Loading ...6 Great Ways to Reduce Stress
No matter who you are or what you do, you more than likely feel stressed out at least once in a while. For the great majority of people in our society, stress is a problem faced every single day. Work, bills, children, relationships, life – it can be tough to handle it all sometimes. There is no magic cure for stress, but there are a few key actions that you can take in order to reduce it to its lowest possible form; here are six of them:
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Be Proactive
If you have a problem, any problem at all, face it! I’ve always found that some of my worst stress comes from putting something off that I would rather not do. It is always better to spend your time doing whatever is in your control to do to repair the issue and put it behind you. Sitting and worrying or complaining never fixes anything.
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Know Stress When You See It
If there are particular things, people or situations that stress you out, acknowledge them and either remove yourself from them or learn to deal with them more productively. Sit down with pen and paper and take the time to consider the question: what stresses me out? You’ll be surprised at how easy the answers seem when you take time to devote to each individual stressor.
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Be Organized
One guaranteed way to stress yourself out is to be unorganized in your daily life. Without a clear idea of where your day is going, the day itself can seem to get out of hand, leaving you frazzled. Be aware of the appointments and obligations of the day and face them head on! You can acheive this by taking time out in the morning to consider and be mindful of the places you know your day will take you, making sure that very little will catch you unprepared.
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Don’t Do Too Much
Modern society is fast paced and very demanding and too many of us commit far too much of ourselves to no better an endeavor than making money or climbing a corporate ladder. That’s not to say that there is anything wrong with making money; on the contrary, one clear path to a more peaceful and happy life is having the money needed to sustain your chosen lifestyle. Money means very little to the happiness of the spirit though, and you need to remember that. Don’t take on so much that you lose track of the things that truly make you happy.
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Go With The Flow
Like it or not, stuff happens. Things rarely go exactly as we plan them and getting worked up over a glitch in your day is simply not worth it. I find the best way to counteract this is to simply plan only the fundamentals; I’m not particular and I’m open to possibility. In addition, do the easy things like giving yourself a bit of extra time “just in case” and keeping in mind that there are worse things to be than late.
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Be Active
Bad physical health ALWAYS leads to bad mental health. Treat your body well, take the middle road of moderation when you do indulge in a treat and exercise every single day. Yoga practice, tai chi, jogging, aerobics, walking, bicycling…the possibilities are endless. And don’t let time stop you! If you have only five minutes to spare, devote it to stretching. Your body has the terribly difficult task of bearing your consciousness with it every day, all day; reward it with preferable treatment.
photo by Velvet G.
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6 Reasons to Rise Early
It can seem sometimes that waking up in the morning is the absolute worst part of the day, leaving us sleepy and groggy-eyed as we try to meet the coming day. While it is true that a person’s productivity increases exponentially when they wake at an early hour after a fitful sleep, that just isn’t a good enough reason for many of us to rise with the sun. There are many great benefits to waking early in the day and I’m going to share six of my favorites.
1. Quiet Time
We all crave it but many of us are able to get it only on rare occasions and rising early is a perfect way to be sure that you have a few quiet moments to yourself before you attack your day. Setting your alarm for an early hour guarantees that children are still sleeping, electronics are still turned off and your environment is basically distraction free, if only for a few moments.
2. Power Breakfast
We’ve all heard it said a hundred times or more: breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Studies have shown over and over how the brain simply functions much better when you give your body fuel in the morning. In today’s fast-paced society far too many people skip breakfast altogether, leaving their bodies running on empty. Getting up early ensures that you’ll have time to eat a healthy breakfast every morning, helping you to feel more balanced and productive throughout your day.
3. Get a Head Start
Have a busy day ahead? Wake up early get a head start! You’ll be amazed at how much you can accomplish first thing in the morning when the mind and body are fresh and you might just get enough done that you can take an early day by completing your tasks sooner than usual.
4. Get Pumped
Early mornings are an excellent time to exercise, practice yoga and meditate in solace, giving you a head start on your day and getting the task of working out completed. Simply waking up 30 minutes earlier than usual and committing the time to gradually stretching and training will make a huge difference to the way you feel, and the way you look!
5. Plan & Create Your Day
If you have a busy day ahead of you, plan to rise early and put pen to paper in setting goals, planning a schedule and getting a head start where possible. Be mindful of the experiences that you would like to have as you go through the day and prepare yourself for all possibilities and situations. This type of planning will help you to tackle the day with ease, taking things in stride while being as productive as possible.
