How To Be Happier

"Most people are about as happy as they make up their minds to be." - Abraham Lincoln, 16th President of the United States

Think of a happy friend, neighbor, or classmate. When you think of them, you become happy too-- and people you touch may also become happier. A happy person's influence spreads out three degrees, according to scientists who have been studying people over twenty-plus years (Framingham Heart Study).

We have some control over how happy we are. Here are some tips on how to be happier:

1) Find ten things to be grateful about -- every day.

This is one of the most effective ways to be happier. Studies of lottery winners and paraplegics alike show that a person's individual level of happiness is directly related to their own perception and ability to find happiness, regardless of the situation. When you are grateful you are happier. 

 2) Seek out happy friends.

Make friends with people who have a cheerful outlook and an enthusiastic attitude. They will help remind you of things to be happy about in life. As an alternative, start minimizing your time with negative, whiner, or complaining people.

 3) Go for a 15-minute walk.

Fresh air and a change of perspective help move you towards happiness. Find a patch of nature like a community garden, a park, or a lake to walk around.

 4) Breathe deeply.

Believe it or not, you may not be getting enough life-giving oxygen. Sit still for a moment and breathe deeply ten times --- with the added boost of revitalization, you may find yourself in a happier frame of mind.

 5) Find the small stuff that makes you happy - and do it every day.

As creatures of habit, we crave routine. Incorporate something that brings you happiness into your daily routine, so you experience that mood enhancement every day. A "small thing" could be anything that elevates your spirit and is healthy for you and the people around you: it might mean using a favorite toothpaste, watering your potted plants, a familiar bike ride to campus or work, a sharp pencil, five minutes of doing something relaxing, a happy picture on your screen, your favorite tunes on your playlist, a daily massage, or anything that brings you pleasure.

Think of happiness as a number of happy moments, stretching out to infinity --- and go from one of these moments to the next, to the next, to the next.

What does it mean when a lady gets a tattoo?

I was far more nervous about my second tattoo than my first, and it took me a long time to figure out why. All the apprehension I had when I went in for the first time – questions of pain, regret, family approval – were, I think, pretty standard things you feel mildly obliged to worry about; and they all faded away as soon as my tattoo artist started, never to return. I thought the lead up to my second would be anxiety free.

The difference between the two tattoos is this: the first is on my back; the second on my upper arm. That is, pretty clearly visible, especially on formal occasions (which come up a bit at my work). I knew, after I got my first tattoo, that I loved it and I loved the tattoo aesthetic. I knew that I wanted more. I had – or have – rarely been so certain of things that can’t be taken back. But there was some part of me didn’t want other people to know that.

It can be hard for a woman to assert ownership of her body. We grow up in a world in which our bodies are battlegrounds: politically, religiously, ideologically, and to differing extents all over the world. I think we become aware very early on that there are people out there who dispute our claim to have control over our own bodies, concerning everything from our right to choose, to how we present ourselves in public, to our sexual habits and inclinations.

I don’t mean to compare hesitation to get a tattoo with the struggle for reproductive rights, suffrage, freedom from violence, or any of the other (far more pressing) concerns for women around the world. But I do mean to suggest that they are in some small way connected, through the sometimes unconscious processes of socialisation.

It is not surprising, after all, that this millennia old struggle for control should inform our ideas of what is beautiful and desirable, and that this should filter through media, advertising and art to us. Tattoos, I would argue, are a small stand against the dominant aesthetic paradigm which equates femininity to emptiness.

Besides tattoos, think of the many circumstances in which filled (or positive) space equates to masculinity, and empty (or negative) space equates to femininity. Scars, for example; a scar on a man is sexy: it speaks of experience, survival, strength. On a woman, it equates to damage, carelessness, and victimhood.

Tara Cartland

Think, even, of the aesthetics of the cosmetics industry: flawless skin and hairless bodies. No stretch marks, wrinkles, moles, or body hair. No signs of aging or experience, please. It’s also no co-incidence that the traditional Western wedding (and debutant) dress is white: it symbolises not only purity, but vacancy.

Even the traditional rituals of such ceremonies suggests that we do not define ourselves; wepresent ourselves to other people, and through the course of our lives are defined according to and within tightly controlled and constructed social occasions.

