Modern Wisdom from 5 Ancient Philosophers

Whether it is my love of all things intelligent, or the four years of Latin I took in highschool, I have always had a soft spot for philosophers. I love the idea of making a career of being insightful, and maybe that is what I am hoping to do here? In an honest attempt to stand on the shoulders of insightful giants like Aristotle, I have collected my favorite tidbits of wisdom from my favorite philosophers I consider to be truely timeless. These are lessons for life from some of the smartest men to ever live:

Heraclitus

(535-475 BCE)
“Day by day, what you choose, what you think and what you do is who you become.”
“Everything flows and nothing abides, everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.”
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

Pericles

(circa 495-429 BCE)
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you.”
“Time is the wisest counselor of all.”
“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

Plato

(circa 428—348 BCE)
“The greatest wealth is to live content with little.”
“Courage is knowing what not to fear.”
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
“Ignorance is the root and stem of all evil.”

Seneca

(circa 4 BCE—65 AD)
“The greatest wealth is a poverty of desires.”
“One of the most beautiful qualities of true friendship is to understand and to be understood.”
“Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
“A gift consists not of what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.”
“True happiness is… to enjoy the present without anxious dependence on the future.”
“Count each day as a separate life”.

Epictetus

(circa 55—135 AD)
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”
“Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.”
“Make the best use of what’s in your power and take the rest as it happens.”

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These 15 Celtic Proverbs Will Get You Through Anything

Celtic proverbs have always been a favourite of mine. They are concise, to the point, and in my opinion, contain magic in their simplicity. I have gathered 15 Celtic proverbs that are closest to my heart; these ones have helped me through some difficult times and reminded me that I can get through anything. I hope you enjoy!

1. “The greater your destiny, the greater the price”

Sometimes we think that because the road is a tough one, that the end result won’t be worth it. We ponder the possibility of giving up and succumbing to the easier path. But as this proverb reminds us, nothing great was ever achieved through ease

2. ” Beware what you wish for, for the Gods may grant it to you”

This one speaks volumes. Our thoughts and our wishes are more powerful than most people realize. Our wants and desires are capable of being manifested, especially if we put forth a lot of energy into them. Think about what you say before  you say it because you may just get what you wish for.

3. “A soft answer turns away anger”

In the heat of an argument or when harsh words are spoken, a gentle voice can calm the storm. Rather than fight fire with fire, use the soothing waters of your inner serenity to  speak softly. The outcome is always better.

4. “Your feet will bring you to where your heart is”

Everything that you put your energy into, the wishes you make, and the true passions you possess- your life will make these available to you along your path. The things we truly desire and that drive us will be found in our lives and we will be one with them.

5. “A friends eye is a good mirror”

Our friends are our lifelines in many ways. Especially when it comes to seeing another perspective when we need it.

6. “What fills the eye,  fills the heart”

The things we focus on and let into our lives will undoubtedly be more present in our lives. If we focus on the beauty around us and how wonderful nature is, then we start to see more and more things in our lives as beautiful. They become part of what we love more and more.

7. “Better one good thing that is, than two things that were”

Oftentimes we forget to focus on what we already have, rather than what we ‘could have’ or ‘should have’. We are alive, in this  moment we have everything we need. Indeed it is better to see that what we have is good, great, and perfect for where we are right now, than to dwell on things that can’t be changed.

8. “True greatness knows gentleness”

To be great means many different things to different folk. I think greatness means ‘to be pure and loving in all you do’. There are great leaders, great speakers, great activists and the truly great ones know that being a kind soul- a gentle soul- will help you more than brute force and harsh words.

9. “Blind should be the eyes in the abode of another”

Oh boy. You know some people go to their friend’s house, or to someone’s place and they hold judgement for what they see. We are better not doing such things. What people do in their own homes and how they live is their business, no one elses. We don’t wear their shoes and we don’t sleep in their beds. The walls of another’s home holds many secrets and we are not privy to what they keep.

10. “Character is better than wealth”

Money can buy you many things, but it can’t buy you patience, a good heart, or knowledge of right from wrong. Only character can do these things. And character will always be more valuable than money.

11. “There is no joy without affliction”

We can never know how good something is without first experiencing something that was bad. We have to feel pain to understand how wonderful pleasure is. We have to go through unpleasant times to receive the benefits of joy. It’s universal law.

12. “Without knowledge of the past we shall lose the future”

We all make mistakes. It’s a fact. What isn’t a fact is that everyone learns from their mistakes. Yet we must. In order to facilitate a prosperous future, we must keep our mistakes in the back of our mind to remind us that we have already been down these paths and it is time to try a different one.

