Tag: Lifestyle Tips

Ten Tips for a More Positive Body Image

Many women around the world struggle with their confidence. Whether you just ended a relationship and feel unwanted and unloved, or just want to feel better about yourself, you will definitely benefit from a confidence boost. Remember that how you see yourself is not the same how others see you. Make sure that you learn how to show your most positive side in every situation, and your body image will become much healthier. Read our tips below.

1. Update Your Wardrobe

Retail therapy is one of the best ways of getting rid of the blues. You must update your wardrobe and stop wearing the clothes that don’t bring out the best of your figure. Looking trendy is the first step towards being liked and respected. Find your personal style and look for inspiration from others.

2. Try a New Hair Color

It might be that you are not happy with your hair color or style. Does the haircut you have had for many years still suit your body size and personality? If not, it is time for a change. Get some ideas from hair stylists in your neighborhood for free, and decide which adventurous style you are going to try.

3. Play with Online Makeover Tools

If you are not quite brave and confident enough to take a leap, you can start playing with some of the online styling and makeover tools. They are fun, entertaining, and help you decide on hair color, style, makeup, and accessories.

4. Ask Your Friends for Advice

You might not be confident enough to try new things, and could need advice. Your friends will be more than happy to give you feedback on how you walk, hold yourself, wear different clothes, and style your hair. Ask for complete honesty, but be prepared to deal with it.

5. Get Fit

While most people start exercising to lose weight, getting fit has several additional benefits, too. Going for a walk, for example, reduces the level of anxiety hormones in your body, so you stop worrying about your looks and how others see you. Simple lifestyle changes, such as walking to the shops instead of driving and taking the stairs instead of the elevator can go a long way.

6. Learn How to Wear Heels

High heels make your legs look longer and leaner. If you rarely wear them, you should start practicing. Every dress looks much better with a stiletto, and looking taller improves your confidence, too.

7. Sign Up for a Makeup Course

If you have no idea what colors and styles suit you, there is something to be done about this. Why don’t you sign up for a makeup course and learn how to make blemishes disappear and how to highlight your best features. If you need makeup to feel good walking out of the door, let it be.

“Makeup” by SAN_DRINO is licensed under CC BY 2.0

8. Tone Up and Lose Weight

Often the reason why people have a negative body image is the way they look in their tight clothes. If you are fed up with being unhappy and want to get rid of your bat flaps, you can create a personal training schedule for only a few minutes a day to get toned up. If you tend to comfort eat, find a diet shake company that offers nutritious desserts. Alternatively, eliminate sugar and fat to lose weight from the right areas.

9. Start Dating

Dating is one of the best ways of getting positive confirmation and building up your confidence. If you get to take a nice photo and register on one of the sites, as soon as the responses come in your confidence level starts increasing. Even if you are not serious about meeting anyone, you will benefit from guys expressing their interest in you.

10. Learn to Accept Compliments

One of the common traits of women with low confidence and negative body image is that they don’t take compliments seriously. They simply say thanks, but don’t think that the other person meant the positive comment they made. Learn to accept the fact that others notice your looks and try to believe that they genuinely like you.

“a little wardrobe update” by Geneva Vanderzeil apairandasparediy.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Low confidence is an issue that is often associated with negative body image. If you want to feel better in your skin, ask for help and start trying new things. Losing weight and becoming healthier is only the first step; you must keep on working on your confidence and appearance until you are satisfied and get enough compliments each day to keep you going.

Keep Yourself Warm, Fit, And Happy This Winter

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Winter is on its way, which means it’ll be getting colder and you’ll just want to hibernate away from everyone. It is also very easy to start eating a lot more – again, the hibernation stage. And then you end up wobbling through the new year wondering how you put on so much weight.

Well, here’s how you can avoid that from happening while having some fun.

Go on a treasure hunt.

Include the whole family in this one and go out on an adventure. Thanks to modern day technology, there are now things called geocaching, which is essentially a virtual treasure hunt in which you use a handheld GPS to find hidden caches of trinkets. It’s actually a lot harder than you would imagine, making it a fun activity for all the family – including you grown-ups. Going on a walk doesn’t sound that interesting, but going on an adventure does. An adventure that requires you to be in a pretty location in the outdoors, surrounded by the fresh air, the ones you love, and a whole bunch of fat burning and muscle toning fun. Just remember to wrap up warm, and look out for wonderful winter wildlife.

