📖 Book Don't Sweat the Small Stuff … and It's All Small Stuff by Richard Carlson, PhD. Synopsis: Simple ways to keep little things from taking over your life. The book consists of 100 short articles -- we'll go through them week by week. This week’s # 33: Praise and Blame Are All the Same Here's what you need to do: 1️⃣ Read it yourself, take time to reflect on it and make notes. 2️⃣ Join the live reading on Wednesday. We'll read and listen to the article together, line by line. 3️⃣ Share your thoughts. Keep your answer under 4 minutes. Be clear, and focus on expressing your ideas about the topic to practice real English speaking. No debates, just sharing thoughts. ***** One of the most unavoidable life lessons is having to deal with the disapproval of others. Praise and blame are all the same is a fancy way of reminding yourself of the old cliche that you'll never be able to please all the people all the time. Even in a landslide election victory in which a candidate secures 55 percent of the vote, he or she is left with 45 percent of the population that wishes someone else were the winner. Pretty humbling, isn't it? Our approval rating from family, friends, and the people we work with isn't likely to be much higher. The truth is, everyone has their own set of ideas with which to evaluate life, and our ideas don't always match those of other people. For some reason, however, most of us struggle against this inevitable fact. We get angry, hurt, or otherwise frustrated when people reject our ideas, tell us no, or give us some other form of disapproval. The sooner we accept the inevitable dilemma of not being able to win the approval of everyone we meet, the easier our lives will become. When you expect to be dished out your share of disapproval instead of struggling against this fact, you'll develop a helpful perspective to assist your life journey. Rather than feeling rejected by disapproval, you can remind yourself, "Here it is again. That's okay." You can learn to be pleasantly surprised, even grateful when you receive the approval you're hoping for.

Did you know? Cows can develop regional accents. 🤯 Researchers at the University of Nottingham found that cows living together often develop similar mooing patterns, creating their own local "dialects." The study suggested that, just like humans, cows can be influenced by the social groups they spend time with. 🐮🎙️ 🎥 Watch this video... Now for the fun part: Can you guess where this cow is from based on its accent?😄