13. “If you do not sow in spring you will not reap in autumn”

How can anyone expect to get something they want when they don’t work for it? We must put forth effort and plant the seeds of our desires. If you want to be healthier, you must decide to eat healthy foods and change your patterns. If you want to learn more about ancient history, you must read books and continue to teach yourself new things. Our goals are on us to reach.

14. “A man may live after losing his life, but not after losing his honour”

A person who lies or breaks promises intentionally or misuses others trust, these are things that count as dishonour. When that person passes on, they will not live in this world any more and their stories will not be shared. Their name will not be spoken with love and memory. A person who lives a life of kindness and genuine truth will always be in the hearts of others- even after they pass.

15. “When wrathful words arise, a closed mouth is soothing”

Angry words are spoken and often angry words and rebutted. A better option is to say nothing. Silence is key in  many situations. By keeping a closed mouth and biting your tongue, your are able to let the other person vent and you are not responsible for anything anyone else says, only your own words. Better to remain silent than to apologize for letting your anger get the best of you.

I hope these proverbs have helped you in some way today. I know they helped me. Enjoy the rest of your day and remember that we are all humans- full of mistakes and learning experiences. Just try to be a better person today than you were yesterday and things will inevitably resonate with a higher frequency.

Written by Raven fon

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How sugar can destroy your brain.

For years we have been told that sugar is bad for our waistlines and puts massive risk to our hearts health, but now there is growing evidence to prove that high levels of sugar can have a major negative impact on our brain from its psychological wellbeing to its cognitive function.

Sugar on its own in small quantities is not a great concern, but the problem is we are simply just eating too much of it in its many differing forms within our day-to-day food. Its pretty much all the sweet stuff we like to eat and presents itself to us with different names like glucose, fructose, honey and corn syrup, all of this cleverly disguised in around 74 percent of packaged foods in our supermarkets.

Despite the World Health Organization recommending that only five percent of our daily calorific intake comes from sugar, the typical American diet comprises of a well over double that amount at a staggering 13 percent coming from sugar.

Natasa Janicic-Kahric, an associate professor of medicine at Georgetown University Hospital, told The Washington Post: ‘Many Americans eat about five times the amount of sugar they should consume,”

Getting hooked on sugar is easy, but it’s important to be aware how much a high sugar diet imposes on mental well-being and brain function. Here are some facts that you need to know about how too much sugar can affect your brain

It creates a vicious cycle of intense cravings.

When a person consumes sugar, it activates the tongues taste receptors, just like any food. Signals are then sent to the brain, lightening up the reward pathways, releasing a surge of feel-good hormones like dopamine. While stimulating the brain’s reward system with a piece of chocolate now and then being harmless, if the reward system is activated too frequently then that’s when the problems start to occur.

Neuroscientist Jordan Gaines Lewis explains:“These added sugars are sneaky – and unbeknown to many of us, we’ve become hooked. In ways that drugs of abuse – such as nicotine, cocaine and heroin – hijack the brain’s reward pathway and make users dependent”

In fact, research has shown that the brains of obese children actually light up differently when they taste sugar, reflecting an elevated “food reward” response. Disturbingly this suggests that their brain circuitry may predispose these children to a lifetime of intense sugar cravings.

Neuroscientist Nicole Avena explained in a TED-Ed video: “Over-activating this reward system kick starts a series of unfortunate events — loss of control, craving, and increased tolerance to sugar,”

It may cause or contribute to depression and anxiety.

Have you ever experienced a sugar crash? If you have then you may be aware that sudden peaks and drops in blood sugar levels can cause you to experience symptoms like irritability, mood swings, fatigue and brain-fog. That’s because drinking a soda or eating sweets causes blood sugar levels to spike upon consumption and then plummet. When your blood sugar inevitably dips back down (hence the “crash”), you may find yourself feeling anxious, moody or depressed.

Consuming sugar stimulates the release of the mood-boosting neurotransmitter serotonin. Sugar-rich and carb-laden foods can also mess with the neurotransmitters that help keep our moods stable. Constantly over-activating these serotonin pathways can deplete our limited supplies of the neurotransmitter, which can contribute to symptoms of depression, according to Dr. Datis Kharrazian, functional medicine expert and author of Why Isn’t My Brain Working?

Some research has suggested, neuroinflammation may be one possible cause of depression and chronically high blood sugar levels have also been linked to inflammation in the brain.