Put on your dancing shoes.

Who doesn’t like to dance? Even if you’re no good at it, it’s still a lot of fun to do. It’s a way of releasing all the built up stress and being totally and utterly free for a while. Let alone it being a brilliant way to keep fit. Whether you feel more comfortable doing it from the comfort of your own home with the curtains shut and the music turned up to the max, or maybe you like the idea of taking part in some Zumba fitness for weight loss – just find something you enjoy. As long as you’re having fun, it won’t even feel like a workout. So disconnect yourself from the world for a while, and work up a sweat to your favorite tunes. Your body and mind will thank you for it.

Make play your workout.

Think back to when you were a child. What kind of activities would you do before your parents spoiled the fun by calling you in for dinner? Riding your bike. Rollerblading. Jumping rope. – These are all things that we enjoyed doing so much when we were younger, so why stop doing them now we’re grown? Rediscover that joy that you used to have all those years ago.

Go and explore on your bike and pedal as fast as you can until your legs turn to jelly. You’ll feel invisible, like no one can touch you, not even the biggest sports professionals in the world. And not only that, but think about all the calories that you’ll be burning as you go!

Now you see that there are a number of different ways to get active and keep yourself warm in the winter, you have no more excuses. Don’t let the idea of ‘working out’ put you off. It doesn’t have to be a chore at all – it can be a reward.

When Friendships End

Friendships are an integral part of the human experience. We need our friends to support us, help us out of bad situations, and just to be there to have someone to enjoy life with.

A lot is said about the pain and heartbreak that people experience when a romantic relationship ends, but what about a friendship? While the feelings might not run as deep as they do compared to a romance, you’re still losing someone significant from your life. You will still feel their absence; still miss them; still struggle without them.

The end of a friendship can be a difficult time, full of upset, misunderstandings, and difficulties. To try and understand how to get through this period in your life, read through the below, and try to put your experience into perspective.

Friendships End Naturally and Without Acrimony

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In most cases, friendships rarely end because of a horrible argument. You won’t lose friends to fights and acrimony, leaving you with a feeling of having been wronged, very often. The most common loss of friendship is simply drifting apart from one another, as your lives and experiences go in different directions.

When life changes, our friendships tend to change too. While TV shows and movies tend to depict friendships as existing from cradle to grave, this simply isn’t the case for the majority of us. We might have a few old friends, but we’re more likely to change friends as we go through life, drawing closer to those we share more experiences with. So if you and your former best friend don’t really hang out anymore, that’s not necessarily a terrible thing– it’s a natural part of going through life.

Coping With Bad Reactions When You Lose A Friendship

If you have lost an important friendship — either through an argument or just drifting apart from one another — then accepting this can be difficult. If you felt that person was deeply important to you, losing them can be jarring and upsetting.

If you spiral into destructive behavior, then it’s important to acknowledge it has happened and seek treatment, be it through seeing a therapist or looking for addiction counseling. There’s nothing wrong with grieving the end of a friendship, but you can’t let it drag you under forever. Feel the sadness of the loss, deal with it in an emotionally healthy way, and then allow yourself to put it into the past.

Look For New Friends Who Suit How Your Life Is Now

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There’s no doubt that it’s tough to make friends as an adult, but the internet makes it easier than it ever has been before. Look at online forums and local Facebook pages and see if you connect with someone who is more on your level. Developing new friendships to replace those you have lost is important, so while it may feel odd to “put yourself out there”, you’ll benefit from it in the end.

Overall, no matter what the reason for a friendship ending, try and accept that it’s a part of life. Move on, with the help of a counselor if necessary, but keep all the good memories. You can then look back fondly, while moving on into the future with new friends, who fit into your life, and with whom you can make new memories.

Why Fall Is The Perfect Time To Try Something New

It can be all too easy to start feeling blue around this time of year. The skies are getting a little darker, the days are getting a little colder and everywhere you look people seem just a little grumpier and more ill tempered. This is a shame because there’s a lot to love about the autumnal season. The reddish brown leaves of the trees, the slight mist that pervades in the air, the slightly smoky scent carried on the breeze. It’s a beautiful time of year! The trouble is that when the sun starts to retreat behind the clouds and the nights grow longer most of us find ourselves starting to feel down through no fault of our own. Fear not, however, you can mitigate the effects of these seasonal blues by shaking things up and trying new things.

