All posts by Olya Aman

By now I’ve been so many people, I’ve learned who I am. I Am an Actress! If you could draw a map to happiness and make real, palpable emotions into GREEN traffic lights – I would’ve been the shortest way to a Happyville. Why? Because I know how to goose things up and make life on screen shatteringly, profoundly interesting. I Am a Writer! When I write, be it stories, novels, plays or movie scripts, I tug at your heartstrings and make you porous to sweat-out-loud gorgeous life experiences. I know how to woo people with my silver pen. It is similar to witchcraft and I’m the most skillful broomstick rider there is. I Am a Loving Mother and a Devoted Wife! An extraordinary woman that knows how to build a happy home out of the fabric of love, understanding, patience and compassion.
Personal Growth

The Power of Tenderness and Compassion in My Relationship

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Secrets about water that my life put to the proof

The voice of natural water sounds silver and life… – Olya Aman

Water can rise through the trunks of gigantic trees against tens of atmospheres of pressure. What is more surprising, though, is the faculty of a human being to rise over hatred and aggression in the world, indifference and treachery towards himself, and still be loving and empathetic.

“What the dickens do you drink this water for?” I said deprecatingly, when my dog fired ahead to the water that was spilled on the floor. The bottle it came from was a gift that I didn’t appreciate enough. I considered it a wired birthday present. My dog was a much better expert in a healthy way of life, eating only food in green packages with the logo “organic” on it. And he never before ate anything from the floor, preferring his silvery plate to any other vessel.

I felt that I had to learn more about THIS water. And I discovered that I, being an educated twenty-two-year-old lady at the time, knew nothing AT ALL about this substance. Magnetism and energy locked in this bottle transformed my life.

The honored man that presented the fortunate flask became a source of happiness for me. His kind soul wrapped in a beautiful body opened a new world of love and shared happiness. I went from enchantment to enchantment, scenting compassion in the air, and this feeling of admiration gave a new turn to my thoughts.

The imminent danger of water’s memory.

Experiments in many countries around the world have shown that water remembers everything that occurs in the space that surrounds it. The water structure of each person’s body is identical to the water structure of the place where he was born. Our internal connection to our homeland is depicted in the water of that place. And our inner water-based computer records the entire history of our relationship with the world around us.T

Marat is my future husband, and his story is a vivid example of a ‘movie-like’ experience that is unforgettable and needed to be shared with others.

He seemed to have everything but for the memory of his early childhood and youth. That was strange. Marat possessed the knowledge and education to be adequate and navigate his way in the world, but he could not remember the words said by his mother, and the school games went to with his father.

That happened after the car crash that left him, a single child of a happy middle-aged couple, an orphan. Doctors said it was a post-stress reaction of his brain. The neatly structured organ in his head tried to protect him against his own will. Marat longed to remember, but not any conventional or alternative medicine could help him do so.

One day, about 11 years ago, his best friend came back after a long journey to far-away countries. He brought exclamations of praise and deep respect for the elderly healer he met there. Marat didn’t believe it could work and agreed to go only for the sake of adventure.

The ceremony of their encounter reminded a scene from a mystery movie. Marat and a small wrinkly guy in a dress-like white shirt were staring at one another blankly without words. Then the old man showed Marat to his chamber. The cave was dark and cold and full of small and big glass jars with water. He filled Marat’s little cup from almost every container. And at the point of over dense tension in the easy to guess area in his belly, something extraordinary happened. Marat suddenly remembered. Springwater from a distant mountain village in Kyrgyzstan brought relief to his tired from searching brain.

It happened so that his father was born in that village. His parents, being almost desperate to conceive, went there and spent almost a year in that remote place. They came back to the States to give birth to their beloved son and get the benefit of traditional high-quality medical care. The water from that village remembered Marat, or, rather, his body remembered that water. Some impulse, the life force coming from this water, triggered the processes in his brain. It made the memory of his past a charming reality that he could take into his present.

No wonder, when Marat fell in love with me, from the first sight, by the way, he presented me with the most cherished gift he could imagine. Yes, he gave me a bottle of that pure spring water from far away Kyrgyzstan.

Human power both whitens and darkens water and souls.

Nowadays it became clear that positive and negative human emotions are the strongest elements of influence on water. Water, experiencing fear, aggression, hatred, projected on it, is suffering. Those feelings deform its structure and reduce its energy. Love, on the contrary, increases water’s energy. The power of tenderness and compassion is yet unexplained, but accepted by almost everyone’s intellect.

I became the most negligent person when it came to the choice of food after I broke up with my ex. He took excellent care of his diet and very little of my emotional state. I was devastatingly unhappy in our relationship. He was a handsome, cold-hearted person, which made me detest anything good-looking, tasty, and healthy. I developed a belief that things, being eatable or not, are pretty on the outside and empty on the inside.

After our separation, I was rebelling my past healthy lifestyle, and I became a regular visitor to fast-food places. That made me look 10 years older and 30 pounds heavier. I thought badly about the food I ate and drinks I consumed but continued to do so to prove some wired point, the meaning of which I couldn’t explain even to myself. All those substances I swallowed made me feel even more depressed until the day I met my future husband, Marat.

He is incredibly plump and extremely cheerful. His spirit is contented and grateful. Nothing can spoil his positive attitude to life, even my negative connotation of every aspect of it.

First few months we ate at the same bad-quality-food places I favored. Surprisingly, I felt my body not as heavy and my mood not as gloomy anymore. Somehow, Marat’s uplifting spirit charged every eatable object with his life-giving energy.

When we started to live together and Marat became a master of the kitchen space, life became almost an unbearably sweet experience. Both of us fell in love with new aspects of vigorous and healthy life. By degrees, we started to spend quite ridiculous money on food, and water was the number one investment in our list of the most important things.

Water combats behavior and life itself with music and love.

Classical music gives water an occasion for displaying the splendor of symmetric beauty. As if choosing music that uplifts and rejuvenates us, we should be spellbound listening to a loving person, and determined to run away from a twisted and vengeful one.

I love music, and I am a skilled pianist. I and my husband attend musical events as often as we can. My best friend, but for my husband, is a magnificent instrument in our living room.

Every day I hurry home to my soulmate and discuss Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven with it. The decanter full of water is on the nearby table and it witnesses all my musical performances. I have a habit of taking it to our dinner table and later to our bedroom. This water seems to be full of notes of love and care, beauty, and affection. I take excellent care of my water and fill the vessel with the best of the best. Play music to it and make every note enter my body and my soul. I drink it with satisfaction and feel refreshed, delighted, invigorated. I am forgetting my cares, feeling as if I had wings to my feet.

No thing about water is an illusion. Nothing in the world is softer and more yielding than water. We do not realize how close and almost identical we are. Water wears down the hard and strong, and none can overcome it. When our strength husbanded, we are capable of glorious things just the like.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

5 Nature Healing Techniques

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Receive life with much philosophy and nature… – Olya Aman

Introduction

G. shuffled through life most of the time being far gone indeed. His mood being as dark as the grave, his face being as weary as the days of his past, and his voice as harsh as the hollow moaning of the damp unwholesome wind.

He was not yet past 36 and the earth and life itself seemed not his element anymore. The expression in his eyes was scarcely of his age or of the world. So many shadows from the past played about his face that G’s smile, above all, was the worst evidence of artless pain and misery.

The horrors of the war left no trace of the memory of a happier existence, long gone by and forgotten, vanished in the scenes of fighting and killing. These marks of cruelty and anger buried every trace of love and affection he had ever known. It seemed that nothing in this world would be able to recall any positive emotion in his soul. Darkness and nightmares watched G. as he slept and was awake.

The sinking of soul and spirit is alleviated by an emergent field of ecopsychology. It awakens the remembrance of our connectedness to the web of life. We need to be careful about how we deal with nature as we are an inseparable part of it.

Blithesome environmental music and freedom in the landscape carry thoughts of recreation and peace to the hearts of people. Remorse may seem unavailing, but it creeps away when met with brightness and mirth in the scenes of brilliant sky, vast fields, and high mountains.

Our relationship with nature should be explored, and nowadays mental health practitioners pay more and more attention to the aspects of ecotherapy. The inner impulses of every person’s soul long to be connected to the environment.

1) Connectedness to Earth as the Core of Ecotherapy

G. was a true personage of an uncouth man with sharp eyes and rough hands. The fervent prayers, gushing from the hearts of his many relatives, overcharged with wild nature and simple close to deprivation and far from cruelty life, were his daily companions in his youth.

Exposure to the wet morning grass, cold fresh mountain air, and many animal-friends brought on belief in good, frank, and honest which hung over him till the first days on a battlefield, those reduced G. and his faith sadly. An effort to come back to his native place was the only way to recover his life force back again.

The earth does as much for us as could be expected in an age when the population cannot afford to stay connected to it for nothing. Relationship among humanity is built on the principle of giving and taking and the same motto we tend to express toward everyone and everything. Nature, though, is worn with use, disheartened with selfishness, and tired of human contact.

We should attribute exceptional importance to the process of creation, the natural forces that govern life. Harmonizing with these systems, we may experience spiritual illumination, improved mental and physical health. Respect in every aspect of life is vital. To cherish nature as we cherish close, loving people is just as important. Love given to the human being revives life forces in that person, and the same emotion granted to the surrounding environment awakens its blooming essence.

Personal well-being is lost amid a host of every-day troubles, filled with artificial noises that stifle and destroy, it becomes empty and arid. To not let it slip away completely, we need to stay connected to planetary well-being. This feeling of union with a greater system of interaction makes a sense of weakness and captivity vanish. Only when seeing ourselves as a part of the world we can recover our balance and will-power.

