Author: signordal

5 Essential Tips for Keeping Your Sobriety When Traveling

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*This article is for recovering addicts and how you can stay sober while traveling.

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.” – Jack Kerouac

Traveling may bring a multitude of new sights, new experiences and new cultures. However, as a recovering addict, there is one very important fact you need to remember – you are still YOU. You still have your “triggers,” you still have your weaknesses and, ultimately, you still have your addiction. Therefore, it is essential that you prepare yourself prior to making your trip.

Don’t get me wrong. It is not dangerous for you to have travel as an integral part of your recovery; in fact, quite the opposite. It will broaden your mind and give you, hopefully, fresh perspectives on how you can best live the life you want and deserve.

However, for travel to impact upon you in the best possible way, preparation is the key. Remember the “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail” edict? This is so relevant to you as a recovering addict for you will have much to lose. No-one is more aware of that than you.

This article will provide you with 5 essential tips for ensuring you maintain your hard-fought sobriety when confronted with new sights, experiences and cultures. These tips are designed to assist you make the right choices and decisions whilst traveling. As a recovering addict myself, and a guy who loves to travel as often as possible, what I wish to share has come about through good advice from others and positive experiences.

Recovery Relapse Plan

group travels

In the more secure and stable environment of your home and your local community, you have successfully created a life that keeps you sober, free of alcohol and/or drug use. Part of your success is this familiarity with your daily life, your daily routine and your local support; be that friends, sponsors, meetings, etc. When you are travelling, away on your vacation, these things are removed from you. Therefore, it is up to you to develop your own relapse prevention plan.

You should:

  • Tell your sponsor (if you have one) about your travel plans. As with everything else, it should not be a secret. Should you feel that you need to speak to your sponsor, let this person know that he or she will be the first person you call.
  • Tell your family and friends. Let them know that you may feel the need to call them too.

As part of your recovery, you will have identified your triggers, and physical and mental scenarios that have previously led you to addictive behaviour. Be introspective and analyze those triggers again. Remind yourself of them fully and be completely aware of the danger they pose to your sobriety.

Organize Activities

A vacation should be just that – time for you to rest and relax. However, as a recovering addict, you will know that boredom, inactivity and the compulsion to do something active always needs to be addressed.

So, in your travel plans, incorporate activities, tours, and other scheduled events to ensure this doesn’t happen. Whatever type of vacation you are planning, engage in activities as part of a group. Remember, for you, isolation is not your friend.

Keeping Your Routine

If you are able, incorporate as much of your normal daily routine into your days while on vacation. For example, attend meetings, maintain your healthy diet and exercise regime, and keep a journal of thoughts and feelings. Even waking at your usual time will help you maintain your equilibrium in your temporary new surroundings. Always endeavor to maintain whatever works as part of your usual recovery routine in this new one.

Sober Vacation Websites

Did you know that these even existed? Well, they do – for the sole needs of those like you and I that require assistance with our travel preparations. For example, Sober Vacations International offer a wide-ranging variety of vacations, from safaris to cruises to all-inclusive beach resorts. Sober Travelers offer vacations specifically based around the 12-Step Program. Even Expedia can provide a whole host of destinations designed for those wishing to keep their sobriety.

….and ENJOY!

have fun

By incorporating all of the above into your travel preparations, you will dramatically increase your chances of a relapse-free trip. So there’s only one thing left for you to do. Quite simply, enjoy yourself.

From my own experiences, traveling has given me a much clearer view on how I wish to lead my new life. Living sober (as I have done for a significant number of years now) has not stopped me from wanting to enjoy every moment of my travels. The people I have met, the new sober friends I have made, the cultures I have learned from – all of it is now an integral part of my personal recovery. It can be for you as well.

Happy, Safe & Sober

Let’s recap. Your 5 essential tips for keeping your sobriety when traveling are these: work out your personal relapse prevention plan, organize activities for your destination, keep as much of your daily routine as possible, make use of the available sober vacation websites, and, last but definitely not least, go and enjoy yourself. If you have any other advice for fellow recovering addicts with regard to ensuring their sobriety when traveling, please feel free to share in the comments below.

One last quote for you, one that I totally agree with.

“Hey, people who travel with their bed pillow. You look insane.” – Jim Gaffigan

Happy, safe and sober travels to you all.

