The shortest way to your own happiness!

Making people around you happy could be the shortest way to your own happiness! Here are some good reasons why:
-What goes around comes around. This might not be the driving force behind your acts of kindness, but contributing for someone else’s happiness can reflect back at you, too.
-You won’t regret it. Do you remember a time when you’ve felt sorry that you’ve done a good deed? Me neither.
-You’ll feel happier as someone’s face flows with happiness!
So how do we do that? How can we easily brighten someone’s day?

Here are 17 quick and inexpensive solutions for this:

1. Encourage. Sometimes it’s hard to stay positive when you’re going through tough times. When someone is feeling down, you could always give them a ray of  your own sunshine and remind them of the positive sides of their problem. This will certainly help your friend see the light at the end of the tunnel!
2. Hug. In the right situation it could change someone’s day! Hugging reduces stress and it can brighten your thoughts and mood in a second. Pretty cool for something so simple.
3. Give away a piece of your talent. A good drawing or maybe a necklace or bracelet? A present with a touch of individuality won’t go unappreciated for sure.
4. Hold the door open for someone. Donate a few seconds of your time for a wide smile on someone’s face- now that’s a deal!
5. Bring a cup of tea/coffee. Next  time you go for a cup of coffee, buy one more for someone from your office/class. It’s an easy way to show that you care.
6. Bring positive energy into the conversation. Positive energy is contagious! Throw in something a positive thought during lunch for example and soon most of your lunch mates will do the same. Brighten up the atmosphere!
7. Smile. Even if it’s to a stranger on the street- it will either make them smile back or they’ll just feel awkward. At least it’s worth trying if it’s going to brighten up someone’s day.
8. Just listen. People feel appreciated when they are listened to and not rudely interrupted.
9. While driving, let someone into your lane. This could be someone’s moment of relief during a stressful day.
10. An honest compliment. It works best if it’s for something that is close to the other person’s heart. You would feel better if someone acknowledges the effort you have made on something, wouldn’t you?
11. Share some of your homemade sweets. Who doesn’t like cookies? Or ice cream or jerky?
12. Share something you found on the internet. It could be your favorite funny video or something intriguing and helpful.
13. Bring your friends’ favourite takeout food. Another version of the tea/coffee favor is buying your mate’s favourite food- chocolate, sandwich, pizza, etc. If you’re a good cook, why not prepare a favorite meal?
14. Pick some flowers for your buddy. That’s a pretty easy and joyful way to put a smile on someone’s face.
15. Do a chore or run an errand for someone. If you’re having a day off, why not help someone with something small? It’s a good sacrifice and a positive outcome is sure to follow.
16. Tell a joke or a funny story. You can turn your mischiefs into a funny story that can make someone laugh.
17. Share a good advice with your mate. When there’s a problem you can easily participate in the solution by offering a helpful advice or your own point of view. You can consult with friends that have been in a similar situation. This could really mean a lot for the friend you’re trying to help! Show them that they’re not alone in this.

Things You Should Always Try To Remember

“I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand.” ~ Confucius

Do you ever stop to observe your own thoughts and behaviors, to observe yourself and your life? Do you ever wonder why you are doing whatever it is that you are doing? Do you ever stop and observe the world? Most of us live our lives on autopilot, and we rarely or never stop and question the way we live our lives and why we live the way we do.
Here are 10 things you should always remember as you go through this journey of life:

1. Change Is The Only Constant In Life

What does this mean? It means that no matter how much we try to avoid change, it will be impossible to do so, since change is the only constant in life.

“The only way that we can live, is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn. The only way we can learn is if we are exposed. And the only way that we can become exposed is if we throw ourselves out into the open. Do it. Throw yourself.” ~ C. JoyBell C.

2. Nothing Lasts Forever

Nothing ever lasts forever, and this is exactly why we need to learn to detach from things, places and people in our lives and, when the time comes to say goodbye, to let them all go and to do it with dignity.

“Nothing lasts forever, so live it up, drink it down, avoid the b.s, take chances and never regret because at one point it was what you wanted.” ~ Unknown

3. You Judge Others for the Things You Haven’t Accepted in Yourself

The traits we dislike in others are the traits we dislike in ourselves. This is something most of us can’t even grasp and we get irritated when we hear such things, especially when we are all thinking so highly of ourselves and we know for sure that we are perfect and they are not.

“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to a better understanding of ourselves.” ~ Carl Jung

4. You Can’t Force Love

Love comes because it wants to come, not because we want it to come. Our family, friends, co-workers, lovers — they all love us because they choose to, not because we want them to, and the same applies to you. Love is meant to be felt, enjoyed and lived, not to be forced on anyone.

“You can’t force love, I realized. It’s there or it isn’t. If it’s not there, you’ve got to be able to admit it. If it is there, you’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect the ones you love.” ~ Richelle Mead

5. Mistakes are Part of Life

As you walk through life, you will fall down many times. You will fail and you make mistakes, but that’s okay. Life is like that. Never forget that life is a process of becoming and that through every every painful and humiliating experience and through every hurtful and heartbreaking interaction, you craft yourself and you build your life. Through everything that happens to you, either good or bad, you gain all the wisdom, strength, knowledge and confidence to do the things that you are meant to do. And to live the life that you are meant to live. That’s what life is all about.

“What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning – and some of them many times over – what do you find? That you can swim? Well – life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!” ~ Alfred Adler

6. What You Resist, Persists

The more we fight against certain things, life circumstances, events, people, ideas, etc., the more we will be contributing to their growth and persistence into our daily lives. Learn to shift your focus from that which you are against to that which you are for, and to that which you wish to attract into your daily life and watch how your life will be transformed.

“What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” ~ Carl Gustav Jung

7. Your Thoughts Create your Reality

Thoughts have power, great power – creative power. With every thought that you think you craft and shape your life in one way or another. The life you are now living is the result of all the thoughts you have thought up until this moment. Your present level of self esteem, your confidence and your sense of self worth were determined by all the thoughts you have ever thought and all the words you have ever said to yourself. The quality of your present relationships, the way you look at the world, your beliefs and limitations, your fears and insecurities, they are all the result of the many thoughts you kept affirming to yourself.
We are where we are right now because of the thoughts we thought, and our lives look the way they do because of the thoughts we thought over and over again. If the thoughts that run though our minds are pure, positive and empowering, we will create positive and empowering beliefs about ourselves and about life, and our actions will be a reflection of these thoughts and beliefs.