2) Nature as a Tender Healer of Mental Fatigue

Only coming back home to his old and shabby house, senile forgetful mother, simple-hearted coarse childhood friends, and his ancient failing horse, he began, at length, by degrees, to get better. How deeply G. felt the goodness of his surrounding in his native mountain village, and how strongly regretted he that the ill-advised desire to escape in a search of a better life led him to the war.

Whirred, monotonous and tiresome as a clock life, words thrown out, conversations started, then the concert of mentally fatiguing angry emotions – this existence makes a wall against which one dashes in vain. To stop that deafening and blinding cycle, we need to walk in a nature preserve. No voices for lying, no faces to hide themselves behind – only the vastness of fragrances, nature sounds, and beautiful inspiring scenes.

The atmosphere of inhaled, tasted, touched, heard and seen satisfaction reduces the symptoms of depression. We feel less anger and more positive emotions. All senses participate in the recovering process. Engulfed in the brightness of green spaces, we have a greater capacity for paying attention, delaying gratification, and even less need in pain medications.

Simply calling flowers and plants into view positively affects creativity, productivity, and problem-solving skills. Over-wrought nerves, aggression, and agitation are waved away as if with the help of a magic wand in the presence of animals and under the exposure to the sounds of nature.

3) Activities that Add Variety to Life and Bring Back Glorification

Who can describe beauty and tranquility of a mountain river and snow-covered tops and hollows? Is it possible to imagine life without the pureness of that balmy air full of grass’ and flowers’ fragrance? The green hills and rich animal life, only touched by hunting in necessity degree and never in pleasure seeking unwise killing.

Life as it should be, love as it was created, and friendship as it was intended – healing emotions, and curing energies of nature didn’t wash away crowded, pent-up memories of the war, but a life of toil and peace in the atmosphere of pure, almost untouched plant and animal life made those memories Past, and not Every-Day-Haunting Nightmares of the present anymore.

1. Fresh sensations revealed during meditation.

Even when it seems that the world had been turned upside down, a tranquil moment of abstractedness can put it right-side up again. We are able to come over to the positive way of thinking after reflection on the connectedness of all alive and breathing

2. Horticultural therapy reveals to us the ability of the earth to give a sensation of maternal protection to our senses.

Garden-related activities of digging soil, planting seedlings, weeding garden beds, trimming leaves help to alleviate the symptoms of stress and burnout.

3. Animal-assisted therapy is at the service of reducing aggression and agitation.

Animals are able to pure out more of the treasures of our souls than we could even imagine. Often after the time spent in the company of wild or domestic animals, we feel intoxicated with delight and happy sensations.

4. Physical exercise in a natural setting brings us closer to the feeling of satisfaction with our mind and body.

We become more independent, more inspired and even more In Spirit – inspiration visits us while we are walking, jogging, cycling or doing yoga outside.

5. Increased awareness is reached when we are involved in restoring activities.

A sense of purpose and hopefulness, belonging and connectedness is born during the process of generous improvement done To and For the benefit of nature.

Conclusion

G. started a chain reaction of a nature healing process, in which his own rejuvenated personality was the first link, by contacting his battle comrades and inviting them to visit his poor farm. G. could not even imagine the outcome of his good intention. Now the place is the most blessed, homely ecotherapy healing work-camp known so far.

People in mental struggle come from all over the world to find contentment and peace again. Working together, improving their life, cultivating earth and personalities, they share memories and feelings. Here again, they can feel themselves the most blessed and favored of mortals and have a touch of unmingled happiness.

True felicity of pure and most amiable generosity of people around; the warmest, soul-felt gratitude creates an attachment to the place and mental state of peace itself. The earth in her mantle of brightest green is glad to accept wounded hearts and treat them with a cheerful serenity that gives vent to the tears which now a person is unable to repress. And when the eyes are full of water, the remedial river is covering the troubles of today and the worries of the past.

The sorrow and calamity of the world half closes, becomes more distant when you feel that you belong to the bright sphere of nature. There is no pursuit more worthy of the highest nature that resides in every one of us than encouraging the circulation of deep affection and gratitude toward nature. The sacred emotion of connectedness to the earth makes fears weak and selfish regrets feeble.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

How My Cousin’s Self-Compassion Helped Him Recover From Drug Addiction

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Self-compassion taught him to admit the fact that life is painful sometimes

Take the misery of negative self-judgment in a luxuriously calm refuge-island of self-compassion… – Olya Aman

My cousin Victor was a fair example of a typical ‘mazhor’ (a kid of wealthy parents). He snapped his fingers and had everything he wished. And when his father lost every dollar they had in a risky market deal, Victor’s self-esteem suffered a great deal. He simply lost his place in the world, thinking that material possessions were the only means of determining it.

When his family moved to a shabby-looking village house nearby, his grandma left him in a will a long time ago, he considered all his plans for the future ruined. I found him very poorly equipped to live frugally and happily, rather he was prone to make up in negative judgmental feelings what he lacked in dollar bills. We were not friends, although spent hours together talking, or arguing about life. I was only 13 at the time, but felt myself superior to this 18-year-old kid.

Victor lived a narrow life of anxiety and depression. He suffered from fits of narcissistic, self-absorbing anger. He stopped any communication with his father, blaming his misfortunes on him. He spent almost all his time in the nearby town, and when he occasionally showed his wistful face in our village, he often ended up in my kitchen. He longed for compassionate attention and understanding. He was lost amid his troubled thoughts and feelings, and painfully needed to talk to someone, to pour his misery out and, by doing so, try to get his turbulent life in order. I tried to be a sympathetic listener.

In about a year of village life, Victor stopped coming home at all. I can admit now, I missed this troubled boy a lot. His parents found him almost too late. He entered the narcotic state of self-destruction, greedily grabbing after each opportunity to get stoned and forget about the present.

Self-compassion tells you to resist the temptation to criticize harshly yourself and others. You reach the full potential in life if you are alive with kind thoughts and feelings concerning others.

Six months in a rehabilitation clinic drew a straight line between his past and his present. Victor had to learn all over again to establish contact with people. But to do that he needed to notice their engaging characters, rather than labeling any new acquaintance either as a ‘valuable’ or a ‘useless’ one as he used to do before.

I was happy to accept my cousin in a small circle of my best friends. Now we could talk without raising our voices. Now we had more in common.

Self-compassion kindles a sense of belonging and connectedness. Attachment to humanity is the only way to diminish suffering.

To find new friends, Victor needed to add more positive emotions to his life. I loved him and was ready to accept him with the entire fabric of his timid personality and teach him to understand the keener pleasures of life without an abundance of money. Victor needed more people like that in his life.

The first note of compassion washes away anxiety. It was suggested by the science that self-compassion lights up regions of the brain linked to empathy, pleasure, and caregiving.

He plunged into the healing process by getting rid of regrets, doubts, and self-bitterness. Victor added to his life the rich touch of self-understanding, self-acceptance, and self-praise. It gave him power enough to think favorably about his future. I always told him he was smart enough to reach the desired, be it personal happiness, or material comforts. Finally, I saw signs that he believed in this creed.

Being kind to yourself means to learn the art of positive self-evaluation. There is nothing in this world more delightful than that state when you mentally balance between self-worth and acceptance of imperfections in yourself and in the world around.

Today Victor claims to have self-compassion enough in him to straighten his life in a balanced, heartfelt, and mindful way. He is not ignoring his past, but he is no longer exaggerating his own misconduct, rather takes the best from each experience. He needs to fight his way to happiness, always remembering about his past addiction. He praises himself for each day lived without drugs.

Conclusion

My cousin discovered inner instruments to make himself believe that he was special just the way he was. Victor doesn’t need money, recognition or fame to prove it. Today he accepts things as they are, because being not perfect means to be unique.

Victor recognizes his past mistakes and explains the reasons for them. Self-compassion taught him to admit the fact that life is painful sometimes. He radiates an atmosphere of power and productiveness, even facing hardships.

My cousin is imperfect yet magnificent as every one of us is. When he embraced what he could share with others rather than what benefit he could take from each person, he found genuine friends, people ready to be beside him even when he is in the wrong. Now his self-worth is much less easily shaken.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

Gratitude Motivation: 6 Ways to Be Cheerful

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I was armed at all points. It was a pleasure to be so completely equipped for the life battle with my gratitude weapons being polished steel. – Olya Aman

Introduction

T. was a generous spirit. He had all the illumination of wisdom, and yet he was distressfully dying. There seemed to be a happy symmetry in this unhappy depiction of his life. I was touched with wonder at the depths of perception of which this person was capable. His unselfish belief in the idea that gratitude is a way to make the most of life was something I could set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…

T. had a taint of death, a flavor of mortality in him – which is exactly what I needed to shake my world to the bottom and have a chance to find myself in the thrashed around pieces of it. I hung on every syllable he uttered in his diary, and received, as oracles, all he wrote.

With gratitude, your mind is never cold. It enjoys the pleasure of sincere appreciation of what you have. The positivity behind this feeling is always present. It gives food for pleasurable emotions and breaks the monotony of life. You become intolerable to negative thoughts, odious to your soul, they are smashed by every supreme moment of complete kindness and compassion.

In a grateful state you live as thirsty men drink – sleep with spirit, eat with joy, communicate with virtue, and, to crown the whole, your health becomes void of all those sicknesses that originate from harmful emotions. They have no power over you, your cheerful temper and uplifted spirit keep your bodily health unstained.

