Within sight of downtown Miami, Biscayne National Park in Florida protects a rare combination of aquamarine waters, emerald islands and fish-bejeweled coral reefs. There’s also evidence of 10,000 years of human history, from pirates and shipwrecks to pineapple farmers and presidents. Outdoors enthusiasts can boat, fish, snorkel, camp, watch wildlife or simply enjoy a gorgeous sunrise over the ocean. Photo courtesy of Andrew R. Slaton.
Located in the clearing of a forest in Eumundi, Australia, this tent house was designed by Sparks Architects Pty Ltd in 2016. The home covers an area of 344 m2, and provides the perfect home for a family that enjoys contact with nature. At first glance, its roof reminds us of the typical tents seen in circuses. However, seeing it at the top of the hill, under the shade of..
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Anybody who has dated and experienced being in a relationship will know how complex the process can get. The longer you continue to see each other, the more dynamic the feelings become.
If you are still in the dark, here are 7 of the most obvious ways to tell if you’ve gone from dating to entering a relationship.
Before, you used to spend most Saturday nights dating people at a bar, cinema, or restaurant. Now that you’re in an actual relationship, it will no longer matter where you are dating. As long as you’re with your loved one, you’ll be happy.
Once you’ve already gotten over the infatuation stage and realized that you and your partner are in it for the long haul, you’re less likely to think about him all the time. This, however, doesn’t mean that you’re bad. It’s just your brain showing how settled you are.
In the delicate dating stage, one or two arguments can often spell the end of the romance. When you have settled into a real relationship, the bond between you and your partner is already strong enough that you no longer take silly misunderstandings seriously. Instead, you argue a bit, cool off, and the make up again.
During the dating stage, people tend to create the ideal versions of themselves. It’s a way to entice a partner. However, once you have found someone special, you begin to let your guards down and show your real self. You wear less makeup and you pay less attention to how you look.
Bringing up what you want in the future is probably one of the worst things you can do when you’re casually dating someone. It’s a sure-fire way to scare somebody off. This changes when you are in a relationship. You find freedom and excitement in discussing what might happen in the next few years.
The idea of meeting each other’s friends and family is always a bit awkward when you’re still in the early part of dating. By the time you are in a formal relationship, you probably already know each other’s friends’ first names. You might even be sending them Christmas and birthday cards regularly.
In a relationship, you no longer have to worry about other men or women paying close attention to your partner. Being in a formal relationship gives you more security since there’s less competition. Apart from that, there’s complete trust in one another, too.
The process of dating and entering a relationship isn’t at all bad. In fact, it’s interesting and exciting. Enjoy while you’re at it.
See Also: 5 Ways To Create the Foundation of a Long Term Relationship
The post 7 Ways To Tell That You’ve Gone From Dating To A Relationship appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
This peculiar construction is located in New Delhi, Delhi, India, and was created by Studio Wood in 2016. It was constructed with steel panels refurbished from shipping containers. The yellow-colored steel panels match perfectly with the terrace chairs. Furthermore, they’re perfectly adapted to the structure, giving it a unique and unusual look. A small garden is in the center, and serves as an escape from the main building, connected via..
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Our lives are spent building up to more important moments, later, the moments when we’ll be happy.
But when those moments come, we’re not happier. In fact, we’re already looking ahead to the next big moments: an upcoming trip, a big project being completed, meeting up with friends, getting that great thing you ordered online, finding your next favorite book, meal, drink, experience.
What if that wonderful moment we’ve been waiting for is this one, right now?
What if this very moment is the most important moment of our lives?
What if we stopped working for something later, and instead started paying full attention to right now?
What if we stopped thinking happiness is coming soon, and tried to see what was in front of us, and find happiness in that?
What if this were the moment we’ve been waiting for all along?
If this is the most important moment of your life, some ways you could appreciate it:
These are just a few ideas — let yourself explore a thousand other ways to appreciate this most important of moments, in the most loving way you can — with your full attention.
