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Mental Health

5 Essentials for Building Inner Happiness

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I act often with fear and bravery chasing each other in my eyes… – Olya Aman

Introduction

L. is a good nurse, and that alone tells a lot about her. She was born in Rwanda, adopted and raised in Europe. L. moved back to Rwanda when she learned her way and made sure that helping her patients was her aim in life. After the genocide her native country needed support, her least lucky people needed her knowledge.  

You must not grudge me a little pomp and ceremony about this story. L. is a fine creature, her big almost black identical in size and shape eyes cause people to confide in her. She learned early on to listen, and this skill proved to be invaluable in her profession. 

“Every day is like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again,” she says. “I begin my harum-scarum day and see the transformation, one person at a time.”

People often live with the brow of an optimist above and the jaw of a pessimist below. To make one dominate another is to create real value in life. A positive approach to everything one does helps to build a skill set that makes a smile last a lifetime. Whereas, one sardonic smile can bring gloom that blankets everything around.

1) Negative Thoughts Are as Bad as a Dangerous Plague, and Infinitely as Harmful to Your Health

“I was 12 when my new parents took me to Europe. I have my first memories linked with horror and fear, loss and grief. Those memories shaped my personality and in some way, I am grateful for the background I have. Although, gratitude was not speedy enough to visit me.”

“My good, generous and loving parents had to put up with a lot. I was not an obedient child, rebelling at anything and everything. I was in constant emotional pain at least first five-six years or so. The lesson of the genocide period in Rwanda left my whole being in ruins. Nearly one million people were killed. I lost my family, my friends, everything I ever loved.”

When we feel negative emotions, they surround our brain by a mysterious halo, which shuts off the outside world, limiting our ability to see the way out. Our brain finds it easy to see the raw afternoon and the dense fog, the muddy streets, and the bleak houses. 

You need to make an effort to not letting bad things alone take their own bad way. The world takes gloomy and bright passages, and if you take it off-handedly, it will never go right for you. That is why in the midst of the mud and at the heart of the fog you need to force yourself to see the light, to shake the negativity off. 

Procrastination, spoliation, evasion, botheration blind your brain, depriving you of the ability to see the options and choices that surround you.

2) How Positive Thoughts Color Our Life in Healthy Beautiful Shades

“Love and patience helped me to gradually come back to believing again. Jane and Matt – my stepparents – are my rocks in life. I owe them my new self, or, rather, the return of my old happy before-the-horror-self. I remember and I mourn, I often cry, but now mostly because of happy memories. I have more of those, you know, and the rest is still here in my heart, but not pressing and as vivid anymore.”

“This transformation came with the knowledge that I wanted to make a change. I was sick for a while at some point. A woman that nursed me in the hospital imprinted the longing for the same profession in me. By that time I knew that Rwanda was in the reconstruction period and the system of health needed human resources. I was going to come back home.” 

The impact of positive emotions on the brain and overall health is hard to underestimate. Joy, contentment, and love open endless possibilities in life, they broaden your mind, make it more prone to new innovative solutions. 

When you seem to be a mass of dull, complaining feelings everything you do may seem distasteful. Gift yourself with optimistic thinking by identifying areas of your life that usually upset you. Each time your thoughts distress you, drive them out or find a way to put a positive spin on them. 

A smile during difficult times lightens the burden of troubles. When you humor everyday misfortunes, you feel less stressed. A good laugh is a luxury, the radiating waves of it break the toughest walls of desperation. 

Our social barometers always should stand at ‘sunny’. Negative people continually war with your happiness. Surround yourself with positive, supportive people who can give help with advice and action. 

3) Motivation is Another Definition of Positive Thinking

“The desire not only to see my country again, but to be able to bring good – my skillset and knowledge – was driving me in my studies. I followed the efforts of Dr. Binagwaho, who spent years helping to rebuild the country’s health care system. She is my hero.”

“The most precious resource of the post-genocide Rwanda was its people. Thousands of community health workers traveled from home to home providing the necessary care. I willingly joined the rural health tribe.”

Life has many costumes and only by looking at it with optimism one can truly value it. Positive emotions prompt useful and valuable everyday activity. Encouraging thinking is a sophisticated weapon in a battle with monotony. 

Building anything requires patience and motivation, both are synonymous with optimism. Only in a state of appreciation you can spark massive changes that can lead to new developments in life.