1) Gratitude Is a Way to a Far-Reaching and Infinite Happiness

“Of parents extremely poor and extremely honest, it was next to impossible that I could paint my life other than in grateful colors. Our family seemed to be possessed with a kind of intellectual gaiety at the times of the most troublesome hardships. We were able to starve any thoughts of misery and lack of appreciation entirely away by just a mere force of heartfelt love to each other and to the life itself.”

“I often was bruised and felt scant of breath but never ungrateful. Every misfortune walked me away from despair and gave me the key to patience. I was a sick-nurse to my father (my mother died when I was 28 and my father and I never fully recovered after that loss). I was seriously out of health. I caught a violent cold right after the saddest day of our life, which fixed itself on my lungs and threw them into dire confusion.”

No day can go without a speck of some misfortune. However, if you spend at least a moment a day recollecting it with humor and praise with gratitude the opportunity to learn from it – it becomes impossible to let uneasy thoughts hunt you for long.

Be ready to undertake 5 minutes each morning portraying yourself reading a poem about a coming day, composing a piece of wonderful music that will accompany you throughout it, or drawing a beautiful picture that will depict a culminating point of it. While doing it, keep in mind that the principal business of life is to enjoy it.

Every now and then put your thin forefinger on your lips and remind yourself of many blessings in your life that you are sincerely thankful for. Kiss it with a smile on your lips and imagine embracing yourself tenderly. This mode of actions will set every nerve in your body quivering with happy vibes.

2) Gratitude Makes You Light and Incapable of Stupidity

“I had good winters and poor winters. I basked in the sun and went to bed when it rained. And I never forgot to spend a few moments a day reflecting on the things in my life I was blessed with.”

“I was always so odd a mixture of quick parts, sarcastic humor, reserve, and caprice that the experience of knowing me for a short while had been insufficient to satisfy my acquaintances, and those people lingered about me longer to build friendly ties with me stronger. This way I had a daily meeting with someone to be thankful for, an old friend reminding of himself to be grateful for, and a promise of a future pleasant contact to be longing for…”

There is more in the bond with other people in your life that you can put a name to. The real fact is that the knowledge of being respected and loved raises a presumption against unhealthy relationships. It is as if you put a protecting charm on the arm you use to stretch to shake hands with other people.

If you train yourself to care only for truth and kindness, and believing that two intelligent and friendly people ought to look for healthy relationships together, you will feel a great desire to be social, to share your grateful spirit with others.

3) Gratitude Drains the Cup of Health to Your Benefit

“I was determined to live longer, although the doctors professed the limit till just two-and-thirty. Imputing it to nothing but grateful feelings, which for ought I knew, prolonged my life extremely, I was able to make it to these days, waaay past forty.”

“When I was in pain I more often smiled than scowled. That was the foundation of my beauty despite of my many limitations. I had love enough but not too much, I had loss a lot but not unbearable. Had I lived my life again in every detail of desire, temptation, pain and surrender, I would have chosen the exact life I lived to the very aspect of sickness and every element of loss.”

Every day is a blank page, a pure white surface, and you are the only one able to paint it successfully in bright colors. Use art and guile, talent and temper, recognizing friendship, avoiding a mistake and taking care of the state of your body and mind.

Do not let yourself to be easily crushed by negativity. Evoke a multitude of grateful pictures in your mind and thirstily drain the cup of a happy and healthy life.

4) Gratitude Brakes the Monotony of Your Daily Life and Boosts Your Career

“My business affairs never were a dull round of searching a way to follow money, but a charming mode of meeting my expectations. I had a right mixture of the detached and the involved when doing a job which made every day in the office a splendid harmony of classic, calculated activity of the mind, and graceful, whining movement of the body.”

“Gratitude gave me that easy confidence of manner. Always quite up to everything, I was a sort of person you could depend on, and that made me splendidly respectable by my partners and coworkers.”

To build a successful career is to cut clean out of your life scorching pessimistic thinking. Do not let anyone or anything to throw you off an equilibrium which gratitude creates. Networking is gaining in strength by the contented approach. Above all, decision making improves more from good-humor than from gloomy concentration.

Gratitude, when truly genuine, makes you eager to listen, and this skill is essential for managing people and organizations.

5) Gratitude Feeds You by a Spring of Inexhaustible Positive Emotions

“I took no notice of negative people and very little of pessimistic acquaintances. The wealth of positive emotion awakened pleasure and added loveliness and virtue to my life. My heart being overcharged with grateful feelings, made me exposed to the goodness of the world around me. I was able to describe delight, peace of mind, and soft tranquility on paper, voice it to my friends, charge with it my family, and radiate it to the objects, and atmosphere around.”

Wrap yourself in happy memories, grateful emotions, and generous hopes. An open-hearted life is a possible perfection and must be treated with passion and love. Clear, bright, radiant emotional state certainly depends on what you feel toward yourself and others. The actual amount of pleasure you receive from life is exactly proportional to the expanse of compassion and gratitude in the air you are breathing in.

6) Gratitude Resides in Glad and Flourishing Personalities

“The fervency of my personality trembled from sunlight and fragrance. Gratitude created a barrier that was guarding me against cold and cheerless. Like any freezing temperature, those kinds of feelings could preserve but never let life to be developed. Any progress was stopped when in an atmosphere of a pessimistic refrigerator.”

“I looked on nature and my fellow-men and didn’t see the dark and gloomy. The cheerful colors prevailed, and those were reflections from my own grateful eyes. A clear vision was developed in the balmy atmosphere of positive vibrations. My mind rambled at its pleasure and every valuable information was deeply curved in it. My personality flourished with every grateful feeling and every glad emotion.”

Gratitude is the first warm ray of sunshine that, as the story tells us, makes the traveler throw the cloak from his shoulders, when the storm blows as it will, cannot tear it from him. You do not cringe away from the winds of life. Being ready to show appreciation to every obstacle on your way, you supplement them by profitable lessons that make you even stronger.

It does you a good turn when you appear less materialistic, self-centered and more optimistic, and spiritual. Gratitude makes this change possible. It compels you to achieve your goals without any anguish of uncertainty because success does not matter as much as the opportunity to test yourself.

Conclusion

T. died at forty-eight. When I saw him last, he evidently found great difficulty speaking. He waited long to collect himself, and then he murmured simply: “Take this,” and he handed me his diary. That book had a voice that dropped deep into my soul.

The last page contained a message: “Pain passes, but love remains. We suffer so much sometimes. I’m very old when I think about it, but I grow young again when I believe in generous mistakes that hurt, happy tears that burn, and deep adoration that squeezes the heart till every drop of love is revealed. And the only way to see the beauty in life is to be able to open your eyes every morning with extraordinary grateful gladness. Only this feeling will make you beyond the reach of pain.”

Let gratitude to excel every other quality. It would be a relief to cherish people over material things. If you recognize the need to build a habit of practicing appreciation, it will have an exhilarating effect on your nervous system. You will feel calmness and composure in difficult situations when dealing with people, philosophic equanimity facing cataclysms of nature far beyond all human power, and happy in your own quiet way when giving love and returning kindness.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

10 Things That Can Ruin Your Social Media Presence

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If you are exposed to attention of millions – they are exposed to your influence. – Olya Aman

Introduction

His ability to write and voice what he thought was as well-kept as his perfect mustache. He was a true modern incarnation of my beloved Poirot and had the same initials. By the butterfly’s wing of his white necktie, P. could charm any woman and make every man jealous of his looks and manner.

I stopped talking and, putting on an observant air, pricked my ears in evident delight. The lecture began with an opening statement on our honored guest’s background: a short summary of his accomplishments and a brief enumeration of his published works.

P. lived for years in depressive intoxication: he was dismissed from work, lost his house, his wife left him, and he ended up living in the streets for three consecutive years after that. With superhuman effort he evoked himself from this slumber: found a job, a room to live, a phone to call old friends and family. P. carried the burden of his misery and cruel memories wisely. He portrayed his journey of recovery in his social media accounts and speeches that he gave throughout the country.

The support P. received gave him courage enough to write his first book: “FROM A BEGGAR TO AN INFLUENCER.” He skillfully depicted the sincerity of his renewed self-belief, -worth, and -respect.

P. pronounced the word of truth, the word of gratification and excuse in his most honored books. He had sadness and shadow in his life and managed to transform it into joy and light and, which is fascinating, to inspire others to do the same.

I turned on the recording function on my phone, entrusting to it to capture not only meaning but also the vibration of P.’s charismatic baritone and the elevating vibe of his emotions.

1) An Invocation to the Sacred Collective Intelligence

“A few years ago, I was a little worse than nobody and only the wealth of feeling and imagination kept me going. I did my best to put as many external-change-miles between myself and that past self that resembled a lizard person: fat, distressed, and overall unhappy street beggar.”

“When the visible transformation that I depicted in my social media accounts afforded a strong confirmatory evidence of my will power I noticed a considerable follower increase that continued to be so till the dark day in July of 2017.”

Social media is like an invocation to the sacred collective intelligence of the audience. The effort you are making to draw attention, to Go Viral, Create Memes (a discovery that is shared so widely that it becomes a part of internet culture) becomes a luminous point in the coming days of your life.

The magic in social media comes with excited, placid, deep, and limpid emotions shared, spread across social media realms. It is a superhuman vision that media evokes. It is heightened by valued people, trendsetters and their ability to network. They spread messages and those are never in repose after that but forever in flight and their course is insatiable.

The success in this internet universe is determined by the ability to penetrate the silence of the eyes, the voices in the heads, and the vibrations in the hearts of humanity in your niche. If you are able to see into the inside of your people: the misery they suffer, the happiness they crave, the thoughts that grow out of their experiences, the infinite emotions that lay hidden in their hearts – then the glory of having created the solution, redeeming the suffering, showing the new world of ideas and distractions will put you in a sort of ecstasy.

