Is everyone wearing green today? Nature’s light show displays a fantastic emerald ripple above Denali National Park in Alaska, a great place to see the Northern Lights. Says photographer Carl Johnson, “Having great aurora borealis images to show for a night out in the cold cannot truly capture the thrill of just being out there and witnessing this amazing phenomenon.” Photo courtesy of Carl Johnson. #StPatricksDay
Have you always dreamed of seeing a yeti? Maybe you’d love to have a beer with ol’ Bigfoot? Or sight a Sasquatch? Have a natter with Nessie?
If mythical beasts from folklore are totally your thing, why not ditch that planned all-inclusive holiday to Greece and head off to a fantastic creature-spotting adventure instead?
We’ve sourced five of the best mythical creatures and assembled a handy guide to these wonderful beasts. With our monster map, you’ll finally know where they live, what they do, and where they are from.
Go to: Rural Scotland
This mythical creature is one of the most well-known in Scottish folklore. The first recorded usage of ‘kelpie’ goes back to 1759. Thought to haunt the waterways of Scotland, the kelpie is a shape-shifter that usually appears as a horse.
Nearly all rivers, streams and lochs in Scotland have some kind of kelpie story behind them. It’s thought that the kelpies’ ability to shape-shift (they can also appear as beautiful young women, children, and other forms) comes from its bridle.
So, if you’re strong enough to get hold of it, you could well find yourself in the rare position of having the upper hand over one of the most monstrous creatures from all folklore.
Go to: Norfolk, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Essex, UK
Black Shuck was the inspiration for Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Hound of the Baskervilles, but the black spectral dog which hides in bushes goes further back than that. It terrorized parts of East Anglia in the 16th century as it stalked coastlines, graveyards, hidey-holes, and hedgerows.
Despite looking like it could cause serious harm, Black Shuck was not necessarily a violent creature. Rather, it was a harbinger, usually of bad luck.
Go to: Loch Ness, Inverness, Scotland
Nessie is perhaps the most infamous of all mythical creatures, so it should be right at the top of your must-see list. Travel firm Expedia, who have put together a fantastic online map showing you places around the world where mythical creatures are said to live, explains that early sightings of the Loch Ness Monster compared the aquatic creature to a dragon.
The Nessie phenomenon started back in 1933 when the local paper Inverness Courier reported a sighting of the beast. The rest is history as Nessie cemented itself as a sensation. Expedia’s resource recommends going on a cruise to the ruins of Urquhart Castle, with live sonar on board, to maximize your chances of finding the creature.
Go to: Manaus, Brazil
The Yacumama is a giant anaconda-like snake that has been frightening Brazilians for many years. This immensely strong serpent, capable of sucking up everything around it, has the power to cause mudslides and general chaos.
The mythical creature resource shows that explorers were reporting seeing the snake as far back as 1906. A report from Percy H. Fawcett reads: “We stepped ashore and approached the reptile with caution. It was out of action, but shivers ran up and down the body like puffs of wind on a mountain tarn. As far as it was possible to measure, a length of 45 feet lay out of the water, and 17 feet in it, making a total length of 62 feet.”
Go to: The forests of North America
Another big beast of popular folklore, Bigfoot, or Sasquatch as it’s also known, is thought to stand at least 9 feet tall and with dark fur and skin. The gorilla-like creature is thought to be a vegetarian, so it’s unlikely he’d see you as his dinner.
Where to start with a colossus like Bigfoot?
He’s practically the king of all the mythological beasts out there. The Bigfoot legend relates back to stories of ‘wild men’ that were prevalent in indigenous communities of the Pacific Northwest. The number of apparent sightings and close encounters concerning Sasquatch are legion, but he’s never been proven to exist. Most think Bigfoot is a hoax, albeit an elaborately crafted one.
So, if you’re planning an intrepid holiday to catch sight of your favorite mythical beast, we hope this monster map comes in handy. If you need to make a quick getaway, it’s great if you can take a car with you.
The post A Map Of Mythical Creatures And Where To Find Them appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
This elegant home is a perfect mix of new and old. It was designed by Archiplan Studio in 2012, and is located in Mantua, Italy in a building that dates back to the 1500s. It’s simply marvelous to see how the modern décor and the older details of the construction converge in the same place in a perfect harmony. In the living room, dark sofas were used in conjunction with..