“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.” ~ Unknown

8. There Comes A Time In Your Life When You Really Need To Let Go

“There comes a time in your life when you have to let go of all the pointless drama and the people who create it and surround yourself with people who make you laugh so hard that you forget the bad and focus solely on the good. After all, life is too short to be anything but happy.” ~ Karl Marx (composer)

There comes a time in our lives when we are asked to let go of certain things, ideas, people and places. And when that happens, we need to learn to let go with grace. We need to trust our natural instincts and we need to trust in the natural flow of life. Because just like Buddha said it, “You can only lose what you cling to.”

9. You’ll Only Regret the Things you Don’t Do

Whenever you want to do something but you are too afraid to do it because of what might happen after that, I want you to remember about this study that was performed on elderly individuals a few years back, that has shown how during old age, most of these people have regrets about the many things they didn’t have the courage to do as opposed to the things they did do.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” — Mark Twain

10. You Can’t Control Other People’s Behaviors, You Only Think You Can

It’s funny how the closer we are to a person the more rights we think we have to control them and their lives without realizing the only thing we can control is our attitude towards them and their behavior, that’s all.

“Never underestimate your power to change yourself; never overestimate your power to change others.” ~ Wayne W. Dyer

Source: “10 Things You Should Always Remember,” from purposefairy.com, by Luminita D. Saviuc

Have you ever had “butterflies” in your stomach or a “gut wrenching” experience?

Have you ever had “butterflies” in your stomach or a “gut wrenching” experience? You know, that type of feeling that you get in your stomach when you are nervous or excited about something? As it turns out there is a scientific explanation as to why, the gastrointestinal tract is sensitive to emotion. Anxiety, anger, sadness, excitement can all trigger physical symptoms in the gut. There is a network of neurons that line our guts; it is so extensive that some scientists have even nicknamed it our “second brain.”
As it turns out, our gut does a whole lot more than handle digestion and cause feelings of nervousness, in connection with our brain; the gut partly determines our mental well-being and plays a key role in the development of diseases throughout the body. In turn, it has been concluded that a healthy gut helps in maintaining good mental and emotional health –what you are eating directly affects your mental and emotional state.


The gut and the brain both develop from the same tissues, one section evolves into your central nervous system –your brain and the other into your enteric nervous system –your gut. The Vagus Nerve connects these two nervous systems. Some of the same hormones and neurotransmitters that control the brain are also found in the gut! The enteric nervous system (ENS) helps you to sense environmental threats and then directly influences your response. Dr. Michael Gershon author of “The Second Brain and chairman of the department of anatomy and cell biology at Columbia University says: “A lot of the information that the gut sends to the brain affects well-being and doesn’t even come to consciousness.”

Study Finds Probiotics Directly Affect Brain Function

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Los Angeles found that probiotics (beneficial bacteria) actually altered the brain function of the participants. The study was conducted on 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55, they were divided into 3 groups:

• One group ate yogurt that contained probiotics that are said to have a beneficial impact on intestinal health twice a day for one month.
• Another group ate a product that looked and tasted like regular yogurt but contained no probiotics at all.
• The control group ate no product at all.

After the 4 weeks the women were examined and it was found that the women in the probiotic yogurt group had a more stable emotional response when exposed to a stressful situation.

“By changing the environment in the gut, we can actually change what happens in the brain.” Noted Kirsten Tillisch, the head of the research team for the study.  She also stated “Time and time again, we hear from patients that they never felt depressed or anxious until they started experiencing problems with their gut. Our study shows that the gut–brain connection is a two-way street… ‘When we consider the implications of this work, the old sayings ‘you are what you eat’ and ‘gut feelings’ take on new meaning.’”

How To Ensure Healthy Gut Health

To keep your second brain and your… first brain at optimal health you want to ensure to nurture your gut, by eating a healthy diet rich in probiotics. Yogurt can be a source of probitotics, but there is an increasing amount of evidence to support the claim that dairy is not very beneficial to your health. There are some alternative dairy free probiotic options for you to consider adding to your diet:

• Sauerkraut, preferably raw, unpasteurized sauerkraut, it is actually really easy to make on your own.
• Kombucha tea, also, raw unpasteurized.
• Coconut yogurt.

Other Nutrition Tips For Optimal Gut Health

• Don’t skip breakfast; breakfast really is the most important meal of the day. A quick smoothie is all you need to get your day started and to ensure a healthy start.
• Avoid acidic foods like soda and don’t over indulge in things like coffee and alcohol.
• Eat fruit. Fruit is the best source of vitamins and enzymes that will keep your digestive system working very well.
• Drink lots of water throughout the day and ideally, at least 500 ml of lukewarm water with lemon every morning before consuming anything else.
• Decrease stress in your life and make time for things you enjoy, follow your passions and make time for them everyday.
• Take time to relax, make time for yoga and meditation if that’s your thing. Exercise regularly, these activities boost the presence of healthy hormones required for maintaining a healthy mind, they also keep the gut healthy.

Your brain is going to thank you!
Much Love
Sources:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolutionary-psychiatry/201404/the-gut-brain-connection-mental-illness-and-disease
http://www.health.harvard.edu/healthbeat/the-gut-brain-connection
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gut-second-brain/
http://neurosciencestuff.tumblr.com/post/38271759345/gut-instincts-the-secrets-of-your-second-brain
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-18779997
Credits: “Some Scientists Are Calling This The Second Brain. It’s Very Important To Keep It Healthy,” from collective-evolution.com, by Alanna Ketler

