybe I'm drunk.

How/When to Avoid Making Eye Contact: ♥While wearing Google Glass… Just say “okay glass,” and it takes care of everything – no eye contact needed. ♥When Sitting in a stall or using a urinal at a public bathroom, it is definitely not a time to stare – feel free to close your eyes.
♥Watching your favorite TV character in a drunken moment demands averted eyes – feel his pain with eyes cast asunder.

When I researched the topic online, there were lots of articles on how to make  effective eye contact, articles on cultures that don’t encourage direct eye contact out of respect, and on the benefits of looking directly at others when we speak. For this post on “How To do something,” I decided to take the path of humor which is always a great way to break the ice. Some of the suggestions are true and others are tongue in cheek.

“I’m hopeless at small talk and have a problem making eye contact.” Gary Numan

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact  - Be Pinocchio and tell a lie

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact – Be Pinocchio and tell a lie

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact - Eat a banana

Humor: How & When To Avoid Making Eye Contact – Eat a banana

someecards.com - When I'm feeling inferior, I go for a drive. My car makes all the eye contacts I usually avoid.
When you’re feeling inferior/insecure

How/When to Avoid Making Eye Contact: ♥When telling a lie, the eyes will give you away unless you’re a seasoned pathological liar – best to avert the gaze of another when fibbing.
♥When eating a banana or a lollipop, keep your eyes to yourself – don’t ask me why, do the math.
♥If you’re feeling insecure or down on yourself, avoid eye contact especially with manipulative types – they know the look and feed off it. Take a De-stress ride.

I found it quite interesting reading some of the articles on making eye contact. There is an impressive body of work with great insights on the subject. A Google search gave me about 539,000,000 results and I’ve added some links in the post. More below!

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Inspiration: Celebrate Good Deeds Day

“I believe that if people will think good, speak good and do good, the circles of good will grow and our world will be a better one.” Shari Arison

Inspiration: Celebrate Good Deeds Day... pledge page

Inspiration: Celebrate Good Deeds Day… pledge page

Goodnet – A Gateway to Doing Good, is a media platform that aims to help you activate your goodness. Connecting between people, organizations and initiatives, Goodnet offers everyone a direct path to finding the opportunity that best suits them for doing good.

In 2007, Businesswoman and philanthropist Shari Arison, owner of the Arison Group, initiated Good Deeds Day; the main idea behind the initiative was that each of us can do something good to help/benefit others. Shari’s wish was to inspire people to make a commitment to do good.  The first gathering in 2007 was organized by Ruach Tova (NGO), the philanthropic arm of the Arison Group, and part of The Ted Arison Family Foundation. Since that first gathering of 7,000 committed souls, it has become a huge success as people around the world (50 nations in 2012) continue to sign up to perform acts of kindness towards others in their communities. To encourage greater participation, Shari and her team also created the website Goodnet, to provide participants with a portal to help them gather and connect with others interested in activities that exemplify doing good.

Good Deeds Day Shari Arison via wikipedia

Inspiration: Celebrate Good Deeds Day… Shari Arison via wikipedia

Recently, I came across Shari Arison’s organization on Facebook and when I found out that March 10 was the designated date for International Good Deeds Day, I signed on. When you join in, you are guided to a page to fill out a form with data and make a pledge to perform specific actions. Your created profile with your name and location is then added to a huge Participant board or pledge page showcasing many others active members. They even offer a toolkit to help you create an activity/event for the day. For this assignment, I pledged to send out daily virtual hugs: Here’s one {{{HUGS}}}  for you! However, you can pledge anything that tickles your fancy and it’s never too late to join. More below!

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Writing Challenge: Happy As A Clam At High Tide…

Happiness held is the seed; happiness shared is the flower.” John Harrigan

Writing Challenge: Happy As A Clam At High Tide... Happy man

Writing Challenge: Happy As A Clam At High Tide… Happy man

Have you ever seen a happy clam at high tide? Seriously, have you looked at any clams lately? If not, I can assure you they don’t look ecstatic. As I was putting this post together, I realized I had no idea about the origin of the popular, oft abbreviated  saying; “Happy as a Clam.” A little digging produced an explanation: Clams are harder to catch at high-tide. To live is to be happy.

My uncle Jaja was always upbeat and full of life; even at 65  he stayed active and interested in life. He was a farmer and palm wine tapper who made friends easily. Whenever he left the village to visit his two grown sons in the big city, it seemed like a set of megawatt bulbs had burned out. Invariably, he would return and regale us with stories of the people he met in the city. He liked to call them “Characters.”  Two stories came to mind for this exercise, and I’ll let the late Uncle Jaja speak for himself.

Uncle Jaja: Thank you my child! So, Last Easter when I went to the city, my sons and their wives fed me well. The food was so good, I had to take a stroll to the bar beach to work it off. As I walked on the beach, I noticed a very old man, with a basket of clams, hawking his wares while laughing and chatting with people walking by. He had a few teeth, wrinkly weathered skin, and grey hair, but with an ancient warrior’s gait.  His eye caught mine and he called me over.  I’m always happy to make a new friend so I went. After saying a traditional greeting, I called him Uncle.

“No, no man, call me Tabu!  You hear me!? Anyway what brings you here?” he shouted as he shook my hand.  ” The children.” I said.  “Good. Buy them some clams!”  He replied. Then he started laughing and cracking dirty jokes. I can’t even tell you.  He was full of life and knew a lot about seafood. We had a great chat and after some time,  he persuaded me to busy a few. I did and saying goodbye, headed back to my son, Oge’s, house.

Writing Challenge: Happy As A Clam At High Tide... Happy clams?

Writing Challenge: Happy As A Clam At High Tide… Happy clams?

Next day, I went to bar beach again and there he was, old man Tabu, carrying his basket of clams and dancing and laughing. This time I was curious to find out more. I went over, greeted him warmly and asked,  “Uncle Tabu, you look so happy today. What’s your secret? “  He burst out laughing, even bending over to catch his breath.  “Me?, he said, “I’m a happy man. I smoke  five packs of cigarettes daily, drink 3 cases of whiskey and palm wine every week, eat meat 3 times a day and I don’t waste time with exercise. Instead, I hang out at the beach and make new friends like you! “

I was shocked! I’m 65 and can’t eat like that… How could this old man consume all that and still be standing?  Unbelievable! I had to ask Uncle how he does it and advice him…   I followed him to  the edge of the water where he stood rinsing out a metal teacup.  Tabu looked at me and said nothing.  He seemed subdued, even a little reflective.

I pulled myself together and in a bold voice, said, “Uncle, why the mission to self-destruction? I’m 65 and hope to see more grand children. I’m sure you already have a few.”   Uncle smiled  and said nothing.  So, I continued, “By the way, how old are you? I want to remember to be this happy when I’m older.” He looked at me and laughed. “No, I’m serious Uncle, please.” I said.  Uncle Tabu looked me in the eye and said, ” Man,  I’m twenty-six!”   I was flabbergasted, but you know what? We can’t speculate without having all the facts … and he was living his version of happy. -UJ.  Was he? More below

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