The ability to stay enthusiastic and hopeful is always located within. Whatever happens outside should not determine your state of mind, for that power rests with you only. So, does not allow an external event to be a disturbance.

4) How to Allow Positivity Reign Amid Chaos

“The health workers were selected by the villages they served. The people of my native village decided that I would care for them. It was the happiest day of my life.”

“The country’s health system has managed to achieve so much progress on a very limited budget. Other poor countries often call this achievement miraculous, I call it challenging. Our dedication to delivering effective health care improves the lives of the poor and that is the best reward we need.”

Do not blame yourself for the lack of calmness, doing so will never bring you to the state of inner joy. Practice awareness of what makes you feel good. Immerse yourself in this activity. Meditate if that makes you display more positive emotions, increased mindfulness, and decreased illness symptoms. 

Explain your inner state of mind in writing. If you note your positive experiences, you will have a better mood level and fewer health problems. 

We are all rooted to our social environment, meeting people we like and … not so much. Schedule fun time with optimistic people. Positivity attracts more of its own self, just being optimistic will make lovely, cheerful people your reality.

 5) Happiness and Success Come Together

“At the end of every day, I am tired and full of joy and sorrow. Both mixed together comprise my life and make it unforgettable. I take both and grateful for both. The new coming day is ever more incredible because of this mixture of emotions and I always start it on a positive foot.”

“I am happy to be home. To lead the life of purpose is stimulating. I often in a state of inward merriment and I encourage myself to prolong this feeling because it is contagious. People around me can feel it and, consequently, become happier from my presence in their life.”

L. is very contented in her profession. She is a link in a chain of remarkable alterations for the better. 

In a positive state of mind you can withstand the passing disappointments and pain. You become a strong personality, the only one controlling your inner state of mind. Happy you, develop new skills with joy, that activity leads to success and that all gives you more reasons to be even happier. Serenity and peace are on your way when you remind yourself of your unbroken positivity.

Conclusion

L. confided in me and gave her permission to share her story. She only asked to make an emphasis on the happy side of it, showing to my readers the importance of positive, grateful approach to life. She mentioned several times that love saved her sanity, and optimism of her parents, being contagious, helped her to get better physically and emotionally.

It is hard to overestimate the importance of positivity. The most deplorable and irreparable results come from deeds made in a state of pessimistic rejection of bright and jolly in life. Whatever comes your way, allow it to be, but experience it with inner belief in a good outcome. A positive approach to life helps you to be preserved and unbroken. It reminds you that what seems distressing at one point in time is a blessing at another. 

Stay tuned… 

Personal Growth

4 Things to Know About Makeup

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To be the butt of everyone’s ridicule could be a symbol of all that is truly beautiful and stylish… – Olya Aman

Introduction 

A. had the territory of curves, the acres of curls, the meadows of fresh grassy aroma all about her, and the domain of a bit sarcastic but still kind attitude towards life. There was no way I could forget that tremendous display of the whitest teeth on Earth and a lovely cascade of laughter. Of all the fine people on board of Eleanora, the cruise ship going to South Africa, A. swaggers in my memory as the finest. 

On the board of that liner we shared the adjoining compartments and for some strange coincidence, the door between them was not bolted. The very first day of our voyage I tried it and slipped right into her room just at the time A. was getting ready to go out to have dinner. She laughed approvingly, saying that she was just thinking to try that door herself. We had dinner together that evening and all the consequent ones that followed.

The definition of beauty breaks under the test of each individual. Out of this word one forms numberless associations and correspondences. The countless varied impressions, experiences, concepts are formed by society. Out of these materials, every woman strives to take the best to be considered beautiful by society standards. 

1) Pursuing Status and Popularity Throughout History

1920
1960

We invented a game to amuse ourselves during our meals and strolls, solving imagined mysteries and inventing detective stories with crimes and murders. A. had a peculiar mind, reading people and situations promptly and to the point, never being in the wrong. And I was the Hastings to my Poirot friend, always naïve and always in the foggiest to what was truly going on. 

It amazed me how A. turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to all those demonstrations of society accepted beauty standards. A. always wanted to partake of the forbidden pleasure of being remarkably loud in her self-expression. She was inhaling the judgmental fragrance coming from other people, and I doubted if ever she was quite through with it. A. enjoyed it, not able to toss the desire to shock out of her heart. It is my opinion that people judged her boisterous manner because they envied her bravery.