6. The Sunrise
Watching the sun rise over the horizon and lazily make its way across the sky in the morning is as thrilling an experience as you’ll ever have. Rising early allows you to step outside and truly enjoy and appreciate the rising of the sun and gives you the opportunity to greet the day in its purest and most stunning form.
photo by neloqua
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6 Reasons to Practice Yoga
I personally find the practice of yoga to be the most rewarding mind and body exercise that I have ever undertaken. Unlike many types of physical exercise, yoga is subtle and comparatively easy, allowing a simple five or ten minutes per day to translate into real, visible results. If you’re considering starting a yoga regiment or simply need a reminder as to why you do it every day, check out my top six reasons for maintaining the practice!
1. Breathing
One of the absolute keys to yoga is the control of the breath. The timed breathing that flows so smoothly with each pose and posture helps one to be more aware of the most fundamental action that your body undertakes each and every moment of your life. Steady, monitored breathing leads directly to increased physical stamina and intense relaxation, two of the biggest boons to yoga. As you continue to practice you will find that you become more and more mindful of your breathing every minute of the day, leading to extended stress relief and overall calmness of mind, body and spirit.
2. The Physical Benefits
Whether you choose to undertake a slow and steady practice or more physically demanding postures, yoga is directly akin to all other beneficial exercises. The stretching and straining involved in all forms of yoga will lead almost immediately to increased flexibility, more and better muscle tone and the loss of fat. See for yourself; 30 minutes of even moderately difficult poses will have you sweating like you went for a run!
3. Increased Mindfulness
As mentioned in point number one, controlled breathing helps lead directly to everyday mindfulness of your body’s most fundamental functioning. Yoga practice also gives you the opportunity to stay in touch with the rest of your body by combining physical relaxation with deep mental stimulation. The longer I practice, the more in tune with myself and the universe I feel and there is nothing better than feeling like you are genuinely in tune with yourself, inside and out.
4. Do it for the Kids!
Yoga practice is a wonderful thing to teach and perform with your children, helping them to understand the absolute importance of peak physical health. Too often in Western society we become dulled to the need for fitness and longevity, focusing instead on the instant gratification offered by fast food and laziness. My two-year-old isn’t much for 30 minutes of practice but he strikes a mean tree pose and helps to make my practice exponentially more enjoyable.
5. Mental Development
While yoga offers much in the way of physical exercise, it also creates the opportunity for clarity of mind and insight. The fluid movement and steady breath that the practice of yoga entails naturally creates a peaceful place for both body and mind, allowing you to experience the mental clarity and evolvement that comes hand in hand with not only yoga, but many mindfulness training practices.
6. Sleep Well, Every Night
I have no clear facts or evidence to demonstrate the effect that yoga has on sleep patterns but I can say with true authority that a day for me that includes 15 or 30 minutes of practice is guaranteed to end with a fit, restful sleep. A day with no yoga might see me sleep a full eight hours with only a slightly rested feeling while yoga creates in me the ability to sleep a scant six hours while waking up alert and rested, ready to attack the day. Peacefulness in the mind body and exercise in the physical body add up to allow one to reach a deep sleep more quickly, giving your body the ability to maximize the benefit of each and every moment that you slumber.
In summation: do yoga! It can be as little as five minutes each morning before work or each night before you hit the sack; unlike many forms of exercise, the benefits of yoga can be seen and felt immediately and will increase steadily in the long term. Many people that I talk to are extremely surprised that, after attempting and then quitting everything from jogging to jump rope, they feel absolutely compelled to continue their yogic practice with no prompting whatsoever – yoga simply speaks for itself!
photo by daily pleasure
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6 Reasons to Stop Eating Meat Today
Despite the fact that vegetarianism is clearly the most ethical, most sustainable and most healthy choice of diet there is, the vast majority of the world’s people continue to consume animal meat at an alarming rate. I firmly believe that education preempts insight and that insight leads to positive change, so here are six excellent reasons to stop eating meat today.
1. Your Health
Despite the common thought that vegetarians are sickly and malnourished, the truth is that vegetarians are the healthiest people on the planet. Studies have clearly shown over the years that vegetarians weigh less, have lower cholesterol, suffer from far less disease and generally live longer than meat-eating humans. Fruits, vegetables and other natural foods are unable to carry the many pathogens, bacteria and diseases such as e-coli that meat easily does. It is very clear that the absolute easiest move that you can make to increase your level of health is to stop consuming meat and animal byproducts.
2. The Environment
Most of us would never even consider the fact, but a diet that includes meat and other animal byproducts leaves a huge footprint on our one and only Earth. For example: the production of one pound of meat consumes 5,000 gallons of water in comparison to the 25 gallons of water needed to produce a pound of wheat. The same farm animals who consume 80% of the grown food in the United States produce nearly 150 times the natural waste (excrement) of the humans in the same country. Craziness!
