How To Be Merry by B. Merry (ebook reader online .txt) 📖

your inhibitions. Join the conversation and tell jokes that would be funny to you! Because chances are they will be funny to them too and they will want to become better friends with you! And who doesn’t want better friends? But remember that you should ALWAYS be nice and considerate about other’s feelings. You may end up offending some of the people if you say mean or offensive comments. Soon you will find yourself living this method and realizing that you will be so much happier! You will finally feel like yourself! The judgment that you once felt will completely disappear!

On the flip side, please note that passing judgment is simply the thought of bullying. Imagine that everyone around you knows what you’re thinking. Now imagine that you see a person who paints her skin green, talks only in cat noises like meows and purrs, and is well equipped with a rolling Land Before Time backpack. What do you think to yourself at this point? You probably think to yourself that that person is extremely weird and probably has no friends. You probably think of them in a negative light. Now imagine that like I mentioned before, they hear your thoughts and they can hear the negative things you think about them. It’s no different then simply telling them, “hey you’re ugly, get a real backpack and talk like a human being,” and that is considered bullying. Try and make your thoughts clean enough to the point where anyone could hear them and not a single feather would be ruffled. I believe there is a direct correlation between how often one judges others and how often one feels they are being judged. So this second lesson is two fold, stop judging people, because it’s simply not nice, and second, when you stop judging others then you will not feel like you are being judged and that is a life changing gift only you can give yourself. It comes with confidence and self-esteem, which are essential to happiness. And everyone should be happy.
So what’s the final verdict? Mistrial! That means no judgment here! ☺
Newsflash: You Can't Read Minds

Have you ever done something that you feel was embarrassing? Or said something that may be construed in the complete opposite way of the way you meant it? For example, one might ask, “what did you do with your hair?” only attempting to figure out how they can emulate this hairstyle or whatever. But the person receiving the question may take it as an insult. I have done this before but the worry was not in what I said, the worry was in how it made the other person feel. The fact is, you may not have affected their mood or anything at all. But one can spend hours or even days worrying about this.

What happens here is that human beings have a natural tendency to try and read what another person is thinking. This is a huge flaw that can cause major worry and loss of joy, which is never a good thing. I have a message for you: YOU CAN’T READ MINDS SO STOP TRYING. This will take a huge deal of stress off of your shoulders. This is all actually a product of YOU over-thinking. When you over-think, you begin to make up problems in your head. This is a very counterproductive strategy to solving the issue at hand. Let me use an analogy to help you better understand: Many students are not very good exam-takers. Most of these students claim to use what is called process of elimination. But what they really end up doing is thinking to themselves what the correct answer should be, like this: “Well (A) sounds like it could possibly be correct. (B) is definitely not correct. (C)… oh I thought that is what (B) was asking. Maybe (B) could be the right one.” They try and justify why each of the answers could be correct. It is this same process that goes on in the human brain when we over-think about certain situations we are in or when we over-think about what other people are thinking about you (sounds confusing I know). The REAL process of elimination goes like this, and it’s the way all of the very good exam-takers do it: they completely eliminate all of the answers that they know are not correct, leaving them with only 2 or 3 answers, rather than 4 or 5. They do not look for the possible solution right away, rather, they cross out the wrong answers to come closer to the correct response. This greatly increases their chances of reaching the correct answer! So if you do the same with the solutions to problems in your life, rather than trying to justify each solution you come up with, you will become a lot more stress-free and in turn much, much happier.

My tip for you, if you are an over-thinker: think logically about the situation first and foremost. And do not end up like a lousy test-taker. It will only lead to stressing out and unhappiness. Stay calm, as whatever situation is arising or has arisen will likely not seem important ten years down the road. For example, if that girl or guy isn’t answering that text... THINK LOGICALLY! “She must hate me! She hasn’t responded in 45 minutes!”… stop… You’re being ridiculous… People have other things going on in their lives and a text isn’t all that important to someone if they are at a family dinner, or in the middle of a sporting event. Again, this goes back to trying to read people’s minds. DON’T DO THAT!

For all of the examples I have given to you, I would like you to maybe think of some situations you have been in where you maybe did a little bit of over-thinking. Again, it is never really as bad as it seems in your own mind. Think logically and do not, under any circumstances, try and read another person’s mind.

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Text: Brian Merry
Publication Date: 02-23-2012

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