Debbie Reunolds
Doris Day

The history of makeup is charged with a constant change in society. Exquisite soft colors of the 1940s and post-war 1950s are rippling in our memory. Sweet ladies, such as Debbie Reunolds and Doris Day, recall in a flash years of longing for simple, natural, clean and conservative beauty. 

Peggy Moffitt
Twiggy

Later in the 1960s and 70s, the splash of idealism and feminine protest required to see instantaneous, fleeting, and slightly boyish faces. Twiggy and Peggy Moffitt pretty nearly summed up the philosophy of that time. The views of masculine touch in a woman’s appearance grew habitual to everyone.

Falling early into the 1980s and 90s, and into loud and louder everything about the face. All that little sense of propriety in makeup was laughed out of that time by a hardened, bright, colorful specter. Doubting how to distinguish men and women one needed to accept eyeliner, big hair, and lipstick on both sexes. 

  • Tyra Banks (2000 – 2017)
  • Alessandra Ambrosio (2003 – 2017)
  • Doutzen Kroes (2005 – 2017)
  • Daria Werrbowy (2004 – 2015)

In the 2000s, women started to feel the wide world. Technology and the internet started to make them dream of the heights they never thought possible for themselves before. Ladies escaped the clutches of seriousness and added a female touch to their business look. Who could be timid in the presence of glossy, glamorous and sexy in a smart way businesswoman? Healthy, organic air prevailed in the makeup industry. 

Gliding neatly and softly into today, a beautiful woman is striving for a healthy look and a healthy life. The trend was started in 2000 and was culminating in now. The exterior is natural. It resumes the contours of normality. The interior is enhanced by workouts and good food. We do still see the hurls of the 2000s somewhat heavy looks, but more and more additional genuine light is brought into the lives and on faces.

Today we strive to believe that any troubling feeling is flitting. Sadness, fear, frustration like a storm, cannot last forever. As our experiences broaden and deepen we tend to see the beauty in absolutely everything and everyone. This inward knowledge creates freedom of expression. A woman looks within herself and in time finds the measure and the meaning of the inward and outward beauty.

2) Chasing After Favored Status in Different Countries

There were many men and women on board our vessel. All dressed up and, so to say, made up. The company was diverse: European women were stunningly attractive, high hills on dainty long legs, red lips on oval faces, big lashes on colored sparkling eyes; Asian ladies had unusually white complexions, Western beauties were tanned and blushing with rouge on their cheeks. 

A. was an accomplished woman with enough means to be able to buy all the makeup possible, and yet, she never bothered to wear any at all. She looked quite all right without it, as far as I could judge, with all those unruly locks, thick black eyebrows, and long shadowy eyelashes. 

Being successful at investing her own money and advising others on how to deal with theirs, A. possessed the brains of a wise man. She could not care less for the opinion of others and loved to be in a company of strangers, people who didn’t know who she was, and thus, looking at her very often disapprovingly. She loved to trace the signs of transformation. It solaced her mind to see how people, almost against their will, were eventually attracted to her, admiring her truthful nature. 

There might be some allowance for error in depicting the looks in different countries. To avoid it I will only try to point the way for the beauty qualities that are considered attractive in some distinguished places. 

For the lovely ladies of the US suntanned skin, fuller lips and the longest eyelashes ever seen are a splendid example of attractiveness.

The bulk of Brazilian woman strives for a natural, effortless look with the most significant accent on a bold matte lip that commanded over light and harmony of naturally colored skin and eyes. 

Chasing After Favored Status in Different Countries

The colors that count in Canada are beige nudes and deep reds. Here the secret of attraction is in brows. Bold or barely there, they present a perfect addition to the color choice for the lip.

Chasing After Favored Status in Different Countries

In the UK and France women are willing to be natural, more real. The forces of makeup are now equally with contouring and highlighting that looks less artificial and more enhanced. 

Chasing After Favored Status in Different Countries

Anyone can trace here that the secret inner wish of every woman from every country is to display the treasures of their personalities. Smoky in India, dramatic in the Middle East, intense in Mexico – eyes tell a volume about female vitality. Red and beige, loud and dense, expressive and accentuated lips feel and tell, whisper and shout about a sensuous force of every woman’s nature. 