Upon thinking about this, I realised that there was some part of me that bought into this idea. That wanted to maintain the idea of myself as a blank slate, and a space for someone else’s projections. Not ‘the girl with tattoos’, but ‘the girl who could be anything you want’. Is that a healthy impulse? I don’t think so. Why do I care more about preserving the non-existent tabula rasa of my body than asserting my individuality in a way that makes me happy?

It was a while before I was comfortable saying: I don’t.

And I love my new tattoo: a black ink sketch of Charles Darwin’s predicted moth, its wings spread and its unlikely, long proboscis arcing up my arm. It’s a tribute to the ideas that have shaped me – literally and intellectually. It gets its fair share of comments; most are overwhelmingly positive, and some are not. It turns out visible tattoos are an excellent litmus test for awful people: “I can’t believe,” a stranger, male, said to me one night without the slightest hint of irony, “that a girl knows about science.” I was happy to have proved him wrong.

In the context of our modern femininity and our ongoing battles, I think there’s something wonderfully revolutionary about tattoos. They are a small flag which says, this is mine. This body, which I have a fleeting possession over for too few decades, is wholly mine and all I am: complete and sovereign.

http://www.mamamia.com.au/style/what-does-it-mean-when-women-have-tattoos/

Am I In Love 21 Signs That Help Decode That Fuzzy Feeling

Am I in love? – The 21 love signs to decode that fuzzy feeling!

Love can be confusing, especially if you’re experiencing that feeling for the first time with someone new. It leaves you feeling scared and yet overwhelmingly excited.

Use these 21 signs to find out if you’re in love, and if you do experience most of these 21 signs, you’re truly and deeply in the first stage of love, in a perfect start to something that could change your life for the better, forever! 

#1 Awesome and oh-so-perfect. When you start to fall in love with someone, everything about them would seem so perfect. And every second longer that you stare, they just seem to get better and better. And you can’t imagine anyone in the world who’s more perfect, and more importantly, perfect for you!

#2 You can’t focus. You’re constantly distracted and have a hard time focusing on anything other than this new person in your life. Everything other than your new lover including your work, your friends and your commitments start to take a backseat.

#3 You feel selfless. You can’t help but put this person’s needs before yours all the time. You’re eager to sacrifice your wants just to see your new lover happy because watching them happy makes you happy.

#4 Mood swings and excitement. You’d feel excited all the time when you start falling in love with someone. But with that high of excitement also come the terribly painful lows of disappointment. You get excited easily when your sweetheart does something nice for you. But at the same time, you get disappointed very easily too, especially when your sweetie doesn’t call you on time or forgets to text you goodnight! 

#5 Daydreaming and fantasies. Your mind drifts away into fantasyland almost all day. You may be in the middle of an important meeting or having a conversation with friends, but your mind may involuntarily drift into a daydream about the last time you and your new lover did something together.

#6 There’s not enough time. When you’re falling in love with someone, time may stand still when both of you are together. But yet, there’s just not enough time to be with each other! You could spend all day in each other’s arms, but when it comes to saying goodbye, it’s still the hardest thing to say to each other.

#7 They’re so cute. Everything about this person you love would start to seem charming or cute. It could be something as trivial as the way they run their hands through their hair or the way they smile when you compliment them. But to you, that gesture of theirs would make your heart melt in a flash! 

#8 Jealousy and possessiveness. You’d feel very possessive of your lover. You may not always display your jealousy or your possessiveness to them, but you’d feel a twang of jealousy welling within you if you see your new lover having a flirty conversation with an attractive someone.

#9 Happy events. You create memories or try to compare anything both of you do together to something more beautiful, meaningful and dramatic. Something as trivial as having coffee together one evening could convince you that it one of the happiest evenings of your life.

#10 Our place. If you’re falling in love with this person, you’d start naming places as “our place”, or “the place we laughed so much” or “the place which sells the cupcakes both of us love”. Doing that makes both of you feel closer, creates more together-memories faster and makes your relationship seem more meaningful and important. 

#11 Mesmerized. You’re mesmerized when you listen to them talk about something. You don’t want them to stop talking, and you could spend all day watching those lips move so beautifully while saying anything at all. In fact, at times, you may be so mesmerized by them that you may not even realize what they’re talking about.

