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hitozy · 3 years

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and i oop ≪ masterlist ≫ her love language

Hinata felt horrible. YN did not let him go last night and he ended up sleeping with her, in her bed. He woke up with an early rising friend and took a shower to calm down. Watching YN sleep was kind of... nice. He couldn’t stop himself from taking a picture, grinning and then ran away to get something to eat.

I am a pervert and the worst friend ever.

YN woke up with a killer headache and a killer nausea. She remembered coming home with the boys and throwing up in the bathroom… she hopes she didn’t wreck it that bad. She didn’t want to clean it but she would never make the maids do it. After cleaning up the bathroom and herself a bit, she walked towards the kitchen, to find him eating what looked like an omelet.

‘You should have woken me up to join you~’ He jumps a bit on his seat and blushes.

‘You needed the rest a bit more than me, princess…” He trailed off when she picked up her discarded bag and pulled out her gloss.

He did not need to see her apply the strawberry shimmery gloss she wore yesterday, that he tasted on your lips just a few hours ago… fuck, he wants to kiss you again. But he doesn’t know if you remember last night or not, and he doesn’t want to pressure you either. That's a lie, he thought, I want to know if she does remember what happened, does she regret it? Does she like me too? Even though I am not what she deserves… the words her father said yesterday, rolling through his head over and over. He wasn’t wrong and I kind of hate it.

YN knows what happened and does not know what to do. As she grabs some toast and jam, she considers her breakfast mate. Does she say something? Does she ignore it and live on with her love for him hidden in the shadows? They are sitting face to face, very close to each other and yet he seems miles away. Finally, she bites the bullet, “Shoyo, are you awkward because of the kiss?”

She saw him freeze and felt anxiety spark up all over herself. She was drunk, and emotional and he looked so good, but she never asked him for permission and that sits very wrong in her stomach. Her father had always taught her that when it concerned a person's feelings or body to always ask for permission. Oh god, what have I done.

‘Er, yes and no.” He awkwardly rubs the back of his neck, when he looks up to see you pale as a ghost, he feels anxiety take over his heart. “No-not in a bad way! I-” he huffs trying to get the words out, “I liked it and I think that's the problem.”

“Huh?”

“I liked the kiss and I like you very, very much, princess.”

“Then why-” “I’m not good enough for you.”

It’s dead silent all of a sudden. You want to punch him in the face and then kiss it all better. ‘Not good enough for you’? My ass! Hinata Shoyo was one of the nicest, purest, most passionate person in the world! She wanted to spend loads of money on him before he admitted his feelings, she still wants to! He deserves so much more and here he is, saying he isn’t enough.

“Why would you say that? Have you not realized how much I fucking love and adore you, you goddamned orange pumpkin man!? I LOVE YOU!” She gets up and moves towards him, gesturing everywhere, “I want to give you everything because you should have it! You give me so much emotionally and I- I,” as she starts to kneel, Hinata gets up and makes her sit where he once was.

“I didn’t know that you love me… but now I do… but YN, what about how I feel?” He kneels down before her, “Everyone thinks I don’t realize that you are practically my sugar mommy, but I do. I know it and I accept it, most of the time, because I feel like that's your way of expressing affection. Like I do the same but with volleyball n’ stuff?” He chuckles and looks straight into your eyes, “I care so much about you, but I’m not even half the man that you deserve, princess. I know that if we become an item, I'm just going to hurt you.”

You stare into his eyes, because you don’t believe his words. Thing is, his eyes are saying the same thing his mouth said. There is love and pain and regret? Hold up, “Are you saying this because you’re going to Brazil next year?”

“...yes.”

“Oh my god, okay, Shoyo. I understand, well I actually don’t understand your current feelings, but I accept the fact that we,” gesturing between the two of you, “have feelings for each other or else we wouldn’t have kissed.”

He sighs, “Ynnie…”

“I am in love with you, Hinata Shoyo.” You hold his gaze, “I think I might have fallen in love with you last year, during nationals, because since then I can’t get you out of my mind. Pumpkin, I don’t need you to be a ‘big guy’ or ‘the manliest man ever’ “ he snorts, “ because you are my reliable guy, my dose of daily dopamine and serotonin, my sunshine. I can live without you, Shoyo, I am well aware of it. I just don’t want to, I want to be with you. However you’ll take me. wherever, whenever.”

“I’m not in love with you, though” you felt your heart drop, break and explode to nothing, “I do like you. I want to be with you, but I can’t. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, ok? I-...I- ”

“I’m a big girl, Shoyo. I can take care of myself and my feelings.”

“Doesn’t make me feel less awful hurting you.”

Hinata takes her hands, after a minute of silence you say, “How about we meet in the middle then?”

He looks up at you confused, “Huh?”

“Yeah. You and I, we won’t be an item. We won’t be together, but we WILL. We let this flow and take it as it goes.”

“Like... friends with benefits?” He blushes, making you laugh.

“No, like I’m your sugar mommy, you're my arm candy and I splurge my money on you to cover up for whatever we want to do but won’t allow ourselves to do it until we are ready.”

He stares, “So like what you’re doing now? The hell is that better!? What am I supposed to do? What do I give?! I’m not rich, yn. I can’t splurge on anything except myself...”

“You grow without any worries, Shoyo. You serve as my eye candy and let me love you.”

