How to Love the Life You Already Have

Written by Ali Luke 
Categories: Self Improvement, Motivation, Life

You’ve probably heard the old saying “The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.”

Perhaps you feel like it’s true. You look at other people’s lives, and you envy them. They seem to be doing so much better than you. They’ve got a great job. Lots of money. A happy home life.

They seem to have it all. And you can’t help wishing that you did, too.

But none of us ever really know what it’s like to live someone else’s life. Sure, your friends might be spending lots of money on dinners out, booze, fancy gadgets … but for all you know, they’re deep in debt, or working long hours in jobs they hate.

No-one’s life is perfect – whatever it looks like from the outside.

Plus, it’s a safe bet that some of your friends are looking at your life and thinking very similar things. Maybe they envy your dull but predictable job – you’re home on time every night. Maybe they see your great relationship with your spouse and kids – and they’d rather have that than any amount of money.

Whatever state your life is in, you’ve got a lot of good things. You just need to recognize them again.

  

Enjoy What You Have

One of the best ways to love your current life is to write a list of things you’re grateful for. It doesn’t matter if they seem small or insignificant: little everyday moments of happiness count.

You might think of:

·         People who you’re grateful for – your family, friends, housemates, co-workers…

·         Treats which you enjoy – the smell of fresh coffee, the taste of dark chocolate, a long bath after a hard day…

·         Things which make your day easier – the dishwasher, online grocery shopping, fast internet access at work…

·         Anything special which you’ve grown accustomed to – your wedding ring, your smartphone, a favorite coat…

·         Happy moments – chatting with a friend, something which made you laugh, playing with your kids…

I’ll bet you can easily come up with five things every single day that you’re grateful for. Your life is full of good things – you just sometimes need to work a bit to see them.

Focus on the Good Points

When we’re thinking about future goals and ambitions, it’s easy to end up in quite a negative mood about the present. Perhaps you start thinking through all the things you want to change in your life: losing weight, getting fit, quitting smoking, switching jobs…

As well as thinking of what you might want to change, look at the areas of your life which are currently good. Maybe:

·         You get on well with your colleagues at work, and you’ve got a good relationship with your boss

·         You’ve got some real strengths – like being able to establish a quick connection with clients, and being organised

·         Your house is set up pretty much how you want it – there might not be loads of space, but it feels like home

·         You’ve got some hobbies you really enjoy

…and so on. How could you make more of these good things? Perhaps you could spend more time on your hobbies, or concentrate on your particular strengths at work.

Live in the Moment

It’s appropriate to plan for the future, and to learn from the past – but it’s not a good idea to constantly have your mind on how “things will be better next year when…” or on “life was so much better last year because…”

Being able to live in the moment means appreciating what’s around you. It’s about having your attention on now, instead of reminiscing about what’s already gone, or worrying about what’s yet to come.

Living in the moment means:

·         Enjoying your days off, without constantly thinking about Monday morning.

·         Listening when someone’s talking to you, and being fully present in the conversation.

·         Taking time to stop and watch a beautiful sunset, or to enjoy the smell of fresh-mown grass.

·         Eating your meals more mindfully – instead of grabbing a sandwich on the run.

By keeping your attention on the present moment, the here-and-now, you can get much more enjoyment from the life you already have.

What are you grateful for, in your life? What’s already good? How can you appreciate all of it just a bit more?

(Courtsey: Pick The Brain Dot Com : D)

Reflection

 I read and walked for miles at night along the beach, writing bad blank verse and searching endlessly for someone wonderful who would step out of the darkness and change my life. It never crossed my mind that that person could be me. 
Anna Quindlen


How true it is to see for a person to look within, to retrospect himself/herself. Time and time upon when the soul is not at rest, a mere reflection of self is what it takes to re-affirm the belief within.

Came across such a wonderful theme of pics at Vandelay Design, portraying the inner self.

15 Cool Ways To Boost Your Creativity - II

Listen to Mozart

Albert Einstein said he owes his creativity to listening to Mozart pieces. Certain songs and compositions allow the brain to be more creative and function better.

Albert Einstein did not know why this was the case, but he found Mozart compositions to help his thinking.