3. Killing Animals & Consuming Their Flesh is Wrong!
Period. Even if we lived in an ideal world where farming was scaled way down to the family level and the animals in said farms were free range and lived full lives, destroying them in the end in order to eat their flesh, muscle and fat is awfully unethical and more than a little gross. Tack onto this fact the truth of the meat industry as it exists today and you have to open your eyes to the fact that these animals are raised, drugged, exploited and murdered en masse for nothing more than profit. To consume a purely vegetarian diet is to say to the companies and individuals that benefit from these profits that you will no longer give them a reason to murder sentient beings and take your money for having done it. PETA estimates that the average vegetarian will save 95 animals every single year that they do not consume animal byproducts; a large number and an obvious result that we can all sink our teeth into.
4. Being a Vegetarian is Cool
Yup, you heard me right! Vegetarianism is hawked by movie stars, educated young professionals and yoga moms all over North America and making the switch yourself puts you in league with them. This is not to say that you should stop consuming meat for this reason, but the recognition of your peers as being a conscious eater is an added bonus to the health benefits and lives saved by your choice.
5. Consciousness
A vegetarian diet is, in my opinion, 100% necessary for any individual who is interested in furthering themselves spiritually toward a better understanding and acceptance of the unity of all things in our universe. To be a Christian or Muslim who believes that God placed all beings on Earth by hand and then kill them to consume them is hypocrisy in its ugliest form. The same goes for Buddhists, Jews and every other member of an institution that professes a belief in the unity of all things only to willfully and systematically destroy them.
6. Vegetarian Food is Easy & Delicious
Myths abound about unhealthy vegan eaters who consume too little in the way of vitamins and minerals but the truth is that eating a vegetarian diet is healthy, delicious and surprisingly easy. Food replacements abound in the form of tofu (not as bad as you think), soy beverages (can’t possibly tell the difference in a bowl of cereal) and restaurants and supermarkets are quickly catching onto the trend and making wide varieties of yummy vegetarian foods available to each and every one of us. If you are resisting the pull of vegetarianism for the sake of an enjoyable diet, don’t be fooled; making any major change can be difficult but proper research and creative cooking can ensure that you never go without something absolutely delicious to chew on!
See also: 6 Reasons to Stop Drinking Milk Today
How would you like it?
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6 Reasons to Stop Drinking Milk Today
While there are many ethical and moral questions to be answered when one considers their consumption of milk, there are numerous health concerns to take into account as well. This piece will explore some of the reasons, related both to health and ethics, to quit that nasty habit of drinking cow’s milk.
1. Pathogens, Bacteria & Antibiotics – Oh My!
The first glaring problem is the state of the milk cows themselves. Dairy cows are fed high-protein, soy-based feed instead of their natural feed of green grass. This practice produces grown cows with abnormally enlarged pituitary glands, giving them the ability to produce milk more rapidly. The downside to humans: the process leaves the cow weak and unhealthy, forcing the milk industry to pump the animals full of a variety of antibiotics to keep them well enough to continue to produce. These antibiotics are commonly found in the finished product that many of us consume on a very regular basis.
2. Pasteurization
Problem number two: the pasteurization process. Pasteurization is the act of heating the raw product up to extreme temperatures in order to destroy the native pathogens and bacteria that cow’s milk contains. Unfortunately, this process also destroys the natural enzymes found in the milk, enzymes that the human body requires in order to properly break it down when it is consumed. Because the human pancreas was not designed to break down the mother’s milk of animal species, it is often lacking when it attempts to deliver the enzymes necessary to break down the milk; people whose pancreas is unable to produce sufficient enzymes are called lactose intolerant. Continued consumption of cow’s milk can cause your pancreas to become overworked to the point that you develop lactose intolerance at any point in your life.
3. Homogenization
The butterfat found naturally in cow’s milk is forced through a commercial process called homogenization. This process forces the butterfat to the point of rancidity, allowing it to be easily removed for the sake of “low fat” cow’s milk. Removing the butterfat altogether produces skim milk, a product marketed to us as a health food; what is ironic is that the removal of the butterfat keeps the human body from properly digesting the milk, leaving behind the many vitamins, minerals and short chain fatty acids that are naturally found in milk.
4. Bovine Growth Hormone (BGH)
The American FDA has recently approved the use of Bovine Growth Hormones by dairy farmers with the intention of allowing for increased milk production. So how does BGH affect humans? Well, it causes a drastic increase in insulin-like growth factors (IGF-1) in the milk of commercial dairy cows, forcing the people who consume the finished product to consume it directly. IGF-1 has been found to promote the transformation of human breast cells to cancerous forms among other negative health effects.