Going back to school

It’s this time of year when kids and college students are going back to school which lends the season a certain frisson of excitement and opportunity. Just because your school or college days are behind you, doesn’t mean that you can’t energize yourself by trying something new. As we get older we tend to fall into the same habits and behavioral patterns and our brains go on autopilot as it’s not required to make new neural pathways. That’s why the days seem to last forever when we’re young and months go by in the blink of an eye when we get older, it’s because back then our brains were making new pathways all the time and we felt stimulated and excited. No matter how old we get, fall always seems like the start of the new year so now’s the time to reignite those feelings again.

Image by Pixabay

Change your eating and drinking habits

Even if you enjoy a healthy, balanced diet now is the perfect time to open yourself up to new culinary experiences. If you only ever drink white wine, try red. If you only ever drink vodka try whiskey, which can be an intimidating drink but there are plenty of more accessible starter whiskeys. Check out this Kikori review for a great example. The food we eat is a great way of understanding the various cultures of the world so trying a new cuisine is a great way of broadening your cultural horizons (without having to read subtitles). If you’ve always likes your food on the bland side, open yourself up to trying Indian, Thai or Malaysian foods. While these richly flavored foods utilize a broad palettes of spices to create dynamic and interesting flavors there are often plenty of accessible dishes to ease new diners into the flavors.

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Take a class

If you were a drama queen at school, join a local amateur dramatics society or (better yet) get yourself an agent and try and get some paid acting work in your free time. Or, why not learn a new craft. Most community centres and colleges offer classes in all kinds of arts, music and dance as well as sports. These are great ways of keeping in shape (why wait till new year?) while teaching new new skills and introducing you to a whole new circle of friends.

 

 

 

 

Are These Unhealthy Habits Ruling Your Life?

Everyone has unhealthy habits. Some of us eat a bit too much junk food, while others aren’t so good at keeping their home clean. While it’s important to try and kick bad habits, most of them don’t have too big of an impact on your life. But there are some unhealthy habits that can take over your life, and you might end up planning everything around them. Sometimes, it’s not even possible to make plans, because your unhealthy habit rules over all your time. It’s important to be aware of when something unhealthy has become more than that, and how you can get your life back.

By Pixabay

Smoking

Smoking is a pretty common habit, and it can be difficult to stop. It’s important to remember that it’s addictive, and kicking any addiction is tough. Many smokers probably think smoking doesn’t rule their life, but from an outside perspective, things can look a little different. If you smoke so much that you need to plan a journey with smoke breaks or you have to remove yourself from situations so you can go and smoke, it could be affecting your life more than you think. It’s also very bad for your body. If you want to quit, it’s always useful to access resources and support. You can speak to your doctor and find plenty of help online.

Drinking Too Much

Drinking alcohol is another thing that many people do but, unlike smoking, most people don’t get addicted. However, even those who might not technically be described as an alcoholic can still have an unhealthy relationship with alcohol. There are responsible ways to drink and less responsible ways, and there is a danger of it affecting your life. If your drinking habits are having a negative impact on your life, you might need to reassess them. A resource like alcoholrehab.me can help with anyone who thinks they might have an addiction or drinking problem. In some situations, you can take control of the problem yourself and change your habits.

Working Too Much

You might not see yourself as a workaholic, but it might be a different story if you ask anyone you know. Working can be addictive for a few reasons, ranging from money to feeling like you have a purpose or ignoring other things in your life. But if you work all the time, you could exhaust yourself and have no time to do anything else. There’s no point working if you don’t have the time or energy to use the money you make. It could be time to start reorganizing your priorities and your schedule.

Running Away from Problems

Avoiding your problems can be an easier habit to fall into than you might think. Even though it doesn’t make your problem go away, it can make you feel like they have. But the longer you ignore a problem, the bigger it could become. If you’re always running away from your problems, only you can make a change. It might be helpful, however, to get support from friends and family or from a therapist.

The unhealthy habits could be ruling your life, and you shouldn’t let them. Maybe it’s time to make a change.

Beat Boredom At Home

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Modern life is frantic, and we never seem to get enough time to ourselves. So, when we do, it’s imperative that we fill that time in a productive fashion. Sadly, that lack of familiarity means that those moments of relaxation often lead to immense boredom. It is undoubtedly one of the most frustrating things in the world.