#12 Spread the word. When you love someone, you can’t stop talking about them. You’d talk about how amazing they are, how wonderful you feel and how romantic the world feels all of a sudden, with everyone who’s willing to listen to you.

#13 Rolling in bed. Rolling around in bed is a definite sign of falling in love. When you start to fall for someone, the comfort of a soft, cozy bed would remind you of your new lover’s touch. And every morning, you’d spend a few more minutes running your hands around your bed and fantasizing about how perfect it would be if your lover was in bed with you. 

#14 Your jaws hurt. No matter how hard you try, you can’t clamp that smile shut even if your jaws hurt. The world looks so beautiful, and everything in it just makes you smile and jump.

#15 Special times. You constantly think of ways to do something special for them. When you’re shopping, you feel like picking something up for them. When you’re having lunch with friends at a really nice place, you wonder how it would be to come to this place with your new boyfriend or girlfriend.

#16 Your ex vanishes. You may have been haunted by the memories of your ex for several months, but all of a sudden your ex doesn’t hurt you anymore. In fact, they don’t even exist anymore!

#17 You’ve found the one. No one else seems as attractive and perfect as your new partner anymore. You could walk into a club and see the most gorgeous people on earth, but somehow, none of them seem as exciting as the one you’re falling in love with. 

#18 Entangled hands. You just can’t keep your hands off this person when you’re with them. You hold hands while walking, while talking and even while sitting at a restaurant *even if that means you have to use only one hand to cut your steak!*

#19 The big future. You make plans for the future, even if it’s only in your head. You imagine how wonderful the years ahead would be with this person in your life. 

#20 You melt just a little bit. You can’t stop grinning or blushing while talking to this person you love. Their compliments make you blush. Their longing stares make you melt like butter. And their warm hugs just make you want to sink into them completely.

#21 Those love songs. You may hate love songs to begin with, but when you fall in love, you can’t help but listen to mushy love songs and visualize your own fairytale romance in it. Somehow, love songs always make you feel more in love, especially if the lyrics seem to coincide with your own love story.

The first stage of love, the infatuation stage, is always wonderful, full of romance and unquenchable passion. And it’s a perfect step to pave the way into the next eight stages of love, which will only get better and more meaningful. But which stage are you in right now? Or are you even in love?

http://www.lovepanky.com/flirting-flings/dating-game/am-i-in-love-signs

How to discover your life purpose in about 20 minutes

How do you discover your real purpose in life? I’m not talking about your job, your daily responsibilities, or even your long-term goals. I mean the real reason why you’re here at all — the very reason you exist.

Perhaps you’re a rather nihilistic person who doesn’t believe you have a purpose and that life has no meaning. Doesn’t matter. Not believing that you have a purpose won’t prevent you from discovering it, just as a lack of belief in gravity won’t prevent you from tripping. All that a lack of belief will do is make it take longer, so if you’re one of those people, just change the number 20 in the title of this blog entry to 40 (or 60 if you’re really stubborn). Most likely though if you don’t believe you have a purpose, then you probably won’t believe what I’m saying anyway, but even so, what’s the risk of investing an hour just in case?

Here’s a story about Bruce Lee which sets the stage for this little exercise. A master martial artist asked Bruce to teach him everything Bruce knew about martial arts. Bruce held up two cups, both filled with liquid. “The first cup,” said Bruce, “represents all of your knowledge about martial arts. The second cup represents all of my knowledge about martial arts. If you want to fill your cup with my knowledge, you must first empty your cup of your knowledge.”

If you want to discover your true purpose in life, you must first empty your mind of all the false purposes you’ve been taught (including the idea that you may have no purpose at all).

So how to discover your purpose in life? While there are many ways to do this, some of them fairly involved, here is one of the simplest that anyone can do. The more open you are to this process, and the more you expect it to work, the faster it will work for you. But not being open to it or having doubts about it or thinking it’s an entirely idiotic and meaningless waste of time won’t prevent it from working as long as you stick with it — again, it will just take longer to converge.

