A Metaphor for Life: “Changing Your Soil”

In the never ending rabbit hole that seems to be my sources for inspiration, I ran across a quote from a guy named Alexander Den Heijer that said “When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.”
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Now usually quotes like that process themselves through my optic nerve into my brain, mix in with all of the other stuff floating around in there, and get tucked away in my subconscious mind somewhere. Only to pop up awkwardly in conversation 6 months later like I just said something profound. But, in the case of this quote: I immediately took notice of it and let it sink in. Instead of the thought wandering off, it came charging to the forefront. I think what struck me about the statement is: as humans, we are extremely similar to our leafy cousins on a very basic level. We require the same kinds of care and cultivation, we face the same threats from parasites, and our environment is critical to our survival. The plant reference really hit home with me and sent my thought process pinballing away.

So, I want to take the plant metaphor a little deeper. You see, I like to fancy myself a gardener of sorts in that I can intentionally grow a plant when I want to. What I have learned from my short time as an amateur (at best) gardener is that the most critical element of good gardening is your soil. To apply that to life, your soil is where you are. Not only physically, but as a person. Your soil is your base. Your foundation. And just like with growing a plant, there are times that you need to change your soil to get the absolute most out of your plant (you).
Read: 10 Scientific Ways To Detox From Sugar Addiction (Before It Kills You)

Changing Your Soil

Give Your Soil What It Needs

There are very few places in the world where you can just dig a hole, throw a seed in it, and expect a plant to grow. There are factors like nutrients, Ph, and minerals that all determine how viable the soil really is. That being said, with work, you can take the leanest soil on the planet and make it fertile. It takes work and the right components, but it can be done. Our lives are the same way. There are things that we can add to our existence that will make us grow in ways we didn’t know we could. Things like taking up a hobby or meeting new friends. Find the things you love in life and make them a real part of your life. There is a huge difference in knowing that you need something in your life, and actually making it a part of your life.

Compost

One of the greatest things you can add to your soil is compost. Compost is essentially a collection of waste that is broken down for it’s nutritional value over time, which is then added to the soil. We don’t realize it, but we have compost in our lives as well. All of our experiences, good or bad, are processed and digested mentally and emotionally. These experiences are broken down into lessons that make us the people we are. Just like the chemical and biological processes of composting, this is a complicated cycle. It’s not something that happens automatically or immediately. Just like you can’t expect to just dump a pile of dead leaves and food waste on a seed and expect results, you can’t just apply a negative lesson to your life and expect to grow from it. Take the time to break it down. Take the best from every moment of your life, and use it to nourish the next moment.
Read: Technology of Memories: The Potential for a “Spotless Mind” Really Exists

Mix It Up

Once you’ve started adding things to your soil that it needs to be fertile, it’s time to break out the tiller and mix it all together. This is also the least fun part for a gardener who doesn’t happen to own a power tiller or a mule and plow. But, mixing up your soil is critical to making it fertile. Again, our lives are exactly the same way. We need to mix things up. Get out of your routine. Travel, meet new people, wander, learn. This is where you apply those nutrients you mixed in with that compost. This is where you really provide that seed (you) with all of that potential you’ve managed to muster.

I am typically not one to get lost in a metaphor, but this one just stuck. There is something about the plant reference that has always made sense to me. I once wrote about how watching a seedling of a flower blooming was like watching a person grow as a person. As people, we tend to forget that, even though we are highly developed, we are still organic organisms with the same basic needs as all of the other organic organisms we share this floating space rock with. On a very basic level, why should we be any more complicated than they are?

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Potential, Non-Invasive Alzheimer’s Detection Technique Shows Promise

One of the most difficult aspects of Alzheimer’s disease is the fact that there are no warning signs, other than the symptoms of the disease itself. Symptoms like mental decline, memory loss, and dementia. Often times these symptoms come on fast and without any prior warning. A new study from the Monell Center and the USDA is aimed at developing a new screening process that can detect Alzheimer’s disease in its earliest stages. The key to this detection process? An odor marker in urine.
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According to the author of the study, Dr. Bruce Kimball, “Previous research from the USDA and Monell has focused on body odor changes due to exogenous sources such as viruses or vaccines. Now we have evidence that urinary odor signatures can be altered by changes in the brain characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease. This finding may also have implications for other neurologic diseases.”
Read: 10 Scientific Ways To Detox From Sugar Addiction (Before It Kills You)

The implications for a non-invasive, simple, effective, and accurate test for neurological disorders like Alzheimer’s are huge. Although there isn’t a cure for Alzheimer’s, early detection could lead to treatments aimed, at the very least, at slowing the mental decline associated with the disease. 5.1 million Americans over the age of 65 are affected by Alzheimer’s. Currently, there is no physiological test that can be done on a living person to diagnose Alzheimer’s, so to develop one would open a whole new doorway to different treatment options.
Read: New Alzheimer’s Treatment is Fully Restoring Memory Function

The study, which was published in the online journal Scientific Reports, centers around APP mice, which have brain pathology similar to the brain pathology of Alzheimer’s patients. Between chemical analysis and behavioral changes, researchers found that the APP mice had a different odor to their urine that non-APP mice. What was unique, is the fact that the APP mice’s urine wasn’t chemically different, just different in odor.
Read: New Compound may be the KEY to Preventing Alzheimer’s Disease

Dr. Daniel Wesson, on of the authors of the study, admits: “While this research is at the proof-of-concept stage, the identification of distinctive odor signatures may someday point the way to human biomarkers to identify Alzheimer’s at early stages.” That being said, if this is the first step to creating a detection method that could be included in annual physicals and other basic diagnostic exams, patients wouldn’t have to be blindsided by the onset of symptoms. Detection is an important step in finding a cure.

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Relational Psychology: Walking Through The Woods

The concept of relational psychology has always been interesting to me. These tests work by presenting you with a hypothetical situation with many variables, and your answers reveal aspects of your personality and values. I remember the first time that I was given one of these tests, more specifically, that I thought the test was goofy at best. Sure enough, even giving half-hearted answers, the results were spot on. There are many different tests out there that you can take, but I’ve found that when you have the chance to give individualized answers instead of a multiple choice selection, the answers are more accurate. One of the most popular relational psychology tests out there is the “Walk in the Woods”. So let’s give it a shot, and see how accurate the answers are. Get a pen and paper, and take a second to answer these question honestly and I promise you’ll be surprised by the answers.
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Walk in the Woods

Imagine yourself walking through the woods…
How Thick are the woods? Is is a thick jungle, or is it a piney forest?

Who are you walking with?

As you continue on in your walk through the forest, you come across an animal.
What kind of animal is it? Is it an animal that belongs in the type of forest you are walking through or is it out of place?
Read: The Secrets Behind The Science Of Persuasion

You come up to the animal. What does the animal do?

As you continue walking you come to a clearing. There’s a house in the middle of the clearing.

How big is it? Is it fenced in or no?

You walk up to the door of the home and it’s open a bit. You walk in and see a table.

Describe what’s on the table.

You walk through the house and out the back door. Behind the house, there’s a huge lawn and in the center is a garden. In the garden, you find a cup.

What is the cup made out of? What do you do with the cup?

As you walk to the end of the garden, you find yourself at a body of water.