See Also: 6 Steps to have a Stress Free Travel including Yoga

 

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lost in iceland by vulturelabs

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B&W photography workshops in London, Venice and Iceland

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Profile picture rules every professional should follow

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Snow clings to the jagged sides of Devils Tower National…

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Snow clings to the jagged sides of Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming. This astounding geologic feature is considered sacred to the Northern Plains Indians and other tribes, who called it “Bear’s Tipi” or “Bear’s Lodge.” Hundreds of parallel cracks make it one of the finest crack climbing areas in North America. Devils Tower entices us to explore and define our place in the natural and cultural world. Photo by National Park Service.

What Can Employers Do About The Student Loan Crisis?

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There’s news about the student loan crisis just about every day. College tuition is going up at a greater rate than wages. Daycare costs more than college, leaving parents unable to save beforehand. The average student graduates with over $37,000 in student loan debt, often deferring payments and increasing their debt overall.

According to Florida Representative Dennis Ross, “Unfortunately, most students today are saddled with extraordinary debt and are entering one of the weakest economic recoveries in history. . . More than 43 million Americans owe nearly $1.3 trillion in student loans, with a repayment delinquency rate of 11.6 percent. That’s more than $150 billion in student loan delinquency, not including interest. This is a serious problem we cannot continue to ignore.”

An Educated Workforce Is Better For The Economy

college students

We all know that individuals who have achieved a higher level of education do better financially in the long run, but that principle also scales to the entire economy. Our economy actually does better when more people are better educated.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, investing in education is the single best thing we can do as a society to better the lives of individuals. In a recent study, they found:

  • States with the highest wages are also the best educated
  • Investing in education can lead to greater economic opportunity
  • States with more educated workers can attract higher wage jobs
  • Initial investment in education can return greater tax income to the state in the long run as wages grow

See Also: How a 529 Plan Can Help You Save for Your College Education

Why Employers Should Pitch In

working student

Even if some magical force rendered college tuition free tomorrow, we would still have an entire generation of students saddled with student loan debt. More and more companies are offering signing bonuses, tuition reimbursement, and other forms of help for students these days. Companies want to attract and retain top talent, and offering relief from student loans is certainly likely to help you keep your employees happy.

In one study, healthcare giant Cigna was able to achieve a 129% ROI on its tuition reimbursement program, mainly through retaining talent. In that same study, employees who took advantage of the program were able to gain promotions within the company, resulting in an average wage increase of 43%.

Even companies like Best Buy and Starbucks are investing in the education of their workforce, with Starbucks explaining, “College education is a priority for Starbucks partners, but for many, the rise in tuition costs has put college out of reach. We know that there is a clear and demonstrated value of having a college degree, both the opportunity it affords and the measurable impact on earning potential throughout a lifetime.”

One of the student loan repayment proposals on the table right now was proposed by U.S. Representative Dennis Ross. Under his plan employers would get tax credits for matching up to $500 a year in student loan repayment for up to 3 years, but only for students who have an associates degree or higher and who have more than $10,000 in student loan debt. Says Ross of the plan, “Overall, this bill is designed to help students become gainfully employed and pay off their loans while employers are benefited by hiring skilled and educated employees with a vested interest in long-term employment.”

Work Study Programs May Not Be Enough

Many students opt to take advantage of work study or resident advisor positions in order to lessen the burden of college costs, but that may not be enough. If employers can pitch in to make up the difference, there will be a better educated and less burdened talent pool to be attracted and retained, and there may even be some tax benefit to employers in the near future.

See Also: 7 Ways to Save Money while Earning a College Degree 

Student loans follow people around for the rest of their lives, unable to be bankrupted. In today’s economy with stagnating wages and greater competition over jobs, student loan debt is tantamount to a noose around your employees’ necks.

Preventing student loan debt before it starts is crucial to loosening those nooses. Learn more about the possible alternatives to student loan debt from this infographic. You might be surprised how many other options are out there!

Source

Hacking

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41 Inspiring Quotes on Failure (and How to Handle It)

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On some days things don’t go as planned. You fall. Or fail. Or stumble.

It’s a part of a life well lived but how you look at and handle these dark or negative situations can have a huge impact on your life, success and happiness.