The post New and Old Come Together in This Home in Mantua, Italy appeared first on HomeDSGN.
Bears Ears National Monument – Utah – USA (by Bureau of Land Management)
This 19th-century cabin had originally been abandoned, and during its renovation process, it was demolished and rebuilt from the ground up. It’s located in Praz-de-Fort, Orsières, Switzerland. Savioz Fabrizzi Architectes was in charge of completing the renovation of the 775-m2 home in 2016. Surrounded by gorgeous fields and mountains, this beautiful cabin is the perfect place to spend our most relaxing days. We would never be able to guess what..
The post Conversion of 19th Century Cabin by Savioz Fabrizzi Architectes appeared first on HomeDSGN.
Would you rather is a classical social game that has stood the test of time and is among the most popular gather-around games in the world. Whoever says you can’t learn a lot about your friends over this game has probably never played it right.
In reality, the game is hilarious, engaging and informative. However, for you to reveal your friend’s deepest secrets with this game, you’ll need sharper questions that promise better answers.
Just as articles are required for a blog to rank high on Google, you need to have good Would You Rather questions to have a fun time. While some people are born with the natural ability of asking good questions without any preparations, others have to develop it through practice.
If you belong to the last group, here are 5 easy, simple and effective ways to help sharpen up your Would You Rather questions.
One way to improve your Would You Rather questions is to find the right attitude. Without the right mindset and attitude, a lot of people will avoid playing with you.
To start, you must first determine what makes a bad player. For one, they don’t take responsibility for their rude or inappropriate behaviors. They offend other players with big no-no questions and they curse and blame others for their own mistakes.
If you think you don’t have these traits, then you’re on the right path to improving your game.
We, humans, have a tendency to keep hitting someone’s weak spot as soon as we find it. However, for the sake of fun, you should refrain from asking Would You Rathers from one category only.
The key to making the most out of the game is to be diverse and ask both serious and funny questions from as many categories as possible. As long as your intentions are friendly, you can ask any sort of question you want.
Although you can ask any question you like, that doesn’t give you the right to be impolite, rude, and make others feel uncomfortable. To avoid an awkward situation, make sure you know enough things about the players, like their age, education level and personal preferences.
If you take the risk of asking a Would You Rather question without considering your friend, you may not only offend them and kill the mood, but you may lose them from your life for good. Before you start, make sure you know which questions are good to ask and to which players.
As with any other games, practice is a crucial part of becoming a good player in a game of Would You Rather. There are a plenty of questions online that are conveniently sorted into different categories. You can just look them up if you want to get inspired or improve your skills.
It may be obvious that reading questions online can help you sharpen up your questions. However, it won’t be able to help you get better at creating your own. Crafting your own questions require more effort, but it is a much more effective way of getting better questions.
Last, but certainly not the least, is to prepare a list of Would You Rather questions before you even set a game date. This is a better strategy than throwing random questions when you’re already in the middle of the game. Apart from letting you know more about your opponents, it will also give you more time to analyze them carefully.
See Also: 5 Sports From Fiction You Can Try And How You Can Play Them
The post 5 Ways To Sharpen Up Your Would You Rather Game Questions appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
You’re reading How to Learn Any Language On Your Own (Step-by-Step Guide), originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Learning a language on your own is not easy. But it is possible with the right strategy.
While we suggest finding a teacher or partner that can help shorten your learning curve, we also understand that not everyone has the budget or time.
Over the past few years, we’ve heard from many of our student who have tried learning a language on their own. They’ve shared from their own experience what they wish they would’ve done differently.
This is the single biggest feedback we’ve gotten from people who’ve taken the solo learning path. It turns out that some people are designed to learn new things on their own, while some of us are the contrast.
For example, some of us learn best by listening, while others retain more information when reading something (check out the 7 major learning styles). You have to reflect on your previous experience to understand how you’ve best learnt new skills in the past.
Unfortunately, most of us have been forced to learn via a limited learning style because of the traditional education system we grew up with. In short, not everyone is designed to learn new skills on their own. And by being self-aware of your shortcomings upfront, you can save yourself a lot of time, stress, and hassle.