The feeling of affectionate attention that social media can give is the opium of modern world that can either stop the tempest of doubt and dread, of jealousy and rage that people feel or increase the intensity of those harmful feelings to the unbearable degree.

2) An Electric Current that Goes Through the Hearts and Minds of People

“The flow of traffic accompanied by the feeling of power and monetary satisfaction was an engine that propelled my activity and at the same time throttled my ability to reflect and empathize. People started to ask my expert opinion and I was delighted at the opportunity to dominate, preach and teach.”

“Those in distress found it motivating and uplifting to follow my story. I managed to create a balance and unity of thoughts and feelings through my speeches on the stage and in my videos. I painstakingly pieced my life in a few hours and elated people by my example.”

“A few followers sent me pleading for help letters. They needed more attention and encouragement. I became too arrogantly busy to spend enough time to do so. By a remarkable coincidence, those few incidents of my negligence skipped calling publicity (no one complained). So, the ruin of my social media career was not due to my silence but on the contrary – thanks to the too-loud-opinions that I’d expressed.”

Social media is an electric current that goes through the hearts and minds of people. The perfect sculpture of this system of sharing contains words, ideas, pictures, videos, and audios.

Face to face, emotion to emotion, wound to wound – this world has a childish soul and a limited mind behind the vastness of information. Without wise guidance life within it is saddened and future is black. Making first steps in social media world, make sure you have a mentor to help you navigate your way. It will save you a lot of time and energy.

Sheltered from harmful influence, protected for a time against the fearful spells of over dense information one can mature and add great knowledge and exclusiveness to his life with the help of social media. Now you can find what you need in seconds without spending hours in the library turning pages after pages. The resources available are numerous and categorized for you by reviews of many people.

It is a fine modern privilege to be able to skillfully direct the route in social media realms. And without knowing how to do it any life in there is short-lived and weak.

3) A Fearful Spell of Judgments

“The social air grew colder as my vanity expressed itself louder. And when the mist of my unfavorable twitts rolled along the world like a dense cloud of smoke, the decline of my reputation was not possible to stop.”

“I was busily engaged in judging and criticizing the ways of life that considerably differed from the one I was living at the moment. I forgot that only a few years prior I was a complete contradictory person to what I represented at the time. With much ceremony and stateliness, I voiced verdicts like: ‘I do not understand how one can live like that’, ‘I cannot respect a person acting in this way’, ‘how one can live in such a body’… and many more of a similar kind.”

“Finally, the tragedy was entered into my life with the full force and distractive power. The strength of public protest crashed the respect that I earned in the eyes of the outer world and my own self-worth suffered immensely. For the second time in my life, I was ruined mentally, morally, and physically. And if the first time circumstances and out-of-my-control factors were to blame, this time I was the only one responsible.”

Successful people, influencers, use admirable art of words and gestures, contagious images and piquant, unique ideas, ingenious salutations – and all of it to invest in their future. The more engaging content they put out to the world of social media the more they get back in terms of attention and affiliate advertising opportunities.

4) A Positive Distraction or a Depressing Factor

“I seated myself opposite the people I was trying to help. My first intention was forgotten in the confusion of attention and praise that I was luxuriously thrusting myself into. Anger and annoyance at what I expressed publicly was a just confirmation of my moral decline.”

“I used to be close to these people when I was one of them: working hard, feeling tired and depressed sometimes but with an effort lifting my head and doing what was right. I was able to break the chain of negative behavior, emotions, and feelings. I prided myself with this accomplishment. People were empowered by my example and generosity of my statements.”

At the same time, there are a lot of damaging oddities that may attract the audience and create a collective desire for negative behavior. That mostly touches kids and teenagers, but some insecure grown-up people are a target as well. To prevent it, parents need to create their own system of censorship. Guidance when making the first steps in learning how to use the world of information is required in school with books and in life with internet.

A life we live every day is diverse and enveloped in good and bad, jolly and sad, interesting and boring. Often the latter prevails, but what we see online is not the reality we usually live offline. The idealized picture may serve as a distraction that betters our life or as a depressing factor. And the feedback our emotions receive depends on the self-esteem we feel. Fear and lack of self-worth create pessimistic interaction between our life and the lives that other people expose to our attention online.

5) Unlimited and Unrestrained Debates

“When I forgot my past self, I took the transformation that I’d managed to make as purely my own doing. I easily threw away the encouragement that I’d received on the way to my new body and mind, forgetting the impact my followers made. They rightly broke off the ties and left not only reproachful comments but, what is more painful, a memory of love turned into hate, respect transformed into contempt, and admiration altered by disgust.”

Debates online are fueled by unlimited attention and participation. People engage in discussions and say a lot to the purpose and absolutely out of it, which makes it unrestrained. Some people act under a firm conviction that their opinion is always right. Criticism is uncontrolled and any tenderness to the feelings is often nonexistent. If you decide to share part of your life online, consider that and be warned and armed to address it in the right way.

6) A Way to Maintain a Stronger Connection

“To build connection is a tenacious and time-consuming work. To maintain it is just as hard. But to ruin everything you do not need to make any effort at all. One publicly shared unfavorable statement of yours can crash years of tough movement to the desired.”

“I felt support and love gushing from the hearts of people that liked what I was doing. I felt the lack of it the more painful for it. Who has lived in the light of attention cannot feel contented in the uncrowded space of lonely life without it.”

“I hastened to repair my life by self-reflecting and writing all my feelings and thoughts down. When I published my second book “BUILD CONNECTION WITH RESPECT IN SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD” I didn’t anticipate the impact that this work would do.”

“One of the main things that defer humankind from any other creature on this Earth is the ability to forgive. My book helped me to be forgiven because I was sincerely sorry for what I’ve said and the way I acted.”

With social media it is easier to be loved and courted by distant relations. But if you say and show too much, you may appear somewhat self-opinionated – people do not like it. If one touches upon the lives of others over any limit, it shows that he or she is a narrow-minded, tattling old gossip – people hate it.

The greatest installment to the debt of sincere affection is truth and genuineness. When you share your happiness, you connect with other people on a level of positive vibes, and by doing this, you multiply the bliss in your life.

The impact you have on your social network should serve to solace spirits and soothe tempers. If your company is pleasing and online conversation is genuine people come back to your platform and bring friends along.

Becoming a soul of authentic order online is very important for keeping a true and strong connection with people. Fresh news or old scandal, trivial questions or oft-repeated observations – when online it is spread across the minds with the speed that beats the light one. Be careful of what you share and remember that when you are radiant with dignity and depth of soul your charm is keenly spiritual and has an ineffable power to attract and subjugate the hearts.

7) An Advertising Dreamland

“Covering my face with my hands I sank into a new life of renewed self-awareness. I was suffused with a crimson flush. It was not from the shame but from the pleasant feeling of regained self-esteem. This mistake taught me my duty and served as an advertisement for my work. The sad remembrance of my failure helped me to be more sincere and open to the people who addressed me online and off-line.”

“This experience of sinking lower and lower cast over my writing those brilliant hints and expressions that touched the hearts of people. MY heart was set on a right track to impress and uplift, to inspire and motivate.”

Slowly, using content marketing or more quickly through influencer marketing one can achieve results with persistent and constant effort. To set up an advertising campaign nowadays you do not need to hire a whole bunch of experts. One smart person can be enough, or you can do it even by yourself.

When people grow fond of your content, you realize with some unaccountable satisfaction that they will buy what you have to offer. It does not free you of responsibility to maintain your reputation valued by always offering quality products. If your blog is loved, make your book shine with more excessive excellence of information. If you look so lovely that people cannot help admiring your charming outfits, make sure the clothing and accessories you recommend worth the price people are ready to pay for them.

8) A Limited Personality Perception

“The third book I published “THINGS YOU DO NOT KNOW” was about friends and kindred, close and distant connections, valuable and reserved network, people of the world and out of it – and how to use the things you do not know to build relationships.”

“The ‘secret’ I shared was a universal axiom, known to everybody and neglected by many – to live by ‘not-judging’ because of ‘not-knowing’. It became a sensation overnight. The quotes from it were flying through the media with the speed of light: “If you do not understand that I am a man like every other man, you take me for what you are afraid in yourself… You do not need to know me if you are not going to judge me… If you intend to rank me in your system of values, take pains to perceive me thoroughly…”

“And let me tell you that to get to ‘perceive thoroughly’ anybody is a rare skill not everybody has. We seldom know ‘good enough’ ourselves to claim to be experts in forming opinions about other people.”

In the internet society we often miss the expression of the face and the attitude of the body – an essential part of the information needed for making a clear picture of any person. Our perception is a tenuous membrane that is too rudely buffeted by the stressors from outside and emotions from inside. Everything happens too quickly, and we learn to run with time and information. Often, we mechanically put labels on things around us: ‘useful’ and ‘unimportant’, ‘true’ and ‘false’, ‘positive’ and ‘negative’. This mode of action helps us to keep our minds sane in the whirling world we live in. But no one can be justly proud of using the same method with people.

Personality is not an easy book to read overnight and write a short review in two hours in the morrow. Every person is a universe in itself, complicated, with undiscovered phenomena on every corner. Family, close relations, distant connections, society, things around, climate outside, and numerous other factors play their role in personality formation. Without a thorough knowledge of all these criteria how one can justly say ‘I know you’ or ‘if I were you I would do this or that’?

How can you solve a mathematical problem with limited information given? The answer won’t be right. And to my mind, it is better to restrain from being in the obvious wrong by judging too rashly. When it comes to people and relationships one needs to pause and contemplate before acting in any way.

