Halloween Forest by kilianschoenberger

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Today in the morning I involuntary plundered right into a struggle between these two tree ghosts. The trees have eyes. Sometimes it’s really scary out there in the woods with those gnarled trees around shrouded by fog and dimly lit by the twilight of the dawn

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Wood B by larsvandegoor

forest in fall, the Netherlands, must be seen on black, click image

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Lost in Iceland by XavierJamonet

Lost in the highlands mountains of iceland during my last workshop, far from any other human presence…

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What Were You In Your Past Life

Do you ever get a feeling that you’ve lived before?

Lots of cultures believe in past lives, that we’re are all old souls and the life we are living just now is just another incarnation of our true soul.

A fascinating writer on this subject is Edgar Cayce and his work on the Akashic Records.  In the book he describes cases where people are having trouble in this life and they wish to learn of their past lives to understand their current situation.  Whether you believe it or not it’s a fascinating read and, at the very least, interesting.

Today I wanted to share with you a quick, fun quiz that will show you what type of person you were in your past life.

What Were You In Your Past Life

 

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Give it Some Flavor: How to Increase Your H2O Intake

benefits of water

benefits of water

When it comes to being healthy, we all know we should be consuming plenty of water – so why do so many of us struggle to drink the recommended daily allowance? Whether you regularly forget to top up your water bottle or simply don’t enjoy drinking water, there are ways to make sure you’re getting enough H2O. We’ve put together some handy tips on how to increase your water intake, add flavor to your drinks and stay hydrated all day long.

Benefits of H2O

From clearer skin to reducing headaches, the benefits of drinking plenty of water are endless. As well as keeping us healthy and hydrated, maintaining regular water intake helps us stay alert and active throughout the day. Recommended water consumption is different for everyone, but there is a simple way to figure out how much H2O you should be consuming on a daily basis. An article published by U.S News suggests our water intake should be calculated by halving our body weight and drinking that number of ounces. That way, we can all make sure we’re getting the right amount of water for our bodies.

Inject some flavor

It’s the age old debate: does water have a taste? While some argue that it doesn’t, others claim that it has a flavor that they simply don’t like. Wherever you stand, there are ways to shake up a simple glass of water so that it tempts everyone’s tastebuds – and adding flavor to your water doesn’t have to be time consuming or expensive.

  • Water infusion – fill old jars with water and add your favorite fruits. Store the jars in the fridge overnight and allow the fruit to infuse your water with scrumptious new flavors
  • Flavored ice cubes – for a refreshing burst of flavor, dice up some fruit and leave it to freeze overnight – then simply add it to your drink for a mouthwatering taste
  • Fruit juice – if you’re in a rush, add a splash of sugar-free fruit juice to your water for an instant burst of flavor

Some tasty recipes

The beauty of creating your own fruit-infused drinks is that you can add anything you like – but just in case you’re struggling for ideas, we’ve put together some of our favorite recipes:

  • Orange and blueberry – for a true taste of summer, add a handful of blueberries and some orange segments to your water and leave them to chill
  • Raspberry and strawberry – if you’re a fan of berries, put these in the freezer overnight then add them to your drink for an ice cold, fruity treat
  • Cucumber and mint – go green this season by adding this cool combo to your water for instant refreshment
  • Lemon and lime – for a real citrus kick without the artificial sugars, add some sliced lemon and lime to your H2O

Hydration stations

If you spend a large portion of the day at work, it’s essential to think about water consumption throughout the working day. It can be easy to become distracted and forget to look up from your desk or keep yourself hydrated – but this can actually decrease brain activity and productivity. Water coolers in the workplace are a great way to get unlimited access to H2O – but if your office doesn’t have one, don’t let that discourage you. Bring in a large bottle of water from home and commit to drinking the whole bottle before the end of the working day. By taking responsibility for your own water consumption and making sure you’re getting your recommended daily allowance, you’re guaranteed to reap the mental and physical rewards.

So what are you waiting for? Take your first step towards glorious hydration today. All hail H2O!

Damien Higgins is Marketing Manager for Eden Springs, a leading supplier of environmentally friendly office coffee machines and water coolers to businesses and organisations throughout the UK, helping to keep your employees hydrated and productive all day long.

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10 Steps For Success: Applying The Power Of Your Subconscious Mind

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“You have power over your mind – not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.” – Marcus Aurelius

How big is the gap between you and your success? 

What is the difference between successful people and unsuccessful people? It is as simple as this: successful people think and talk about what they are creating, and unsuccessful people focus on and talk about what they’re lacking.

So how do you bridge that gap between wanting success and having your success? Let’s make an important distinction. You see, there is a big difference between “Wanting” and “Having” something.

Wanting: means lacking or absent. Deficient in some part, thing or aspect.

Having: means to possess, to hold, to get, to receive, to experience.

You can have one OR the other, but not both at the same time with any particular object of your desire. You either have it or you don’t.

