If you watch a nature documentary with the sound off and you just see some penguins on the screen and you don't hear the voiceover, you have no idea what they're saying about those penguins. It would be anything.

It was like oh there's penguins. It's not very interesting or maybe it is but I don't know what to make of this.

Turn up the volume and hear the voiceover and then suddenly there's information and a message.

This penguin is the oldest living penguin of its tribe and has all the respect of its peers.

I don't know.

And I've watched them.

So these penguins are endangered due to global warming or these penguins even though there's global

warmings will be okay, you know.

So what the voice over says really changes vastly the way we interpret the image. Why am I telling

you this? Well, as Albert Ellis, the great American 20th century psychologist, noted the thoughts that we add

to our experience drastically change the way we interpret our life, our experiences.

For instance, you're on your way to work

and you see a close friend as you are on the subway entrance or on the street, you wave to them and looks like they see you but they don't wave back.

Now that's just an event.

If your next inner thought is,

my friend saw me and he didn't wave back, then anger arises a sense of outrage, resentment, more storytelling,

how dare they.

I've been a good friend of them.

All I did was wave and now, after all I've done, they don't wave to me.

On the other hand, if we follow that experience of seeing the friend waving

and they don't wait back with the thought, oh, they probably didn't see me. Then there's no resentment.

There's no residue. there's no residual anger, there's very little residual thought.

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