When it comes to social media behavior I would say: express yourself as freely as you feel comfortable doing and detain your conclusions about other people as long as you can. The world is small when it comes to emotions. To cause pain is as easy these days as to type one or two sentences in your ‘compose new Tweet’ box.

9) A Dangerous Ground for Conflict

“In my fourth book “WHEN MY GRANDIOUR SLIPPED AWAY” I was eager and ashamed to tell the story of my failure in light of my obtained vastness of understanding myself. I slightly kicked upon the prostrated form of my past-self with responsibility in my mind and empathy in my heart.”

“People trusted me, asked questions and conferred their fears and mistakes on me. And due to my arrogance, I failed to respect their confessions. I was down on my luck, but I continued at all costs to regain respect I lost by taking responsibility for the words and behavior I expressed when self-esteem deserted me.”

If at some point any influencer adopts a manner to look down on other people, they will despise this person in return. Social media has a smell of the sensational air and it may knock some people down by way of spreading negativity. We wish it to be territorial and stay where it was born, but the reality proves it to be much speedier than any positive, harmless piece of news.

A certain instinct, not a virtuous one, makes people talk about bad things times more than about good ones. But no one stops you to have a system and an orbit of your own thinking and acting. Spreading positive, non-judgmental content is a noble life-improving mission. And I wish we had as many people following this creed as possible.

10) A Positive Channel of Valuable Information

“The direction of positive influence was swiftly borne through the damp and gloomy atmosphere of failure. We are composed of little foibles and weaknesses of our kind. And to take control over them is our obligation.”

“My experiences strengthened my ability to reflect. Now there are no troubles that can efface love and respect that I feel, vigor and positivity that I share.”

Make an effort to follow the motto of spreading love in a way that the knees of people who receive it knock in delight. Let your life take a flight and prove to the world that the indestructible leading mind can enjoy the pleasure of creating peace and abundance of beauty.

Try to be incapable of stupidity and hurtful blunders. Self-express in the most comfortable, profitable, and amenable way. The infinite good nature lives in everyone and is always of to-day.

Conclusion

To never loose actuality online is to listen to the feedback of your followers. Negative feedback requires a good deal of wisdom and patience to be responded in the right way. Do not be too involved when addressing it. When you look at the things in a detached way you see the picture more clearly and form an understanding in a much better way.

People who can fail and redeem themselves in the eyes of others, who accused them – these people have a note of rarity. Well-intentionally disguising offense means to be able to wait wisely and act rightly. Steadiness is needed to keep the temper in peace when people refuse to accept your train of thoughts. Sometimes the best way out of it is to offer some budgets of fresh news to divert the attention. Let the things cool down and then ask forgiveness if you happen to offend someone.

Remember – a spirit of candor and frankness never fails. Peoples’ hearts are sensitive plants, they open for a moment to sincere attention but curl up and shrink into themselves at the slightest touch of false feeling or rude injurious intention.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

3 Reasons to Compete Against Yourself

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Self-Competition Is a Gambit in a Self-Development Game

Introduction

Rustling, quickly-moving, clear-voiced, V. was extravagant and a little disquieting. Large, square face and little grayish eyes – there was nothing soft or gracious about her. Up to everything and down on herself, V. was a splendid actress but didn’t quite believe in it herself. She formed the habit of sticking pins into her dignity and this venerable instrument of her nature was suffering immensely. I always felt an impulse to pull out the pins, they did inflict so much damage on V’s vulnerable personality, and I believed she could make a better use of her sharpness.

Her conversation was of a sort that gave a large license to originality and wittiness. But she accused herself of not being like some other beautiful and successful actress (who AGAIN got a part in a movie she was auditioned for) – and that competition she was constantly in with others heated me so that it almost scorched.

Some Interior (self) and Exterior (with others) Competition is like a bad and a good joke – one is amusing to everybody you care about and whose opinion matters to you, and the other is funny only to outsiders, people of the world in which you have no place of your own. An infinity of malicious amusement lurks in those who compare themselves to others instead of finding enough will to meet the metrics and values that suit them. Because to win in Exterior Competition is possible but the reward, whatever it is, won’t do one any good.

Imagine fighting in a war for a foreign government – you end up on a winning side, the country is rejoicing, dividing treasures, lands, and you … you go home with empty hands in ill-fitted uniform and no one cares about your heroic deeds in your homeland. And why would they? You didn’t fight for theirs (you got it – YOURS) freedom.

The noble war against your rivals (negative behavior, harmful habits, pessimistic thinking, procrastination, etc.) is never ending and always self-satisfactory. You win one battle and right away plan another strategic military attack on your own chosen enemies, transforming them into your comrades on a way to a better-future-you. Every victory is adding more confidence and vitality, indolent grace and ease, charm and charisma, and with every year you look far more experienced and at the same time far more youthfully alive.

Turn on the Niagara of the Infinite Change. Determine ‘What’ to Confront.

Goodness only knew how far from the truth V.’s self-understanding was. She looked down at the world through sharply evaluating everything eyes. She was somehow always out of spirits and her life was punctuated by little and big disappointments. She lived in a constant state of competition-stupidity with others and the only salvation I could see was to recharge her self-esteem, and to redirect her competitive spirit on herself.

We live and learn, experience pain and pleasure, establish relationships and break up bridges – we change. Having made this pronouncement I want to emphasize that the modification ‘to the better’ or ‘to the worse’ lies entirely with us. Like a ship you can choose to move along a sleek and oily swell that leads nowhere or a bumpy troubled sea that will get you to a wonderful shore with a marvelous view.

The process is most likely arduous and exhilarating but the result is always pyrotechnical – and when one colorful transformation takes place you cannot help waiting, open-eyed and alert, for the next one. Change to the better-future-you is fascinating, and it demands to be continued once started.

1) Procrastination

The winter of 2017 was the toughest in V.’s life. She lost her father (her mom died two years prior) and being the only child, she was now left alone. My voice was hoarse and weary with preaching the weekend I spent with her. I came to console and pull her out of that misery she thrashed herself into, willingly and almost gladly, taking that as an excuse to her apathy and lack of desire to fight her way in life.

The battle with procrastination is simply a development of magic. You stop the baa-baa business of excuses and make an action. Deeds not words are the man’s first and most grandiose invention. With directed activity, you can create a whole new universe of your own. Charge yourself with envy to a Tomorrow-You, endow yourself with passions and faculties of your inner stronger personality that was waiting for the privilege to come up front and pronounce the sentence of power and will. A lizard person should rapidly shoot up into a lion person – that power resides in every one of us.

2) Negligence

I kicked all the clothes off the bed and chairs, made V. get up and look in the mirror. Her ears didn’t play her false – I was not very picky with words when like a policeman arresting the flow of traffic I held my hand to keep her silent and listen to the voice of reason. She popped back in self-care immeasurably during the weeks spent in her deserted family dwelling. And she had clapped the door shut behind self-love and respect long before that happened. Being almost oracular in painting symbolical pictures of TRUE success through TRUE completion I made the atmosphere palpitate, and at the end of my tirade her smile was irradiation and the best reward I could ever ask for.

3) Negative Behavior

V. had a habit of talking to herself in a mocking and resentful key. And I made a goal to change it during the week we spent together in a Turkish all-inclusive hotel by the sea. This trip, that I almost forced her to agree to accompany me to, was a transformation therapy that I prescribed to my friend. My voice sounded and sounded in her ears with the insistence of mechanical noise when I went on and on in continuous expressions of love and beauty, serenity and benevolence, exquisiteness and originality of her personality.

‘How’ to Be Busily Engaged in Self-Competition and Enjoy It

I made my best to instill in V. envy to her better-future-self, substituting the raving and displeasing desire to be somebody else. Only when she took herself and the choices she made in an axiomatic loving and respecting manner was she able to call her life her own. And starting from this turning point any defects, that she had in her own eyes, became goals – a way to flawless crystal image of her future self.

1) Be Guided by Self-Love

It was worth the trouble of looking at and admiring my renewed friend. When V. stopped her bleating, bellowing, and neighing her features started to express intense intelligence which brought her self-respect back to her eyes and self-love back to her heart. Now the atmosphere about her sent a cheerful warmth and a suggestion of comfort and ease. Her loving heart spoke to her and to others. Every intercourse was amiable because positive expectation was in the air.

2) Be Led by a True Idol

V. was wrongly choosing idols from a famous Hollywood crowd, and that was a definite failure and a pointless race that painfully oppressed her heart. This false competition like an ill-made overcoat made her look ill-fitted to life. People liked her description by others better than they liked her because no one could hear her own conversation, those were only words expected, gestures already made by someone else, and expressions approved by the mirror.

When the wind of self-respect and self-love started to blow in her sails V. became a capital person to be around and to listen to. Every human being has his shell, and her shell was her vocabulary and the whole envelope of her sharp mind. Now she was brave to be different, courageous to disagree, bold to self-express, and daring to call her-future-self the best person in the world.

Do not write your life in a variety of strange hands rather than using your own. You do this when you get into external competition. It squeezes you into insignificance when you try to be someone else instead of finding your own way, style, amplua. The only hero you should be obsessed with is ‘you-tomorrow’. There is an inspiration in this strive, you grasp at pleasure and fail to get a complete hold of it as it always gets bigger and a little farther from your reach. It remains possible and impossible at the same time. And this game is never ending which makes life a fascinating experience.