What kind of body of water is it? A lake? River? Pond? You must cross this water in order to get home.
Read: Practicing the Law of Attraction Or How To Get What You Really Want

How wet do you get?

The Results

The density of the forest relates to the things going on in your life.
For instance, if you imagine yourself in an impenetrable forest, you see your life as complicated and cluttered. If you imagine yourself in a hardwood forest, you see more organization in your life.

The person you were walking with is someone who is important to you in one way or another.
Seems simple enough, but the importance here is why the person is important to you. For instance, it could be a love interest or a celebrity that you find attractive. The indicates that having a love interest in your life is important to you. Maybe it was a historical figure? That indicates that there is some value in that person that is important to you.

The animal you come across is a representation of the problems you see in your life. .
Was the animal big? Was it appropriate for the forest you were in? If not, that’s a representation of problems that you feel are out of your control.

Your interaction with the animal is a representation of how you deal with the problems you see in your life
Did you fight? did you run? Did you hide?

The size of your home is representative of your level of ambition.
Did you see a shack or a mansion?
Read: 11 Traits Of People With High Emotional Intelligence

The fence or the lack of a fence around the house is representative of how open you are as a person.
was it barbed wire? was there no fence at all? How hard would that fence be to cross?

The items on the table are representative of your happiness.
Things like food, flowers, or something pleasant indicate that you are happier as a person. Things like guns, knives, or unpleasant things are indications that you are unhappy.

The Durability of the cup relates back to your relationships with the people around you.
The cup is a representation of how well you think you hold people around you.

What you do with it is representative of your attitude toward those relationships and people.
How important is that cup to you? Did you throw it away? or did you hold on to it?

The size of the body of water is related to your sexual drive.
Was it a puddle? Was it an ocean?

How wet you got represents the importance of sex in your life

Did you stay relatively dry? Did you jump right in?

This is just a simple example of relational psychology, and although ALL of the answers might not be spot on – you’ll see that if you answer truthfully, you get truth in the results.

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Your Favourite Fairy Tales Are Older Than The Bible

Two researchers have discovered our beloved fairy tales are much older than we thought- they say one even dates back to the Bronze Age.
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Sara Graca da Silva, and Jamshid Tehrani used tactics usually employed by biologists to form a phylogenetic tree of common fairy tales and myths, and found many of them seem to be much older than originally thought.

Graca da Silva, a folklorist with New University of Lisbon, and Tehrani, an anthropologist with Durham University, built these phylogenetic trees to track linguistic patterns and attributes to their origin. They began with 275 fairy tales, each one rooted in magic, and narrowed the list down to 76 basic stories or legends. They then began building trees based on Indo-European languages, some of which have long been extinct. By doing this, the researchers discovered evidence that certain fairy tales, like Jack and the Beanstalk, were rooted in other stories. They also found that these stories could be traced back to the period when Eastern and Western Indo-European languages split, approximately 5,000 years ago, predating the Bible and Greek myths.
Read: Inside the Beautiful Mind of Jim Carrey

The analysis showed Beauty And The Beast and Rumpelstiltskin to be around 4,000 years old. But that’s nothing compared to the 6,000 year old tale of The Smith And The Devil; a story about a blacksmith who sells his soul to the Devil in exchange for unmatched smithing powers and who uses them to pin the Devil down, allowing the smith to keep his soul and his new abilities.

“We find it pretty remarkable these stories have survived without being written,” says Tehrani. “They have been told since before even English, French and Italian existed. They were probably told in an extinct Indo-European language.”

150 years ago, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm believed the same thing, even though that opinion wasn’t a highly-favoured one. The Grimm brothers were fascinated by the history of the stories they shared, and thought many of the ones they popularized, such as Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretel, and Snow White, shared a history rich in culture dating back to the induction of the Indo-European language.
Read: The Timeless Brilliance of W.C. Fields

Tehrani says, “We can come firmly down on the side of Wilhelm Grimm. Some of these stories go back much further than the earliest literary record and indeed further back than Classical mythology – some versions of these stories appear in Latin and Greek texts – but our findings suggest they are much older than that.”

The complete study can be found in the Royal Society Open Science Journal, and fully explains the processes conducted to reach these conclusions.

Dr Tehrani explained: “We used a toolkit that we borrowed from evolutionary biology called phylogenetic comparative methods. This enables you to reconstruct the past in the absence of physical evidence.

“We’ve excavated information about our story-telling history, using information that’s been preserved through the mechanism of inheritance, so in that sense they embody their own history.
Read: Hávamál: Poetic Viking Wisdom

“By comparing the folk tales that we find in different cultures and knowing something about the historical relationships among those cultures, we can make inferences about the stories that would have been told by their common ancestors.”

Written by Raven Fon

Ref: BBC | Royal Society Publishing

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The Vitality of Recess: How Giving Kids A Break Improves Everything

When a pilot program to increase recess time for kids started up in Eagle Mountain Elementary School in Fort Worth, Texas, first-grade teacher Donna McBride “was very nervous about it”. She worried especially about how she as going to get all of the information she needed to teach the students into a day that suddenly had not one, two, or three but four 15-minute recess breaks.
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The results, however, have been astounding. When kids are given the opportunity to “reboot”, they come back to their classrooms ready to focus. The pay closer attention. Parents report increases in creativity and problem-solving skills. The school is part of a program called LiiNK, developed by Professor Debbie Rhea at Texas Christian University, and one of its main goals is to increase the amount of recess time kids are given to play outside. Even if it is cold or drizzly, the kids go out to play.
Read: The Art of Being Assertive

Recess is crucial for a number of reasons; the results demonstrated by LiiNK show that kids are more enthusiastic about learning after given a short break, develop better social skills, work harder to learn independently, and have fewer disciplinary problems. Since the kids know they’ll get multiple opportunities to go outside and play, they’re less competitive about playground equipment and more likely to connect with their classmates. The emphasis on “unstructured” play time gives kids the opportunity to be more creative, develop their own games and improve socialization. Given the incredibly impressive results LiiNK has shown, it’s no surprise that four more schools in Texas and one in Oklahoma have signed onto the project as well.
Read: 4 Steps to Detox your Life, Starting Today

Independent of the results shown by LiiNK’s implementation, research also shows that more time outside for younger kids can help in reducing the development of myopia, or nearsightedness. In a study conducted of communities in Singapore and Sydney with parents having roughly the same proportion of myopia (about 70% of parents were nearsighted), 29.1% of the kids in the Singapore community were myopic, whereas only 3.3% of the kids in the Sydney community were myopic. The major difference in the two communities was exposure to sunlight: the Singapore kids spent only about 3 hours a week outside, whereas the Sydney kids spent about 13 hours a week outside. Sunlight plays a key role in cuing the production of the neurotransmitter dopamine in the sleep/wake cycle in humans, and studies suggest that dopamine’s release into the eyes helps to protect them from developing myopia. So more exposure to sunlight, especially in early childhood, may actually help protect against nearsightedness. The studies aren’t entirely conclusive and more research still needs to be done to confirm these links, but evidence strongly suggests that this is the case. Looks like more recess is an all-around win.