When it comes to your subconscious, if you’re focusing on the “wanting”, i.e. the not having, guess what, you will build stronger neural networks in your brain around the “wanting.” However, through the power of your subconscious mind, you can focus on the “having” as if it has already happened. Research has shown that your brain doesn’t know the difference between what you’re visualizing inside your mind versus what is happening out there in your reality.

This is a regular practice of elite athletes. They spend as much timing creating the internal mental imagery of their success playing out as they do actually physically practicing. This helps create both the neural pathways in their brain and the muscle memory to consistently deliver on that success.

Here are 10 “brain hack” steps for success that you can take to create your version of a happy life. Make these steps a regular habit, and you will be astonished at the results.

Step 1: Decide exactly what you want to create and have

This is usually the biggest problem that people have. They don’t know what they want and then they’re surprised when they don’t get it.

Step 2: Write down your goal clearly in every technicolor detail

A goal that is not written down is merely a wish. When you write it down in full detail, you signal to your subconscious mind that you really want to accomplish this particular goal.

Step 3: Write your goal in simple, present tense words

…that a three year old can understand on a three-by-five index card and carry it with you. Read it each morning after you awake and just before you go to sleep.

Step 4: Backwards planning

See your goal achieved and identify all the steps required that it took to bring it to life. Making a list of all these steps intensifies your desire and deepens your belief that the attainment of the goal is already happening.

Step 5: Resolve to take at least one step every day from one of the items on your list

Do something every day, even if it is just one baby step, that moves you toward your goal so you can maintain your momentum.

Step 6: Visualize your goal repeatedly

See it in your mind’s eye as though it were already a reality. The more clear and vivid your mental picture of your goal, the faster it will come into your life.

Step 7: Feel the feeling of success as if your goal were realized at this very moment

Feel the emotion of happiness, satisfaction, and pleasure that you would have once you have achieved your goal. Visualize and feel this success for at least 20 seconds at a time.

Step 8: “Fake it till you make it!”

Confidently behave as if your subconscious mind was already bringing your goal into reality. Accept that you are moving toward your goal and it is moving toward you.

Step 9: Relax your mind

Take time to breathe, pray or mediate each day. Disengage the stress response and engage the relaxation response. A quiet state of mind allows your brain to access newly formed neural pathways.

Step 10: Release your goal to your subconscious mind

When you turn your goal over to the power of the universe and just get out of the way, you will always know the right actions to take at the right time.

Starting today, try tapping into the incredible power of your subconscious mind.Start with just one goal or idea, and practice it continually until you succeed in achieving that goal. Make it a game and have fun with it! The more lightly you hold it, the easier it will be to achieve. By doing so, you will move from the “positive thinking” of the hopeful person to the “positive knowing” of the totally successful person.

Hit reply and let me know what you’re creating!

To your success!

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15 Things You’re Not Taught In School That Determine Your Success

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School teaches you many of the fundamental things you’ll need a basic grip on in order to be a genuine success during your life, including math, English, science, discipline, and socializing, to name a few. But not everything that’s worth knowing is chalked up on blackboards. At least, not yet.

Listed here are 15 essential life skills that determine your success yet aren’t part of a typical school curriculum, although they really ought to be.

1. Spotting a Scam

As a rule, schools don’t tend to teach children about how to spot the signs of a swindler, and getting fleeced at least once is currently the only way to learn about the incredible amount of scams that plague the world. Knowing a dodgy deal when you see one is something that comes in handy in today’s world, especially in a day and age in which so many are able to hide behind the shifting face of the internet. Teaching students to spot a scam can allow them to go a long way in life.

2. Negotiation

In most classrooms, there’s very little room for negotiation. Unless the teacher is having a particularly good day and decides to meet children halfway in terms of what the deadlines for that particular lesson might be, any attempt by a student to get a better deal for themselves is met by the teacher’s furrowed brow and an extended finger pointing towards the door. It’s a shame, really, since when you enter the big, bad world of adulthood, being able to negotiate is vital in order to help get you out of some seriously sticky situations. Negotiation strategies come particularly in handy in the world of business, and teaching children how to master this skill from a young age can end up having all kinds of benefits in later life.

3. Self-defense

It’s never nice to think about, but that doesn’t stop the fact that there are depressingly high numbers of dangerous people out there in the world who one day might target you personally for a number of reasons. To stay safe, it’s important to learn the very basics of self-defense – both in terms of being able to protect yourself through the art of speech as well as physically, if it ever comes down to it. Self-defense is an integral part of life, and knowing how to shelter yourself from the evils of the world can boost your confidence, keep you happy, and allow you to live a highly successful life. 