In this week’s article I’d like to share the best advice and thoughts on failure from the past from the people who walked this earth before us (well, quite a few of them are still here and walking among us).

This is 41 of the most motivating, though-provoking and helpful thoughts on failure and how to handle it from the past 2500 years.

  1. “Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.”
    – C. S. Lewis
  2. “I can accept failure, everyone fails at something. But I can’t accept not trying.”
    – Michael Jordan
  3. “No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.“
    – Napoleon Hill
  4. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better.”
    – Samuel Beckett
  5. “The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.”
    – Buddha
  6. “An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.”
    – Charles F. Kettering
  7. “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.”
    – Confucius
  8. “Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.”
    – Henry Ford
  9. “When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.”
    – George Bernard Shaw
  10. “A man may fail many times but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.”
    – John Burroughs
  11. “It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.”
    – J.K. Rowling
  12. “To be wrong is nothing unless you continue to remember it.”
    – Confucius
  13. “Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new.”
    – Albert Einstein
  14. “Try a thing you haven’t done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.”
    – Virgil Thomson
  15. “When we give ourselves permission to fail, we, at the same time, give ourselves permission to excel.”
    – Eloise Ristad
  16. “Part of being a man is learning to take responsibility for your successes and for your failures. You can’t go blaming others or being jealous. Seeing somebody else’s success as your failure is a cancerous way to live.”
    – Kevin Bacon
  17. “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
    – Douglas Adams
  18. “Failure isn’t fatal, but failure to change might be.”
    – John Wooden
  19. “I’ve come to believe that all my past failure and frustrations were actually laying the foundation for the understandings that have created the new level of living I now enjoy.”
    – Anthony Robbins
  20. “Failure after long perseverance is much grander than never to have a striving good enough to be called a failure.”
    – George Eliot
  21. “A man may fall many times, but he won’t be a failure until he says that someone pushed him.”
    – Elmer G. Letterman
  22. “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent in doing nothing.”
    – George Bernard Shaw
  23. “What do you first do when you learn to swim? You make mistakes, do you not? And what happens? You make other mistakes, and when you have made all the mistakes you possibly can without drowning – and some of them many times over – what do you find? That you can swim? Well – life is just the same as learning to swim! Do not be afraid of making mistakes, for there is no other way of learning how to live!”
    – Alfred Adler
  24. “Winners are not afraid of losing. But losers are. Failure is part of the process of success. People who avoid failure also avoid success.”
    – Robert T. Kiyosaki
  25. “I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”
    – Michael Jordan
  26. “Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.”
    – Napoleon Hill
  27. “You’ll always miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”
    – Wayne Gretzky
  28. “A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.”
    – John C. Maxwell
  29. “There are no failures – just experiences and your reactions to them.”
    – Tom Krause
  30. “Success isn’t permanent and failure isn’t fatal.”
    – Mike Ditka
  31. “Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.”
    – Winston Churchill
  32. “Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of a greater or equal benefit.”
    – Napoleon Hill
  33. “The biggest risk is not taking any risk. In a world that changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.”
    – Mark Zuckerberg
  34. “No human ever became interesting by not failing. The more you fail and recover and improve, the better you are as a person. Ever meet someone who’s always had everything work out for them with zero struggle? They usually have the depth of a puddle. Or they don’t exist.”
    – Chris Hardwick
  35. “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
    – Elbert Hubbard
  36. “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you always got.”
    – Mark Twain
  37. “Success builds character, failure reveals it.”
    – Dave Checkett
  38. “Everything you want is on the other side of fear.”
    – Jack Canfield
  39. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.”
    – Ken Robinson
  40. “Remember that failure is an event, not a person.”
    – Zig Ziglar
  41. “Most great people have attained their greatest success just one step beyond their greatest failure.”
    – Napoleon Hill

What is your favorite quote on failure? Feel free to share the best one(s) you have found in this article or in your life in the comments section below.

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Robert Hirschfield Architects Renovate a Private Residence in London, England

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Every home has a center of attention. That special place where our eyes go when we enter it. In this home, this happens to be the stairs, without a doubt. Designed by Fowler and Co., these spectacular stairs move in a helical balustrade formation, slowly and smoothly guiding us from one floor to another. It was assembled on site, and effortlessly became the focal point of this renovation by Robert..

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