Chasing After Favored Status in Different Countries

What a glamorous masquerade is this makeup business. It entices women to sail forever in the abundance of color with sense and feeling and mind to be her selves and yet different, to imitate and be unique, to be seen and most important – remembered. The secret inner will that controls this industry is a fateful desire to make the time still and our nature silent, to preserve the beauty and to fool the life. 

3) Makeup as a Tool for Gaining Lofty Titles and Increasing Self-Importance

A. sensibly tasted the sweets of living without deceitful colors on her cheeks and looked somehow visibly more honest than others. She considered makeup an instrument of woman’s destruction. I was not of the same opinion; we argued with zeal and friendly passion. I spent quite a number of years selling makeup and I loved to play with colors, although I got tired of it long ago and at the time wore nothing but for a bit of mascara and a liquid liner on my eyes and a trace of lipstick on my lips. 

A. had sense, and energy, and spirits, and character – she needed not any additional color to the abundance her personality presented already. A.’s universal good-will and contented temper attracted people not from the first glance, that was for sure, but from the first conversation. With her, every day flew away at a very unusual rate. Forming all those playful schemes in a perfect Agatha Christie’s fashion we made a lot of friends in-betweens.

The makeup industry is equally charged with the odors of camouflage and deception. It pulsates with buoyancy and desire. It is an art so wonderful and with such power of creating rather than enhancing, that to recognize an infinite nature that is hidden under it is almost impossible – a person becomes a new made-up incarnation of herself. 

After the makeup is washed off, women feel insecure, as if an essential part of their character is missing. This sensation is close to the feeling of loneliness. It creeps over dear ladies with false statements that exquisite beauties cannot be discovered when makeup is not present. 

Even such sensations as business success and accentuated beauty became undividable nowadays. Piling foundation on concealers perceived as professional and may very much likely to help a person to be more successful. 

4) Media Troubling Representation and the Need for Importance

A. took delight in putting me wise on how things were and why she despised wearing makeup. You see, in her early days she had quite a taste of misery when working in an investment firm her vanity was not once pushed, or rather dashed down by her male senior manager in front of other female colleagues due to her ‘lack of femininity’. For some reason, he thought it would make A. more successful with clients if she had furnished her bag with necessaries of some beauty enhancing tools. 

Eventually, A. called a council in her thoughts whether she needed to take the advice or toss it overboard – and did the latter, leaving the office and opening her own business. It was vain to sit still and wish to be yourself in the surrounding where you were pressed to be someone else. She encouraged herself to go beyond what she would have been able to have done upon staying in her firm. 

A. was contented with the discovery that women loved to confide in her with their thoughts, and… with their money. The husbands, they thought, were in the safe, dealing with a woman with no makeup. It just happens so that men will not be nice to you if you are not good looking, and women will not be nice – if you are.

We lose imagination when an instinctive desire to follow the creed promoted by media is overpowering the other senses and emotions. It compels women to look for the pictures of accepted standards and try their best to be counted as “similar” and “like” the person on the cover. 

If for some reason a lady cannot find her resemblance vividly displayed she feels left out, forgotten, not accepted, not beautiful. Seeking the favor of others, women strive to obtain the same shades for the eyes and lips. But the reality is that whatever approval is supposed to come her way will move her farther from her unique nature. 

Pursuing the status of prettiness and loveliness, the natural flow of beautiful energy of independent mind and soul is often stopped. This chasing is alarming, regardless of the outcome. If you gain approval, you will become a slave to outside messages of praise. Do not let someone else’s opinion direct your life. Only when you adjust the obtruded belief to a heart-felt individual one, your understanding of attractiveness changes. 

Conclusion

A. always had something to talk about that no one else had monopolized. She created a sense of power and incongruity. Being kind of shut out from the region of the beautiful, A. had a freer mind. She had not a smooth story to tell about herself, and who did? She played a game of life into her own hands with the help of her brains, not her looks. Her road to success might have been easier the other way around, but she would have been a different person then.

Makeup, as a tiny fragment of our life, is not as significant anymore. It still has a thousand hues that are blended in various substances. And women play with it, experiment, hide and sick themselves in the process. 

Beauty takes shape of joys and sorrows. It has the poignancy of heart-satisfying inner emotions. A strive to achieve a way of life that guarantees integrity, joy, peace, and balance is depicted on modern faces. 