4. Mental Health

Occasionally, schools will host workshops and activity days where various society health representatives will totter from classroom to classroom, but for the most part, the aspect of mental health is left entirely up to the school’s counsellor, if they have one. For the most part, today’s youth are largely kept in the dark about the specifics of mental health, with issues like depression being very poorly understood. Raging teenage hormones are not the same as somebody who’s dealing with depression, and high-quality mental health education is needed in every school in order to help everyone learn about the more troubling conditions of the mind.

5. Socialising & Networking

Managing your internet profile is about so much more than having a high number of “likes” on Facebook these days. It can be the difference between being offered a terrific job opportunity and facing an endless string of rejections. Keeping your appearance online professional and in check will make potential employers recognise your maturity as a person, and schools really ought to widely teach the art and discipline behind crafting your very own unique internet identity.

6. Emergencies & First Aid

Basic first aid ought to be taught at regular intervals in every school at every age. Science is consistently finding new ways to medically treat people, and some of the old breathing assistance techniques that you saw on television back when you were a kid are now considered archaic and even dangerous. Frequent, up-to-the-minute emergency reaction and first aid teaching in schools can go a long way to helping someone out if a serious situation occurs in the future.

7. Household Repairs

As you get older, you’ll come to realise the absolute necessity of being able to perform basic household repairs. There are few worse feelings on earth than an appliance breaking down in your home and you standing ashen-faced with no idea how to fix it. A few basic tutorials in ordinary household maintenance could prove to be enormously expedient when it comes to moving into a first home.

8. Self-assessment

Taking a long, hard look at yourself and acknowledging what you’re truly good at, as well as what you are not so good at, is probably one of the most challenging aspects of life. Few people can truly do it. It takes practice, and being able to come to terms with what you need to improve on can make you a much better person in all aspects of your life.

9. Balance

School rightly encourages you to work hard at improving your academic performance, but what it doesn’t truly teach is the ability to balance your life so that you achieve high levels of gratification in every aspect – from having quiet family time, to working hard, to partaking in joyful evenings with your friends. Achieving a great sense of balance is paramount in order to live a happy, heathy life. Managing your time well will allow you to make sure the things that ought to come first do indeed come first, and not at the expense of anything else.

10. Cooking

There’s a reason why so many university students find themselves living on budget noodles for the entirety of their degree years. Money of course is a factor, but it’s also due to the fact that very few young adults have any real experience cooking by the time they move into college dorms. Serving up a mouth-watering meal isn’t just an art that can pave the way for success for an aspiring chef, either. Cooking is a skill that can impress friends, bosses, dates, and perhaps most importantly, keep you in good health. Cooking classes in schools do exist, of course, but putting a little emphasis on some tasty, healthy recipes could really help turn young children into terrific little cooks by the time they fly out of the nest. 

11. Coping with Harsh Realities

Simply put: life isn’t fair. If you expect it to be, you’re going to be disappointed. Sometimes things will go your way, and on other occasions they won’t. It’s enough to make you want to claw your hair out, but by learning to cope with harsh realities, you’ll be able to live happily without succumbing to the pangs of stress that life can so cruelly impose upon you.

12. Money Isn’t Everything

It’s terrific to have a well-paying job, a big house, and a glossy car on your driveway. We know this because this is what school facilities drum into our heads from day one. It’s a simple equation: Working hard at school = Better grades = Better prospects = More money. But money isn’t happiness. On the contrary, cash can actually be toxic if handled in the wrong way and has the ability bring out the worst in people who are unable to separate it from joy. Wealth and happiness are two very different things, and schools ought to make a conscious effort to instil this in pupils’ heads before they depart from lower education.

13. Learning from Failure

Some teachers are absolutely exceptional at handling children who struggle to deal with even the simplest tasks. But learning from failure isn’t really what school is about. No, school is about doing enough so you don’t fail in the first place. A fine lesson in itself, but the fact is that at some point in their lives, everybody will fail.

But no failure is a catastrophe if you learn from it. Understanding what went wrong and why something didn’t turn out as planned can help you to curb your lifestyle so that it never happens again. It can and will turn you into a stronger, more successful person.

14. Forgiveness

It can be tricky to say that you forgive somebody who has let you down. It’s even more difficult to actually mean it. Learning how to let the silly things go and move on with your life may be something that’s discussed in specific counselling sessions with people who have gotten themselves into extremely problematic situations, but otherwise, the act of forgiveness isn’t something that’s currently taught in schools across the world. It’s a process that requires patience and understanding. It puts you into someone else’s shoes, helps you to understand other people, and makes you a more successful person in life.

15. Expect the Unexpected

Perhaps it’s a little tough to teach this, but it’s a rule that everyone ought to live by in order to be a successful person. The world is an utterly unpredictable place. It’s a scary thought, but at the same time it’s also kind of wonderful, if you’re prepared for it. Putting yourself in the mindset that absolutely anything might be lying around the corner in wait can actively improve your personality and help you to deal with life when times get a little tough.

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Black Sand, Iceland. Photo by Raimondo Restelli

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