3) Be Directed by Positive Criticism and Hones Praise

V. was able to unite the intrinsic (love to herself) and extrinsic (praise and criticism) advantages and became an extraordinary personality, the one that you can drink like a healthy cocktail and never have enough of the precious taste and benefits. She found the best acting teacher in a stand-up women’s comedy show. People praised her, and she rejoiced, friends criticized sometimes, and she was grateful. She started as an out-of-stage minor character and won her way to a leading actress participating in every show in her best disguise – never rudely present, always profitably clever and wisely funny. Everything she did or said was up to the most intelligent unoffensively critical and humorous way. Ingenious people loved her, and slightly shallow minds didn’t understand and avoided her – and that was just the price for being true – likable and not so much, lovable and not so much, respected and always so.

Conclusion

Woe to those who dream of what others have and fail to see the potential in themselves. Competition with others runs you into a blind alley. It takes the truth and love to present to you an internal competition anew. To be guided by things meaningful for you is like an invocation to a sacred beauty that awaits you on this way. The world is made small if you busy yourself with the faults of other people. When you overcome your fears and strive to be better than you were yesterday – the world enlarges by your presence. Living in this state you are never in repose but forever in flight. You arrest yourself for a moment when you reach one goal and continue an endless way to a better-you. Every move you make is a smile not a sigh. The vision of ‘you-tomorrow’ should be intoxicating and reviving.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

My Encounter With Energy Vampires and Protective Techniques I’ve Learned

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Now I know how to spot, understand, and survive

Do not lock yourself in the secret tower of your deafness and muteness when a danger to be drained by a vampire presents itself. – Olya Aman

I became a member of ‘Pen-Friends’ club, aspiring authors of my little countrified and old-fashioned town in the spring of 2011.

There wasn’t a nerve in me this experience hadn’t twisted. It wrongs my heart to think that one of my books was so close to being buried in the coffin of a negatively false critic. The true nature of this club made me shiver with repulsion, sell my house, and change my address.

Hunting in the Night

I always loved reading and had a great natural aptitude for creating fascinating stories. I finished my book and its manuscript burned my fingers. When a friend of mine offered to spend a long winter night reading and discussing it in a company of like-minded people, I rejoiced and agreed with delight. Little that I knew what it would make me fear for the sanity of my mind and the soundness of my body.

Energy vampires prevent you from keeping your body and emotional state in health. There is nothing like a cheerful mind to stay sound and strong against any life challenge. Vampires defy positive and happy people to the teeth and do their best to wipe out the smile off their faces.

Dracula #1 — The Narcissist

We always met on the dark side of twilight and the owner of the house welcomed everyone with an uncompromising face, hard diction, and vibrating consonants. Dracula #1 was as crisp, new, and comprehensive as the first issue of a book before the folding in a cover. And from top to toe he had no misprint. But when I looked thoughtfully enough, I saw a person who admitted nothing and down faced everybody but himself.

If he could not out-argue me on the point of the value of my book, he bullied me and took my silence for agreement with his views.

A Narcissist Energy Vampire‘s face is decorated with a constant sign of grandiosity, a lack of empathy, and a craving for admiration. Such a person will collect his arrogance, self-centeredness, and ‘ME-first’ philosophy and hurl them into your face.

Dracula #2 — The Victim

Dracula #2 was very easy to sympathize with, but it was not at all easy to be of any help. She was apt to carry her head thrust forward and somewhat down in an imploring attitude as if she was looking to any available advice. But as soon as you offered one, she adopted a highly tragic and devoured by remorse air. Dracula #2 was not willing to listen, not looking for the solution, enjoying the attention, blooming only when complaining, and rejecting any possible solution.

In her company, my brains got so dry that I almost lost my wits. She made me feel sorry for the lack of inspiration, imagination, and confidence in her life.

Victim Vampires dwell in the enormous mileage of suffering, low self-esteem, and lack of self-responsibility. They will fill you with guilt, blaming your actions and behavior for every negative aspect in their lives.

Dracula #3 — The Passive-Aggressive

Dracula #3 hated the world and its inhabitants with a quiet smile on his rather handsome face. No one looked half so tranquil among this group. In his company, I suffocated from the toxic energy that saturated from his whole being. I flatted myself that he had got a tough nut to crack, but little by little he made me begin a new record of angry self-doubts.

With Passive-Aggressive Vampires, a thing promised is never a thing done. There is no way to make them speak directly and about the matter at hand. They always jump on the negative side of things but will not admit it to anybody.

Dracula #4 — The Drama Addict

Dracula #4 looked like an Arabian sheik with his snow-white beard and frosty sparkling eyes. He was a high-class expert in the art of making people cross with each other, cry to the deaf ears of opponents, and crash nearby loudly smashable objects.

Spending just a few moments near this person, I felt rather erased, blotted out from the healthy realm of normal life. He fed upon the lives of others, and to amuse himself he used a special scheme of telling lies and spreading slough scandal about people he knew.

Melodramatic Energy Vampires make you agonizingly conscious of the ‘catastrophes’ all over the world that you otherwise would not know about. They make up in drama around what they lack in their lives.

Dracula #5 — The Guilt Tripper

Dracula #5 had her hour of victory when with malicious intention she made me believe she was a trustworthy friend. And when my heart was open, she triumphantly ended any amicable intercourse, exchanging it to a pretentious smile. She invented various scenarios to make me feel sorry for the things I’d done and confided to her. Her sudden transformation was the major reason that raced my shadow away from my hometown.

Guilt Trippers have no sense of proportion when it comes to pressing your insecurity buttons. They want to imprison their misery in a false sense of power and control by blaming you for every misfortune in their life. Inventing this manipulative business, they make you do what they want.

Dracula #6 — The Splitter

Dracula #6 was very handy with tools to separate and make people jealous. She found the way to spread vile gossips about me and my boyfriend. The entire scene with my lover was an unutterable mixture of tragedy and pathos.

Splitter Vampires seek relief from their loneliness in making other people unhappy. They waste their time in the imbecile routines that go by the name of divorce and separation. It is axiomatic for them that people in a union cannot live in contentment.

Dracula #7 — The Criticizer

Dracula #7 was not tall, but he carried his head so haughtily that he looked a commanding figure and there was something cunning and sharp in the look of his closely set little grey eyes. He disapproved of every attempt of my authorship experimentations in his engaging, deep, and a little husky voice.

I almost lost an ability to think under a tyranny of his pressing personality. He reasoned well and was driving at making me doubt my book and forsake an idea to publish it.

Judgmental Vampires are virtuosos in making rude comments, judge your decisions, talking about wrongs and ‘bads’ and saying nothing nice. Being close to these people will make you feel small and ashamed for no reason.

Dracula #8 — The Fixer

After a while, I got restless as one did under the heat of a sultry summer day. Dracula #8’s advice seemed so easy to follow and never fixed anything, rather made me cease to think about my problems and let them grow and multiply till I could not close my eyes on them anymore.

Peculiar charm and vividness of her sweet talk made one forget the important meeting, skip the urgent payment, let the important opportunity leave your grip. She had a great stock of excuses that I could easily borrow with no charge but self-reproach in ex post facto manner.

Fixer or Controller Vampires walk in your life without knocking and start controlling and dictating what you supposed to do and how you are expected to feel. They do not quite put their finger on the opinions you have, because they always have their own — and those are indisputable.

Strategies for Survival

In a company of these people, I became almost not real anymore. This wretched book club made me forget all my responsibilities toward my family and friends. They had been quite ‘blowing my trumpet’ to win my confidence at the beginning. And at the end, I became a person on which they exercised their revolting abilities to drain and drench.

That was a lesson to learn and never to be forgotten. I learned to stay positive no matter what happened, and what others thought about me. Now nothing can shake the step of my intellectual pace. I believe in myself and in people I love and care about.

Assess your emotional capacity and strengthen it.

Your understanding of yourself should be a gambit in the game of life. Self-reflect with genius and do not let self-love be a theoretical feeling — do that in earnest. Only this way you will know how much of a particular person you can take. A privilege to choose what and whom to let into your life reserved to you alone.

Determine how much of a threat to you the energy vampire is.

Determine what kind of a threat is in front of you and how much of it you can take. If you still feel that your head aches, your dry sleepless eyes feel as though they were bruised from behind, and the blood is beating within your ears — the intercourse with some person was too much and you need to remove the danger.

Vampire identification.

It doesn’t quite come home to these drainers that the entire world does not revolve around them. They seem somewhat afraid of responsibility and are in constant search for victims to put the weight of it on. One distinguishable feature of their personalities is a pessimistic approach to life.

The decision to make.

Has it flashed upon your vision that we attract in our lives what we haven’t improved in ourselves? Once you embrace with strong arms the issues in yourself, address them, work through — you will feel the fragrance of freedom. Every ‘Dracula’, deprived of the opportunity to prey on you, will leave you in peace searching for a more drainable victim.

Recognize when you’re being drained by an energy vampire. Take control of your nervous organization, follow your breathing, visualize a shielding barrier, a buffer zone, where no negative influence can penetrate.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

Why Social Media Overtakes the World

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“I want to have memories that are realities and are better than anything that can ever happen to anyone”, said P. in a husky, breathy voice, and stole cautiously towards the house.

Introduction

P. always had a real aesthetic passion for antiquity. He bought a house, magnificent and terribly incommodious. It was offered at a great bargain. He was working tooth and nail to pay the bills. Now this property was out of danger. But there was time when he almost lost it… and himself.

P. was tall, lean, loosely and feebly put together. His face was ugly, sickly grayish color. But it was a charming face – he looked clever and ill. His blazing eyes were beautiful. In his three-and-seventy he stepped in his life with the eager nimbleness of a boy. The time when he was seven-and-fifty, ruined in spirit, body, and monies had been far away but not forgotten.