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The Density of Wisdom: 28 Timeless Teachings of Epictetus

Throughout my life, I’ve always loved the Greek philosophers. I’ve put together collections of quotes from Aristotle and Plato,but one of my favorite philosophers has always been Epictetus. Epictetus lived a hard life, even by ancient standards. He was born a slave and went to Rome as a boy where he was the servant to a wealthy master. He was granted permission to study philosophy by his master, and as he did so, he gained notoriety, even as a slave. Sometime around 68AD, Epictetus was granted his freedom and began teaching philosophy as a free man. In 93AD, the current emperor of Rome banished all philosophers from the city and so Epictetus went to northern Greece where he lived out the rest of his life.
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I’ve always held Epictetus in high regard because I’ve always believed that the value of the advice a person gives is directly proportional to the life they have lived. For instance, would you rather take business advice from a trust fund baby who inherited a corporation or the guy who built an empire out of nothing? Sure, they both may have excellent points to what they are saying, but the advice from the guy who went from rags to riches carries more weight in my opinion. It’s a concept not unlike density in physics: two objects of the same size can have two completely different weights.

Epictetus believed that philosophy wasn’t something you taught, but yet a way of living. One of his most famous excerpts that I love referring back to says:
“How long are you going to wait before you demand the best for yourself and in no instance bypass the discriminations of reason? You have been given the principles that you ought to endorse, and you have endorsed them. What kind of teacher, then, are you still waiting for in order to refer your self-improvement to him? You are no longer a boy, but a full-grown man. If you are careless and lazy now and keep putting things off and always deferring the day after which you will attend to yourself, you will not notice that you are making no progress, but you will live and die as someone quite ordinary.
Read: 30 of The Most Profound Quotes From Plato

From now on, then, resolve to live as a grown-up who is making progress, and make whatever you think best a law that you never set aside. And whenever you encounter anything that is difficult or pleasurable, or highly or lowly regarded, remember that the contest is now: you are at the Olympic Games, you cannot wait any longer, and that your progress is wrecked or preserved by a single day and a single event. That is how Socrates fulfilled himself by attending to nothing except reason in everything he encountered. And you, although you are not yet a Socrates, should live as someone who at least wants to be a Socrates.”

I think we should all strive to be a Socrates.

Here is a brief collection of some of my favorite quotes from a man who didn’t just teach philosophy, he lived it.

“If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”
Read: 60 Timeless Inspirational Quotes

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”

“Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”

“There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power or our will. ”

“Don’t just say you have read books. Show that through them you have learned to think better, to be a more discriminating and reflective person. Books are the training weights of the mind. They are very helpful, but it would be a bad mistake to suppose that one has made progress simply by having internalized their contents.”

“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems”

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.”

“If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid.”

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”

“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.”

“Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”

“He who laughs at himself never runs out of things to laugh at.”

“Other people’s views and troubles can be contagious. Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.”

“Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”

“Only the educated are free.”
Read: 30 of the Greatest Quotes from Abraham Lincoln about Life and Success

“Circumstances don’t make the man, they only reveal him to himself.”

“It is impossible for a man to learn what he thinks he already knows.”

“Nature hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.”

“To accuse others for one’s own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.”

“People are not disturbed by things, but by the views they take of them.”

“You are a little soul carrying around a corpse”

“First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.”

“I laugh at those who think they can damage me. They do not know who I am, they do not know what I think, they cannot even touch the things which are really mine and with which I live.”

“Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.”
Read: 11 Quotes About Self-Improvement that can Inspire the Changes You Want to See in Yourself

“The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests. ”

“No man is free who is not master of himself.”

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has. ”

“Seek not the good in external things; seek it in yourselves.”

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The Courage of Glen Campbell Resonates Throughout his Final Song

4 Steps to Detox your Life, Starting Today

It seems like you can’t make it through your news feed these days without seeing an article detailing the benefits of detoxing your body in one form or fashion. For every reason there is to eliminate toxins from your body, there is an associated process, complete with a list of ingredients that you’d never think to add together and a warning of “minor digestive discomfort.” I believe wholeheartedly in removing toxins from the body, I just wish there was a process that didn’t involve spending a day in the bathroom.
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So, if it is that important to detox our bodies, what about detoxing our lives? With all of the battles that we wage and the burdens we bear, I think it is important to spend some time detoxing the soul as well. Cleansing your life, just like cleansing your body, gets rid of the toxins we build up, and makes way for the good things we need to keep us happy and healthy. The best part? No crazy ingredients. Here is the 4-step process for detoxifying you life that you can start right now, right this minute.

Fears

What is it that you’re truly afraid of? Sure, there are spiders, clowns, ghosts, flying bugs, whatever. I’m talking real fears. The first step to detoxing your fears is to figure out what they are. Just like you’d address a fear of clowns by going to the circus, you need to make a list of what it is that you are really afraid of in life. Once you have a tangible list, go through it and determine what you can and cannot change. For instance, if you’re scared of losing friends make an effort to strengthen your friendships. Face those fears just like you would if they were physical.
Read: 10 Scientific Ways To Detox From Sugar Addiction (Before It Kills You)

Toxic People

This one is common sense. Just like you’d flush toxic junk from your digestive system, you need to flush toxic people from your life. I assure you, we all have one or two people hovering around in our existence that we’d be better off without. Yes, we’ve tried to do the right thing and be a good person, but no matter what we do these people continue to drain us. Take a minute right now to consider the people you interact with every day, and the impact they have on you.
Read: Why Everyone Needs A Himalayan Salt Lamp

Hopeless Situations

No matter how hard we fight against the circumstances of our lives, there are going to be things that we cannot change. Sometimes it is the people around us. Sometimes it is the situations that we find ourselves in. The key here, just like our fears, is to address what we can change and what we can’t. Just like the serenity prayer suggests, you need the will to change the things you can, the strength to endure the things you can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference between the two.
Read: 11 Reasons To Detox

Define your Life, The Way YOU Want it

I recently read a book called “Live It!: Achieve Success by Living with Purpose” by acclaimed author and speaker Jairek Robbins. In his book, Robbins takes you through an exercise where you envision your perfect day. Down to the smallest details. Then, by realizing how far or close you are to that perfect day, you work toward making your life just like that perfect day. Personally, I think this is a practice that we can all put to use every day. It’s not about dwelling on the things you don’t like about your current life, but how you can improve on them. Making every day your perfect day.

Just like detoxing your body makes your body more efficient, detoxing your life is the key to being healthier and happier.

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Inside The Institute Of Illegals Images: Over A Millions Hits Of LSD On Display

Have you ever heard of Mark McCloud? He has a collection of over 30,000 sheets of LSD in his San Francisco home which the DEA has tried to confiscate more than once.
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15 years ago was the last time the feds tried to arrest and permanently sentence McCloud, and that attempt was just as unsuccessful for them as their previous ones. How can anyone have millions of hits of acid in their home and be allowed to keep them? Well, it’s art. It’s on display, and most of the sheets are ineffective due to “exposure to ultraviolet rays of light and oxygen which have neutralized the psychotropic chemicals,” says Mark. Although he has been arrested a few times for conspiracy to manufacture and distribute narcotics, he is always found innocent due to the tabs being inactive.