In the present age the concept of music enhancing your thinking has been scientifically researched and proven. Certain frequencies have a positive effect on increasing your brain’s performance and creativity. Today they are known as Binaural Beats and Iso-chronic Tones.

Basically, scientists have engineered sound-files (I can’t really call them songs) with researched frequencies that have proven to increase brain performance. Simply buy purchasing some of these tracks and listening to them with stereo headphones, you can already notice an effect on your thinking and creativity.

Meditate

There are certain techniques that allow your mind to find peace and that allow you to silence all the hundreds of thoughts that constantly run through your mind all day.

When you achieve this inner calm, it has all sorts of benefits like being more creative and having better ideas.

Exercise

The effects of exercise and physical movement on the mind and creativity have been studied for centuries.

There is no doubt that you feel much better after exercise. This is because after you exercise, endorphins (feel-good hormones) are released into your bloodstream.

Ask For Help

Don’t be scared to ask someone for help or for their opinion. The input from a friend or stranger could be enough to jump-start a whole series of ideas and new creativity.

Expand Your Horizons

Do something you have never ever done before in your life. Go sky-diving or bungee-jumping. Sign up for classical dance or salsa classes.

The experience of it may be enough to boost your creativity tenfold and give you many new ideas.

Eat Blueberries
Blueberries are said to be the richest in anti-oxidants and good for your brain an thinking abilities. Eat a handful a day, and even if you don’t get extra creativity, enjoy the taste and the health benefits.

Stop Doing Drugs
I’m talking about sugars, processed foods, alcohol, caffeine and cigarettes.
(I shouldn’t have to tell you not to do hard drugs!)

Not only will your health benefit, but you will feel much more energetic. The chances are huge that you will find all sorts of new inspiration that comes with your new energy levels once you start eating healthy and stop consuming junk.

Do Puzzles

Puzzles stimulate your brain to look at a problem from different angles. The easier you are able to open up your mind to new ideas and new approaches, the more likely it will be that you become more creative.

Make Music

I personally like playing piano. It is relaxing and it allows to experiment with new tones, melodies and ideas. Often while playing an instrument and making music achievers get very creative ideas for their own projects.

If you’ve never played an instrument, why not start with something simple like piano, guitar or the drums?

Practice
Practice makes perfect. 
Yeah it’s cliché, but it’s true. Do you want to be a great writer? Then write every single day, even if it’s just about your dog. 
Do you want to,  be a good designer, or a singer or a professional? Then design something new every day, even if it’s just a logo for your favorite food, sing your heart out and Just BE.

 : D

 (Courtesy: Pick The Brain)

The Secret Powers of Time

In this presentation, Philip Zimbardo "conveys how our individual perspectives of time affect our work, health and well-being. Time influences who we are as a person, how we view relationships and how we act in the world." Going by the reviews, Zimbardo develops this idea more fully in The Time Paradox. At its best, the book seems to illustrate the many ways in which our approach to time shapes us (as do our approaches to death, family, justice, etc.). However, I am rather wary of his promotion of an "ideal" approach to time for a "better" life.

(Courtesy: Namit Arora from his very well known blog shunya.net)

Aryabhata-The Indian Mathematical Genius

If the world knows so much about the Life of a "Pi", or the inventor of what we so conviniently use today as "Calendar" or the way we conviniently count the Hrs in a Day or the value and relation of Sin & Cosine and Trignometric Table and so many other mathematical fundamentals such as quadratics equations, plane theories and what not.... then lets know a little bit more about the inventor of all the mentioned above as well. Meet Shri Aryabhat (IAST: Āryabhaṭa, Sanskrit: आर्यभटः) (476–550 CE). He was the first in the line of great mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy. His most famous works are the Āryabhaṭīya (499 CE, when he was 23 years old) and the Arya-siddhanta.

Get rich! 

Wikipedia on Aryabhata

(Video Courtsey: Anand Kumar)

How to Deal With Depression Without Medication

You can make a huge dent in your depression by taking the following tasty anti-depression tablets (with no side-effects). Though medical treatment is advised for higher level of depression, these things will support medicines also.

1. Search Yourself The Reasons of Depression:, Spend some good time on you and pen down all the things that you feel may irritate you. May they be petty things like your home is unclean or you are not tall or etc. Once depression is identified, you can take steps to make things better and overcome depression. Now categorize them into two groups: One- depression reasons under your control, two- depression reasons out of your control according to you.