He groans, “No, YN. Just no, if you want to do that fine, but I also need to contribute or else I AM going to feel like the worst man ever.” I’d go to your father personally to execute me if that ever happens…

She tuts, “Fine, I want a full-blown out love confession once you realize that you love me.”

Silence.

He snorts out a laugh, placing his head on your lap, “You’re crazy, miss.princess.”

Yeah, crazy for you.

“Do we have a deal?”

“...Deal.”

“Good, now, since we already ate breakfast and you aren’t going back to Miyagi until next week, and the boys are dead... again, how about you help me out with something?”

He stands and pulls you up, “Okay, what do you need?”

“I got a lot of clothes, merch and stuff from our sponsors that I need to try on and decide which one we want to collab with this quarter,” you flutter your eyelashes at him, “I need you to tell me if it looks good or not. Also, take pictures of it.”

“Sure.”

Hinata Shoyo has decided that when it's about LN YN, he will never be prepared.

He has been sitting for the last three hours watching her wear short skirts and shorts, crop tops, yoga pants, sports bras… he thinks this might be her way of torturing him for not wanting to be her boyfriend, yet.

It is.

and i oop ≪ masterlist ≫ her love language

facts:

⇾ YN saved the kissing picture as her screensaver on everything. Daddy LN is not impressed. Just jealous. Hinata printed it out and has it inside his wallet uwu ⇾ YN and Kenma are going to the same University that Kuroo attends. While he is excited, his kouhai are not. He hates these little shits. no he doesn’t ⇾ Kodzuken channel skyrocketed one day all thanks to YN promoting his youtube channel.. he won’t admit it but he is grateful. P.S Kenma did get a Nike ad ♥ ⇾ Kenma doesn’t know it yet, but YN is going to give Kenma her first paycheck to help him develop Bouncing Ball Co. ⇾ Fukunaga doesn’t know it yet, but YN wrote an extensive letter to his University about how great he is and got him a scholarship. ⇾ Yamamoto doesn’t know it yet, but YN submitted his volleyball games and practice games to Kaganawa VBC league. ⇾ They’ll find out soon though.

A/N: ... To everyone that thought I was gonna do a full blown angst chapter, jokes on you, I can’t write angst for shit. For future reference, just call me out on it, ok? also next chp is a big timeskip! so... be prepared for that and full disclosure, on part ii we start with the smutty parts ♥ again, i will make cuts on the chapters in case you don’t want to read it!

taglist ➜ open! send an ask to be added ღ

@mint-mai . @prettyinblack231 . @starryleafy . @ilauvcoldpizza . @its-the-aerieljeane . @daddy-kawa . @aizumii @pansexualproblemchild

#hinata shouyo x reader #hinata shoyo #hinata shoyo x reader #hinata shouyo #hinata shouyou #hinata shouyou x reader #hinata smau #hinata fic #haikyu!! smau #haikyu!! fic #haikyu!!#sweet tangerine♥#sweet tangerine

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yogaposesfortwo · 4 years

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Meet Hollywood's Favorite Yoga Teacher

Kirschen Katz is the go-to yoga teacher for many Hollywood A-listers, but her most fulfilling work—teaching kids—comes after the school bell rings. Lindsay Tucker: How did you transition into becoming a yoga teacher? Kirschen Katz: When I was 34 years old, I was trying to become an actress in Los Angeles, and I had many, many jobs. I have been practicing yoga since 1989. I come from a running background—competitive runner at 12 years old, full athletic scholarship. I just always ran, and really was not competing anymore but started to breakdown. So I ended up getting into a yoga practice on my mother's recommendation in 1989. I did my first class with Steve Ross, one of the godfathers of yoga in Los Angeles. I practiced yoga until ’96, and then I was able to take a year off and think about what it is I wanted to do. I decided to become a yoga teacher, and I did teacher training. That's my pre-divorce—I go pre-divorce and post-divorce—pre-divorce was teaching, but I was in a financial life where I didn't have to really struggle. And then he moved me to Hawaii, and my marriage ended there. LT: So how did you end up working with actors? KK: I came back to LA, and I really had to boogie to make a living. I was really lucky to be in the right place and open to abundance—that was my mantra after my marriage crumbled. I had signed a prenup and was left very little money. Anyway, I came back to LA, and I was in my hairdresser's salon, and there was a Hollywood wife there, and she said, “Come and teach me yoga.” Through her I met Jenny Belushi—who was married to Jim Belushi, the actor—and Shannon Rotenberg, whose husband ran a management production company. And so then these women (and this is now in 2005), they introduced me to just wonderful women in the entertainment business, and one of them introduced me to Julia Roberts. And then the other one introduced me to Reese Witherspoon. I never went back to teaching classes. I just settled into the private yoga world. I tapped into this niche of, you know, Hollywood and entertainment people, and it's all referral base, as you can imagine, and it's about trust. It's a lot of yoga therapy and just really listening to people. I've incorporated running with some of my clients, so for maybe 30 minutes of the private, we’re walking, running—we're doing more of the therapy session—and then the other 30 minutes is yoga. It's not always that way. A lot of clients just want their yoga, but I have been in so many different situations. I've had the royals from Liechtenstein. I've had royals from Abu Dhabi. But I am also a secret, because I am not really involved in the Los Angeles yoga scene. I know the players in it, but it's like I'm just kind of doing my own thing. See also 10 Business Secrets to Starting a Successful Yoga Career LT: You work with the Just Keep Livin Foundation teaching yoga as an after-school program in inner city schools. Is that just straight yoga, or are you involved in other ways? KK: Last year, they asked me to go in and tell my story. It's a story. I grew up with the Nazi- loving father, and I had to heil Hitler until I was older. I didn't know what it was. I grew up in Upstate New York. My mother was loving, but she had no voice. She had no self-esteem. And the father—I refer to him as “the father” and not my father—he grew up a Hitler youth, and I grew up in a very violent, verbally and physically abusive home. My inspirational story of transformation is something that I want to share with these students, so I go into the schools and I share it. We practice yoga, we talk about my story, and then we have a gratitude circle. But getting back to growing up, yeah, I changed, a violent verbally abusive traumatic childhood and I got out. Running was something that helped me, and yoga was something that helped me process trauma.