Stay tuned… 

 

 

 

 

Mental Health

My Struggle With Hatred After My Boyfriend Was Killed

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Do not let hate make you old and stale and faded

I was beside her, wrapped around her, melting in my anger… – Olya Aman

I was almost abnormally fond of Adam.

The little dimples on his cheeks were driving me crazy. He was the only means of complete and ineffable happiness, the very essence, which I defined as Life.

His heart stopped beating and the Hatred to the person (who drove the car in a state of alcohol intoxication, killed my boyfriend, and remained almost unharmed) began to control my existence with innate satisfaction.

This experience turned my understanding of Hate and Hatred bottom side up.

I meditated on my hate, crying quietly, shouting inwardly. I was utterly desperate in my desire to inflict the same suffering upon a person responsible for that devastating emotional pain, soul-torture, the heartbreaking outcry of my whole being.

I will share my love story with you in a few well-chosen silences, and the story of my hate — in several emotional words.

1) Try to accord with the disturbing person.

The ghost of an idea to get to know that person better (and if not to forgive, but at least to free my spirit from a tormenting feeling of anger, that didn’t let me breathe fully, function satisfactory, and live bearably) invaded my thoughts.

I visited Mary in prison for eighteen months and four days after the car crash. The expression on her face told me wordlessly that I should (if I would be so kind) spend a moment in her presence, make an effort to not shout from inner pain, listen if she had anything to say, have a look into her eyes for just a fraction of a second… and just be quiet.

Mary’s apocalyptic face, whiter than Death’s itself, seemed incapable of even a glimpse of a smile anymore. I felt my hatred if not slipping away but for sure diminishing. In front of me, there was a woman that made a fatal mistake, a mother that could not be beside her kids, a wife that lost her husband’s trust and love.

I, for one, had her to blame. Mary had gone on every night without the consolation of exoneration.

2) Keep in close touch with your motives.

After the meeting with the person who killed my boyfriend, I was unhurriedly and calmly propelling myself toward recognition of my loss and acceptance of my fate.

I did not forgive Mary, I still felt the pangs of hate often. That was a huge step forward to a new life, where moments without this suffocating feeling were visiting me more and more often.

I had never in my life so perfectly understood (even to the most exquisite nuances) that state of hatred I lived in for so long.

But before that meeting, I had not even one-third the command over it. My ability to distract my thoughts and recover some balance in my feelings ranked better with each new day.

3) Thrust hateful shock upon a paper.

Although my loss was the unspeakable and the unwritable history of agonizing anger and bitterness, I created by some occult process of self-mastery a diary of perfectly cruel time in my life. I wrote about the perpetrated deed of self-distraction committed by hatred.

I wrote down my feelings partly because I wanted to get rid of that hate, and partly because I wanted to have a shred of evidence in the form of a written word of that time, to justify my desire to live when my lover was not among the living, to show him that I still loved and suffered tremendously from that loss.

4) Value trustworthy spectators and listeners.

I could not push this pain off or away, but I started to talk about it with people who cared to listen.

By doing so, I rose from the domain of the inner prison cell I used to live in one on one with this feeling of hatred.

I appeared on the surface where friendship and love of close people and consolation saturating from every encounter could help me recover and drift peacefully along with the current of life.

5) Breathe a tepid skepticism and sickly dislike out.

From all the indescribable I had known, definitely, the most intense one was the feeling of overwhelming loss, pain, and hatred mixed together.

This cocktail made me sick to my stomach and dizzy in my head.

I learned a special breathing technique to help me manage this dreadful inner hullabaloo tornado of disruptive feelings.

It helped me to diminish that absolute and incurable hysteria of emotions and, with time, to extract it from my life almost completely.

6) Ease your pain in the certitude of positive and healing forgiveness.

I visited Mary, the unfortunate driver who killed my boyfriend, only once.

I could not force myself to go to prison again. In one more year after our encounter, Mary was released.

When that piece of news was announced in an official letter, I felt bitterly disappointed. Were thirty months in prison enough to pay for the taking of someone else’s life?

I was despite myself with grief. The feeling of hate overwhelmed all my entire being all over again.

The authorities forced our second encounter on me. I needed to be present at the release meeting, where Mary would declare her remorse, ask to believe in her renewed self, and plead to be forgiven.

What a hellish thing it was to sit through it. I could not lift my eyes to see her talking. When most of the time elapsed, the door opened and two pairs of huge black buttonlike eyes entered the room.