A recent study on adolescent mice, conducted by researchers at Emory University School of Medicine, found a diet high in sugar to contribute to depression and anxiety-like behavior which might go along way to understanding how Teenagers may be particularly vulnerable to the effects of sugar on mood.

 Research has also found that those people who eat a standard whole food diet that’s lower in sugar are at a decreased risk for developing depression, compared to those who eat a typical American diet that’s high in processed foods — which often contains high amounts of saturated fat, sugar and salt.

It impairs memory and learning skills.

A 2012 study on rats, carried out by researchers at UCLA, discovered that a diet high in fructose, just another word for sugar, literally slowed down the brain and hindered learning and memory. The researchers discovered that the rats who consumed too much fructose had damaged synaptic activity in the brain which impaired the communication among brain cells.Excessive sugar intake caused the rats to develop resistance to insulin – the hormone that controls blood sugar levels and regulates the function of brain cells. When insulin levels in the brain are lowered as the result of excess sugar consumption, cognition can be impaired because Insulin strengthens the synaptic connections between brain cells, helping them to communicate better and thereby form stronger memories.

 Dr. Fernando Gomez-Pinilla, the study’s lead author, said in a statement. “Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain,” He added that “Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new.”

 It’s a risk factor for age-related cognitive decline and dementia.

Further research suggests that a sugar-heavy diet which messes with the insulin resistance and blood glucose levels – all hallmarks of diabetes could also increase risk for developing Alzheimer’s disease. Some researchers, in fact, have even referred to Alzheimer’s as “Type 3 Diabetes” — which suggests that diet may have some role in an individual’s risk for developing the disease.

The research “offers more evidence that the brain is a target organ for damage by high blood sugar,” endocrinologist Dr. Medha Munshi told the New York Times.

So armed with all of that knowledge, now might be a good time to choose to be smart, after all, intelligence is sexy, sugar addled brains are not.

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What Did You See First?

Are You Always Running Late? There’s A Very GOOD Reason Why!

No, I’m not scatterbrained, or intentionally trying to be rude. But I am always running late. As long as I can remember, my life has always been this way.

I usually wake up with three or four hours to spare before I have to start work, and yet I will still end up frantically running about trying to be on time, which I never am, and arrive at least 5 – 10 minutes late. I don’t think I deserve any special treatment, nor do I think that the rules don’t apply to me. I’ve just never been able to make “time” work for me the way it works for everyone else.

There is one sentence that is a constant in my little world; “I have plenty of time.” If I have 30 minutes to get somewhere that is 40 minutes away, I will still believe that I can wash the dishes and take the dogs for a walk before leaving, and still be able to make it on time. Of course, that never happens. But I’m not alone with these late tendencies.

Diana DeLonzor has done personal research on the topic of why certain people are always late, and her findings are pretty amazing.

In her book titled ‘Never Be Late Again‘, DeLonzor says,

“Most late people have been late all their life, and they are late for every type of activity — good or bad. Surprisingly little scientific research has been done on tardiness, but some experts subscribe to the theory that certain people are hardwired to be late and that part of the problem may be embedded deep in the lobes of the brain.”

So, if you are chronically tardy, I sympathize with you. The criticism and backlash from constant lateness can be brutal at times. But, it’s actually not intentional and it’s not entirely your fault.

Personality and psychology  are two key factors when it comes to being consistently late.

We’ll touch on the psychology first, then discuss the personality traits.

DeLonzor believes that most people who are late can fit into one of three categories, the “deadliners”, the “producers”, or the “absent-minded professors”. Deadliners are, as DeLonzor says,  “subconsciously drawn to the adrenaline rush of the sprint to the finish line.” She adds, “they have a hard time motivating themselves without that looming deadline, without that crisis on the horizon. Then, as they realize there’s no way they’re going to make it on time, that positive feeling turns to dread. Then they start beating themselves up.”

The second category, the “producers”, is what DeLonzor calls “those people who consistently over-schedule their days. The producer thinks she can go for a run, clean the house, put in a load of laundry, pick up the dry cleaning, take a shower and get the kids dropped off at school in an hour.”

And finally, the “absent-minded professor”, which are those of us who are easily distracted. “When they head out the door, they might notice the drapes are crooked and they run over and fix the drapes. On the way back they’ll get distracted by seeing the computer is on and they go to turn it off but have to surf the web first,” she says. “They have a hard time getting from point A to point B without getting distracted by C, D, and E.”

These different psychological traits of tardiness are pretty on point. I personally feel I am a cross between a producer and an absent-minded professor. Over-scheduling my time and becoming distracted by the world around me is basically how my day plays out.