LT: And how has yoga helped you process your trauma? KK: I process it by being still. PTSD comes from war, but it can come from abuse as well. I had tremendous anxiety. I had dyslexia. Nobody ever took me to a doctor or therapist, so I was always running on Cortisol and my adrenals were blown out. I was running 90 miles a week, highly competitive. My body fat was very low. I developed bulimia. I couldn't stand still long enough to tap into my consciousness. You know what I mean? Running is helpful to produce serotonin and dopamine, but yoga was what I needed to really slow down and tap into my breath and become quiet. Then I was able to approach . Yoga can bring up all your injuries and also all your mental anguish and trauma. See also A Yoga Therapist Shares the Truth About Trauma LT: What’s different when you’re solely a private yoga teacher? KK: You are in these homes and in these people's lives. I have been fortunate enough to have many of my clients for literally 14 years. I've gone through their children with them. I’ve gone through marriages. I have been to more bar and bat mitzvahs than I can share. You know these people intimately on an infinite level. You’re on their journey with them. But what is really nice for me is there are no distractions. It's one on one. I am solely focused on them. It's more intimate, and I love intimacy. I love having my clients feel vulnerable that maybe you can’t in a class. You can really devote this hour to their wellbeing and their healing or their nourishing. If you have a class of 30, 40, 80 people, you cannot really make anything individual. you really make it specific to them, what they are feeling that day. I show up and my clients could be crying, and you have to be flexible. I go there, I open the door, I’m invited in, and within a minute I read my clients and know what they need at that moment. That's a unique thing. I love that. Being vulnerable, and that's what I get. I get people on a path, trying to always improve themselves and grow. You get to share that and see that, see people evolve. Traveling with clients is really wonderful. Eat, Pray, Love, that was a great experience. I mean, really interesting. It was so nice to have Julia take me to India. LT: Can you share more about that experience? KK: She had been my client for a while. I got a phone call—I am going home on the freeway from my day—and she goes, “Pull over.” She’s like, “I’ve got this movie. It's Eat, Pray, Love.” I knew the book. I knew the book, and I love Elizabeth Gilbert. I was so happy I was going to have the experience with someone who actually wrote something I love to read. You know? I left for three months: one month in Rome, one month in India, and the best month in Bali. I left my clients, which was tricky. I left them with support yoga teachers. I took videos of them doing yoga, and I sent them to a local studios. India and Bali are otherworldly. Bali was a wonderful reward for India. India was very challenging. I have heard people say poverty is astounding, but it's way more than I thought it would be. But I embraced it all, and it ended up being wonderful. And the Bali portion was some of the most fun yoga. It’s funny—I work with these Oscareen actresses, but you forget who they are because you know them as Laura or Reese or Julia, and that whole other part of them is such a different part. They become so much more interesting when you get to know them aside from all that fame. LT: Tell us a little bit about your personal practice. KK: It's literally like 20 to 30 minutes a day, and I fit it in whenever I can. It's really just working on the poses. It changes daily; it changes with my mood, with whatever injury I am trying to avoid. I am not the most flexible person. If you looked at my Instagram, the most bearing pose that I can do, Natarajasana and Crow Pose, is strong. I have to be careful because running is very important to me, and I can't do anything where I blow anything out. I use my body for my career, my business, so I don’t ever try anything too daring. I do a lot of pranayama in my own practice, driving around Los Angeles, always doing pranayama counting. I do a lot of mantra and essential oils. Basically I do the practice similar to what I teach. So it's level 2. I love inversions, so I am constantly upside down. Like before this interview I just went upside down a couple of times to calm myself down. If I go three days without practice, I am hard to be around. See also 30-Minute Beginner Sequence to Reset Your Perspective on Life LT: What is the hardest thing about being a yoga teacher? KK: For me, the only downside is all the damn driving that I do—that's it. I put 25,000 miles a year on my car. I just drive a lot. But I love teaching yoga. I love doing it with my clients, and I don’t think about anything in my life. I'm present, and it's pure, and we are moving, breathing, and our breaths are in sync. I am really fortunate enough to teach yoga to people on a journey toward a beautiful life or enjoying a beautiful life or evolved people. I am grateful I have created this too. There is a deep sense of pride for having created this in a moment of trauma. I just came here wishing abundance not only for me but for everyone around me, and the universe presented me with this opportunity. I took advantage of it. I was very open for that. I believe yoga has really helped me to manifest this life I have. Author: Lindsay Tucker Source: https://www.yogajournal.com/lifestyle/kirschenkatz Discover more info about Yoga Poses for Two People here: www.yogaposesfortwo.com Read the full article