14 Fast Food & Restaurant Employees Confess The One Item You Should Never Order

People all over the world are starting to be more conscious about the food that they eat. Fast food restaurants are full of food that is literally designed to turn people into addicts. They are often littered with and chemically altered for this purpose alone, despite a number of these foods being proven to be detrimental to human health. Ultimately we do have a choice, but it’s also confusing why these foods even exist given how bad and toxic most of them are, and how they promote so many different diseases. Just think about the intent behind their existence. Do you really think that it is to feed people? I don’t usually post articles that aren’t completely originally written, but I think this is worthwhile posting, since in my opinion anything that might potentially draw people away from these foods is worthwhile sharing. You never really know with restaurants, some horrible things go on behind the scenes and the food we are served isn’t always what we really think it is. The following question was posted to Reddit: What should we not order at your restaurant? Why not? According to the Huffington Post, None of these claims are verified, but they received thousands. Some of these are quite disturbing but not surprising at all. Anything McCafe At McDonald’s “I work for McDonald’s and make sure everyone that matters to me never orders anything that comes out of the ‘McCafe’ machine as these are routinely neglected, in practically all the McDonalds. Not only are staff not properly trained in its cleaning and maintenance, at almost every McDonalds I’ve had experience with, the managers in charge of training them don’t know f*** all either…All McCafe beverages run through a horrifically dirty machine – we’re talking 5+ inches of uncleaned, liquid bullshit making up its inside parts.” – Envirometh I personally would not recommend eating anything at McDonald’s: Do Not Order Hot Dogs At Baseball Games “I used to work in a baseball park concession stand. The short answer is not to order anything, but if you absolutely have to buy something, don’t buy the hotdogs. Do not. Buy. The Hot Dogs. They made it out of the package okay, and might even have been edible after we finished grilling them – and then they went into the water. We kept three pans of water at the back of the grill that held the hot dogs. Any hot dogs left at the end of the day went back into the fridge, and came out again the next day. Me and the other cook put our feet down on throwing out the water and old hot dogs after two full days, but the management didn’t want to let us.” – FreakyCheeseMan Hopefully this video encourages you to think twice about it by grossing you out. On Steak & Beans at Taco Bell “I worked at taco bell a little bit ago and I warn everyone to stay away from both the beans, and the steak. The beans start out looking like cat food, and the directions are, ‘Add water and stir until you can’t see white anymore.’ The steak was just the worst on dish duty. If it would sit too long it would become like hair gel. It was the worst.”-Beefcake21 On Wendy’s Chili “I used to work at Wendy’s. The meat used in the chili, yeah that comes from the meat on the grill top that expires and dries up that’s put in to a warming drawer until you have enough for a batch of chili, which we first freeze and then thaw the next day. Also if the chili sitting in the warmer doesn’t sell fast enough we just added hot water to it to mix it up.” Don’t Order Anything Off Of The Starbucks “Secret Menu” “Former starbucks worker here. Please don’t order anything off the ‘Secret Menu.’ It doesn’t exist. If you want a snickerdoodle, nuttella, or captain crunch frappuchino (or whatever other overly sugery thing someone has since come out with), know the base drink and the modifications, and order that. If you just say the name, it’s up to the barista to come up with what’s in the drink, and it may not be what the last barista you ordered from put in there.”- Stac52 On Movie Theatre Popcorn “I worked at a theater, don’t get popcorn for the first showing- that’s all just last night’s popcorn put into giant garbage bags and then reheated in the warmers in the morning. Oh yeah and remember that sticky floor in the aisle of the theater? Well what do you think would happen if you had that at your house. YES THAT’S HOW YOU GET ANTS… and cockroaches, and everything else. Plus it’s in the dark most of the time. It’s like a bug buffet once the lights go out and the movie starts.”- YouAteYourParents Skip The Pasta At Panera, Stick To The Sandwiches “Panera- pasta; it’s all microwaved, this includes mac and cheese. Smoothies/frozen drinks- nasty base crap that smells and it’s sticky. Cupcakes/coffee cakes- all come frozen. Best items are the real sandwich/ salads. Real ingredients and usually fresh.”- President_Pancake Always Ask For “Fresh” Chicken Nuggets At McDonald’s “I used to work at McDonalds. If you order, especially chicken nuggets, just ask for them fresh. Otherwise they’ve been just sitting in their container in the heat. They have a timer, but 9/10 times when that timer goes off, people just reset the timer instead of making new ones. This could go on until all the nuggets are sold.”- Ritch88 Steer Clear Of Beans At Taco Johns “Taco Johns reporting for all you mid-westerners. I would steer clear of the beans, at least outside of peak hours, because they sit on the hot table for a long long time and when they dry out, just add water. Everything else is pretty solid though. Worked there a couple years back in 2007-2009 and still love going back to get my fix.”- clamslammer707 BBQ Sandwiches At KFC “Worked at KFC for ~4 years. The BBQ sandwich is actually made from chicken too old and stale to give to the homeless shelters, so they soak it in BBQ sauce until it can be pulled and then they keep it on the heater for a month.” The Eggs At Einstein’s “I worked at Einstein’s bagel place which is basically fast food. Don’t order anything with eggs, they aren’t real eggs and if business is slow they could have been sitting in a container for hours after they are microwaved.”- Thedudeiscj On Gas Station Slurpees “Gas station slurpee’s. The amount of mold in those machines would crush your childhood to a pulp.” - MarTank666 The Doughnuts At Dunkin (Warning: This Will Break Your Heart) “Currently employed at Dunkin doughnuts and it’s sad but true all the doughnuts and baked goods there come to us frozen.”- Ass_in_assasain Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/foodbeast/14-fast-food-and-restaura_b_4921256.html Credit: “14 Fast Food & Restaurant Employees Confess The One Item You Should Never Order,” from collective-evolution.com , Arjun Walia

Emotional Patterns That Disturb Your Inner Peace

At some stage of our lives we all experience emotional dysfunction to some degree, especially when we’re maturing. In some cases it may just be part of the learning curve as we grow into our more developed selves. Simple examples are that we might dwell on a problem too long, get upset or angry too easily, or think self-abusive thoughts consistently. For others it might impact us more significantly and even result in a form of mental illness.
Yet that isn’t to say that negative thoughts or feelings are dysfunctional. In the short term, experiencing negative thoughts and emotions is natural because we’re human and it is part of the human experience. Instead of that negativity being suppressed, when we give it the space to breathe, it voluntarily gives way to our fundamental philosophies and beliefs and more positive feelings. However, when we feel these emotions for ongoing periods of time it can have a detrimental impact on us and others.

Even though it’s important to productively feel all of our emotions, if we want to establish and maintain our inner peace, then we have no option but to overcome the emotional dysfunction plaguing our ego and sense of self.
For example, constantly being stressed, angry, sad, and jealous, or an array of other negative mind states, is emotional dysfunction. Rationales like “I’ve got a short fuse” or “I’m heartbroken” reflect self-destructive behaviour, especially when they occur over long periods of time. Anything negative that we continually maintain inside of us is inherently self-abuse. Unfortunately, these states of mind are generally considered normal and acceptable for people in our society, while we put little emphasis on the damage that these states have on our health and general wellbeing.
The reality is we have more control than we realise in how we feel. If we lined up 100 people and gave them each the exact same experience, even though there may be a vaguely similar emotional response, we would get 100 different ongoing reactions or responses. Why is this? Essentially it’s because there are factors which influence how we deal with the highs and lows that the rollercoaster of life takes us on. Those factors are our environmental influences. The biggest factor is our own free choice.
Following are 8 examples of self-harm that we sometimes choose to include in our individual states of mind, plus some tips to help us take control, overcome them and find our inner peace.

1. FEELING UNFORGIVING TOWARDS OTHERS

When we’re resentful towards others it’s usually because they have behaved hurtfully or broken our trust. But anyone who has felt like this (ie. everyone!) knows how bad it feels. It makes us think and feel negatively.
Therefore, forgiveness is essential for self-care.
The empowering aspect is, forgiving is easy – with the right rationale. For example:
“I forgive them because they lacked the wisdom and strength to have treated me better. I also forgive them because if I don’t, I continue to hurt myself, which is being just as disrespectful to me, as they were”.