What about the personality part of this? Well, it’s fascinating, and here’s why:

Science has found that those who are constantly late are more optimistic, and they feel life really flows when they are multitasking. Basically, those of us who are late are more hopeful individuals.

A study done by Jeff Conte at San Diego State University in 2003, found that the majority of those who prefer multi-tasking are generally late due to a lack of “metacognition”, or awareness of what you are doing. In 2001, Conte also found that there’s a personality type that’s more inclined to be late. While the achievement oriented Type A individuals are more likely to be punctual, Type B individuals, who are more laid-back, are later.

What’s really interesting is that Type A and Type B individuals actually feel time pass in different ways. Conte conducted three previous studies and discovered that for Type A personalities, a minute passed in 58 seconds, where the Type B personality felt a minute pass in about 77 seconds.

In other words, some people experience time differently. And that’s not entirely a bad thing.

Being optimistic about what you can accomplish in a set amount of time can literally be good for your health. Optimism and happiness reduce stress, diminish the risk of cardiovascular disease, and strengthen your immune system. Additionally, having a positive outlook can help you live longer as well.

All of this talk about time and efficiency makes me wonder, why are we in such a rush anyways? Life is meant to be lived, not scheduled. But I’m a Type B absent-minded professor with producer tendencies.

Where do you fit into the table of tardiness? How does being late affect your life? Leave us a message in the comments!

Written by Raven Fon

 

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Can 10 Minutes of Eye Contact Really Alter Your Consciousness? Science says It Can.

Of all of the mind-altering drugs that a person could use to create a shift in their consciousness, a new study from Italy is suggesting that all you need is a pair of eyes. No, you don’t eat them, weirdo, all you have to do is stare into them for prolonged periods of time.

The research was done by Giovanni Caputo from the University of Urbino and was his second such study involving eye contact. In his first experiment, he had 50 test subjects stare into a mirror at their own eyes for 10 minutes in a dimly-lit room. As the subjects stared at their reflection, they began to see animal faces, monsters, and even family members. Caputo described this phenomenon as “strange-face illusion“.

Apparently, if you want to amp up the effects of “strange-face illusion”, you need to swap out the mirror for another human being. In his second study, that is exactly what Caputo did. He took 40 adults and broke them up into pairs: half facing each other and half facing the walls with their backs together. As in the first experiment, the room was very dimly-lit – to the point where color wasn’t a factor. At the end of a 10 minute period of time, the participants filled out a questionnaire about their experience.

According to the British Psychological Society, “The participants in the eye-staring group said they’d had a compelling experience, unlike anything they’d felt before. They also scored higher on all three questionnaires than the control group. On the dissociative states test, they gave the strongest ratings to items related to reduced colour intensity, sounds seeming quieter or louder than expected, becoming spaced out, and time seeming to drag on. On the strange-face questionnaire, 90% of the eye-staring group agreed that they’d seen some deformed facial traits, 75% said they’d seen a monster, 50% said they saw aspects of their own face in their partner’s face, and 15% said they’d seen a relative’s face.”

Caputo believes the results are an indication of disassociation, which is a departure from one’s own reality. Caputo thinks that the real explanation is based on a phenomenon known as “Troxler fading”, where when staring at something for a long period of time the details in the periphery begin to fade and eventually disappear. When these details fade our brains fill in the information that is missing with what is expected or assumed. Why then would people’s brains make up something that is completely fictional in nature like a monster face?

Caputo admits that his research is in its infancy, but it is still a very interesting concept to ponder. I suggest you try either method of Caputo’s study and let us know what happens when you stare at a mirror or another person for 10 minutes.

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What this Father does with Old Crayons is Amazing

4 Years ago while at a restaurant that gave kids crayons to doodle while they waited for their food, Bryan Ware pondered the fate of those crayons after his kids were done with them. Bryan never expected a simple question about crayons would change his life, and the lives of children all over his home state of California.

Bryan and his team of volunteers at The Crayon Initiative take old crayons from just about anywhere they can get them, melt them down, and mold them into a new crayon. Since the new crayons are a bigger shape, they are easier for special needs children and kids in the hospitals to use them. Bryan’s story recently went viral on social media platforms, and Bryan and his team are busier than they have ever been. “I had no idea how social media would so deeply, positively impact our mission. It is so far beyond what I could have imagined or planned for, I am sincerely blown away,” he says.

Check out the video below to see just how Bryan and his team accomplish such a great deed for these special kids.

 

 

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