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adiityav · 5 years

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End of the Intro Trilogy from Diaries of a Ghost

You got two options now. You either are going to take the easy way out you are going to run away from that damned hell of hours that you only set for yourself. Which one is it because time is ticking and you don’t have much time to waste. Or any time more at all. You might be thinking you choose your own path to make it seem everything is alright but by the end, you come down to this as you do every single day. Which one is it, you aren’t going to be let go until you pick an answer chained in that very seat you wasted hours in. Every single day, every single moment, it’s torture. Do you remember when there was a good time in your life when you were truly innocent, it really must have been the life but that changed quickly for you. If you go die, it’s only going to prove the statistics, you go run away, you know they won’t look for long and you will be back right here in your chair in the very hell you created. Only God can save you now because every single beating you took and every single phrase that you said led to this point. You thought back of fighting back. You led an establishment in your head that they won’t listen to you quiet or loud. They mess with your head. They bully you. They are both delusional and psychotic. You only got two options now. Imagine how nice it would be to not go anywhere and then waiting in the corner just to beat you up. Take every single relationship you have and throw it down the drain. Every word they state is only one part of the big picture. What they haven’t realized is you only pushed yourself harder or so you think. No matter how hard you try they will always be better and no matter what you do they will know how to take you down, again and again, one step ahead. They mess with your head. First, it’s the shell. Then they get to your head with the holes they beat inside of you. Every single moment of your life was you fighting back. You wanted to fight back physically but it only made it worse for you. You couldn’t will yourself to hurt another, could you? I am only sitting in the very chair you will use to help satiate that one truth in your head. The one that you spent countless lifetimes trying to convince people it was alright. Trying to convince people nothing is happening. Trying to convince people... enough of that.

I don’t see you speaking too much anymore. You’ve given up. Accepted life was just one task done over and over again. You live the next day. You don’t look for another but you manage that. You gave up lying to yourself. But you put that facade another day. And the next... and the next... I think you are done now. Once you lose that mask, the world will see you for who you are. Someone who will end up in the morgue the next day or the next. You are scared, aren’t you? You don’t want anyone to know how you are and how you feel. You keep lying. You know you messed up. Every single step you take. Every single person that you met. You messed up their lives as well now. You're in the doorway. Drop the mask and never find someone to love. Drop the mask and never feel anything. Drop the fucking mask, and you can’t go back. Drop that mask you won’t be you anymore. Drop the mask... I can’t anymore. Who are you and who is I. It’s the same person one and all. Is it time for you yet? Do you think you kept it in yourself long enough? Are you going to will yourself to walk life without any emotion? Stop crying. I hurt myself for far too long. This same voice is the one that helps you read. This same voice is the one that imagines for you. This same voice is who you are. If you do end up dying and no matter how sad you are, please live for another day. I understand how you feel. I beat myself constantly and hate myself. I only set motion everything that was part of the past and kept it replaying in my head again and again until it eats you out like a parasite. Now, look at you. Look at yourself. Fake smile. What’s next. Laughing is something that is real I guess. Fake, every single thing people know or think about you is fake. Because the moment you met them, you were lying. You aren’t happy and truthful and positive. That’s only what you wanted yourself to believe and them. You and I know that we both can’t keep doing this. I am going to sit down now. Going to cry a bit. Maybe take a couple of pills like I usually did and break my streak of pill sobriety. You weren’t happy. You won’t be. Every single thing that gets close only pushes them further away because of me. Your own head fighting it’s self. Your own mind. Your own thoughts and feelings. It kills you such as one getting stabbed. You never wanted to cut yourself because there wasn’t a point for it. I either hate myself to go full out or suffer longer but perhaps cutting myself was really alright to make sure I felt that pain of everyone I hurt and everyone I did wrong. Cutting is better than these pills meant for medication that you abused. I don’t know. You are tired every single moment of your life because I am here like a virus. It got to your thoughts and tries to get to your brain. You never wanted to turn out numb like this. You never wanted to show someone the truth of you. You are the ghost. You sit here watching life as a movie only here for the ride. The third installment for the diaries of a ghost beginning was to show what you really are to the world. You write these stories you convey how you feel and what you think and what you go through. I think it’s time soon. You have been like this for a long time. I think there are now only two answers for you now. Suffer or die.