2. EASILY FRUSTRATED WITH SMALL MATTERS

If we’re easily frustrated it usually indicates that deep down we’re angry or sad. We could be holding onto anger or disappointment from our past that we’ve not let go. In some fundamental way, we have not found ongoing contentment in our life.
When life is so short, it’s painfully self-destructive to be constantly irritated. It’s a stressful experience, and as the adage goes — stress kills.
Being irritated all the time is simply a manifestation of a unresolved emotions which then also causes those around you to suffer. If we fully and honestly embrace our present, then we functionally process all of our experience as it happens, including the good and the bad.

3. SADNESS AND DEPRESSION

Life isn’t all wine and chocolates. It’s a rollercoaster of emotional highs and lows due to the varying experiences that we have. Some of those experiences are harder to deal with and take a more advanced emotional development to process effectively and efficiently. So of course at times we are going to feel sad, but it becomes dysfunctional if we’re sad more often than not, or it’s easy for us to fall into that state.
A lack of self-esteem and ongoing negativity can lead to depression. It is physiologically represented by a chemical imbalance, which is why there are pharmaceutical drugs designed to help realign our chemical needs. Yet depression is also representative of how we negatively process our past and present whilst not accepting and embracing it for what it is. The drugs don’t help us to do that, which is why they’re generally ineffective on their own.
Now this is not to be confused with grief. A natural process of human activity is to grieve over the loss of a loved one. The inability to heal from grief, especially if it leads to depression, is when grief becomes dysfunctional.

4. ANXIETY PRONE

Worrying is one of the most common dysfunctional states in our age. It’s more often a nurtured or learned behaviour. Our parents and a fear-consumed society have taught us to worry about our future, about our kids, about our health etc.
The most irrational aspect of worrying is that if we add up the amount of times we’ve worried about something, and the times it actually eventuated in an undesired way, we’d be looking at a very small percentage. Therefore, spending all that time in a stressed and anxious state has simply been self-abuse, particularly as the mind/body can’t distinguish anxiety about the future from current experience, and responds to that anxiety accordingly.
On top of that, when we’re anxious about our future, sometimes we create what we were anxious about in the first place. When we live in that negative anxious state, we send out negative vibrations — and attract them back. It impacts not just us but also those around us.
I love this flowchart which simplifies how useless worrying is:

5. NEGATIVELY JUDGING OTHERS

We all make judgements every day. It’s perfectly natural for humans to assess their environment including the people in it. The problem is that we often don’t have all the information we need to make a holistic and fair judgement, so it’s important to recognise this before we make any assumptions of someone or something.
When we negatively judge others it usually through comparison to ourselves. For example: “I can’t believe they don’t act/think like I do”. We might also meet a person and have a negative judgement on their character: “They’re a terrible person because they yelled at their kids and that’s not how I operate”.
Forming realistic judgements is about embracing the wholeness of a situation or person, and acknowledging the humanity in other people, even if they behave in a way that we find undesirable: “It’s not the best way to speak to their kids, but maybe they are struggling with parenthood? Or don’t have the skills to respond more constructively?” Another example of holistic judgement would be: “I don’t condone their actions, but I have not had direct experience ‘walking in their shoes’.”
If we are dysfunctional in our judgement towards others then we generally only focus on their negative traits, whether they are perceived or real, which is unrealistic. We constantly compare ourselves to other people and in our own minds – consciously or not – and try to justify why they are inferior to us, not as smart, not as ethical, etc.
The same goes for when we are dysfunctional with our judgement towards ourselves; we justify in our own minds why others are superior to us.
Assessing and judging is tricky business. The truth is, the way we judge is frequently a source of emotional dysfunction and discord in our society. To overcome it, we should take self-comparison out of our judgement the best we can and contextualise our experience into the bigger picture of the development that we all go through as well as our interconnectedness.

6. JEALOUS BEHAVIOUR

The old saying “jealousy is a curse” is super true. Envy has the ability to evolve into some serious dysfunction of the mind. It also relates closely to how we can negatively or unrealistically judge others.
Jealously is a form of delusion, based on the notion that someone’s gain is somehow our loss. Jealously also manifests in a conspicuous way, such as negative judgement. We might be jealous that we don’t have the particular strengths of another individual, that we don’t have a particular relationship with someone that others do or that we don’t have the money or job that someone else has. It might be a perfectly natural emotional reaction, yet if we’re always feeling this way or don’t process the emotion in a healthy way, it is inherently self-harming because it isn’t positive or constructive for ourselves.
Regardless of what we’re jealous of, we remain in an unrealistic or delusional state of mind. Our focus is in a place that we are not, and only we can correct that focus. If there are areas which we need to evolve in ourselves, or our lives, then that is where our focus should be — not on the perceived strengths or fortunes of others, and what we don’t have ourselves.
Jealousy can comes out in harmful ways, such as defaming others behind their back. It’s plagued with lies. Dirty gossip is born out of jealousy and negative judgement. They did this, or they did that, is an unhealthy and unsuccessful way many use to build up their own self-esteem. But we don’t evolve our own confidence and self-worth by bringing others down; we do it by focusing on ourselves.
Put simply, if we feel jealousy then allow it to be a fleeting state that drives us to work on our own needs, especially developing the need of being free of jealousy’s ugliness.

7. HOLDING ONTO GUILT

Feeling ongoing and unresolved guilt over our past mistakes is nothing but a negative state of mind. To move past guilt, we need to learn and evolve from our mistakes, not wallow in shame and regret.
We all make mistakes, at times more seriously than others. If we all felt guilty all of the time, no one would be growing. Guilt is helpful to understand that we’ve done something that goes against our conscience, as is shame and regret, but we should ensure they’re temporary states of mind that motivate us to create something more positive and constructive out of those situations.
The aim is to accept and embrace what we did, learn from it, show our remorse through corrective actions, and build strategies around how we’ll never make that same error again.
It’s important to understand that holding onto guilt, shame and regret only leads to emotional dysfunction. Learning to forgive ourselves is the key to moving forward with our lives.