He calls his home the Institute of Illegal Images. Tens-of-thousands of framed images on blotter paper cover his walls from top to bottom. There you’ll find some well-known designs like “sorcerer Mickey”, and Grateful Dead logos, but you’ll also see works of art that can only be described as masterpieces. McCloud has put some of these images on the website Blotter Barn for those with a curiosity to browse through what he has been collecting since the 1970’s. “When I first noticed the blotter prints, I said, ‘Boy, this is fascinating, and maybe I should try to collect some of these so our children know what happened to us,’” McCloud says.
Read: Studies Find Psychoactive Drug Safer Than Alcohol When Driving

The history of blotter art is something McCloud is very familiar with. In fact, he is a treasure-trove of knowledge about this kind of stuff. At one point, he was on the board of the San Francisco Art Institute and art has always interested him. Blotter art happened to be the next evolutionary step for him after becoming a huge advocate for LSD.

1968 marked the first commercially available acid. It was simply drops on paper and was out of New York City, done by an underground chemist called Ghost. These sheets were called 5-by-20s and they were on a small card that was the size of autochrome film; they came out wrapped in Kodak packaging.
Then the 70s brought about illustrated tabs. The first sheets were printed on paper the same size as an LP so they could be shipped in vinyl records. In the early stages of illustrated sheets, a single image would be printed then divided into tabs and would usually be a single colour as well. It didn’t take long, however, for those simple images to become something much more elaborate.
Read: St. John’s Wort is Better Than Antidepressant Drugs

Blotter art has been evolving and is still a relatively new form of underground art. Erowid, a site for documenting drugs, says blotter art has led to “an array of creative and stunning designs,” insomuch as “it is likely that a few of the blotter designs shown have never been dipped [in LSD] and were created purely as art.” This site has its own digital collection of LSD blotter art, and some of the artwork from the Institute of Illegal Images can be found there as well.

When asked how many trips he has taken, McCloud told Vice, “Half of one. The full trip is when you’re happy playing harp in Heaven and your job is done. That’s the full trip.”

Written by Raven Fon

All images via Blotter Barn

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Why Everyone Needs A Himalayan Salt Lamp

If you’ve got respiratory allergies like me, you spend a fair amount of time figuring out how to make your life less sneezy, less wheezy, and less sniffly. Respiratory allergies are no fun and no joke: besides the need to carry tissues everywhere and the potential for development into more substantial health problems, they’re taxing on your immune system, making you more susceptible to viruses and infections. Allergies are, in fact, the product of an overactive immune system. While it may seem like a good thing to have an overachiever for an immune system, it can unfortunately turn against you.
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I’ve spent years trying to dust- and dander-proof my home as much as possible. I buy hypoallergenic pillows, vacuum and dust constantly, and haul my mattress out into the sunny Colorado outdoors as often as possible to kill dust mites. (This works.) Respiratory allergies now affect 20% of the US population, so there’s a good chance that if you’re reading this article, you’re one of us.

But wait, this is an article about Himalayan salt lamps, isn’t it? Indeed it is, and as a former skeptic who now keeps one plugged in and turned on all the time in my room (except when I’m sleeping, since it’s a little bit too bright) I can personally attest to the benefits. Himalayan salt lamps are created in one of two ways: a light bulb is placed in the middle of a chunk of Himalayan salt, which glows and heats up when it is powered on, or a bulb is placed in the middle of a bowl with chunks of Himalayan salt. My lamp is the former kind; my mom actually has the latter and likes mine better, but she’s not an allergy sufferer and enjoys hers mostly because it’s beautiful.
Read: 3 Things You Can Do Every Day to Live a Better Life

And salt lamps are. They create a soft pink glowing light that isn’t quite enough to read by but gives a warm glow to any room or area they’re lit. The really cool thing about Himalayan salt lamps, and what has made them relevant for me, is that they create negative ions. Contrary to what they sound like, negative ions are actually a really good thing. Exposure to negative ions can boost mood and shows significant decreases in stress and depression, negative ions have been so thoroughly studied recently -and with such optimistic results- that some researchers think they may be an effective alternative to prescription medications for some patients. Negative ions abound in nature -they can be found in huge concentrations around waterfalls and after thunderstorms- but aren’t found much in our homes, especially given our increased reliance on technology. While negative ions are good, positive ions are bad for your health, and computers and other technological equipment are massive positive ion-generating machines.

Negative ions have also been shown to bond with allergens, because allergens are positively charged. And salt lamps are wonderful producers of negative ions. While the research on this is still inconclusive, reports from allergy sufferers seem to attest to the power of Himalayan salt lamps in reducing allergies. And that includes this author. I am a huge skeptic of ion generators and so-called homeopathic remedies, but I was gifted a Himalayan salt lamp and found that the air in my room smelled better, cleaner, and brighter. I now sleep better, wake up with fewer allergy symptoms, and feel more refreshed and energized since making this simple change in my life. I now keep the salt lamp on constantly.
Read: 10 Scientific Ways To Detox From Sugar Addiction (Before It Kills You)

Not an allergy sufferer? Negative ions still help in an abundance of ways, mostly by canceling out positive ions. While mechanical negative ion generators have been called into question for their effectiveness and are no longer recommended by the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy & Immunology, Himalayan salt lamps don’t function in the same way. By generating negative ions in a natural way, they create a much fresher, more outdoorsy environment anywhere they are placed. Much better for your health, whether you have allergies or not.

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4 Keys to Mending a Damaged Relationship

Every day in our lives we are faced with one constant challenge: other people. Often times people associate the word “relationship” with a significant other, but n reality we maintain relationships with everyone around us. From neighbors to co-workers, friends to lovers. If there is one common connection between all of these relationships, it is that at some point they will become strained in one way or another. Too often, people are quick to throw away relationships that could just as easily be mended and strengthened. Relationships of any kind take work. The next time you’re faced with a struggle in any relationship you might have, think of these 4 keys to keeping that relationship intact.
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Take Responsibility

First off, let’s establish that taking responsibility and taking blame are two different things. If you are at fault, take responsibility for it. Nothing alienates another person quite like ignoring your actions. If you aren’t at fault, take responsibility for how someone else’s actions made you feel. There are two sides to every coin, and as you take responsibility for yourself, you’ll start to see that blame isn’t the point. It is accountability. When two people can agree that they were both at fault in a situation, finding common ground to come back together on is easy.
Read: One Thing that Successful Relationships all Seem to Have in Common

Say It

Think of the conversations you have when you are mad or hurt. Are you actually communicating anything other than hostility or frustration? Just because words are coming out of your mouth, doesn’t mean that you are communicating. You’re better off explaining WHY you feel a certain way than you are just saying that you feel that way. Anytime I harp on communication, I use the word “effective” for a reason. You have to let someone know they why of how you feel, not just that you feel it.
Read: The Most Common Relationship Mistake People Make, and Why it Ruins Them

Stay Rational

The closer a relationship may be, the more the tendency to let emotions take control exists. It’s easy to let emotions take over any conversation but when it comes to dealing with another person, rationality will always win. Yes, it is important to have a grasp on your emotional state and to communicate it. That doesn’t mean that your conversation needs to come from a place of raw emotions. That’s where emotional intelligence comes into play.
Read: What to Expect from a True Twin Flame Relationship

The Elsa Approach

In the end, there will always come a time when we have to be like Elsa in Frozen, and just let it go. You have to look at the other person and say, “you know what? my relationship with you is more important than winning this argument.” It’s that simple. The key here is that if you’ve done all of the other things I’ve talked about here, and the person doesn’t care or adjust whatever it was that started the conflict, maybe it’s time to let go of them.