A three-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl. Mary’s husband divorced her while she was in prison, but being a good father brought the kids to see their mother on the day of her release.

The spectacle was refreshing for my feelings. Now I stared all eyed in the scene of devoted love of a mother and unconditional love of her children.

I leapt to my feet and made for the door to shut it and never see these people again, to close that chapter of my life, and be partially contented with the idea that I could not hate this loving mother anymore and hopefully would never see these people again.

Mary and her family moved to a different state, away from the memories and people who can judge her and bully her kids in school. Away to start a new life.

Let me tell you what I know for sure.

Hate is the most uncomfortable, impoverished, and disagreeable feeling to live with.

It sucks the life-giving energy from a human being like a hungry vampire from an unfortunate victim. It is inhaled together with humiliation, mistreatment, and a feeling of impotence.

As an artificially grown black rose, that you may buy to go to the funeral, this feeling cannot becomingly complete a bouquet of beautiful and kind emotions. It spoils the entire picture, sticking out and disgustingly protruding.

Forgiveness and compassion can help to avail this sickly atmosphere.

To say ‘No’ to distractive thoughts means to see better days. Start a journal of positive recollections and put yourself in a contented state every time you read it.

Sometimes things you write may be appalling and rereading those is inflicting even more pain. Tearing up or burning, though, on the contrary, is releasing yourself, freeing your spirit — making it flexible, prone to change.

Close, loving people represent all the vast conscious world of consolation, empathy, and emotional and physical support.

Relax in a company of a friend, the one you can talk a long time to, who will be attentive and intense, who will drink it all in and will help you release your pain, anger, and misery.

Keep washing away negativity with tenderly chosen words of self-compassion that you inwardly voice with each count.

The first note of peace will strike when you inhale in slow fives, hold for another 5, and then let it go with the final 5.

Treat yourself to a luxury of positive visualization.

Feel your detestation passing away with each breath.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

My Mentor Was Dyslexic and Taught Me The Value of Smart Reading

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What quality reading does to our brain

I wanted to be a creature whom ‘Smart’ does not even slightly describe… – Olya Aman

Many years prior to the days of our acquaintance, my mentor was considered a dyslexic child. He had trouble matching the letters, struggled to read fluently and spell words correctly.

My mentor, Maks, can intoxicate every person individually with his great bright voice, hoarse and rich, sudden, and intensely accurate. Saying things enlightening and captivating, he can describe any event from his life and the life of the world around fully and without hyperbole and still catch unmitigated attention of everybody around.

My notebooks, one in particular, are covered with expressions of his wisdom. I’m the witness of his ineffable teaching — How to eliminate our troubles by growing a hunger to read.

I will put you wise using his own words:

Read a Good Book and Energize Your Brain

Reading makes our brain omnipotent. By processing written material, we encourage our brains to work harder and better. Almost like after a visit to a gym, when our muscles still remember the strenuous stretch and weight, our brain expresses a shadow activity at a specific region that was stimulated.

Maks has a great understanding of the brain and his learning disability. He explained to me that dyslexics are visual and multi-dimensional thinkers.

“Although I excelled in hands-on learning and was highly creative, I needed to put a certain dangerous effort into mastering the art of reading. I was long past the school-age when I finally could claim a label ‘normal’ for myself.”

Maks was hard, immeasurably hard on research, finding the best ways to rewire his brain. “I tried all kinds of remedial reading programs that could help me become a better reader. Every single day I was working on changing the way how my brain was processing information.”

Remedial Reading Helps to Diminishing Confusion in Our Lives

Reading decreases stress. You transport yourself into a different situation and positively affect your daily life with uplifting literature.

Maks made his Dyslexia (‘word blindness’ — how it is called sometimes) not an insurmountable obstacle in a process of education, but a problem to be solved — an opportunity to express personal motivation; a trigger to combat an enemy and win the battle on the arena of education.

“I’ve discovered the relationship between reading and stimulation of particular regions of the brain. Today it is a base for the emerging field of literary neuroscience. My life is an example that even a dyslexic reader can fix his problem with the right approach to a book.”

Maks often stresses that by challenging our brain, we keep ourselves upright together with our cognitive abilities. “There are many benefits in the ensemble of mind improving reading exercises. It even can ward off dementia.”