8. OFTEN FEELING OFFENDED

Feeling offended from time to time is natural, although some people appear addicted to being offended.
Even when we are offended over something that we are justifiably right to defend, why is it that we should put ourselves through suffering just because of what someone else said or did? Isn’t it a reflection of them, and not a reflection of us? Of course it is.
Just say a person in the street is rude to us. We could get offended and upset because of what they’ve said or done, or we could understand in that moment that it’s a reflection of their lack of empathy, wisdom and compassion in that moment.
If we invest our feelings in the way others behave, then we’re destined to suffer because there are always going to be unthoughtful and uncompassionate people in our society.
Moreover, if we blame others for the way that we feel, then we become ‘Blamists’, externalising the responsibility for our own inner state. For example: “It’s my parents fault for what they did when I was a kid”… or “it’s my ex’s fault for what they did to me when we broke up”.
Blaming others for the way that we feel is disempowering. We effectively give away our power to others. But if we take responsibility for how we think, feel and behave, we empower ourselves with the responsibility and the freedom to be who we wish. The time we become truly free is the time that we take full responsibility of ourselves and ensure that we, not anyone or anything else, are the single most influential factor in how we evolve for the rest of our lives.

FINAL THOUGHTS

There are many emotional states that can potentially steer us from our contentment and sense of inner peace. The reality is if we’re living with these self-harming conditions, then we’re not properly taking care of ourselves. They might be considered normal in today’s spiritually-disconnected and ego-based society, but they’re far from the natural and balanced state of the human mind and spirit.
We have to take responsibility because there’s no one that can overcome these dysfunctions for us, but ourselves.
We really have that much power.

Source: “8 Emotional Patterns That Disturb Your Inner Peace,’ from www.wakeup-world.com, by Phil Watt

12 Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking

Here’s a list of things about creative thinking that you were never taught at school:

1. You are creative.

The artist is not a special person, each one of us is a special kind of artist. Every one of us is born a creative, spontaneous thinker. The only difference between people who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not. Once you have a particular identity and set of beliefs about yourself, you become interested in seeking out the skills needed to express your identity and beliefs. This is why people who believe they are creative become creative. If you believe you are not creative, then there is no need to learn how to become creative and you don’t. The reality is that believing you are not creative excuses you from trying or attempting anything new. When someone tells you that they are not creative, you are talking to someone who has no interest and will make no effort to be a creative thinker.

2. Creative thinking is work.

You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity. All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are bad. In fact, more bad poems were written by the major poets than by minor poets. Thomas Edison created 3000 different ideas for lighting systems before he evaluated them for practicality and profitability. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music, including forty-one symphonies and some forty-odd operas and masses, during his short creative life. Rembrandt produced around 650 paintings and 2,000 drawings and Picasso executed more than 20,000 works. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Some were masterpieces, while others were no better than his contemporaries could have written, and some were simply bad.

3. You must go through the motions of being creative.

When you are producing ideas, you are replenishing neurotransmitters linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to what your brain is doing, which in turn is responding to challenges. When you go through the motions of trying to come up with new ideas, you are energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between neurons. The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become. If you want to become an artist and all you did was paint a picture every day, you will become an artist. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you will become more of an artist than someone who has never tried.

4. Your brain is not a computer.

Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences real or fictional. You can synthesize experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain cannot tell the difference between an “actual” experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. This discovery is what enabled Albert Einstein to create his thought experiments with imaginary scenarios that led to his revolutionary ideas about space and time. One day, for example, he imagined falling in love. Then he imagined meeting the woman he fell in love with two weeks after he fell in love. This led to his theory of acausality. The same process of synthesizing experience allowed Walt Disney to bring his fantasies to life.

5. There is no one right answer.

Reality is ambiguous. Aristotle said it is either A or not-A. It cannot be both. The sky is either blue or not blue. This is black and white thinking as the sky is a billion different shades of blue. A beam of light is either a wave or not a wave (A or not-A). Physicists discovered that light can be either a wave or particle depending on the viewpoint of the observer. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. When trying to get ideas,  do not censor or evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them. Think of all your ideas as possibilities and generate as many as you can before you decide which ones to select. The world is not black or white. It is grey.

6. Never stop with your first good idea.

Always strive to find a better one and continue until you have one that is still better. In 1862, Phillip Reis demonstrated his invention which could transmit music over the wires. He was days away from improving it into a telephone that could transmit speech. Every communication expert in Germany dissuaded him from making improvements, as  they said the telegraph is good enough. No one would buy or use a telephone. Ten years later, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Spencer Silver developed a new adhesive for 3M that stuck to objects but could easily be lifted off. It was first marketed as a bulletin board adhesive so the boards could be moved easily from place to place. There was no market for it. Silver didn’t discard it. One day Arthur Fry, another 3M employee, was singing in the church’s choir when his page marker fell out of his hymnal. Fry coated his page markers with Silver’s adhesive and discovered the markers stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the page. Hence the Post-it Notes were born. Thomas Edison was always trying to spring board from one idea to another in his work. He spring boarded his work from the telephone (sounds transmitted) to the phonograph (sounds recorded) and, finally, to motion pictures (images recorded).

7. Expect the experts to be negative.

The more expert and specialized a person becomes,  the more their mindset becomes narrowed and the more fixated they become on confirming what they believe to be absolute. Consequently, when confronted with new and different ideas,  their focus will be on conformity. Does it conform with what I know is right? If not, experts will spend all their time showing and explaining why it can’t be done and why it can’t work. They will not look for ways to make it work or get it done because this might demonstrate that what they regarded as absolute is not absolute at all. This is why when Fred Smith created Federal Express, every delivery expert in the U.S. predicted its certain doom. After all, they said, if this delivery concept was doable, the Post Office or UPS would have done it long ago.

8. Trust your instincts.

Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged. Albert Einstein was expelled from school because his attitude had a negative effect on serious students; he failed his university entrance exam and had to attend a trade school for one year before finally being admitted; and was the only one in his graduating class who did not get a teaching position because no professor would recommend him. One professor said Einstein was “the laziest dog” the university ever had. Beethoven’s parents were told he was too stupid to be a music composer. Charles Darwin’s colleagues called him a fool and what he was doing “fool’s experiments” when he worked on his theory of biological evolution. Walt Disney was fired from his first job on a newspaper because “he lacked imagination.” Thomas Edison had only two years of formal schooling, was totally deaf in one ear and was hard of hearing in the other, was fired from his first job as a newsboy and later fired from his job as a telegrapher; and still he became the most famous inventor in the history of the U.S.

9. There is no such thing as failure.

Whenever you try to do something and do not succeed, you do not fail. You have learned something that does not work. Always ask “What have I learned about what doesn’t work?”, “Can this explain something that I didn’t set out to explain?”, and “What have I discovered that I didn’t set out to discover?” Whenever someone tells you that they have never made a  mistake, you are talking to someone who has never tried anything new.