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MIT Neuroscientists Find Gene that Reverses Autism

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5 Things About Love Everyone Should Know

I saw a post the other day in my Facebook news feed that normally wouldn’t have caught my eye, but for some reason, it sent my mind reeling. The post basically said, “If you could write your 18-year-old self a note, what would it say?” At first, I thought, “okay, how long can this note be? Handwritten or typed? Where do I find old lottery numbers?” The more I thought about it, the more I figured out that there isn’t much I would tell myself that I didn’t already know. I’ve lived a good life, and I don’t think there is much I would have changed. That being said, there is one thing I would enlighten a younger version of myself about: love.
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Take What you Think About Love and Throw it Away

Take everything you think you know about love, and throw it out the nearest window. All of the preconceived notions that you’ve created about love are not going to make it any easier to find or figure out. Let it happen. Be open to it. Hollywood has painted this unobtainable version of love that so rarely exists in real life that it’s about as useful as trying to grab a handful of wind.
Read: Why Highly Intelligent People Struggle to Find Love

Nothing is better – Nothing can be Worse

Love can be the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to you, and you need to be ready for both. Having love in your life will change it just as much as losing it will. Again, you have to appreciate both sides of the coin. Take the good with the bad, graciously.

Jumping and Falling are Two Different Things

There is going to be a time when it looks like love, sounds like love, and even feels like love – but it isn’t. The difference between jumping and falling is that jumping is an option. Falling is just something you do. Real love doesn’t give you an option.
Read: How To Get Her To Fall In Love With You: Explained By Science

Your Heart was made to be Broken

The heart is a resilient thing. It’s not some Faberge egg that will shatter into a million tiny pieces at the first instance of mishandling. Sure, it’s going to feel that way, but I assure you that those pieces will go back together with time. The heart is amazing in the punishment it can take.

The ones that didn’t work out. Every failed relationship is a lesson. Every lost love is an experience that makes the next one have that much more potential to be amazing. So often, people see failed relationships as just that: a failure. The truth is, they are successes. They are one step closer to finding the right person for you.

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What Type of Intelligence Do You Have?

The Art of Being Assertive

In my professional life, I have had the opportunity to supervise and manage some awesome people. I’ve also had the opportunity to manage some not-so-awesome people, as well. In both instances, I’ve always heard the same thing from business owners and partners when it comes to me and other employees: “Justin, you are too nice.” I used to get really defensive about it. I’d say things like, “well, I used to have a shitty boss, so I never want to be one.” The truth is, the problem wasn’t that I was too nice, it was that I wasn’t assertive enough. People seem to think that to be assertive you have to be bossy, and that’s not the case. Being assertive is an artform of sorts. It’s maintaining that balance between being in charge and being overbearing. You can be the nicest or meanest person in the world and still not be assertive.
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And the funny thing about being assertive is that it doesn’t just apply to your professional life. Being assertive is a key social function in any setting. No one wants to be a doormat their entire life. So, knowing that being assertive is a critical part of a good social or professional situation, here are the keys to being assertive without being bossy or controlling:

Say What You Mean, Mean What You Say

I harp on communication a lot. Whether I am talking about relationships, business, friends, family, basically any interaction with another human being. The reason is that there are no confirmed cases of people who can legitimately read minds. Even if there were, they would be too few and far between to make a difference, so you have to tell people what it is that you want. If you leave people to make assumptions, you’re at the mercy of what THEY think YOU need. Don’t be afraid to over-communicate. In fact, over-communication can be a great tool.
Read: 8 Tips to Mastering Body Language that will Win Anyone Over

Take Responsibility for How YOU Feel

A lot of times we hold back from telling people what we need because we are worried about how they will feel. In a professional setting, it might be something like reprimanding someone for something they did wrong. In a personal setting, it might be worrying that a friend will be upset if you don’t like something. In either scenario, you’re worrying about how someone will react to a situation, instead of worrying about you are going to feel about the outcome. In that professional setting, you’ve now got an employee who is going to continue to screw up. In that personal setting, you’re going to end up with a friend that will keep putting you in a situation you don’t like. Either way, you’re choosing their feelings over yours.
Read: Researchers: Watch Out for Overly Polite People

Quit Appologizing

As a boss or as a friend, when you do what you need to do the very last thing in the world you should do is apologize. Business decisions aren’t personal, and you need to make that separation. In social settings, if you’re looking out for yourself, there is no need to be sorry. Self-preservation is a strong instinct and one that should not be ignored. You especially don’t need to apologize for how something makes you feel. Emotional intelligence is all about understanding what you feel and why. Explaining how you feel is a much more constructive behavior than apologizing for it.
Read: 6 Tips for Maintaining a Positive Attitude

Stay Cool

The main key to being assertive is keeping your cool. Maintaining control as opposed to becoming emotional is the best way to maintain control of a situation. Yes, assertion is about control, let’s be clear about that. Keep in mind, there is a difference between having people follow you willingly, and standing on a chair with a whip. In a professional sense, Being effectively assertive is all about people having faith in you and believing that you are leading them in the right direction. In a personal sense, being assertive is a way of establishing boundaries that people will respect.

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95% Of People Can’t Get The Perfect Score In This Basic Memory Test

3 Things You Can Do Every Day to Live a Better Life

Every single day we have the ability to make our lives better. I know it doesn’t seem that simple when we are in the midst of a tough day, but it is the truth. We have this amazing ability to look past the easy changes we can make for ourselves in light of the big changes we think we need to make. Nothing worth doing is done in huge, bounding leaps. They require baby steps. Here are 3 of those baby steps that can make your life better for yourself and the people around you.
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Ditch the Telescope, Focus on the Mirror

It is so easy to fall in the trappings of worrying so much about what other people are doing, and not look at yourself and the things you are doing. People are constantly comparing themselves to others. We constantly look at other people simply to point out their faults. Instead of looking out at everyone else, look inside yourself for the changes that you can make to be better. Quit comparing yourself to others to make yourself feel better, and instead, focus on yourself and what makes you happy. I promise you that the more you like what you see in the mirror, the happier you will be in the end.

Quit Telling People What You Think They Want to Hear

One of the biggest failures we commit to each other is telling people what we think they want to hear, instead of what they need to hear. We do it because we are afraid of how people will react to the truth. You are not responsible for how someone reacts to the truth. You are, however, responsible for telling people the truth when they need to hear it the most. You can still be supportive, kind, and compassionate while being brutally honest.
Read: Emotional Balance: Why it is So Important in Our Lives

Under-Promise, Over-Deliver

This is something that I struggle with every single day. It’s not that I just placate people by saying I can get something done, I genuinely want to do everything for everyone. But at the end of the day, there is only so much I can do. By setting realistic expectations, you not only make people happier in the end by doing what you say you will, but you avoid disappointing people when you take on more than you can handle. Quite simply: don’t be afraid to set realistic expectations.