Writer’s Note

I debated whether to release this or not because well it confirms it for some people and well for others it’s I think something they didn’t know. The fact that it did start questioning me for others was me noticing that they can tell I put on a mask or that “fake” in me. I don’t look for pity nor do I wish to be talked about constantly because I am the same person you have always known mask or not. I have been depressed for quite some time and this year has been the worst for me and the people around me. Depression is a lack of dopamine which causes a chain reaction effect leading into a lack of serotonin which is main mood regulator and then lack of oxytocin removed the love to certain things that you feel whether that be another or a memory or something of that sort. Perhaps you may know more than what I know if you took Psychology. Depression isn’t something where you are sad one day and happy the next and caused by life events unless you have Bipolar or Manic. It’s constant and prevalent in each person’s daily life. They choose how to get over that constant sadness with a distraction and this is something that can be good or bad. Pill popping, drugs, alcohol, self-harm. But there are always good ones as well, helping people was one I did for 3 years straight and it did help a little by accepting what was happening to me and using those feelings to help guide and promote other people to make them feel good. That feeling that you get from helping others did feel good. But like any other distraction, I don’t know if it’s me getting worse or the tolerance of it which led me to get worse is where it hit this year. This past couple of months led me to go get help after a close friend of mine urged me to go get help and I have been doing quite so. I think I don’t know where I would be without them and I know they are probably reading this and there is my sense of gratitude for them. I kept this a secret because I was afraid of people figuring out. I was afraid of what they will say and what will happen to me. I was afraid what their depiction of me to sort of state. Except for its high school year and in 2 more years college and that appals me. That is two more years, it’s only a short time. I am opening out like stated before I don’t want to be pitied, people who come out for anything and are pitied to make them feel good but I don’t need that. I am talking about this because for people who are like me, this is really to you. I have honestly no idea of what you went through and why you are like this. There can be so many reasons as to why you came out like that and I can’t signify or list the number of reasons and perhaps choose one in particular. If you think you can manage it, you can do so, but the moment you feel like it’s not working I highly advise you to get help. Or if you can’t manage it right now, people say this all the time but just talk to me in any way. Via text or in person if you know me. Even if you saw me or met me once I don’t care. I went online for a while, I have seen people around the world left and right and I help them out under a different persona of mine. I barely know half the people I talk to because that is the beauty and nature of the internet. Though talking online to random people if they are down is extremely risky so in hindsight, I don’t recommend it. In all, I did this for people to see me for who I am because I don’t want people to know me for my facade. I will still keep up the facade and over a couple of months and this might get better for me like how it has before. Now I guess I have said more than enough so I will leave this up to you. Just know that life doesn’t need to end so quick none the less of pain. I thank you all for everything and since the intro trilogy is now done and one secret over I think we are good for another maintained release of story collections ;). Stay tuned.

#National Suicide Prevention Week #Suicide #Depression #Hope #happiness #National Suicide Prevention Month #September #diariesofaghost

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talabib · 3 years

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How To Improve Your Time Management Skills

Modern life is full of time thieves. Whether it’s your phone buzzing in your pocket with the latest tweet, a colleague interrupting you in the middle of an important task or the daily barrage of emails, your time is constantly being stolen from you, minute by minute, hour by hour. And once you’ve lost that time, you can never get it back again.

To remain focused and make sure these time thieves don’t get the upper hand, you need to keep a few tricks up your sleeve.

Here are a few ways to improve your time management skills

Do you ever wish you could have an extra hour in the day to read, exercise or hang out with the people you love? Well, you can and there’s no magic required! But first, you need to understand how precious time is.

That’s why the first secret of time management is learning that time is your most valuable asset and that, once it’s lost, you can never get it back. A good way to monitor this precious resource is by breaking it down. For instance, there are 1,440 minutes in a day, each of which should be invested wisely.

To remind yourself of this fact, you can tape a” 1,440” poster to your office door. It would remind you of the limited time in each day. But why use minutes? Why not think about the 86,400 seconds that every day offers?

Well, there are a bunch of daily tasks that you can actually do in a minute, like knocking out 30 sit-ups, reading a poem or watering a plant. This fact makes minutes key to monitoring your time.

Okay, now that you appreciate how valuable time is, it’s time to start prioritizing it. This is where the second secret comes in: determine and prioritize your most important task, or your MIT. This is the single task that will have the biggest impact on your life or work.

Just take Therese Macan, a professor at the University of Missouri-St Louis. She found that one of the most important productivity determinants is the ability to identify priorities. So pinpointing an MIT is central to time management.

For instance, if a senior executive sets a goal of developing a new app, her MIT might be to hire a new programmer. Or the MIT for a start-up CEO could be to prepare a great presentation to land a major investment. Research has shown that having a daily MIT, whatever it is, results in greater levels of happiness and improved focus.

Never-ending to-do lists weigh down lots of people. Take a look at yours. How many of the tasks have been lingering there for weeks, unnecessarily stressing you out?

You probably have at least a few such tasks, and the best way to deal with them is by pulling out a good old fashioned calendar. Here’s where the third secret comes into play: ditch your to-do list and pick up your calendar to de-stress your day.

Research has found that an average of 41 percent of items on to-do lists never actually get completed. One of the reasons for this shocking statistic is that a note stating how long it’ll take to complete them usually doesn’t accompany the tasks on such lists. As a result, tasks that are more difficult or less important generally get left undone.

That might not be such a problem, except for the fact that the unfinished items on your to-do list will inevitably produce a lot of stress that could just as easily be avoided. In fact, researchers from Florida State University discovered that you can avoid this stress by simply coming up with a plan to complete a task.

The Olympic gymnast Shannon Miller offers a good example. She succeeded at spending time with her family, completing her school obligations, training for the Olympics and even doing media interviews, all by scheduling time for important tasks.

This strategy is known as time blocking or time boxing and, incredibly, all it requires is maintaining a detailed calendar. By doing so, Miller forced herself to prioritize tasks that would bring her closer to achieving her goal and, to this day, she keeps an almost minute-by-minute schedule.

However, you’ll inevitably encounter tasks on your calendar that you can’t accomplish. When this happens, instead of letting them drift into the past, simply reschedule. For example, if you usually make it to the gym at noon, but have a flight to catch at the same time, simply move your workout to earlier in the day.