10. You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are.

Interpret your own experiences. All experiences are neutral. They have no meaning. You give them meaning by the way you choose to interpret them. If you are a priest, you see evidence of God everywhere. If you are an atheist, you see the absence of God everywhere. IBM observed that no one in the world had a personal computer. IBM interpreted this to mean there was no market. College dropouts, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, looked at the same absence of personal computers and saw a massive opportunity. Once Thomas Edison was approached by an assistant while working on the filament for the light bulb. The assistant asked Edison why he didn’t give up. “After all,” he said, “you have failed 5000 times.” Edison looked at him and told him that he didn’t understand what the assistant meant by failure, because, Edison said, “I have discovered 5000 things that don’t work.” You construct your own reality by how you choose to interpret your experiences.

11. Always approach a problem on its own terms.

Do not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased toward your usual way of thinking. Always look at your problem from multiple perspectives. Always remember that genius is finding a perspective no one else has taken. Look for different ways to look at the problem. Write the problem statement several times using different words. Take another role, for example, how would someone else see it, how would Jay Leno, Pablo Picasso, George Patton see it? Draw a picture of the problem, make a model, or mold a sculpture. Take a walk and look for things that metaphorically represent the problem and force connections between those things and the problem (How is a broken store window like my communications problem with my students?) Ask your friends and strangers how they see the problem. Ask a child. How would a ten year old solve it? Ask a grandparent. Imagine you are the problem. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

12. Learn to think unconventionally.

Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers which mean they look for ways to include everything, including things that are dissimilar and totally unrelated. Generating associations and connections between unrelated or dissimilar subjects is how they provoke different thinking patterns in their brain.  These new patterns lead to new connections which give them a different way to focus on the information and different ways to interpret what they are focusing on. This is how original and truly novel ideas are created. Albert Einstein once famously remarked “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
And, finally, Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

Source: “12 Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking,” from themindunleashed.org, by Michael Michalko

Why We’re Attracted To People Who Are Wrong For Us

I’m asked this question all the time: “Why am I attracted to people who are wrong for me?” And the answer is quite simple, actually:  Because your wounded self is doing the attracting.

Now, I know the term “wounded self” can sound a little intense, so let me explain. We all have two selves: the “little self” (or the wounded self, the ego) and the “Spiritual Self” (the higher self, adult self, or soul).
The wounded self is the part of you that feels incomplete. It questions your worth and value; it doesn’t feel whole, or it feels flawed in some way. My wounded self is the “little me” who wonders if I’m truly lovable.

On the other hand, we also have a Spiritual Self. This is your higher self, your soul. It’s the part of you that’s connected to love, truth, wisdom and peace within. Your Spiritual Self knows, without a doubt, how lovable and valuable you are. In many ways, it’s the opposite of the ego.
At any given time, we are operating from one of these two selves. Many of us, unfortunately, operate from the viewpoint of the ego most of the time. That is, we believe we’re insignificant and powerless in some way, and we’re trying to make up for this lack.
The ego looks for things on the outside to find validation and completion. It believes once it gets more (money, a better partner, a better job, a better house, more vacations, etc…) it will finally be happy.
But … it’s never happy. Not for long, anyway. Because the ego’s very nature is to feel incomplete. Therefore when you live through the perspective of your ego, you’re destined to feel like something’s missing. Life through this lens is not very fun.
The ego gets highly activated when it comes to romantic relationships, because relationships are where we hold the most wounding.
We’ve all felt disappointed or hurt by a relationship in the past; we carry the memory of this wound into adulthood (sometimes unconsciously). If a wound from childhood is still active within you, you’ll attract people who are going to highlight the same feeling. For example, if your wounding is centered around feeling rejected or unseen, it’s likely that you’ll feel a similar way in your relationships as an adult.
Your unconscious is programmed to attract people who activate your wounds. The reason for this is so you’ll grow.
This is a frustrating part of the growth process! But think of it this way: You’re replaying your wounds so you can finally heal them. We cannot heal anything we don’t feel or see; we can’t heal things that are unconscious! The uncomfortable feeling has to come to the surface for you to grow beyond it.
And how do you grow beyond it?
By identifying with your higher self.
Remember, your higher self is the part of you that knows the truth about you. It knows that you are worthy, amazing, capable, and powerful. Through the lens of the higher self, you are whole. Yes, you’re an imperfect human with flaws; but the larger truth is: you’re a soul.
You’re beautiful.
You’re important.
You’re special.
You’re love.
This is what the higher self knows about you — and it wants you to know it, too.
By identifying with your higher self (the love within you), your compulsion to play out wounds with other people dissipates and in some cases, disappears.
When you wake up to the higher self’s truth, you suddenly realize that the “wrong” people were just teachers to nudge you into the “right”state-of-mind; a state-of-mind that does not question your value or worth. Unfortunately, nothing inspires us to grow more than a broken heart.
Your higher self wants you to identify with it; it wants you to own who you really are. Reclaim the love within you, and you’ll heal your relationships from the inside-out.

Source: “Why We’re Attracted To People Who Are Wrong For Us,” from mindbodygreen, by Shelly Bullard
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

18 Choices You Make Every Day That Keep You Up at Night

Sleep is essential to brain health. Even one bad night can leave you feeling irritable and in a mental fog the next day.

You consolidate memories while you sleep, so lack of it will affect your ability to remember what you learned the previous day. Every day you lose brain cells, but every night you have the opportunity to create new brain cells provided you are getting enough uninterrupted sleep.

Since 60 million Americans complain of sleeping difficulties, that’s a lot of new brain cells not being created!


Some reasons people can’t sleep are largely out of their hands, such as having a physical or psychological health condition that causes insomnia. But most of us can’t sleep because of choices we make during the day. Here are 18 reasons you can’t sleep that are under your control.

Drinking Caffeine

The average half-life of caffeine is around 5 hours so even if you stop drinking hours before bedtime, there is still some lingering in your system. The effects of caffeine can last for up to 14 hours! So if you drink caffeine, drink it early and stop by noon.

Drinking Alcohol

A nightcap might relax you before you go to bed, but it won’t help you sleep. Alcohol causes nighttime arousals — up to 15 – 25 per night. You probably won’t remember them because the times awake are too short to be remembered, but these awakenings will prevent you from getting the deep sleep you need for brain repair and a feeling of alertness the next day.

Smoking Cigarettes

Ditto on smoking. Smokers also awaken 15 – 25 times per night too. Nicotine seems like it relaxes, but it is actually a stimulant.

Taking Over-the-Counter Medications

Many over-the-counter medications can cause insomnia especially if they contain alcohol or caffeine. Read the labels of all your OTC meds and take accordingly.