2. Now-It’s all a mind game:
Start right away working on the reasons that can be controlled by you. Now comes the turn of reasons of depression that are beyond your control— my friend there is nothing in you that you cannot control. It’s all a mind game. Whatever you feel is whatever you think. Think positive. You cannot control natural happenings but you can surely control yourself. Try to adjust yourself with the nature. Keep yourself busy. Talk to people. If you have nothing to do than listen to any song and jiggle on it. Trust me, this helps a lot. You can sing on your own even (just take care that nobody is observing you. If so, then even doesn’t matter. This is just one way out. Try your own creative ideas (and let me also know).

3. Love Yourself:
Get up and dress yourself to the nines, even if there is no reason or you are not in mood to do so. Polish your looks. It’s turn to make another list. Make a list of things you enjoy most or you wanna do in your life start doing them man! It’s your life what are you waiting for. Stop worrying what will happen, what other will think and blah-blah. Always give at least half-an-hour exclusively to yourself (with no hubby, baby, mommy, papa or television). To achieve this, you may have to force yourself, go ahead and pamper yourself. Love yourself and maintain your self-respect.Try someTips To Make Your Life More Beautiful

4. Love Others:
Depression because of other people, their behavior-Are you depressed because of torn relationship with your partner or because of any of your in-laws, relatives or friends? Put yourself in their shoes. It may possible that mistake is at their end, then why to let yourself suffer. Talk to them about the matter openly yet calmly. If you are at fault, then admit it. That’s it. Don't carry the things for long time.

5. Do lots of Physical Activities and Eat Healthy:
I know the most common advice yet important. Physical exercises detox the mind, keep your metabolism fast and help in balancing the hormones also. Prefer stairs to the elevator, take a walk, play badminton, or do anything you enjoy. Shall I open a secret- you know, I’m 35 and play Kho-kho with an age group of seven to ten. It’s a fun and exercise too.

(Courtesy: ambuuncle.com)

15 Cool Ways To Boost Your Creativity - 1

Feeling burnt out or lacking creative ideas?

This article is especially for all you writers, artists, business owners or anyone looking for some new ways to get their creativity flowing.

Here are 15 ways to give your creativity a jump start:

Write Your Ideas Down

Get into the habit of writing your ideas down as soon as you get them. This way you train your brain to keep coming up with ideas, and as soon as you get them you write them down.

When they are written down you don’t have to worry about remembering them and this allows more room for new ideas to form in your mind.

Relax

Good ideas and creativity usually do not appear under stress. When you are relaxed and rejuvenated, creative ideas usually come rather naturally.

Take a walk on the beach, take a nap, go and play some sport or do whatever it is that relaxes you so that your brain can be more creative when you get back to work.

Have No Expectations

Similar to living with no stress, but specifically no stress from the outcome.

When you create with love and passion and no expectation of the outcome, the chances are much greater that you will create something remarkable!

Be Easy On Yourself
Stop criticizing yourself and stop being so harsh for yourself. Accept yourself the way you are and do things to the best of your ability.  You are enough and you are creative. Don’t let self-limiting beliefs block out your creativity! Remove the barriers and the ideas will begin to flow.

Read

Reading stimulates the mind. The more you read, the more you open your mind up to new ways of thinking and thus the more creative you will become.

http://lyricsdog.in/s/read%20gif

I know that reading can be a bore, especially if you have to force yourself to do it. Just start small.

Choose a book on a topic that you like (it can even be about your favorite sport or artist) and spend 30 minutes before you go to bed reading that book. This way you can read 1-2 new books every month without it being a lot of effort, and it will definitely contribute to you being more creative.

Learn to Understand Your Own Intelligence

Three years ago I listened to a lecture on cognition that changed the way I think about intelligence. This is the crux. There are two types of cognition. The first is normal cognition. This is the ability to retrieve knowledge from memory. When you are asked a question on a test and produce an answer, that’s a display of cognitive ability. The second type of cognition is metacognition; the ability to know whether or not you know.