If money is tight, you can’t just pop out to fill your time with expensive entertainment. Thankfully, there are plenty of cheap and cheerful ways to entertain yourself at home. Here are just five of the best.

Get Fit: Exercise releases endorphins, which will instantly start to make you feel positive about life in general. However, the results can also promote a better body image and increased self-confidence. Working out at home can include using DVDs, practicing yoga, and lifting weights. Either way, it’s cheaper and more enjoyable than the gym and is something you can do even when you only have a few minutes to spare. Perfect.

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Read A Book: Reading is a good way to pass the time, but it can help you achieve so much more. Titles like Spirit Flows Power Grows can help you become a more complete business person, which can accelerate your career. Books on cooking, gardening, and other daily activities can encourage you to develop key skills that will enhance your life. Above all else, you’ll have cured that boredom for a few hours while becoming a better person.

Do Some DIY: Instead of focusing on self-improvement, you could also upgrade the home. Tutorials can show you how to make light work better or how to build a simple garden deck. Alternatively, with the help of Viral Nova, you could transform old toys into useful items for your child’s bedroom. If putting a smile on their face doesn’t sound like a great way to beat the boredom blues, what does?

Discover New Shows: Television plays a huge part in our lives. It’s not only a form of entertainment, but it also provides a talking point for groups of friends and relatives. Our viewing habits have changed, though, and the internet now enables us to find great shows like Ouran Host Club at our leisure. Aside from the joys of binge watching your new find, there’s a great opportunity to share it with loved ones. In turn, it could be the new topic of conversation for weeks to come.

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Earn Money: Life is essentially split up into three elements – sleep, leisure, and work. So, if you can’t fill your free time with fun, why not start earning a little extra money? This can be achieved in a variety of ways, which include completing surveys and signing up to sites like People Per Hour. Anything you earn is a bonus and can be used to fight future bouts of boredom too. If nothing else, reducing financial stress is sure to bring positive to your world.

So, there we go. Five cheap and easy ways to cure the boredom without even leaving the home. Wasting time never needs to a problem again.

 

 

Things You’re Putting Off (That You Should Do ASAP)

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Being a grown-up isn’t as fun as we thought it would be when we were kids. Back in the day, we had other people (i.e. our parents!) who were basically pushing us along and making us do all these things that are good for us. They made sure we went to the doctor when we were ill, they made sure we went to the dentist… but once you’re an adult, you end up neglecting to do a bunch of things you should be doing.

It’s not so much laziness, of course; a lot of us know that there are a bunch of things we need to stop putting off. Life just tends to get in the way. The following things feel like chores, and that’s really the last thing with which we want to concern ourselves during our time off.

We’re going to take a quick look at a bunch of unfun,uncomfortable, yet important things you’ve probably been putting off for quite some time.

Writing a will

We might as well get the most unfun one out of the way first, right? No-one really wants to sit there and write a will. Speaking practically and in a business-like manner about what will happen when you die? No, thank you. But the problem is that this is one of the most important responsibilities adults have. You can read more about writing one at nolo.com. If you die without a will, then the state basically gets to decide what happens to your assets – and they’ll often take a healthy portion for themselves.

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Getting a physical

Going to your doctor and getting a physical is hardly the most comfortable thing ever, but it’s something you should definitely be doing at least once a year or two. Perhaps the most common reason people avoid it is cost, but a lot of people are simply avoiding it because… well, who likes going to the doctor and getting inspected so thoroughly? But, as emedicinehealth.com highlights, a checkup can help catch any problems as early as possible. Just remember not to go overboard; more than once a year is probably too much!

Seeing the dentist

The dentist is as close to a classic “not-yet-but-soon” activity as you’re going to get. Why do people put off going to the dentist so often? There are a couple of reasons. It could be that they simply don’t like their dentist very much. This is why you need to ensure that you explore all your options. There are plenty of dental practices out there that have a reputation for friendliness; you can read more over at dentistryofboulder.com. Another reason is that people tend to underestimate how important oral health is. Remember: there’s a strong link between oral health and heart health. This is precisely why you’re flossing every day. You are flossing every day, right?

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Exercising

Finally, exercising more seems to be on a lot of people’s to-do list, but they’re forever putting it off. Maybe they don’t have the time, or they’re not getting enough sleep and so feel lethargic all the time, or they’re simply underestimating the importance of daily exercise. Whatever your excuse is, it probably isn’t good enough. Get out there and get that blood pumping!