In today’s fast-paced world, it is easy to get caught up in the past, dwelling on regrets and missed opportunities. However, it is crucial to realize that dwelling on regrets only serves to hinder our progress and prevent us from living a fulfilling life. Time is a precious resource, and we must use it wisely. By focusing on the present moment and looking towards the future, we can make the most of our time and create a life that brings us joy and fulfillment.
Similarly, holding onto anger only drains our energy and prevents us from living a peaceful and contented life. Anger is a natural emotion, but when we allow it to consume us, it becomes toxic and detrimental to our overall well-being. Instead, redirecting our energy towards positive pursuits and finding healthy ways to cope with anger can lead to a more harmonious existence.
It is very difficult, although not impossible, to win a race if we have to start down in a hole. However, this is the precise handicap which a lot of people face during their search for happiness. Because of such handicap, climbing out of the hole and arriving to at least the starting line represents an exhausting endeavor. Apparently, this is not logical… this is not how life should be. But truth be told, we can only start from the position we are right now, and we can only use the resources available to us right now. In order to achieve happiness we have to shut off perturbing messages, such as “I cannot”, “I’m going to lose”, “Maybe tomorrow is a better day”, and so further. We have to put all these miscreant ideas aside from our mind, to remove these slimy sentences which do not contribute to our goals. It’s easier for us to attribute the responsibility of our failures and defeats to others… those who taught us, for instance. Some people like to attribute to their parents and teachers an alleged fraud… everything bad has been their fault, not ours. They hold on to the past. They are losers. On the contrary, winners focus on overcoming each obstacle that rises until accomplishing their goals. Winners want to be happy and to bring happiness to all the people around them, sharing the love, their views on life, and perhaps, their goals.
True Happiness
Some serious studies demonstrate that people from developed countries are not necessarily the happiest ones. A lot of nationals and residents of such countries manifest to feel unhappier than those of some developing or poorer countries. In this sense, let’s recall the Easterlin paradox, based on a study by professor and economist Richard Easterlin: Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? published in 1974, while he was with the University of Pennsylvania. Basically, the paradox states that economic growth does not necessarily lead to more satisfaction. It’s obvious that people in poor countries become happier once they can afford basic necessities. But the important idea behind Easterlin paradox is that absolute income does not matter as much as relative income does. In other words, how much you make compared with others around you is what really matters. To put it in today’s terms, owning an iPad doesn’t make you happier, because you then want an iPad Pro 🙂
We are used to recur to the time parameter to assess all of our activities. Worse yet, time assesses our own reality. We love to classify life in an orthodox fashion: past, present and future, unyielding frames we can’t live without. Indeed, as humans, we love to classify things, especially when classifying makes us feel special or protected. We classify things as living or not living. Above all, though, we love to classify things according to time. Thanks to this parameter, everything becomes an event. And we are continually struggling to link events, to establish logical relations of cause-effect between them. If we think this over, we’d note our predilection for going to the ends of classification. To classify, after all, is a proof of intelligence.
We are already accustomed to financial media regularly releasing statistical reports and rankings of the people that lead and have accumulated an important allotment of the world’s money. For instance, Forbes magazine published its annual Japanese ranking a few months ago. For most of us, it’d be wonderful, impressive, and even magical, to someday read our names in such lists. A lot of people only dream of being there. But reality often reveals otherwise. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of luck, or inherited fortunes. But we’ll disregard such cases, as uninteresting for analysis. The norm is that becoming rich requires plenty of sacrifices, and above all, extraordinary efforts. It’s not easy. However, it’s not impossible to reach such goal. Powerful souls set exceptional goals.
Even to cut a flower requires good sense. Good sense, prudence, sound practical judgment. There is nothing in the world which deprives us of enjoying this quality. Good sense allows us to be excellent managers, professionals, friends, husbands/wives, and especially, it opens the doorway to the most precious gift of human beings: self-confidence. Self-confidence is one of those virtues we frequently don’t know how to handle, or that simply we mistreat.
Good sense is the primary and the conditio sine qua non of a better and longer life. Thanks to it we are able to avoid wars, conflicts, hunger, and getting into troubles in general. It is only a matter of just applying it. The converse, i.e. a bad sense of life balance, turns us into fragile souls, easy preys for evil, envy, and lies. A lack of good sense provides a fake sensation of power… power which indeed is only a cheap mask for selfishness. A lack of good sense separates us from our family, our friends and from the entire world. Moreover, that fake power may lead to an hyperactivity which ultimately will burn us.
Saving refers to the preservation of money for future use. Such future use might include capital and goods purchase (house, transport, vacations, etc.), emergencies, and miscellaneous expenses. Strictly speaking, saving is the difference between our income and our consumption expenditure. Besides, saving is our main tool to cope with mortgages, credit card debt, extraordinary bills, and other loans. Without savings, such debt and expenditures may sharply erode our personal finances. Saving also allows for harnessing sudden investment opportunities and to gain access to quality services. All in all, saving is a fundamental aspect of personal finance.
Money has to be tightly controlled. We must know where money comes from, and where it goes to. We must strive to know the way our money flows, the paths it travels, and the drains taking most of our income. By closely watching our money’s nature, we’ll learn to control it. Control is a keyword of personal finance. Control refers to checking the errors we are incurring with our money’s management, and to take the corrective action to rectify any deviation from our desired goals. Setting goals is other important requirement for saving, and it answers the question what are we saving for ?
Memory is the ability to store, retain, and subsequently retrieve information. Clearly, this definition comprises 3 functions. First, input to the system is considered (storing), which involves perception and transduction of the perceived images into the “right format” for saving the perceived information in the brain. Second, the inputted information must be preserved for a specific time (retaining.) And finally, the stored information has to be recovered from the brain, following our commandment (retrieving.) In this post we’ll review the nature of memory and a few options to improve it. A healthy memory amounts to a bigger vision of our world.
Anxiety is a (sometimes annoying) emotional and cognitive state. Emotionally, we recognize it as sensations of fear, grief, worry or general apprehension. The cognitive component entails expectation of a diffuse and uncertain danger. The threat or perspective of danger triggers the body’s defenses: the flow of blood to the muscles is increased, which in turn implies rising blood pressure and heart rate. Needless to say, such alert activation involves a higher consumption of body’s energy, and also other parts, such as the immune system, are inhibited in order to increase energetic reserves and focus for fighting the hypothetical danger.
What do we achieve by thinking of ourselves as “supermen” or “wonder women”? Too little, indeed. Trying to act (and even feel) like fiction heroes, in a frantic rush to enjoy something that really is too tiresome to be enjoyed. There is little reward in demanding ourselves the compliment of being perfect, effective, productive, attractive and winsome people who have no real problems at work or at home, and who always ignite the life of the party. Needless to say, there is no reward in working frenetically until our minds and bodies cannot handle it anymore: we would weaken and become sick. But we already know that time is unstoppable: other people would carry on our duties, and someday, we would be simply forgotten. In other words, no matter how much effort and blood we devote to our jobs, we are always dispensable for the furious wheel of businesses.
The Samurai approach to blogging is a way for the blogging master, a path to highlight your blog. Nowadays, the net is inhabited by myriad blogs. Therefore, to stand out has become more and more challenging. Some people write about excessively specialized or personal topics, which have a narrower audience. On the other hand, topics discussed in plenty of other blogs may appeal to a broader public. Moreover, themes in different blogs touch on similar concepts or ideas, or at least are loosely related. So, blogs have to compete for traffic. Positioning in search engines such as Google and Bing is a good example of what I’m speaking about. Thus, the question arises: how to highlight your blog in order to distinguish it from others?