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10 Scientific Ways To Detox From Sugar Addiction (Before It Kills You)

Want to know the truth about sugar? Well, the truth is our bodies aren’t meant to handle such extremely high levels of sugar in our diets. In fact, we are killing ourselves with an addiction- a sugar addiction.
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For over 50 years, Americans have been brainwashed into believing that fat is the bad guy, when really it’s that sweet, sweet devil we call sugar. It’s sugar, not fat, that makes you sick, overweight, and irritable. In fact, sugar (in it’s many forms) is the root cause for most chronic disease in this country and the rest of the world. Think of an unpleasant or life-debilitating condition/disease. Chances are sugar is the culprit. Heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s, type 2 diabetes, depression, acne, infertility, impotence- all sugar-related.

You’re probably thinking, “But I don’t consume that much sugar, I’m fine.” Sugar addiction is a sneaky trickster. You’d be surprised how much sugar is in your diet.

The average American has an intake of approximately 152 pounds of sugar a year. That’s about 22 teaspoons every single day. Children and teenagers consume roughly 34 teaspoons a day, making 1 in 4 kids pre-diabetic. The American Heart Association says you shouldn’t consume more than 37.5 grams (9 teaspoons) of sugar a day if you’re a man, or 25 grams (6 teaspoons) if you’re a woman. To give some perspective, a venti hot chocolate from Starbucks has 60 grams of sugar, a Chai latte has 52 grams of sugar, and their hot mulled fruit with grape and chai has a whopping 99 grams of sugar.

Besides sugar constantly being in your face and readily available to overload your system, it is also highly addictive. 8 times more addictive than cocaine, reports one study. Dr. Nicole Avena conducted an extensive study on the addictive properties of sugar and found some astonishing results. The test subjects were given sugar on an intermittent-feeding schedule for one month, and began to display behaviour traits associated with drug abuse. Sugar acts just like an opiate within the brain. When the test subjects stopped ingesting the sugar they were craving, they experienced the same effects as those who stopped taking addictive drugs. Withdrawals, depression, and anxiety are just a few of the responses noted by removing sugar from ones daily intake.

Okay, so now you should have an understanding of how dangerous sugar is for your brain and your body. But how do you remove the sugar from your diet without suffering these awful after-effects? Dr. Mark Hyman has some powerful suggestions to help you.

In his book, The Blood Sugar Solution 10-Day Detox Diet, he lists 10 ideas to help you kick the sugar habit.
Read: The 7 Surprising Health Benefits Of Whisky That Will Blow Your Socks Off

1. Make the decision to detox

You can read as many studies as you want, and tell yourself that you know how bad sugar addiction is for your health, but until you are really ready to make some serious life changes, you will remain a slave to your addiction.

Like everything else in life, you have to want it. You have to want to defeat the cravings, you have to want to make better choices, and you have to want to do these things because you know they will undoubtedly benefit your brain and body.

2. Go cold turkey

Just like with every other sort of addiction, the most effective way of quitting something is to completely stop. No little “cheats” here and there. You must remove all sugar from your daily consumption. The idea is to reset your body’s neurotransmitters and hormones by getting rid of that one thing which is controlling them.

“Stop all forms of sugar, all flour products and all artificial sweeteners — which cause increased cravings and slow metabolism, and lead to fat storage. Also get rid of anything with trans or hydrogenated fats and MSG,” recommends Dr. Hyman.
Read: 4 Easy Ways To Free Your Life Of Negative Energy

3. Stop drinking your calories

Most of the stuff triggering our sugar addiction is found in our drinks. Liquid sugar is more harmful to your body than solid foods with sugar content. You are basically mainlining the bad stuff directly to your liver! Sweet beverages are the biggest contributor to sugar calories in our diet. That means you need to pay attention to (and remove) sodas, juices (except green veggie juice), sports drinks, energy drinks, and sweetened teas and coffees. 20 ounces of soda contains approximately 15 teaspoons of sugar; Gatorade has about 14 teaspoons in one bottle. Dr. Hyman states, “One can of soda a day increases a kid’s chance of being obese by 60% and a woman’s chance of type 2 diabetes by 80%.”

4. Start your day with protein

Eat protein at every meal- and don’t skip breakfast! The key to abolishing those cravings and balancing blood sugar and insulin levels in the body is to eat a protein-filled breakfast, and incorporate protein in all your meals. Start your day with farm fresh eggs, then use nuts, seeds, eggs, broccoli, fish, chicken or grass-fed meat with other meals. Look up foods that are high in protein, and find fun ways to add them to your diet.
Read: Revolution for Type 1 Diabetes: The Artificial Pancreas Project

5. Eat unlimited carbs, but make sure they’re the right ones

Yep, carbs can be good for you if you avoid the starchy ones. That means unlimited veggies- greens, broccoli, kale, cauliflower, collards, asparagus, mushrooms, onions, zucchini, tomatoes, fennel, eggplant, artichokes, peppers etc. are all great for detoxing your body. Avoid potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash, and beets for a minimum of 10 days. You will feel a surge of energy in your body, and mental clarity is noticeably improved when you remove sugar. I find that results are drastically increased when you remove grains and beans from your diet as well. Eating healthy carbs is a fail-proof way to fight sugar addiction.

6. Fight sugar with (good) fat

Fat is not your enemy, sugar is. Fat doesn’t make you fat, despite what you have been led to believe, sugar makes you fat. What fat does is make you full, it balances your blood sugar and is a necessary part of your diet to give your cells energy. Combined with protein at every meal, adding healthy fats will boost your body’s metabolism and curb those cravings! What are healthy fats? Extra virgin olive oil, avocados, coconut oil, coconut butter, nuts and seeds, and fish with high Omega 3 content.

7. Be prepared for food emergencies

When you feel your blood sugar levels start to plummet, you don’t want to be stuck in a food emergency with no options. Being hungry and needing something to boost your energy levels but not having healthy options nearby(at the airport, convenience stores, fast food joints, vending machines) can leave you feeling frustrated. More than likely, this is where those cravings will kick your butt. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you have no options. You just need to prepare for those moments- for those food emergencies. Always have a healthy snack pack ready for when your body is telling you it needs something NOW. A few good tidbits to keep with you: turkey or salmon jerky, walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, sardines, kale chips.
Read: What Coca-Cola Doesn’t Want You To Know: The Health Horrors of Soft Drinks

8. Stop stressing and breathe

When you put your body through stress your hormones go haywire. Cortisol increases which makes you feel hungry. It also causes belly fat to be stored and can lead to type 2 diabetes. Recent studies have shown that taking deep breaths activates the vagus nerve. This activation by breathing shifts your metabolism from fat storage to fat burning, and reduces stress at the same time! All you have to do is breathe! Start by taking 5 deep breaths. Breathe in for the count of five, then exhale for the count of five. Do this 5 times. That’s all there is to it. Dr. Hyman advises doing this before every meal to see noticeable results.

9. Remove inflammatory foods

The most common sources of inflammatory foods are sugar, flour, trans fats, and food sensitivities. More often than not, gluten and dairy cause adverse reactions in people’s bodies. This is because our bodies are sensitive to what is in food, especially if we have a slight allergic reaction to it. Give p gluten and dairy products for 10 days. Will it be easy? Heck no, it’ll be one of the hardest things you will do for yourself. But after just 3 or 4 days you will notice a difference; you will have more energy, and relief from cravings, not to mention you won’t have bloating issues and your clothes will fit better.