If you have decided to learn a language on your own, the biggest obstacle for most people is persistency. In most cases, learning anything on your own will take much longer than getting professional help and guidance from someone who’s done it before.
This is why you need to have a strong inner purpose of why you’re learning a language. Maybe your family speaks another language, and you want to feel a deeper connection with them. Perhaps your spouse comes from a different culture, and you want to be able to communicate with his/her family.
Understanding why you’re learning a language is what’s going to inspire you to go through that lesson manual, attend those language exchanges, and to continue grinding it out when things inevitably gets tough.
If you’ve attended our free language masterclass, then you know we’ve discussed the cycles of the mastery curve. In case you missed it, the process of mastery is never a straight upward curve, no matter how talented you are. It’s a series of ups and downs, with many plateaus that come with it.
Once you know why you’re learning a language, you must have a firm end-goal in mind. Otherwise, you don’t have a target that aligns with your purpose.
Is your end goal to reach conversation proficiency? Or perhaps you want to become a fluent speaker.
But that’s only the first step. We also have to know in what timeframe we want to achieve our goals. If you have an overseas trip coming up in July, you may want to aim to hit your goal by May or June. If you’re learning for fun, you can be a little more lenient, but you still want to have a specific deadline.
Why do we want to do this? Because of Parkinson’s Law, which states that the amount of time that one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task. This means that often when we give ourselves 12 months to learn something, we’ll subconsciously spend 12 months learning it. Versus if we gave ourselves only 7 months, we’ll force ourselves to learn within that timeframe.
Now that we have our prerequisites, we’ll share our step-by-step process on how to learn a language on your own.
If you wanted to become a musician, you’ll need an instrument. If you wanted to get in better shape, you need weights and equipment. Learning a language is no different.
Language learners today have a plethora of tools and resources that we can leverage to learn faster. From mobile apps to podcasts, your options are limitless.
Check out our list of recommended language tools to get new ideas.
The second is to design your environment around your language. The reason why this is powerful is because there’s two main ways to learn something: actively and passively. While active learning is more impactful, we only have so much time in the day to actively learn a language.
Examples of passive learning includes:
What doesn’t get measured, won’t get better. This applies to our health life, business life, and others.
The mistake that most learners make is to measure progress in large milestones that are too far to imagine or track. Instead, we should focus on weekly, if not daily goals.
Here are a few ideas we suggest:
Having the right tools and strategy is only half the battle. Staying persistent and accountable is just as important, because learning a language is a marathon. It’s easy to say now that you’ll be able to put in an hour everyday, but unexpected events and emotions will always come up unexpectedly.
Research by professors Robert Cialdini and Tim Church states that finding a buddy that keeps you accountable is one of the best ways to motivate change. It has even shown to be more effective than finding a mentor.
An accountability partner can be a friend who’s also learning a language, a teacher, or anyone that you trust and see often.
When learning anything, there are shortcuts that you can leverage, including languages. There are polyglots, linguists, and researchers that have laid out multiple language hacks that you should use.
Here are some that we recommend:
Daily immersion has been proven to be powerful. It’s much more effective to learn 15 minutes a day, than to learn for 3 hours a week. And it’s much more powerful to learn 3 hours a week than 10 hours a month.
This is because consistency trumps quality, and small achievements accumulate over time. The way to do this is to find ‘hidden’ free times in your day, and schedule learning time. It can be as little as 30 minutes or even 15 minutes.
The reality is no matter how busy we think we are, there’s always empty 15-30 minute slots in our schedule. Here’s an article we wrote on how to find more time in your schedule to learn anything.
Follow up resources we recommend:
You’ve read How to Learn Any Language On Your Own (Step-by-Step Guide), originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
You’re reading How to Learn Any Language On Your Own (Step-by-Step Guide), originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’re enjoying this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Learning a language on your own is not easy. But it is possible with the right strategy.
While we suggest finding a teacher or partner that can help shorten your learning curve, we also understand that not everyone has the budget or time.
Over the past few years, we’ve heard from many of our student who have tried learning a language on their own. They’ve shared from their own experience what they wish they would’ve done differently.
This is the single biggest feedback we’ve gotten from people who’ve taken the solo learning path. It turns out that some people are designed to learn new things on their own, while some of us are the contrast.