Going to Bed Hungry

The usual advice is to not eat a few hours before going to bed, but some people (such as moi) can’t sleep if they are hungry. This is particularly a problem if you eat dinner many hours before you go to sleep or are active in the evening and burn up the calories from dinner.

Going to Bed Full

Conversely, going to bed on an overly full stomach can lead to heartburn and indigestion — not exactly conducive for a good night.

Drinking Too Many Fluids

Here’s another one that gets worse with age — having to get up in the night to go to the bathroom. Try to minimize fluid intake from dinner on.

Being Stressed Out

Being stressed during the day is one of the biggest reasons people can’t sleep. It’s a mean trick of the brain that as soon as your head hits the pillow, worrying thoughts immediately get moved to the forefront.

Exercising in the Evening

One of the metabolic triggers that helps you get to sleep is the slight lowering of our body temperature. But exercise in the evening elevates it for a few hours leading to insomnia in some people. Lowering your bedroom’s thermostat helps to overcome this.

Keeping Irregular Hours

Not going to bed and getting up roughly the same time every day can lead to disrupted sleeping patterns. While this is a choice for most people, for others like shift workers or travelers who frequently change time zones, this is an ongoing challenge.

Being a Couch Potato

The less you do during the day, the harder it can be to fall asleep. Your body was meant for motion. A day of being a couch potato will leave you lethargic but not genuinely tired for sleep.

Sleeping with a Partner

A partner who has insomnia and tosses and turns will keep you awake too. If they snore, they keep you awake while they snooze soundly. It’s so unfair.

Sleeping With Pets

Pets toss and turn, scratch, shed, and snore and can as disruptive as sleeping with another human!

Keep Your Bedroom Too Warm

Your body temperature slightly lowers in preparation for sleep. Having your bedroom too warm will thwart that process leaving you too warm to readily fall asleep.

Watching TV

A late-night action movie can leave you too stimulated to sleep. It takes a while for your brain and body to calm back down to its normal pre-sleep state. But even if you are boring yourself with infomercials, the act of watching any TV will keep you awake. The light exposure reduces your production of melatonin, a hormone that helps you sleep.

Having Electronics in the Bedroom

Light disrupts sleep by halting melatonin production, but the blue light emitted from electronics is particularly disruptive to sleep.

Sleeping With Your Cell Phone

Electromagnetic fields (EMFs) emitted from mobile phones delays your ability to reach the deeper stages of sleep. It’s also suspected of causing brain cancer. One survey found that 44% of those who sleep near their cell phone, check for messages in the middle of the night! If your cell phone is this tempting, move it out of your bedroom.

Using Your iPad

Two hours of iPad use before you go to bed can reduce your melatonin levels by 22%. iPad use is even worse than watching a big screen TV or looking at a computer monitor because they emit shorter wavelength radiation and are held closer to the eyes.

Source: “18 Choices You Make Every Day That Keep You Up at Night,” from bebrainfit.com, by Deane Alban

14 Truths About Being An Introvert (That Mainly Introverts Will Understand)

Below are 14 things about being an introvert that can help you understand what it means to be one (or you can experience a moment of recognition if you are, like the writer of this article, an introvert herself):
1. An introverted person can function better when working alone, than when working in a team. It’s not about being a “team player”, it’s about what can help them produce the best possible result. And working in a team, well…it’s is distracting.
2. Being quiet does not mean “having nothing to say”. It means that one simply enjoys being quiet. As an introvert, I find some of my most satisfying moments when I am in a gathering and observe people talk, without saying something myself. Why don’t you speak? Because I am perfectly content absorbing the stimuli of my surroundings without producing any of my own.
3. Going out in a coffee shop with your book, work, or music, and enjoying that perfect little state between sociability, but without interaction, is very, very satisfying.
4. Introverts choose who they connect with very carefully. And when that connection has been made, it runs deep. Some people can be all depth, instead of breadth. And that is perfectly okay.
5. Rainy days at home are blessings. Period.
6. A trip alone to a foreign country or another city is not scary. It’s an adventure, and not having anyone meddling with your planning is pretty liberating. The lone wolf does survive (if you got my reference, you are awesome).
7. You can never comprehend how some people can spend the entirety of their day together, even fresh lovers in their honeymoon phase. Space is healthy. Silence is necessary.
8. Time alone means time for introspection. While many people avoid looking at their problems, letting them fester and become toxic for them, an introvert can take the time to listen to themselves and perhaps find solutions.
9. Being the observer in a group can actually be very beneficial. It gives one more chances of operating in a behind-the-scenes way.
10. Similarly, the observation of people can lead to better understanding them, which can make an introvert a very likeable person. Everyone wants an understanding confident who lets them speak out for a change, in a world where everyone has an opinion that can, unfortunately, be pushed on to you.
11. Spending less time socializing means coming up with so many more things to occupy your time! There is always a book to read, or a movie to watch, or a language to learn, or some volunteer work you can do, and so on. An introvert can see adventure in the most ordinary settings.
12. That moment when you finally come home after a large party is like the first breath of air in a long time, and a great relief.
13. It can be funny, interesting, and a little bit sad when people get surprised that you have so many interests and hobbies. “Oh my god, I had no idea you did so much!” I mean, it’s not like I sit and stare at my ceiling when I am not with people. But your surprise entertains me.
14. Socializing can be draining, but an introvert can love spending time with an extrovert. Opposites do attract, and one fulfills the other. There are things an introvert cannot do without an extrovert, and vice versa.
To sum up, being an introvert is a great thing. Being an extrovert is also a great thing. The greatness lies within the fact that we hopefully live in a world where people can just be themselves. Being clever and successful is not about learning to separate the more capable (read: sociable) ones from the less capable ones. It’s about fully utilizing every resource, and more often than not, an introvert might just be the ace up society’s sleeve.
Embrace introverts, whether it is the one hiding inside you or someone in your social circle. You won’t miss out.

Source: “14 Truths About Being An Introvert (That Mainly Introverts Will Understand,” from learning-mind.com

5 Ways to Stop Giving a F*ck What People Think”

We’re all guilty. Every day from the moment we wake up, we live our lives caring what other people think of us.

This post originally appeared on Medium.

Author’s note: This article was inspired by the work of Julien Smith and The Flinch.

We accept the status quo for what it is because everyone around us does. We tip toe our way through life by doing things in order to please others, not because it’s what we believe in. Eventually our actions, appearances, and lives become molded by how we think other people perceive us. How are these pants going to make me look? What will my colleagues think if I spoke out? Are those people talking shit behind my back? If I take this job, what will my friends and family think of me?