Have you ever been asked a question that you knew the answer to, but you couldn’t find the right word? This is called the “tip of the tongue” phenomenon and I’m sure we’ve all experienced it. You know that you know the answer, but you fail to produce it. If someone said an answer, you would know instantly if it was correct or not. In these cases metacognition exists without cognition.

In short, cognition is knowing, metacognition is knowing if you know or not. Both can exist together, but many times they don’t.

How Does this Affect Intelligence?

So what importance does this have and how is it relevant to self improvement? The fact that there are two different kinds of cognitive ability means that there are different types of intelligence.

In traditional education, intelligence is measured by cognitive ability. For some people this is works well. They can easily produce everything they know on a test. But for others it doesn’t work out so well. The people that know something cold but can’t find the right words on a test are awarded with poor grades and considered inferior.

But does this inability make them any less intelligent? They know the answer. If the question came up on a task, they could refer to a book or a quick Google search. In reality they’re just as effective as the people that aced the test. They just can’t prove it as easily.

The Importance of Knowing what you know

Unless you’re taking a test or playing Jeopardy, metacognition is more important to success than cognition. In real life, when you’re faced with a question the first decision is whether you know the answer or not. With strong metacognitive ability this is easy. If you know the answer, but can’t come up with it, you can always do a bit of research. If you know for sure that you don’t know, then you can start educating yourself. Because you’re aware of your ignorance, you don’t act with foolish confidence. The person who thinks they know something that they really don’t makes the worst decisions.

A person with poor cognitive ability, but great metacognitive ability is actually in great shape. They might do poorly in school, but when faced with a challenge they understand their abilities and take the best course of action. These people might not seem intelligent at first glance, but because they know what they know, they make better decisions and learn the most important things.

Clever but mediocre people

At the opposite end of the spectrum are people with great cognitive ability but poor metacognitive ability. These people are proclaimed geniuses at a young age for acing every test and getting great SAT scores. Unfortunately, they’ve been ruined by poor metacognition; they think they know everything but they really don’t. They are arrogant, fail to learn from mistakes, and don’t understand the nuances of personal relationships; showing disdain for persons with lower cognitive ability.

So who is superior? In a battle of wits the higher cognitive ability prevails, but life is not a single encounter. It is a series of experiments in succession, each building upon the last. Learning requires knowing what you don’t know, and taking steps to learn what you need to. People with poor metacognitive ability never realize that they don’t ‘get it’. They also don’t realize what’s important.

This doesn’t preclude them from material success. But, perhaps that’s a poor measurement of intelligence as well. There are many people who become rich and successful by their cleverness and cognitive ability, but as human beings are quite mediocre. Is the man that makes a million dollars, but is cruel and abusive to his employees and family, really more intelligent than the poor man who lives a modest and loving life? I don’t intend to demonize wealth, only to state
that it should not be the measure of virtue.

Use your metacognitive ability

So what do we know and what do we not? And how can we tell the difference? There is so much to know in the world that the most brilliant human minds can grasp only the tiniest fraction. For this reason we should always be in doubt of what we know. The closed mind is oblivious to its surroundings, while the open mind absorbs them. Like a sponge, it soaks up observations, becoming fuller and more robust.

But we can’t live in total doubt. If we did we would never act, paralyzed by our inadequate knowledge. We must trust our intuition. If something makes you feel a certain way, that feeling is real and must be respected. Act based on your own convictions, not those of others, and keep an open ear for new ideas.

The most important mental power is the ability to know what you don’t know. The recognition of a fault is the first step to improvement. Don’t try to hide a lack of knowledge. People will see through it and you’ll appear foolish and arrogant. If you admit your ignorance, people will help you learn and respect your humility. For intelligent people this is the toughest lesson to learn. We are used to being right, and consider being wrong shameful. We’re afraid to lose status by looking stupid. This vain arrogance is a great weakness and the source of many problems. To crush it and embrace humility is the mark of true wisdom.

(Courtesy: www.ambuuncle.com)

Bryan Adams - When The Night Comes

Summer Of 69 - Hindi Version

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Where The Mind is Without Fear

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;

Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow

domestic walls;

Where words come out from the depth of truth;

Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;

Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the

dreary desert sand of dead habit;

Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought

and action--

Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

 
 

-- Rabindranath Tagore