Here’s what to do:

1. Take out a blank sheet of paper or open up a word processor where you can type (I prefer the latter because it’s faster).
2. Write at the top, “What is my true purpose in life?”
3. Write an answer (any answer) that pops into your head. It doesn’t have to be a complete sentence. A short phrase is fine.
4. Repeat step 3 until you write the answer that makes you cry. This is your purpose.

That’s it. It doesn’t matter if you’re a counselor or an engineer or a bodybuilder. To some people this exercise will make perfect sense. To others it will seem utterly stupid. Usually it takes 15-20 minutes to clear your head of all the clutter and the social conditioning about what you think your purpose in life is. The false answers will come from your mind and your memories. But when the true answer finally arrives, it will feel like it’s coming to you from a different source entirely.

For those who are very entrenched in low-awareness living, it will take a lot longer to get all the false answers out, possibly more than an hour. But if you persist, after 100 or 200 or maybe even 500 answers, you’ll be struck by the answer that causes you to surge with emotion, the answer that breaks you. If you’ve never done this, it may very well sound silly to you. So let it seem silly, and do it anyway.

As you go through this process, some of your answers will be very similar. You may even re-list previous answers. Then you might head off on a new tangent and generate 10-20 more answers along some other theme. And that’s fine. You can list whatever answer pops into your head as long as you just keep writing.

At some point during the process (typically after about 50-100 answers), you may want to quit and just can’t see it converging. You may feel the urge to get up and make an excuse to do something else. That’s normal. Push past this resistance, and just keep writing. The feeling of resistance will eventually pass.

You may also discover a few answers that seem to give you a mini-surge of emotion, but they don’t quite make you cry — they’re just a bit off. Highlight those answers as you go along, so you can come back to them to generate new permutations. Each reflects a piece of your purpose, but individually they aren’t complete. When you start getting these kinds of answers, it just means you’re getting warm. Keep going.

It’s important to do this alone and with no interruptions. If you’re a nihilist, then feel free to start with the answer, “I don’t have a purpose,” or “Life is meaningless,” and take it from there. If you keep at it, you’ll still eventually converge.

When I did this exercise, it took me about 25 minutes, and I reached my final answer at step 106. Partial pieces of the answer (mini-surges) appeared at steps 17, 39, and 53, and then the bulk of it fell into place and was refined through steps 100-106. I felt the feeling of resistance (wanting to get up and do something else, expecting the process to fail, feeling very impatient and even irritated) around steps 55-60. At step 80 I took a 2-minute break to close my eyes, relax, clear my mind, and to focus on the intention for the answer to come to me — this was helpful as the answers I received after this break began to have greater clarity.

Here was my final answer: to live consciously and courageously, to resonate with love and compassion, to awaken the great spirits within others, and to leave this world in peace.

When you find your own unique answer to the question of why you’re here, you will feel it resonate with you deeply. The words will seem to have a special energy to you, and you will feel that energy whenever you read them.

Discovering your purpose is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it with you on a daily basis and working on yourself to the point where you become that purpose.

If you’re inclined to ask why this little process works, just put that question aside until after you’ve successfully completed it. Once you’ve done that, you’ll probably have your own answer to why it works. Most likely if you ask 10 different people why this works (people who’ve successfully completed it), you’ll get 10 different answers, all filtered through their individual belief systems, and each will contain its own reflection of truth.

Obviously, this process won’t work if you quit before convergence. I’d guesstimate that 80-90% of people should achieve convergence in less than an hour. If you’re really entrenched in your beliefs and resistant to the process, maybe it will take you 5 sessions and 3 hours, but I suspect that such people will simply quit early (like within the first 15 minutes) or won’t even attempt it at all. But if you’re drawn to read this blog (and haven’t been inclined to ban it from your life yet), then it’s doubtful you fall into this group.

Give it a shot 

http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/01/how-to-discover-your-life-purpose-in-about-20-minutes/

12 Rude Revelations About Sex

In order to transcend the discomfort that sex typically stirs, you may need to radically rethink desire, marriage, fidelity, and much more.