Just writing that paragraph alone gave me a headache. It’s exhausting. It’s dreadful. It has to stop. Living a life that follows the ideal notions of what other people think is a terrible way to live. It makes you become the spineless spectator who waits for other people to take action first. It makes you become a follower. Worst of all, it makes you become someone who doesn’t take a stand for anything.

Today is the last day we live a life dictated by others. Today, we’re going to get to the bottom of the truth. Today is the day we stop giving a F@$%.

No One Really Cares

Believe it or not, we’re not that special. We go through our days thinking about how other people might be judging us. But the truth is—those people are thinking the exact same thing. No one in today’s “smartphone-crazed” society has time in their schedule to think more than a brief second about us. The fact of the matter is, when we do have time get our thoughts straight, we’re too busy thinking about ourselves and our own shortcomings—not others.

A study done by the National Science Foundation claims that people have, on average, 50,000 plus thoughts a day. This means that even if someone thought about us ten times in one day, it’s only 0.02% of their overall daily thoughts. It is a sad but simple truth that the average person filters their world through their ego, meaning that they think of most things relating to “me” or “my.” This means that unless you have done something that directly affects another person or their life, they are not going to spend much time thinking about you at all.

I’ve always enjoyed watching performers trying to hustle for some change at New York City train stations. These guys simply don’t give a F@$%. But the more interesting observation I made is how the spectators react. Rather than watching the actual performers, most people are looking around to see how other people are reacting. If people were laughing, they would start laughing too. But if people weren’t paying attention, they would also pay no mind.

Even when provided with the blatantly obvious opportunity to judge someone, people are still thinking about how others may perceive them. Once you understand that this is how people’s minds works, it’s a big step towards freedom.

You Can’t Please Everyone

It’s impossible to live up to everyone’s expectations. There will always be people—no matter what we say or how we treat them—that will judge us. Whether you’re at the gym, at work, taking the train, or even online playing Call of Duty. Even now it’s happening. You will never be able to stop people from judging you, but you can stop it from affecting you.

Think about the worst thing that could possibly happen when someone is judging you or what you’re doing. I guarantee that chances are—nothing will happen. Absolutely nothing. No one is going to go out of their busy lives to confront us, or even react for that matter. Because as I mentioned before, no one actually cares. What will happen is that these people will actually respect you for claiming your ground. They may disagree with you, but they’ll respect you.

Start standing up for what you believe in—causes, opinions, anything. You’re going to have people that disagree with you anyways, so why not express how you truly feel? I’ve learned that it’s better to be loved by a few people you care about, than to be liked by everyone. These are family, friends, your spouse—the people who love you for who you are, and the people who will be there for you during your worst times. Focus on these people. They’re the only people that matter.

You Reap What You Sow

Worrying too much about what other people think can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, because the way we think starts to become the way we behave.

These individuals become people-pleasers and are overly accommodating to others, thinking it will stop them from being judged. In fact, the opposite is true. Most people don’t like push-overs and are turned off by it. The behavior we use in an attempt to please others, can actually cause the opposing effect. This means that if you’re a push-over, then you’re going to be attracting others in your life who are also push-overs. Vice versa. This can be quite a dangerous path to go down if you don’t recognize its consequences.

t’s been said that we are the average of the five people we hang out with the most. When we start to attract and associate with the same people that share our weaknesses —we’re stuck. We stop growing, because there’s no one to challenge us to be better. We start thinking that this is the norm and we remain comfortable. This is not a place you want to be.

Now let’s talk about the cure. Here are five ways to stop giving a F@$%.

Reclaiming Your Freedom

1. Know Your Values

First and foremost. You need to know what’s important to you in life, what you truly value, and what you’re ultimately aiming for. Once you know who you really are and what matters to you, what other people think of you becomes significantly less important. When you know your values, you’ll have something to stand up for —something you believe in.

You’ll stop saying yes to everything. Instead, you’ll learn to say no when friends pressure you to go bar-hopping, or when a tempting business opportunity distracts you from your business. When you have your values straight, you have your shit straight.

2. Put Yourself Out There

Now that you know what your values are, it’s time to put yourself out there. This can be done several ways. Here are a few suggestions:

• Blogging

• Wearing a polka-dot sweater

• Public Speaking

• Flirting/Asking someone out

Keep in mind that when you’re doing any of these activities, you have to speak your mind. Be honest with yourself and what you share, because the world doesn’t need another conflict-avoider who does what everyone else does.

3. Surround Yourself with Pros

Surround yourself with people who are self-assured, and live life without comprising their core values. These people will rub off on you quickly.

One of my best friends, Cody, has been a big influence on me. Having spent the summer with him, I’ve observed countless times where he strongly voiced his opinion on controversial topics. What I learned was that he was simply voicing opinions that people already had in their heads, but were too afraid to voice. People admired him for being so honest and direct, even when they disagreed with his views. Thanks for not giving a F@$%, Cody.

4. Create a “Growth List”

OK, now we’re getting personal. I haven’t told anyone this, but I have this list called the “Growth List.” A Growth List is comprised of all the things in life that makes you uncomfortable. These are fears, insecurities—anything that gives you the jitters. Here’s how it works.

You start by writing all the things that make you feel uncomfortable. Then one-by-one, you do them. Once you complete the task, you move on to the next. Repeat.

My first growth task was taking a cold shower (The Flinch). I turned the water as cold as it could get, and I could feel my body shake before I even entered the shower. This was the inner bullshit voice in my head talking. It was hard at first. But surprisingly, it got easier the second time. Then even easier the third time. Before I knew it, my body stopped shaking—I was no longer uncomfortable; I’d conquered my fear.

This exercise does wonders. I have yet to find a better way to get out of my comfort zone. You can read all the books in the world about being confident or getting over your fears, but if you don’t take action, you’re just someone who’s read how to ride a bicycle without ever having ridden one.

5. Travel Alone

If you’re looking for an ultimate transformation that combines all of the points above, you should travel alone. Traveling with other people can be fun, but you won’t get the opportunity to truly get out of your comfort zone. You’ll be exposed to different social cultures, break social norms that you didn’t even know existed, and ultimately, be forced to burst out of your small bubble.

Bring as little as possible, and fit everything into one backpack. Plan nothing, except for a one-way flight ticket to your destination—figure everything else out when you’re there. Trust me, you’ll be just fine. It won’t be easy initially, but don’t get discouraged. Being comfortable with the uncomfortable will grow with time. I continue to struggle with it everyday, as do many others. But you need to get started today.

The world is already full of people who obey the status quo. But the people who don’t give a F@$% are the ones that change the world. Be the latter. Start living life the way you want, be fearless like you once were as a child, and always, always stand up for the truth. Someone has to.

Source: “How to stop giving a F@$% what people think.,” from medium.com, by Sean Kim