Bishop – California – USA (by ™ Pacheco)
💙 Light channel on 500px by Jason Stander, Polokwane, South… http://ift.tt/2edcbtM
The remodeling of this two-story house, dating from the 1930s and located in the South West of England, was completed by Ström Architect in 2015. It is surrounded by fields and vast forests of fruit trees. Its outer walls, lined with wood, make its appearance integrate with the surroundings. Its fireplace, lined with white bricks, creates a perfect contrast of colors and textures. Its terraces and large well cared-for gardens..
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We often judge activities based on how much they can change us physically. However, when it comes to their mental effects, we rarely care.
I used to be a runner. Treadmill or no treadmill, rain or snow, I ran every day from 5:30 to 6:30 in the morning and I hated every minute of it. From the moment I tied my laces until my last mile, running scared me.
So, why did I do it?
I used to be a chubby kid. I was ‘that kid’ who deliberately tried to get sick for sports day. During college, every time I ran, I had billions of voices shunning me down. At times, I heard the voice of my soccer coach calling me a ’tractor’. Other times, it was my classmates commenting on my man boobs from the sideline as I struggled to finish the race.
So, to me, running during college was a way to prove something. It was unhealthy, but I had to do it to cope.
However, I realized that I had to let go. I had to grow. That is when I came across jumping rope.
It has been a year and a half and jumping rope didn’t only alter my physique, it has helped me develop my character as well, by teaching me lessons about life and fitness.
Here are some of them.
There are a handful of jumping rope benefits once you get the hang of the activity. If you’re just starting out, you may need some trial and error before you get the right form. That process requires patience and perseverance. There’s no place for ego.
I used to run despite hating it because I felt I had to prove something to someone. It was as if I was still competing with my friends in high school.
Because I failed multiple times before finally getting the right form, jumping rope made me realized that I was just competing with myself. I did not have to get better than anyone else- just myself.
And that change in mindset helped me optimize everything.
Failure helped me touch base with reality and develop patience. It killed all that toxic thoughts that were bottled up inside. This made consistency easier.
As my form started getting better, my ego got bigger, too. In the middle of my workout, I would often find myself thinking about how cool I looked.
And those were the times when the rope would get stuck between my legs. Reality would hit me, forcing me to focus on what I was actually doing.
Thus, jumping rope trained me to stay focused. My coordination got better and I experienced improved balance.
These things significantly changed the quality of my work.
When we hit bottom, the obvious advice people give us is to try again. And, although that’s good, there’s something essential that we miss.
Reflecting on our failures.
What went wrong? Was it something out of control or something that can easily be changed?
Jumping rope is all about having the right form- knees bent, elbows drawn in and jumping no more than an inch.
Every time I fail at my routine, I’d reflect on whether it was due to a wrong form or lack of focus. After knowing what went wrong, I make the necessary adjustments and do it again until I get a more favorable result.
I’ve started applying this to the other areas of my life and it has optimized everything I do.
In a world that is so driven by accomplishments, we often lose sight of what is really important. A lot of us want more degrees, achievements and recognitions. Because we aspire to do so many things, we usually end up finishing nothing.
Think about how that applies to fitness. We have so many ways to get fit and, yet, most of us still fail to achieve our body goals.
As I got more acquainted with jumping rope, I started doing High Intensity Interval Training for thirty minutes every day. That’s it. No running or any other form of cardio.
This helped me gain clarity on what I really needed to do to accomplish my keystone tasks. It included practicing Intermittent Fasting, eating the right foods, hitting my macro numbers, and giving my hundred and twenty percent during HIIT.
It turned out that the combination of HIIT workouts and intermittent fasting is exactly what I needed to get lean.
See Also: How To Start Interval Training The Right Way
Working out can mean effort and extra time. When you are not used to it, it’s easy to consider it as a burden, which leads to inconsistency.
As proof, just think about the people who refuse to work out just because they don’t have the time.
But, what if moving your body was essential? What if it was a requirement to living a healthy life?
After every HIIT session, I felt great from the inside. It’s as if my body was thanking me.
My exercise routines last for thirty minutes a day only. Since it was short, I felt motivated to start doing it consistently until I was able to see positive results.
This feeling and the results I got helped me learn an important lesson about our bodies: they are made to move.
Jumping rope helped me fall in love with fitness. Working out wasn’t something I had to do anymore- it’s something I want to do.
See Also: Finding your Fitness Passion
Jumping rope benefits are endless. More than your body, you can also use it to train your mind.