By Alain de Botton, published on January 02, 2013 - last reviewed on January 02, 2013

Sex, we have been led to believe, is as natural as breathing. But in fact, contends British philosopher Alain de Botton, it is "close to rocket science in complexity." It's not only a powerful force, it's often contrary to many other things we care about. Sex inherently sets up conflicts within us. We crave sex with people we don't know or love. It makes us want to do things that seem immoral or degrading, like slapping someone or being tied up. We feel awkward asking the people we love for the sex acts we really want.
There's no denying that sex has its sweaty charms, and in its most exquisite moments dissolves the isolation that embodied life imposes on us. But those moments are rare, the exception rather than the rule, says de Botton, founder of London's School of Life. "Sex is always going to cause us headaches; it's not something we can miraculously grow relaxed about." We suffer privately, feeling "painfully strange about the sex we are either longing to have or struggling to avoid."

If we turn to sex books to help us work out this central experience of our lives, we are typically assured that most problems are mechanical, a matter of method. In his own new book, How to Think More About Sex, de Botton makes the case that our difficulties stem more from the multiplicity of things we want out of life, or the accrual of everyday resentments, or the weirdness of the sex drive itself. Here are some of the most basic questions it answers. —The Editors

Why do most people lie about their true desires?

It is rare to go through life without feeling that we are somehow a bit odd about sex. It is an area in which most of us have a painful impression, in our heart of hearts, that we are quite unusual. Despite being one of the most private activities, sex is nevertheless surrounded by a range of powerfully socially sanctioned ideas that codify how normal people are meant to feel about and deal with the matter. In truth, however, few of us are remotely normal sexually. We are almost all haunted by guilt and neuroses, by phobias and disruptive desires, by indifference and disgust. We are universally deviant—but only in relation to some highly distorted ideals of normality.
Most of what we are sexually remains impossible to communicate with anyone whom we would want to think well of us. Men and women in love instinctively hold back from sharing more than a fraction of their desires out of a fear, usually accurate, of generating intolerable disgust in their partners.
Nothing is erotic that isn't also, with the wrong person, revolting, which is precisely what makes erotic moments so intense: At the precise juncture where disgust could be at its height, we find only welcome and permission. Think of two tongues exploring the deeply private realm of the mouth—that dark, moist cavity that no one but our dentist usually enters. The privileged nature of the union between two people is sealed by an act that, with someone else, would horrify them both.
What unfolds between a couple in the bedroom is an act of mutual reconciliation between two secret sexual selves emerging at last from sinful solitude. Their behavior is starkly at odds with the behavior expected of them by the civilized world. At last, in the semi-darkness a couple can confess to the many wondrous and demented things that having a body drives them to want.

Why is sex more difficult to talk about in this era, not less?

Whatever discomfort we feel around sex is commonly aggravated by the idea that we belong to a liberated age—and ought by now to be finding sex a straightforward and untroubling matter, a little like tennis, something that everyone should have as often as possible to relieve the stresses of modern life.
The narrative of enlightenment and progress skirts an unbudging fact: Sex is not something we can ever expect to feel easily liberated from. It is a fundamentally disruptive and overwhelming force, at odds with the majority of our ambitions and all but incapable of being discreetly integrated within civilized society. Sex is not fundamentally democratic or kind. It refuses to sit neatly on top of love. Tame it though we might try, it tends to wreak havoc across our lives; it leads us to destroy our relationships, threatens our productivity, and compels us to stay up too late in nightclubs talking to people whom we don't like but whose exposed midriffs we wish to touch. Our best hope should be for a respectful accommodation with an anarchic and reckless power.

How is sex a great lie detector?

Involuntary physiological reactions such as the wetness of a vagina and the stiffness of a penis are emotionally so satisfying (which means, simultaneously, so erotic) because they signal a kind of approval that lies utterly beyond rational manipulation. Erections and lubrication simply cannot be effected by willpower and are therefore particularly true and honest indices of interest. In a world in which fake enthusiasms are rife, in which it is often hard to tell whether people really like us or whether they are being kind to us merely out of a sense of duty, the wet vagina and the stiff penis function as unambiguous agents of sincerity.
A kiss is pleasurable because of the sensory receptivity of our lips, but a good deal of our excitement has nothing to do with the physical dimension of the act: It stems from the simple realization that someone else likes us quite a lot.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/201212/12-rude-revelations-about-sex