10. Get plenty of rest

Give your body the rest it needs. When you deprive your body of a full night’s sleep, you are inadvertently affecting your hormone levels. Even just reducing your sleep time by 2 hours is enough to increase hunger hormones, decrease appetite-suppressing hormones, and causes sugar and refined carb cravings. If you don’t get enough sleep, your natural response is to give the body energy in the fastest way possible- sugar. Sleep is the best way to combat those sugar cravings in the morning.

This isn’t going to be easy, but the rewards are definitely worth it, and following these steps will absolutely put an end to your sugar addiction.
Read: How sugar can destroy your brain.

I did a sugar and starchy-carb detox for 3 weeks. The differences I felt and noticeably saw made everything worth it. The first 3 days are the hardest, but once you get past that point you will notice the cravings start to diminish little by little. Do I still want bread, pasta, and two scoops of sugar with my coffee? Yes and no. I think I want it because it became habit, and I associated happiness and feeling full with sugar and unhealthy carbs. But I don’t really want it. I found that having a huge plate filled with veggies, wild rice, fish, seeds and nuts was way more enjoyable and beneficial to my health. After the first week, I noticed my thoughts were clearer (not as much brain fog), I became more aware of flavours, my reflexes and reactions were improved, and the best part is my clothes fit a whole lot better.

Next time you think you are needing a sweet treat, or a sugary beverage, think about what you are doing to your brain and your body, instead.

Written by Raven Fon

Ref: Dr. Hyman | Action On Sugar | National Library of Medicine

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The Timeless Brilliance of W.C. Fields

As a kid, my parents used to take my sister and I to this little retro-styled diner in Dallas every Sunday. It was our tradition. I remember the food being good enough to instill my life-long attachment to breakfast fare, but more importantly, I remember the menu. There wasn’t anything overly fancy about it aside from the back of the menu being covered in quotes from W.C. Fields. As young as I was, I had no idea who Fields was, but I swear, over so many trips to the diner I must have memorized the entire collection. As much as I knew what he said, I never quite understood who he was.
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W.C. Fields was one of the most prolific comedic minds of the early 1900’s. Think of a turn-of-the-century Jerry Seinfeld, if you will. He was known for his ego, his drinking, and his wit. Fields was a master marketer and began his career in comedy at the age of 20. He would go on to perform with the likes of Charlie Chaplin on some of the grandest stages in the world. Fast forward 25 years and the quaint little diner still sits in the suburbs of north Dallas, and the menu hasn’t changed. Neither has the brutal humor of W.C. Fields. It’s almost like he says the things we think but don’t say. Here is a collection of some of my favorite quips:

“I am free of all prejudice. I hate everyone equally. ”

“If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then quit. No use being a damn fool about it.”

“It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.”

“I cook with wine, sometimes I even add it to the food.”

“If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.”

“I never hold a grudge. As soon as I get even with the son-of-a bitch, I forget it.”

“Everybody’s got to believe in something. I believe I’ll have another beer.”
Read: Mind of the Dragon: 31 Quotes from the Master, Bruce Lee

“I don’t drink water. Fish (have sex) in it.”

“Start every day off with a smile and get it over with.”

“A rich man is nothing but a poor man with money”

“Fell in love with a beautiful blonde once. Drove me to drink. And I never had the decency to thank her.”

“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people. ”

“A thing worth having is a thing worth cheating for.”

“Ah, the patter of little feet around the house. There’s nothing like having a midget for a butler. ”

“Once, during Prohibition, I was forced to live for days on nothing but food and water.”
Read: You Will Be Missed Professor Snape: 15 of the Greatest Alan Rickman Quotes

“No doubt exists that all women are crazy; it’s only a question of degree.”

“Never try to impress a woman, because if you do she’ll expect you to keep up the standard for the rest of your life.”

“Take me down to the bar! We’ll drink breakfast together!”

“Hell, I never vote for anybody, I always vote against.”

“I always keep some whiskey handy in case I see a snake…which I also keep handy.”

“I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol, and wild women. The other half I wasted.”

“It is funnier to bend things than to break them.”

“The best cure for insomnia is to get a lot of sleep.”
Read: “I Have a Dream”: 25 of the Greatest Quotes from Martin Luther King Jr.

“Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.”

“I once spent a year in Philadelphia, I think it was on a Sunday.”

“You can fool some of the people some of the time — and that’s enough to make a decent living.”

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Technology of Memories: The Potential for a “Spotless Mind” Really Exists

The Aspects of being “Emotionally Unavailable” that People Don’t Understand

In doing research on relationships, both for my own insight and for professional reasons, I always come across the theme of someone being “emotionally unavailable.” What is a little disheartening is the fact that I completely identify with the theory of being unavailable emotionally, and it is never looked upon as a good thing. One thing I noticed, was that almost everything I read was from the outside looking in, and were mainly written by people that have been in love with someone who they considered “emotionally unavailable”. I’m here to tell you, it doesn’t always work that way. Here is a view from the inside of what being emotionally unavailable is really like.
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It’s NOT Emotional Ignorance

First off, emotional unavailability is not emotional ignorance. Let’s just get that idea right out of your head. If anything, being emotionally unavailable is more like a hypersensitivity. It comes from a strong grasp on emotions and their impacts on us, not a misunderstanding. For some people you can tell them, “Hey, that stove top is hot” and they will touch it every single time to test the theory. For me, I know the thing is hot, I have been burned once before, and I’m not taking the risk. Again, I am completely aware of all aspects of the scenario and I am making a conscious decision of how to act based on that knowledge.

The Puzzle

The problem with emotional unavailability that no one talks about is the fact that most emotionally unavailable people actually want to be in a relationship. Yes, it is as confusing to us as it is to the people that get involved with us. It’s not that we want to be alone. It is that our warning bells and klaxons that go off in our heads when red flags pop up in our relationships are like an air raid siren when other people hear an alarm clock. It’s not that we don’t want the relationship, it is that we don’t want the effects of the breakup. Imagine having a puzzle that you can see a finished picture of but none of the pieces fit.
Read: Why emotionally intelligent people are hard to find but highly sought after.

Relationship Patterns

That’s why our relationships follow a pretty distinct pattern. They start off fast, hot, and furious. Very intense, very quickly, before our brains have a chance to catch up to our hearts. It’s like one of those rocket sleds from the 1950’s, with our heart as the rocket and our brain playing the role of the brick wall at the end of the track. Our relationships don’t end gracefully, they explode. We pass around blame like a joint at Coachella and eventually settle back into our lonely existence with another scar to ruminate.

What To Do

So, what can you do if you consider yourself to be emotionally unavailable? Being honest about emotional unavailability doesn’t do anything to change it or prevent the impending disaster. Even when we are honest with ourselves. If you enter into a relationship with the notion of emotional unavailability it isn’t like you can suddenly just open a door that was locked before. That door exists in another house. So what you have to do is be responsible with the relationships you find yourself in. If you aren’t ready for an emotional connection with someone, don’t seek one. Patience is a huge factor for both parties involved.
Read: 5 More Subtle Signs that You’re Extremely Emotionally Intelligent

You have to understand and love yourself for who you are before you can expect anyone else to do the same. Just because you’ve had failed relationships in the past doesn’t mean that you can’t have successful ones in the future. That’s a fallacy that people develop that is self-fulfilling at best. You’re not some broken heart that can never be mended. You just need to quit flinging yourself at every available heart you come across, just to shatter against it. There is nothing wrong with keeping someone at arm’s length as long as you are willing to bend at the elbow at some point.
Try: How Emotionally Intelligent Are You?