This, however, is not a plea for you to go start jumping rope. Instead, it’s a plea for you to go explore the different ways you can help your body and mind. See what works for you and what doesn’t and adjust accordingly.
The post What Jumping Rope Taught Me About Life And Fitness appeared first on Dumb Little Man.
Note: This post is written by Remy Bernard
Working from home, for some, can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you have a freedom that many cubicle dwellers dream of. No early morning commute to the office, no workplace drama (hopefully), and your schedule becomes much more flexible. When your office is your living room, oversleeping that extra 20 minutes because you had trouble falling asleep the night before becomes less of a problem. Even if you aren’t your own boss and are working for someone else remotely, logging your hours from the comfort of your bedroom or kitchen if you want to is a liberating experience.
However, the working from home arrangement is not without it’s very real challenges. Some of this depends on your personality, but in the conversations that I’ve had with people that work from home, retaining your focus and motivation throughout the day can be difficult. After all, your home is your refuge away from the rest of the world, and it becomes easy to make it your refuge away from work without even realizing it. Until you’ve done it, you don’t realize how easily distracted from your work you can become by a seemingly harmless household side task. If you have kids in the house, this can be ever more difficult and managing those boundaries is another article entirely.
Luckily, the situation is not doomed and there are some great techniques that I’ve discovered along the way through my own experience and in talking with others in a similar situation.
Even though we all only have 24 hours to make it happen every day, working from home tends to skew this perspective. Common thought patterns like “This can wait until later” start to emerge. Before you know it, you’ve skipped this, spent too long on that, and now the three things you were supposed to do today have to wait until tomorrow. I can’t begin to tell you how far the unfocused mind can extend this cycle.
My tip here is to not only structure out your day, but also assign each part of that structure a definitive time limit.
There is something about establishing ahead of time what I will be doing and for how long that enhances my focus. As humans, our minds thrive on structure (even if we don’t like to admit it), and planning out the day can go a long way.
I picked this tip up from a colleague who was an attorney and also worked from his home office. Every morning he would wake up, shower, and get dressed in a suit and tie, only to settle into a day’s work three steps from his bedroom.
Personally, I don’t wear dress clothes while at home, but I do make sure that I transition out of the clothes I slept in. When I don’t, I carry with me a different energy that doesn’t translate to a solid, focused day of work ahead. Some people might be different, but I have found the mindset this creates to make all the difference in the word.
Part of the beauty of working from home is escaping the 9-5 lifestyle, but this should not be an excuse to procrastinate and prioritizing non-work related activities during working hours. The solution is simple: set clear working hours and don’t deviate from them.
Figure out at what time of the day you are most productive and make that the time you work. The trick here is sticking to it. Establish boundaries with people and things that might encroach upon that time and watch your productivity skyrocket.
This one is important, as it’s easy to get carried away and spend hours heads down in a project without resetting. While this is sometimes necessary, doing this all day every day is a sure way to lead to burnout. Even if you can keep this pace up for a month, eventually it will catch up to you.
Instead of crashing and burning, I like to take breaks every two hours or so. You don’t even have to leave the house necessarily, although a brisk 10-20 minute walk is a great way to break up the day. This is the time where you are giving yourself permission to lose focus and let your mind wander. This can look like a quick power nap, going out to grab lunch, or even a short workout. Just do something that pulls you away from the desk and out of work mode. When you come back to your scheduled task, you’ll see it with fresh eyes and renewed focus.
I can’t stand most music when I’m trying to work, but I have found that the right kind of music really helps me focus in on the task at hand. I believe this works because music can help stimulate parts of your brain that would otherwise be open for distraction. There are playlists on Spotify and YouTube that are meant for focus and working. These tend to be made up of songs without lyrics that have a subtle, driving beat. If this isn’t your cup of tea, jazz or piano music also works great.
What have you discovered that help you maintain focus at home? Please let us know in the comments.
– About the Writer –
Remy Bernard – Owner and Editor at Miss Mamie’s Cupcakes
A baker, chef and writer, Remy started missmamiescupcakes.com as a way to deepen and spread her passion for making delicious food. She can also be found on Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook.
– Related Resources –
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