1) Early Days and Struggles

His success was not rapid and had much of the inoffensiveness of failure. He was kind when he needed to be cruel, generous when life asked for frugality, emotional and quick-tempered when patience and reserve were at stake.

The house was too much for him in many ways. Too expensive, too big, too ugly, too isolated, too everything. It had an Elizabethan flavor about it and served as another nail in the ancient coffin of his financial troubles. Still, it became his salvation, ruining him and reviving anew. It was the sunshine of his life and he protected it with volcanic energy. 

You need the push and self-assertiveness to get ahead in professional life.

When a great natural aptitude for your business is in you, you are never as happy as when you do what you’ve been created for. Often, one needs many years and struggles to find the very thing one likes. In the course of working life, one parts with many illusions. The stories of success help the faculty of being interested in life from becoming worn out. There are many wonderful people, true people, and getting to know them virtually or personally is like going to a revival meeting and being converted to a success creed.

2) Close to Devastation

P.’s nature was the one that improved under strain that would kill a weaker person. He realized his mistake in buying this place but in ex post facto manner. He got into a financial pit and lost everything. He didn’t feel weepy, drying up the springs of regret in his heart. All faculties of his mighty brain were thrown into a struggle to find a way to get his dear home back. He could not see himself full and contented without it. One can pity such devotion towards a soulless thing, but he had a heart big enough to hold the love for the building, and the bodies occupying it and sharing his devotion. His wife seldom lost sight of the fact of him being so passionate about it. She interrupted his life with friendship and observed it with love, so he never had lack of affectionate emotion coming from a dear soul.

They stayed in the house waiting for the order to desert it. He couldn’t even think about the need to part with his dear soulless friend. His brain was all in a whirl, looking for the quick way to set them all at ease. Prior to that time, P. worked days and nights to keep it warm and cozy for his family. He had no chance to enjoy the luxury of staying in it long enough to warm his heart. The truck business he owned was calling his attention. When the first heavy snowfall left him in debt, three of his trucks broken and the forth offered as means to pay for the loss – he had no job and no money to spare even on food.

Never let yourself being invaded by a failure.

It, when coming to your life, should push you even harder to the goal you have. You become wiser with every misfortune, it enlarges your horizon. Every succeeding act of your life play is going to be better, more joyous, and less sad. Look for the stock of professional stories that are available online. People talk with vividness about their achievements, showing the way to success and giving a favorable interpretation to everything. And we all need a positive view on things, an optimistic expectation from life. This kind of energy is healthy for your mind, soul, and body.

3) Glimmer of a Solution

The idea presented itself when P. started to wander through his social media accounts. Now he had more time to look at his friends’ pages, admiring happy families of ones, and successful lives of travel and adventure of others. He was not discouraged by the displayed accomplishments of his former classmates, neighbors, and distant and close relations. P. was rather motivated to find a way to improve his life so that he can claim his house a soul property with no dread to lose it and enjoy his stay in it when and as long as he wanted.

He was searching through the success stories of other people, Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram influencers. People who were drafting the rules to live by, and enjoyed what they did, earning their living, commanding their time, and mastering their futures. He thought himself almost past everything but the former business he knew. Was it late to learn a different route in life? P. was taken up with the idea to add an internet turn to his life and regain freedom.

Always put new steps and slides to your idea.

If one way of reaching it is not working, do not change the idea, change the way to it. Add spring and variety to your imagination. Go against some obstacles and around them, outran them with your feeling and faith in a favorable outcome. You should always look back at the people who are able to introduce you to the world of ideas and propel your mental awakening. The atmosphere of endeavor, of expectancy and bright hopefulness should prevail in your life. This blissful vibe attracts positive events in life.

4) A Breakthrough Idea

P.’s excitable temperament rebounded from one extreme to the other. His belief in the sacred character of his social media enterprise made him almost tremble with passionate rage. And an idea gained in force by the energy with which it was expressed. His countrified old house served as his Muse. He filmed his life story and the history of the place, both of them worn like coins that had been long out of use. He kept the video at a high temperature, the success of it owed much to the mysterious melancholy of the place, where things had happened – many people died there, and that made it full of life.

Viral it became, being perfect frost for about two months and after that, suddenly, hundreds, thousands, and millions of views across all social media platforms. People spread the content, shared it with their friends and family. P.’s heart spoke to the hearts of other people. He made his life a poem, cuffed and buffeted through the world it became a hymn of struggle and devotion.

It may take time and many trials to get to the point you want. Never despair. Break into a run if needs be or slow down with it if time is not right. But never lose a strong hold of it. Do not try to live like the mice in the kitchen, making no noise, leaving no traces – be loud if it helps, be bright and big, and make people notice you. Do not be consumed by life, rather, dominate it and set your own nutrition standards.

5) Relief and Freedom

P. lost many things that others kept at his age, but his inner glow didn’t fade. He hadn’t lost the fire of life. His skin was hardened by hard work, old lazy eyes kept the images from the past, and all the strong things of his heart came out in his body, that was so tireless in serving generous emotions.

Freedom added vigor to P.’s personality. The list of his followers was huge, he shared every memorable event in the course of his crowded years and those videos had a deep color of emotion, that didn’t leave a nerve in people that was not twisted. He happened to be gifted with the ability to speak to the hearts of others and make an adventure even from a simple life event. His stories were fascinating, his personality captivating.

So many people are bound to devote every hour of their life to the task they do not like, their glances repressed, their voices hushed. Life goes on for them without delight, only evasions and negations, saving cramps of moments to be with dear people and back to the artificial toils of working life. Do not be negative about your dreams. Start as a hobby and step by step make every effort to help it become dominant in your professional life. Only when you do what you love you live freely, not working anymore but enjoying every day you devote to your favorite venture, that now earns you a living.

Conclusion

Your enthusiasm, your violent likes drive your life and assert themselves in all the every-day occupations of it. Work should be a prolonged festival. Every trial and obstacle should acquire celebrity by their defeat. Find a story that inspires you and a person that motivates you. Do not lose inquisitive and experimental quality and always boost every intellectual pace of your mind. Read and research, share your ideas and look for the advice from people who already at the point of their life where you are aiming to go.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

6 Ways to Push Worry and Anxiety Out of Your Life

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“Understanding, that worrying was draining and unreasonable arrives in course of time,” said U. sitting himself with the air of a stranger.

Introduction

And U. was not a stranger in our house. Today he was very polite, as frightened men frequently are. We both, I and my mom, were visited with the same unpleasant sensation at that moment – worry, like the rippling of water in a silent place, glimmered faintly in his pale blue eyes.

U.’s eyes were sharp, noticing everything, skipping nothing. A round face, shiny black hair, and old fashioned half-whiskers. A friend to our house, a brother to my mom, a confidante to me. He was quick at understanding the teenagers who spoke their own language of youth, and the most reticent and distrustful of them would tell him their story without realizing they were doing so. But his own daughters seemed to get more and more distant and solemn with him.

1) Make a Whole Understanding of Your ‘Why’

U. had two twin-teenage daughters whom he raised without mother, she died when they were only three years old.

N. and M. were as different in their inner nature as they were alike in their outer looks. N. was rather more complex than M. She was fanciful with all sorts of unspoken preferences and was easily offended, her velvety green eyes filled with tears at every trifling misfortune. M., on the contrary, at almost any disappointment or displeasure would lift her chin and bear it silently.

Both of them at their 16 now were getting even with the life of love-adventure. That was the major reason for sleepless nights and days full of anxiety for their father.

Figure out ‘why’ you worry so much. Intently look at the true reasons for your worry. It may be a slight thing that disturbs your equanimity or a major distractive force that frails your mind – in any case, you need to form a clear understanding of what you are dealing with.

2) Piece Your Worry Out

U. was quick to anger, quick to laughter, and kind and loving from the depth of his soul. His daughters used to confide in him with every life adventure. But now they were growing into little ladies and needed a woman’s… mother’s guidance. He felt the need for a gentle touch in their upbringing all the way during his faithful-to-his-dear-wife life. The same sudden recognition flashed into his mind more and more often now.

U. noticed that with him his daughters would restrain their speech and manners out of some secretive modesty. They hated the superior tone that he sometimes took with them, trying to reason and caution.

Turn the power of reason on. The wealth of your mind should piece out every worrisome thing in your life and make a full list of what you need to confront. Analyze the list. This intelligence is refreshing. It gives you an ability to look at the things that disturb you so in a more distant and broad way.

3) Embrace Uncertainty

His daughters resented U.’s protective manner. Now they had only their girlish fanciful minds to batter at the world with. He consoled himself with the belief that he had managed to instill in them the endurance to go through life trials, but he feared that their open-to-love hearts may get bruised on the way to more mature understanding of relationships.

N. and M. were tossed down blindfold on that life of emotion. To predict what it would make of them was impossible. The vital essence, the throb of it, the light restlessness – rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful – they needed to taste it with their own taste buds.

Accept the uncertainty fulcrum. Everything in life comes in perfect time. We need to admit it and welcome every change and challenge rather than feel dread and fear. We grow and become stronger sometimes with the help of things we can explain, and very often with things we are not able to comprehend at all. And to predict which of them would become a happy or a sad coincidence is impossible – and that, exactly that makes life so interesting.

4) Become Handy with Distractive Tools

U. was walking slowly, dragging his feet along as if he had a great weight on his shoulders. His daughters were the only salvation for him. He needed to divert his thoughts to something completely different, something that could rose the old man from the torpor of worry in which he seemed to live now. My mother was a wise woman and a good friend to her older brother. She reasoned with him, instilling in his mind the understanding that every step his daughters took toward love added to them strength and expansion as individuals.

