End With Sincere Praise
A principle for "kind" living is to leave people feeling better about themselves as a result of having met you.
Ask yourself: "What can I say to this person to give him a positive feeling?"
Be sincere in what you say. The goal is not to flatter or to give people a false sense of having attributes they are missing. Rather the goal is to keep on developing your own "good eye" to see the positive in each person.
When you develop positive feelings about others, what you say makes them feel good, as does how you say it -- i.e. with a kind look on your face and a smile.
Love Yehuda
If Your Name Begins With "D," You May Die Younger
By Deborah Huso
A new study suggests that the first letter in your name could be linked to your longevity. If your name starts with "A," then you probably have no cause for concern, but if your name begins with "D," study authors suggest the letter's symbolic significance could result in you dying sooner than your peers, reports the Daily Mail.
Is it all hogwash?
Not necessarily. The study, conducted by researchers at Wayne State University in Detroit and published in the peer-reviewed journal "Death Studies" this month, examined the relationship between the first letters of a person's name and his or her time of death.
The study examined two groups of people -- professional athletes as well as doctors and lawyers. "In each sport, athletes whose first names began with the letter D lived fewer years than those whose names collectively began with E to Z," said study authors Ernest Abel and Michael Kruger, both of whom have been involved in several similar statistical studies in the past, including one that indicated baseball players with nicknames live longer than those without.
The researchers reviewed the lifespans of more than 10,000 athletes and professionals, focusing specifically on those whose names began with A, B, C or D -- letters associated with the grading system in American schools. The study showed those with A names substantially outlived those with D names. Researchers suggest that because D is associated with poor academic performance, those with D names are more apt to suffer from lower self-esteem, making them more prone to disease. However, the most concrete finding really isn't all that striking. Athletes whose names began with D had a median survival age of 68.1 years, while those with names beginning with letters E to Z, which have no grade correlation, had median survival age of 69.9 years.
That's not to say one should consider the psychology of names pure bunk. Countless studies have been conducted over the years indicating that one's name can play a significant role in one's self-esteem as well as how a person is perceived by others. For example, a well-known study published in the "Journal of Educational Psychology" in 1973, showed that elementary school teachers were prone to give higher grades to students with desirable names than to their counterparts with less common names, such as "Bertha" and "Elmer," regardless of the quality of the students' work.
Don't sweat it if your name starts with "D," but if you're flipping through a baby name book searching for the perfect moniker to bestow on the newest addition to your family, don't entirely discount the power and meaning of names.
Now that piece above was from a strictly secular viewpoint. The bible tells us that a person's name helps determine his/her Karma. So it is not surprising that a name can effect your length of life.
Love Yehuda