And for the people that love someone that they consider to be emotionally available, I give you one piece of advice: don’t give up. Under that calloused heart is one that deserves a real chance. Anything worth having is worth waiting and working for. That being said, you have to be just as careful about attachment as the other person is going to be. A lot of time people try to trick themselves into thinking that they can deal with someone who is unavailable, and they aren’t. Unavailable today may be open and willing tomorrow.

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6 Keys to Healing as an Empath

I talking about the damage that an empath can undergo at the hands of a narcissist, I was asked the question: “as an empath, how do you heal?” I think that is an important topic to cover because, as an empath, the constant emotional barrage from people around you can make for a wound that never closes. It’s seemingly impossible to take the time to deal with your own issues when you carry the weight of all of the emotional baggage from the people in your life. so, for an empath, here are 6 ways that you can begin the process of healing your own wounds before you take any lashes for anyone around you.
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Disconnect

Disconnecting from the people around you, while very hard for an empath to do, is really the best way to start the healing process. I mention it first in this list of tips because it is at the root of the 5 things that are to follow. Get away, even if it is just for an hour or two. Don’t worry, the world will be here when you get back.

Acceptance

Just like dealing with anything else in life, if it essential that you really come to terms that you are an empath. Don’t think that you might be, accept that you truly are. There is nothing wrong with you, you are just unique. Empaths are a beautiful thing, but I think they tend to think there is something about them that is broken. It’s the rest of the world that needs to take care of you, not the other way around.
Read: 3 Ways That Narcissists Destroy Empaths

Own It

Once you have accepted that you are empathic by nature, make it a part of who you are – not an excuse to feel the way you do. Own your existence, and be proud of who you are. It’s estimated that only 1 in 20 people is a true empath. Pride in your sensitivity is the only way to keep from feeling like a victim of it.

Meditate. Seriously…

I can’t stress enough the importance of meditation. There are literally hundreds of meditation techniques available to study and perfect, you just have to find what works best for you. For some people, white noise or a specific type of music is the key. Others need total silence. Take the time to figure out what works best for your brain.
Read: Science Proves The Power Of Meditation

Love It

Accepting your empathic nature and owning it are important, but above all – you have to love it. Again, you are special. You are unique. People in your life are blessed to have you around. They aren’t a burden. That’s like a doctor blaming his patients for being tired. Being an empath is just a facet of what makes you who you are. Not a condition to be treated.

Develop Boundaries

Finally, it is critical to establish boundaries. This isn’t the same thing as building walls. Consider your boundaries like a line in the sand. Leave it to the people in your life to stay on their side of that line, and if they cross it, that makes it that much easier for you to keep them at a distance. Be up front about your boundaries. Don’t make them invisible. One of the hardest things for an empath to do is boot people out of their lives and crossing boundaries is as good of a reason as any.

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What to Expect from a True Twin Flame Relationship

As a hopeless romantic of sorts, I have to say that I love the notion of a “twin flame” relationship. I first read about the principles of a twin flame relationship a couple of years ago, and thought to myself: “Man, I’ve got to find one of these.” That’s the tricky thing about a twin flame relationship, though – you can’t just seek one out. They have to happen naturally. Anyone who has experienced a twin flame relationship will tell you, they are like nothing you’ve ever experienced. If You’ve never had the pleasure of experiencing a twin flame relationship, here is what you can expect over a typical relationship:
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Experiencing over Understanding

In most relationships, we spend so much time trying to figure the relationship out, instead of just enjoying it. The twin flame relationship is all about just enjoying the moment. You’re not trying to figure out every little dynamic, you’re just along for the ride.

Growing over Changing

One major component of a true twin flame relationship is that there is an emphasis on personal growth. The relationship becomes the basis for personal development. Anytime we make the conscious decision to change ourselves, there is a period of time that we have to get out of our comfort zones. A twin flame relationship becomes like a home base of operations for these changes. Comfort, understanding, and support are all traits of a true twin flame relationship.
Read: I Want a Worthwhile Relationship, Not a Perfect One

Patience over Direction

In typical relationships, people often times get caught up in “where the relationship is going.” A twin flame relationship is more like a journey with no destination. There is no pressure from with person to move the relationship toward one destination or another. Sometimes the best trips you can take are the ones without maps.
Read: One Thing that Successful Relationships all Seem to Have in Common

Individuality over “The Couple”

A huge difference in twin flame relationships over typical relationships is the emphasis on the individual. Typical relationships focus on “the couple” like it is an entity in and of itself. Twin flame relationships focus on two people being themselves outside of the relationship. It’s more about how the two people fit together as separate people, and not how to mush two people into one collective.

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6 Tips for Maintaining a Positive Attitude

In another article I wrote recently about healing a broken heart, I mentioned the power of maintaining a positive attitude. In fact, maintaining a positive attitude is one of those things I have always maintained is a key to a happy, successful life. That being said, I don’t think I’ve ever gone into depth about what all that entails. In my opinion, attitude is the one thing in life that we have absolute control over. That is important because our attitude is what determines our outcome. So, I’ve taken the time to put together a collection of the 6 most important aspects of maintaining a positive attitude, and I sincerely hope you take them to heart.
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Your Perception is you Reality

Perception is reality, even in our own lives. If you focus on the negative aspects of life, namely the ones you cannot change – how can you expect to have a positive outlook on things? Focus on the good things in your life over the negative. Again, I know this sounds simple, but it really works.

Pay Attention to Your Surroundings

I’ve always said that if you have a cluttered atmosphere you’ll have a cluttered life. There is so much science behind how certain colors and sounds can impact our mood. Focus on the places you spend the majority of your time. For instance, your desk at work – even if you can’t go out and repaint your office, you can still adorn your workspace with things that make you happy.
Read: Wired for Destruction: Negative Thoughts can Literally Destroy Your Brain

Watch the Company You Keep

The people we surround ourselves with is so important to our attitude. If you surround yourself with negative people, you’ll end up a negative person.

Trash In, Trash Out

If I remember one thing from boy scouts it was that when you went into a campsite, you took everything out with you. Leave no trash behind. I try to apply that logic to my life whenever I am encountered with a new situation or challenge. When you are done dealing with whatever you have to deal with, make sure that all remnants of it are gone from the campsite that is your life.

Recharge those Batteries

One of the best things you can do for yourself is to disconnect from the world and recharge. Think of your attitude like a battery: the more you are tested, the more your batteries get drained. Eventually, there is nothing left. Taking time for yourself every single day is the key to keeping those batteries charged up and ready to take on the world.
Read: Practicing the Law of Attraction Or How To Get What You Really Want

Be Grateful

Finally, take a second to look around your life and just be gracious for what you have. Don’t think about what you don’t have, or focus on what you are working to have. Be happy for the people around you. Be happy for your health. Be happy for something. When you truly appreciate what you have in your life, you find a different kind of wealth

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