Everyone’s been there: an important deadline is creeping up and, instead of working on the project at hand, you’re planted in front of a screen – scrolling through Facebook, texting a friend or watching your favorite TV show. Procrastination is a tough one, but, luckily, there are strategies to break free from it and start getting things done.

This is where the fourth secret comes in: procrastination can be overcome by imagining your future self. After all, you don’t procrastinate because you're lazy, but because you don’t have sufficient motivation. Imagining yourself in the future can fix this problem and it’s as simple as asking yourself two questions: “What pleasure will I get by doing this thing?” and “What pain will I feel if I don’t do it?”

For instance, if your goal is to work out every single day, but you can’t get yourself to exercise, just imagine having a huge beer belly and feeling totally sluggish. Such a mental routine will get you off the couch and onto the treadmill.

At the same time, being honest about the actions your future self will take can also help you achieve your goals. For example, if you know you’ll be inclined to eat unhealthy snacks during a future break, you can protect yourself by throwing out all the junk food in your house. You could even go a step further by filling the house with healthy options like baby carrots and hummus.

From there, you can move on to the fifth secret: there will always be more to do; you can’t do everything. And, actually, that’s fine!

In fact, prioritizing and scheduling the tasks you want to do is much more valuable than crossing off as many items as possible. Just take President George W. Bush as an example. He knew there would always be more to do. So instead of trying to do everything, he made it his priority to read tons of books, since he found it therapeutic and educational. As a result, he read some 95 titles during his presidency!

Have you ever had an incredible idea while shopping for groceries or walking the dog? Wouldn’t it be great if, instead of straining to remember it later, you could just jot it down right then and there?

That’s why the sixth secret is to always have a notebook handy. After all, writing down your thoughts helps you hold onto them. Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson says he never would have built his business empire without his trusty notebook.

He was so committed to writing down his ideas that, one time when he had a business idea and no notebook, he wrote down the thought in his passport! For him, if an idea doesn’t get written down, it could be lost forever.

Taking notes by hand also helps your memory. For instance, the psychologists Pam Mueller and Daniel Oppenheimer found that students who hand wrote their notes during a TED talk were better able to recall the material than students who took notes on their laptops.

Writing down your thoughts is crucial – as is maintaining control over your schedule, which is where the seventh secret comes into play. It says that you should avoid checking your email too often, lest other people dictate how you spend your time.

In fact, contrary to popular belief, constantly checking emails is unproductive. That’s because the anticipation felt when checking your inbox is comparable to pulling the handle of a slot machine. Often, you check your messages, and there’s nothing new. But sometimes there is a new message. This unpredictability is addictive, and one begins to check more and more often, hoping for the hit of dopamine that a message affords. Obviously, this costs you time and interrupts your focus.

A good way to untether yourself from your email is by unsubscribing from newsletters by using a program like unroll.me. But you can also adopt the 321-Zero system. To do so, just limit yourself to three email checks per day, while trying to get your inbox to zero in just 21 minutes.

If you’ve ever had an office job, you know how incredibly boring meetings can be. But that’s not the only problem with meetings. The eighth secret is that most meetings are inefficient and you should only schedule them as a last resort.

In fact, a 2015 survey found that 35 percent of respondents considered weekly status meetings to be a waste of time, for these two primary reasons:

First, in accordance with Parkinson’s law of triviality, meeting participants tend to waste lots of time on insignificant issues. Second, extroverts usually dominate meetings, making others less likely to participate. As a result, valuable information might not be shared during such gatherings.

That being said, if you absolutely have to have a meeting, opt for a stand-up affair rather than a sit-down one. This might seem odd, but researchers at Washington University found that meetings during which participants stand result in better collaboration, less attachment to ideas, higher levels of engagement and more effective problem-solving.

The Yahoo CEO, Marissa Mayer, offers another good tip: by scheduling meetings based on increments of five or ten minutes, she’s able to have up to 70 meetings a week. If she stuck with the standard 30-minute block she would never be able to accomplish this.

In other words, controlling the timing of meetings will prevent people from sucking up your time. This is key since other people will constantly ask you for things, a fact that dovetails nicely with the ninth secret: achieve your immediate goals faster by saying no to most things.

After all, every time you say yes to something, you’re saying no to something else. The Olympic rower Sara Hendershot is a good example. She’s a pro at saying no to social and other engagements. This hard-learned skill enabled her to keep her eyes on the prize in the lead up to the 2012 Olympics in Rio, where she qualified for the finals.

As a cherry on top, research has even found that people who tend to say no in response to requests for their time are happier and have more energy.

By now you know that it’s essential to spend your limited time on tasks that will have the greatest impact. The tenth secret can help you do that. It says that by applying the Pareto Principle you can uncover shortcuts to success. Here’s what that means:

In the 1890s, the Italian philosopher and economist Vilfredo Federico Damaso Pareto found that 20 percent of the pea plants in his garden produced 80 percent of his healthy peapods. He extrapolated this 80/20 rule into the general principle that now bears his name. It can be applied to a number of areas.

For instance, by applying the 80/20 rule to your employees, you might decide that the majority of your salespeople should be let go since they’re your lowest performers. From there, you could focus your energy on the remaining 20 percent, who already generate 80 percent of your sales, by giving them rewards and greater levels of support. The end result will likely be an overall improvement in sales.