My mother said that there was no purpose in tossing the days in a sort of monotonous agitation as there was no way to stop the natural process of girls’ awakening sensuousness. She had me and my sister to think about and she chose to trust and respect rather than worry and question our self-esteem.

Change the way you relate to worry and anxiety. Make every effort possible to add meaning and pleasure to your life. Fill your free time with the activities you enjoy the most. Read interesting books and watch fascinating movies, listen to nice music and enjoy your most admirable hobby. Distract your mind from the thoughts that make you feel uncomfortable.

5) Consider Overestimation that Resides in Every Worry

U. needed to call back to his memory the days of his early youth, the recollections of first love when there was not a particle of earth beneath his feet, the resentment at the face of any amount of reason that his parents were trying to thrash into him. He could make his authority felt and lock his girls at home, not letting them wonder with their friends after school – that would only invite violence and protest – U. knew it too well.

His daughters were merging into their teens. Soon enough they would be grown young women and to get to this point they needed to acquire experience that only heartfelt affairs could give.

6) Say a Lot to the Purpose

I was on friendly terms with M. and N. Sitting together, exchanging occasional words, glances and smiles, we indicated a certain advanced stage of intimacy and camaraderie. That friendship produced a consoling effect on U.’s worrisome mind. His girls spent a lot of time in our house, talking to me, my sister, and our mother. That was not the same as having their own loving and caring mother beside, but that still gave them an example of a mother-daughter relationship. They could ask my mother questions that were not destined to man’s ears. The answers they received were full of dignity and depth of graceful and noble judgment.

U. also had a privilege to relieve his long-pent emotions and talk freely with my mother, his younger sister. She was able to balance the strange anxiety in his soul, solace his spirit, and soothe his ruffled temper with the company and conversation.

To talk about the things that bother you with someone you trust is the best way to come closer to understanding them better. Voiced, they lose some degree of frightening power over you. A feeling that you shared your worry with a beloved person consoles your heart and diminishes the weight of anxiety that holds your soul a prisoner. Talk about it, let your fear come out – it may dispel in the air or at least reduce in size.

Conclusion

The time of agitated, burning heart and brain is left behind. U. is an affectionate grandfather to his many grandchildren. His beautiful and wise daughter M. is an ornament of true motherly love and daughterly devotion to the whole village. She came back from a big town with a child in her hands seeking retirement for her broken heart. An icy hand released her soul when she met a simple farmer, married him, and became a mother for four brothers to her little older girl.

U.’s other daughter N. became a famous writer – married to her books; constantly in love with her cats, niece, and nephews; and caring about every relation on a distant gift-giving manner. She remembers all the important dates and never fails to send a word and a present but rarely shows up herself, always faithful to her secluded way of life.

Exercise daily to make your body stronger, it will add flexibility not only to your limbs but to your mind as well. Learn to divert your thoughts from the worrisome ideas that may possess you. Drink less caffeine to minimize some tension on your nerves, get a soothing and calming herbal tea instead. Meditate and learn to see the beauty and charm in life around, relax your body and soul.

Never blame yourself. Be loving and caring towards your feelings. There is a solution to every problem. Get help from other people: your family, and friends – bring your worry to an end together.

Stay tuned…

Mental Health

An Autistic Boy Helped Me Recover After a Loss

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Know the difference between distractive loneliness and desired solitude

Olya Aman
My kind of loneliness rather aggravated than relieved the gloom of my life. – Olya Aman

I stole cautiously towards my secluded bench in the middle of a little island of sunflowers in their utmost bloom and richness of color. One would be almost invisible amongst those kingly looking plants with their golden crowns and massive leaves.

My face during that tough, lonely period of my life was a good deal over-serious for my two and twenty. I was well-nigh alien to this stunning and bewildering scene. My gloominess quite confounded the senses.

I looked at the boy on my bench, my neighbor, in mute and timid wonder. How did he end up on my patch? The intelligence that shone in the deep green eyes of this autistic boy, when I finally had a chance to look into them, seemed scarcely of his age, or of the world. The changing expression of good humor and seriousness, his ability to blush very red to the ears, made me admire a thousand lights that played about his face.

When I rented a small cottage in this remote village, I took no notice of other people and very little of this boy, although we were house to house neighbors and met often coming out and getting in our homely places, both thresholds facing each other. I seemed hard upon my thoughts, constantly looking down as if examining my boots and the ground right under my feet.

That day I smiled at this boy and said a word of polite greeting, but he, dedicated to his thoughts, didn’t respond. I discovered that this ability to concentrate made him a fantastic listener. At that moment in my life, he became my salvation. I was pouring on him a torrent of personal sentiments.

Not looking at me, he said, “L.. l.. l..”, then a long pause. The boy had a severe stammer. Finally, he produced his name in an unusually deep baritone, “Liam”. We communicated in notes from his side and words from mine. The first thing he wrote was, “You are lonely.” And he was right.

I told him my love story and although he avoided any eye contact and scribbled something in his little journal all the way; I knew he was all ears.

“I am in love with a dead person. If I knew him longer, I could have loved him longer. I miss his clear and pure miniature skies under the arch of his eyebrows. Only in his company I felt no need to think of what to say. Every moment of silence was a blessing, every word uttered was a revelation. He poured out more treasures of his luxurious inner nature in one minute than anyone else could’ve done in his entire life.” Liam brushed tears from my cheeks with his checked handkerchief. It was so old and soft, as if a tender touch of a mother.

“Only two years I spent in this blissful state. He missed our second anniversary. He‘d been run over by a car.”

Liam handed me a note with the following question, “Do you feel that your happiness is owing to him, and without his presence, your existence lacks purpose?” This boy could read my heart.

We met every day on that same bench. I was talking; he was scribbling. I said to Liam that I voluntarily chose isolation. I nurtured the notion I differed from all other people that surrounded me. I saw the world in clouds and fogs rather than in colors and vibes. I perceived people as rough creatures, not fit to understand my pain and be my companions.

I busied myself diving in my newly formed plan of moving to the village and burring my over-drained mind in simple farm occupations that required no thinking but just hard physical work. I used to have the vastness of feelings to lose myself in. Now I tried to be forgotten and forget.

When at home I felt my words thrown out, conversations started and no one to address them to. I used to defend myself tragically in an empty room in front of an imaginary lover. My bitter remarks dashed in vain against empty walls. I ate and drank, but it didn’t put any heart in me.

I couldn’t sleep, the night was fast closing, not gifting me with rejuvenating rest. I carried myself with the air of a weary person, feeling the claws of depression pressing harder on my chest. I had no tools to cope with stress, life attractions seemed to be hidden from my eyes. I found it harder with each day to approach people.

Liam listened. When I was done, he handed me his journal and smiled.

Liam wrote the following

It is vital to know the difference between loneliness that feels draining, distractive, and upsetting; and desired solitude that is peaceful, creative, and restorative. I found that you suffer from six kinds of distractive loneliness.

  1. New-Place Loneliness by the nature of things may force a person into the embrace of solitude. Shutting oneself up for a long time may create a communicative barrier that will prevent a person from seeing an opportunity to meet people.
  2. No-Soulmate Loneliness, when intimate bounds are missing. A beloved person is a source of love energy. Missing a romantic partner fills the heart with silence that is not soothing but upsetting.
  3. Lack-of-Trust Loneliness is a pessimistic approach to life. If you do not believe in the existence of truly well-intentioned, kind, and helpful people — you do not believe in life itself.
  4. No-Time-for-Connection Loneliness is misleading. To throw oneself into daily occupations not leaving any space for yourself and for others is a big mistake. That time may be considered lost because there is no one to share the pleasures of your achievements with.
  5. I-Am-Different Loneliness is quite a mystical state of mind. It is good to be different, feel oneself unique. But there is a fine ground between feeling different and feeling superior. The first one is most often positive, rather than the other is for sure negative. To teleport oneself from negative to the positive side of uniqueness is extremely important. To achieve it, you just need to open your perception to the ability to see the individuality in others. The uniqueness of personality, when multiplied, creates a wonderful cocktail of human characters.
  6. Quiet-Presence Loneliness is the lack of companionable silence. Sometimes we need someone to be just there for us, present in the room but not intrusive into our thoughts. The knowledge that we are not alone adds a comforting element to our lives. It is always pleasant to enter a habitable place after the day’s strain and excitement, rather than to find no eyes to look into during dusk hours.

What you should do to recover after your loss

  • Stay open for others. Connect with people. Nurture relationships. You need to feel that you belong, to confide, to give and get support. Attempt to secure the favor of warm-hearted people. That will add peculiarity to your personality.
  • Give love and you will receive it back multiplied. Be generous and wrap your beloved people up in attention and affection. Your life will be full of light, of unmingled happiness, if you cherish faith in the best in people.

This autistic boy changed my attitude toward life

Friendship, which before these days seemed impossible, crept in my life accompanied by blithesome music of this boy’s kind heart. That music taught me to value the treasures of the heart over any material possessions. I stopped feeling superior over others, admitting that I had tons to learn from simple people with little to boast of in terms of monetary luxuries, and so much in terms of values of the heart.

When I let myself be open to the truest, warmest, soul-felt gratitude — I saw more smiling faces around. The reason was simple — the charming smile found its way to my face, and even though I had forgotten how to wear it, my gentle nature was always ready to master every positive skill all over again. I learned to share the devotion and affection of my nature so long locked and sealed inside my soul. This transformation brought deep and lasting relationships with other people.

My mind was firmly set on never to return to the sorrow and calamity of my past distractive life apprehensions. I intended to not let my positive spirit tarnish. My long suffered heart found the perfect formula for happiness, and the key element in it was a strong connection to other people.

Stay tuned…