For example, some of us learn best by listening, while others retain more information when reading something (check out the 7 major learning styles). You have to reflect on your previous experience to understand how you’ve best learnt new skills in the past.
Unfortunately, most of us have been forced to learn via a limited learning style because of the traditional education system we grew up with. In short, not everyone is designed to learn new skills on their own. And by being self-aware of your shortcomings upfront, you can save yourself a lot of time, stress, and hassle.
If you have decided to learn a language on your own, the biggest obstacle for most people is persistency. In most cases, learning anything on your own will take much longer than getting professional help and guidance from someone who’s done it before.
This is why you need to have a strong inner purpose of why you’re learning a language. Maybe your family speaks another language, and you want to feel a deeper connection with them. Perhaps your spouse comes from a different culture, and you want to be able to communicate with his/her family.
Understanding why you’re learning a language is what’s going to inspire you to go through that lesson manual, attend those language exchanges, and to continue grinding it out when things inevitably gets tough.
If you’ve attended our free language masterclass, then you know we’ve discussed the cycles of the mastery curve. In case you missed it, the process of mastery is never a straight upward curve, no matter how talented you are. It’s a series of ups and downs, with many plateaus that come with it.
Once you know why you’re learning a language, you must have a firm end-goal in mind. Otherwise, you don’t have a target that aligns with your purpose.
Is your end goal to reach conversation proficiency? Or perhaps you want to become a fluent speaker.
But that’s only the first step. We also have to know in what timeframe we want to achieve our goals. If you have an overseas trip coming up in July, you may want to aim to hit your goal by May or June. If you’re learning for fun, you can be a little more lenient, but you still want to have a specific deadline.
Why do we want to do this? Because of Parkinson’s Law, which states that the amount of time that one has to perform a task is the amount of time it will take to complete the task. This means that often when we give ourselves 12 months to learn something, we’ll subconsciously spend 12 months learning it. Versus if we gave ourselves only 7 months, we’ll force ourselves to learn within that timeframe.
Now that we have our prerequisites, we’ll share our step-by-step process on how to learn a language on your own.
If you wanted to become a musician, you’ll need an instrument. If you wanted to get in better shape, you need weights and equipment. Learning a language is no different.
Language learners today have a plethora of tools and resources that we can leverage to learn faster. From mobile apps to podcasts, your options are limitless.
Check out our list of recommended language tools to get new ideas.
The second is to design your environment around your language. The reason why this is powerful is because there’s two main ways to learn something: actively and passively. While active learning is more impactful, we only have so much time in the day to actively learn a language.
Examples of passive learning includes:
What doesn’t get measured, won’t get better. This applies to our health life, business life, and others.
The mistake that most learners make is to measure progress in large milestones that are too far to imagine or track. Instead, we should focus on weekly, if not daily goals.
Here are a few ideas we suggest:
Having the right tools and strategy is only half the battle. Staying persistent and accountable is just as important, because learning a language is a marathon. It’s easy to say now that you’ll be able to put in an hour everyday, but unexpected events and emotions will always come up unexpectedly.
Research by professors Robert Cialdini and Tim Church states that finding a buddy that keeps you accountable is one of the best ways to motivate change. It has even shown to be more effective than finding a mentor.
An accountability partner can be a friend who’s also learning a language, a teacher, or anyone that you trust and see often.
When learning anything, there are shortcuts that you can leverage, including languages. There are polyglots, linguists, and researchers that have laid out multiple language hacks that you should use.
Here are some that we recommend:
Daily immersion has been proven to be powerful. It’s much more effective to learn 15 minutes a day, than to learn for 3 hours a week. And it’s much more powerful to learn 3 hours a week than 10 hours a month.
This is because consistency trumps quality, and small achievements accumulate over time. The way to do this is to find ‘hidden’ free times in your day, and schedule learning time. It can be as little as 30 minutes or even 15 minutes.
The reality is no matter how busy we think we are, there’s always empty 15-30 minute slots in our schedule. Here’s an article we wrote on how to find more time in your schedule to learn anything.
Follow up resources we recommend:
You’ve read How to Learn Any Language On Your Own (Step-by-Step Guide), originally posted on Pick the Brain | Motivation and Self Improvement. If you’ve enjoyed this, please visit our site for more inspirational articles.
Miami – Florida – USA (by Anish Patel)
Sig Nordal 