Or you could use the 80/20 rule in your personal life by analyzing the tasks you do on a weekly basis, then identifying which of them has the greatest impact.

That being said, you can also accomplish more by critically assessing the tasks in front of you. The eleventh secret is designed to help you do that. It says that leveraging your skills and delegating work will increase your productivity. Just take a 2013 experiment published in the Harvard Business Review by the professors Julian Birkinshaw and Jordan Cohen. It found that 43 percent of workers were unsatisfied with the tasks they do at work.

By simply training employees to slow down and ask themselves a few questions, the study’s authors were able to identify important tasks, freeing up an extra eight hours per week. The first question they had people ask themselves was, “How important is this task to the company?” Then, “Is there anyone else who can complete it?” And finally, “How could this task be accomplished if I had half as much time?”

On a normal day in the office, do you ever have difficulty focusing? Most people do and a little bit of advice here can go a long way. This is the twelfth secret, which says that grouping your work into recurring themes each week will make you more effective.

A great example comes from Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter and founder of Square. He says that the secret to running both his companies was to have a theme for each day. For instance, on Mondays, he would focus on management; Wednesdays would be dedicated to marketing; and Sunday would be reserved for reflection, feedback and strategy for the next week.

Or take the entrepreneurial coach Dan Sullivan. He recommends theming each week based on three types of days to stay focused and remain invigorated. The first type is called a focus day, which is for vital activities like revenue-growing tasks. The second type is called a buffer day, which is for catching up on emails, returning calls, having meetings, delegating tasks and doing paperwork. And finally, a free day is one on which no work should be done. This last type is reserved for vacation, family time and charity work.

Another simple way to boost your efficiency has to do with tackling small tasks. This is the thirteenth secret, which says that you should immediately take action on tasks that’ll take fewer than five minutes to accomplish and avoid returning to the same task over and over.

Just consider the straight-A student Nihar Suthar. He completes five-minute assignments right away, avoiding a long list of tiny tasks.

Or take Jeff. His sister Debbie recently emailed him, but instead of writing her back, he called her to make sure they could talk. By scheduling a call in his calendar and thereby saving the mental energy he would otherwise spend trying to remember to get back to her, he decided to handle this task immediately. If he had instead put it on a to-do list or left it in his inbox, he probably would have never remembered to address it.

Imagine waking up at six in the morning, working out for 45 minutes and then whipping together a delicious, high-protein breakfast. It might sound difficult but the fourteenth secret shows why it’s essential. It says that dedicating the first hour of each day to a morning routine will enhance your health – mind, body and soul. In fact, starting the day with a workout is a great way to get your creative juices flowing.

Just consider the New York Times best-selling author Dan Miller, who starts off each day by meditating for half an hour, then working out for 45 minutes while listening to audio programs. He avoids checking the news or looking at his phone during this time, devoting his first hour to positive and inspirational experiences. He even claims that his most creative ideas come to him during this daily “me time.”

From there, you can further increase your energy and well-being by eating a healthy breakfast and drinking lots of water. This is huge for the best-selling author and podcast host Shawn Stevenson. He considers energy to be everything, and so he starts off each day with what he calls an inner bath. He simply drinks 30 ounces of purified water to jumpstart his metabolism by flushing out waste.

In fact, according to the fifteenth secret, energy is paramount. The secret is that productivity isn’t about time, but about maintaining focus and energy.

That’s why Francesco Cirillo came up with the Pomodoro Technique – a method designed to reduce distractions and boost productivity. His approach involves setting a timer for 25 minutes, devoting your full attention to a single task for the full 25 minutes and then taking a five-minute break before repeating the cycle.

Author Monica Leonelle found ample success with the Pomodoro Technique after realizing that she didn’t have a single spare hour in the day. By using the Pomodoro Technique, she recharged during her breaks, maintaining steady energy throughout the day and, with the help of other techniques, went from writing 600 words per hour to 3,500!

Highly successful people consider time to be their most valuable asset. By applying their most effective life hacks – which do everything from prioritizing tasks to boosting your energy and keeping you focused – you too can make the most of your time.

#How To Improve Your Time Management Skills

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nullset2 · 3 years

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Society is Evolving in a very Strange Manner

We live in very bizarre times. It seems that more and more, more activities in the world are taking place behind the screen. It's starting to eerily feel like the matrix and it seems that people not only voted for it, but actually WANT it actively, because it's easy and nice.

Now, I've mentioned before that I like the network and I like the Plethora (notice the uppercase letter there, see what I did?) of things that it enables people to do. Sophistication and progress are the degree to which we can perform things in the world without having to think about them, so I will not be a naysayer of the network. I'm not a luddite.

But at the same time, I think that the fact that the network enables such a convenient lifestyle and such an easy way to communicate is actually estranging people away from each other... and this is just no good.

We are just not designed to be click a button and receive free food. To have all of our interactions transpire with little beeps and boops on a 5 inch OLED screen. To have everything and anything be schematized and moderated. It's degenerate.

Now, I love the tech that powers all of that, again, and I wouldn't have it any other way. Tech allows you to educate yourself massively and endlessly, and it connects people all over the world, but the fact that these beeps and boops provide such convenient and easy rushes of dopamine, in my opinion, is getting the best of people right now, and it has to change fast. It can not and will not hold. It must stop, and soon.