“Behind our eyes lives a world of undiscovered. And to start a journey of self-digging and improvement is never late. There are special techniques, new emerging programs, even specifically created fonts to help us become better readers.”

The Value of Close Reading

Reading is not just fun, it is beneficial for our mental health. Reading stimulates our analytical abilities, heighten our focus and concentration.

Breakthrough information emerges every day. Maks keeps finding new ways to improve memory, reduce stress, decrease depression, enhance imagination, improve sleep, and many more — all with the help of books, chosen smartly and intentionally.

“Reading every day not only makes our feet travel in countries not easily imagined but also explore the grounds of our abilities.”

Methods of Keeping Our Brain Active

When crossing the threshold of a new book you should think what benefit you are expecting to get from it. Making a choice in a library, you pick, quite literally, a kind of cognitive brain training, a way to use new brain regions, and it is in your power to decide where to put your focus on.

“Scientists work extensively, developing new ways to train our brain.” says Maks. “There are numerous books on simple math problems and short brain-training sessions with puzzles. By challenging ourselves, we strengthen the connections between brain cells. Devoting our time to learning something new and complex like a foreign language can protect our brain from aging.”

Conclusion

My mania for the world of reading results from the prolonged conversations with my mentor. I love the state of focus and concentration I feel every time we meet.

I think that being a victim of a great book is an honor, and I wish to get into such captivity often and do so at my leisure. There is about the entire process of reading something irretrievably and positively self-imaginary. It punctuates our lives with novel ideas and educates us in unknown areas of life.

By mastering a new field of study, we heighten our opinion of ourselves and our capabilities. Reading manifests refinement to our brain and enjoyment to our life.

A final work from Maks:

When working with great workout tools our body responds more quickly and easily to the exercise, the same happens with our brain when we chose a quality book to read. You may even feel a bit exhausted at the end, as if your body went through the exercise along with your mind.

Stay tuned…

Personal Growth

Body Positivity Couldn’t Be Explained Better Than This

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Regardless of their size, every woman is an apotheosis of fashionable nobility

It was wholly unlike the ‘Permitted Style’, and she could see the people’s awe and distant wonder… – Olya Aman

Sasha is my best friend. We had, and still have, a tradition in our village school to welcome 1st graders with smiles and handshakes from 5th graders. Sasha was the one to take my hand and lead me to my class. From then on, we were seeing each other regularly in school and outside of it.

Being charming ladies in our 30s, now we have families and both live very far from our native place. Some favorable universal coincidence glued us to the same town, though, so we still keep in touch.

Regardless of Their Size, Every Woman Is an Apotheosis of Fashionable Nobility and Strives to Be in Style

The fashion industry should find a sympathetic response in our lives - treat everyone with dignity and respect. It must not suppress self-expression and creativity.

Sasha has a large, square face, with a massive projecting nose and long-lashed, pale blue eyes. When she is smiling to herself, her face shines pink and childish. She is like one of those extinct birds, the Alagoas foliage-gleaner, once found in northeast Brazil, because she wears that elaborate hairstyle of a curiously improbable shade of orange.

Sasha is undeniably slender, and ponderably light, and… proveably short. Even in school, when people wished to distinguish her from the others, they always called her the ‘miniature one’. Nothing changed these days in this respect.

Sasha used to dress as if she had no sense of proportion, and the colors were always pyrotechnical. That was not her fault. You see, she had a sneaking mania for a fashionable style, particularly when she saw a slender, tall body wearing it. But her reality was the indispensable crisis — she couldn’t find the same garments to fit her petite form. And Sasha felt empty-hearted heading to the kids’ section all over again.

Social Media Is a Majestic Influencer and You Can Manifest the True Body Image Through It

Social media kick starts trends in fashion, particularly when used to illustrate diversity and body-accepting concepts. Nowadays everything is ridiculously exhilarated, beautifully abnormal, and deliciously insane. Gradually our vision is gaining in focus, and we wear confident faces and elegant outfits.

One-day I found Sasha turning everything in her wardrobe topsy-turvy and inside out. The whole place was utterly destroyed, as if by an earthquake, but it was only her frustration burning. With half-shut eyes she was lying on the floor in the middle of that devastation in a perfect unrelaxation.

That day Sasha decided to make a try for Paradise. She decided to be happy, even if it would cost her all honesty and money. Sasha shouldered her way in social media. She crafted her own outfits, which added a rousing fashionable kick to the lives of women with romantically shaped but very tiny forms. She created her own line of “Fashion for Petite” driving change and building her own following.