5. Cows Are People Too!
Okay, so maybe cows aren’t people. They are, however, sentient beings that deserve nothing less than a free, natural and happy life that doesn’t involve being chained up in a small stall, being biologically made to believe that it is pregnant nine months of the year in order to increase milk production or being deliberately made sick and pained for selfish human consumption. There is no spiritual standpoint on Earth that advocates or allows for the torture of animals and the commercial dairy process is nothing less than absolute torture.
6. It’s Absolutely Disgusting
We are the only species on Earth that regularly and happily consumes the breast milk of another species. At the same time, sitcoms and humorous books make light of many people’s “gross factor” when it comes to the breast milk of human women; it just doesn’t make any sense.
My final decision to quit cow’s milk once and for all came only recently relative to my lifespan and I can still easily reflect on the ease with which I was drawn into the commercialism of it all. I was fed cow’s milk as a child and it quickly became a daily part of my diet. I fell for the commercials and commercial propaganda that continuously told me how healthy milk is. Education and insight are the foundations of most positive change and I hope that this piece will encourage you to get up from your computer chair, walk to your fridge and immediately pour what milk you have in the fridge down the drain. At the very least, please research the subject further in order to make up your own mind!
See also: 6 Reasons to Stop Eating Meat Today
Aw, isn’t she cute? Note the ID tag stapled into her ear.
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Intelligence Linked to Vegetarianism
A recently published study from the United Kingdom has shown that, in general, the higher a person’s intelligence quotient, the more likely they are to become vegetarians later in life. This study began in 1970 when more than 8,000 boys and girls were given an intelligence quotient test at the age of 10. The masterminds of the research then followed up with the subjects 30 years later, in the year 2000.
Among other things, the study found that one’s intelligence seems to have a direct link to what they eat. 4.5 percent of the subjects reported being vegetarian or vegan; judging the 366 subjects who made the claim revealed that vegetarians were most likely to be well-educated women belonging to the upper-middle economic class.
The published study included information concerning the eating habits of the test creators themselves. Of the four researchers, one claimed to be a committed vegetarian, two claimed to former vegetarians who had “lapsed” and one noted that he was an omnivore.
My Thoughts
Is it any wonder, really? I am a strong believer that meat consumption by humans is entirely unethical and unhealthy; it only stands to reason that conscious consideration and potentially education would come into play on the point. I spent the first 22 years of my life not even considering what I ate and the consequences it may be having on my body, the environment and countless fellow sentient beings and, while I was able to break the cycle, it is not a surprise that so many millions are not able to – they simply don’t consider it!
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For Confused Parents
Anyone with children can agree that being a parent is the most demanding and most rewarding job that they’ve ever had. Most of us are good parents but we could all use a pointer or two from time to time. So, just in case you were wondering:
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Quantum Superposition in Video Games
Here are a couple of great videos that attempt to illustrate the potential Many-Worlds Interpretation of quantum superposition through recorded video games.
The first video (below) was constructed using the Kaizo Mario hacked ROM version of the Super Nintendo classic Super Mario World. This particular custom level was played 1,000 times and than superimposed on top of one another, giving the impression that Mario’s many possibilities are being realized over and over again.
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Denying the Self
As I wade through all of the writings and findings in the fields of science and spirituality, there is one belief that remains strong in me: there is, at the beginning and at the end, no inherent “self”. This has been the most difficult truth for me to come to terms with; alas, it seems to be the truth that the majority of us have the most problem with accepting. Denying the self, from our individualistic point view, seems to be to deny our very existence.
My belief, and a belief that is the foundation of many spiritual movements, is that there is no true self because we are all made up of the same stuff; the way that our brain perceives the stimuli around it gives us a false sense of individualism. I believe the universe to work as a layered mechanism with space-time, mass and matter and consciousness laying one on top of the other so that the whole of each comes into contact with the whole of both others. To say this is to imply that a rock has as much consciousness as I do; it simply doesn’t have the biological makeup to know it.
I exemplify this point of view when I discuss with my wife and family by taking three separate sheets of paper and holding them flat together between my open palms, moving them slowly against one another. Each sheet of paper represents the three “dimensions” (I use the word loosely) to the universe as I believe it exists: space-time, mass and matter and consciousness. The pool of consciousness that gives us the ability to be aware of the fact that we are aware exists in all things sentient and non-sentient that we see around us.
None of this is meant to take away from the fantastical fact that single-celled organisms managed to evolve into beings with a neurological system that allows them to perceive the world around them and to know it; whether one believes that our awareness comes from a pool or a monotheistic god, there is no denying our biological greatness. It does mean, however, that in order to continue along our path towards the best enlightenment that we can achieve, we have to give up our sense of self innately and begin to realize that everything and everyone around us are as native to our awareness as we ourselves are.
More on the steps you can take as you shift your worldview to help to ease the change tomorrow.
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