Clothes Have About Them Something Irretrievably Thought-Provoking for People Around

Our thoughts take on the color of our clothing. One can look simple and charming, and that will strengthen the desire to connect with other people. And being very much aware that you look stunning can bring closer the desire to bestow a little attention to a beloved person.

Sasha regained her good spirits. She is in sympathy with her beautiful self now when she makes her own clothes. She adopted and promoted smart and elegant dressing habit. Her style sends messages to her mind and the minds of others about self-respect and body positivity.

Sasha feels that the conventional visual landscape of the beautiful person needs to be changed. I think she joined a contagious, great, and brilliant movement that broadens the very narrow rules existent for what is considered ‘beautiful’

Conclusion

Being petite myself, I used to be almost swept away by the continually unsuccessful shopping experience. We all desire to parade among our acquaintances in the outfits tailored handsomely and becoming. But we used to be constantly pained by the sight of the fashionable dresses and blouses with shoulders too wide and waists too low.

That wretched mental stupor, the fashion industry used to be in, finally seemed to lighten. Inclusive sizing becomes a good business strategy, even for many haute couture houses. Women of different shapes want to be true to the trend and be part of a modern fashionable movement.

Inclusive sizing is more than just the first subtle outcropping in the fashion industry, it is a re-creating mountain that is going to influence many things in the world. 00, petite, and plus-sizes should not be treated as problems to be solved, but as realities respected and rightfully enlisted in life and business.

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Mental Health

She Got Her Back Broken to Realize She Was Happy

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The power of giving others the heart to live

To linger here or to feel that you belong… – Olya Aman

My sister Tanya is a lean, long-backed, large-headed girl, with surly tones of her voice and coarse features of her face. We scour the country together now and then: I — on my feet and her — on her wheels. Her wheelchair is a speedy little beast, accelerated by her mighty hands and skillfully maneuvered by her flexible torso. You would never believe, looking at her expressive and full of exhilarating energy face, that death had been hovering over her just four years ago.

A rushing torrent of grateful feelings.

The dark night in my sister’s life started from an unfortunate fall from a high staircase. Her brain stopped triggering signals responsible for the muscle movement and she didn’t feel her legs anymore.

When starting to sit down to her meals, still dispirited and sad, she used to say to me, but truly to herself, “Nothing happens without reason. There should be a higher intelligent plan and purpose in it.” The fairest consolation came in disguise of a prayer. It was holding her tight, not letting her slip into that despair completely.

My sister didn’t feel her legs anymore, but strains of overly agitated nerves of her arms and spine substituted that missing sensation. She strengthened her torso every instant she felt the need to hue-and-cry to the missing control of her limbs. She got herself out of the bed and on her wheels with surprising speed.

Elbowing hard upon goals.

Before the accident, my sister used rambled at her pleasure, mostly spending time in the gym listening to her favorite music. Being 32 years old, she still had trouble finding her place in the grownup world.

It seemed a matter of impossibility to center her life around fitness and body healing strategies now when she lost control over almost half of it. But she couldn’t get rid of this idea. Tanya became transfixed with the desire to achieve the heights she didn’t even think possible for her fully functional, healthy past-self.

Tanya set her heart firmly on a goal to become a physical therapist working in amputee rehabilitation. She learned with passion about specific strengthening exercises that flex and tone the muscles. Her own experience gave her a psychological advantage to motivate people.

Issuing forth with a mentor beside.

She adopted this impressive stateliness from her mentor. The simplicity of her mentor’s life stirred her profoundly. Tanya used to preach to me, “This person is happy, chasing his dreams and loving his family. With neither legs no arms he is shining with heart strength and will-power.” Every trace of my sister’s essence strove to bring purpose and happiness into her life.

Power of giving others the heart to live.

My sister still has a sense of weakness and captivity sometimes. But she is recovering her life-balance by an effort of willpower and a desire to set an example for others.

Tanya always says to her patients that whatever happened to her was not a run of ill-luck but a fortunate wakeful blessing. She teaches them to accept the condition and devotedly love their past and present selves. People in her clinic see a humble person just like themselves, never repenting on her helplessness, but being powerful enough to uplift her spirit and inspire others to do the same.

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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.

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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.

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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…