Just imagine if you live in a city like Seattle, where it rains four months out of the year, then you have massively alarming health crises on top. It's like people have actual justification now to stay indoors all the time, whereas before it was just play Seasonal Affective Disorder. Can the awkwardness and inherent effort of socializing ever even aspire to be as compelling as a 4K stream of imagery for entertainment? It's just not, not even remotely, a fair fight.

I literally spent the whole year without seeing anyone in person except for very rare occasions. But in reality a big chunk of it is the feeling of depression pervasive in everyone's minds out of the fact that it's scary to go out if the circumstances are shaky and uncertain. But let's be frank, another part is the fact that it's just easier and nicer to stay home in your jammies listening to podcasts, trying to weather it all out. It's just you staying in the domain of order instead of chaos, something which every reasonable entity ever would choose.

But hear me out just here... I think all of it is starting to get a bit too extreme for my tastes.

We live in the culture of the now (or the Now-Now, rather) and things are getting too vicious because it seems that the focus is just how the network enables you to move faster and faster. To maximize convenience, safety, pleasure and security, perhaps. The network is blazing fast so it enables things to scale infinitely, both in terms of business and communication

And I think that the ultimate consequence of this is... and sorry to be crass, that people are replacing relationships and intimacy with social networks and porn, exactly in that order.

It sounds horrible and it is horrible but think about it... it makes perfect logical sense...

For exsample, imagine you're living alone in a city and there's a virus out there, not only you can't go out, but you must not go out lest you'll be seen as a defficient human being. It's just the right thing to do, and what will you do with your time? Well, it's not like you have a social circle in the city, and you are connected to the network, so...

And this applies to everything: from the pleasant, anxiety inducing bottomless feeds of drivel that encompass our social media (again, Instagram has become the fucking shopping channel), to the infinity of videos available for endless entertainment, generated en-masse, to the endless masses of podcasts being produced daily...

And I think this is why trends like the recent current of stoicism and "No-Nut November" have arised. People just know in the back of their heads that something is just not adding up. Something is seriously fucked up here. Something is amiss: the richness of deliberate content, of a classic book, full of rich stories and characters, and the nicencess of speaking one to one with a friend, face to face, and the comfort of true intimacy with a partner. People are starting to get fed up with the highly saccharine, artificial, engineered equivalents of those which are being offered, at a price, to satiate those hunger pangs.

Those efforts to lower down your screen time and rate of consumption have a reason, thus: to rekindle people's humanity. To teach them that there's more to life than cumshots and seeking of the next high, to show it who's boss. That the tender embrace of a caring partner who actually wants to talk to them is incomparable to crude pornography as much as people would have it that way. That sex and pleasure, as good as they may be, are not, and will never be a replacement for affection and being genuine.

Another one: Truth is non-existent anymore, there's only what gets the most likes. Deliberatism and well thought out content is just not there --instead, it's been replaced by a 24/7 stream of imagery which may not even be good for people, prioritizing spectacle and shock value above all. Everything is designed for maximum dopaminic release and maximization of screen time.

And then this gets co-opted by politicians and propaganda machines, and the results are horrific.

And I think what we need to do is to setup an scheme in place to shut down the commercial, social network driven Internet on Sundays, very much like "Ready Player One". No escapism, sit down and have coffee with your friends and catch up. Don't look at a screen, just relax. Don't think about money or pleasure or sex, just relax.

But maybe this is but a dreamer's wish. Huxley, in "Brave New World", wrote that an ultra-modernized society would become a society of beloved chains, and maybe people love their Instagram shopping network with its endless stream of scantily clad women, and it's machine-produced youtube videos, and its endless harem of new women. I just hope that this changes soon because last time I checked this is not the concensus. People really love their pornhub.

#works

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theeurekaproject · 4 years

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Mortuus Reginae

“I will never understand your insatiable desire for attention.” “I will never understand your propensity for completely unnecessary insults.” “It’s just banter. You’re oversensitive.” “Banter is tasteless.” “Who are you, the Imperatrix of Eleutheria?” “Yes.”

Andromeda groaned. “Fine. I surrender. I still don’t get why all of this is needed, though.” Acidalia’s landing had been as theatrical and overly dramatic as she could possibly make it; the Revelation’s white exterior glimmered in Base Alpha’s fluorescent lighting like a beacon that screamed I’m Acidalia Cipher, come and get me. That ship had top-notch cloaking systems, but the extravagant flamboyance and beauty of its design made them kind of moot; sure, enemy ships couldn’t track it from a distance, but anyone with eyes could see the massive white mansion-with-an-engine hovering in front of them. If Acidalia had gotten ambushed and murdered on her way back from her impromptu journey to Mars, Andromeda wouldn’t have been the least bit sympathetic.

Then again, she wasn’t too sympathetic of Acidalia on a day-to-day basis, anyway—but Acidalia didn’t to know that. It was really better for her and everyone else if the Imperatrix Ceasarina continued to think of Andromeda as her right-hand-man, and honestly, there was no harm in that; they were on the same side, and they were brilliant leaders with levels of genius the rest of the movement could hardly hope to aspire to. If them getting along meant that Andromeda had to continue to pretend that she actually enjoyed spending time with this insufferable, melodramatic, over-glorified princess with more money than God, then so be it. She’d met worse people before.

Still, she grated her teeth a little bit as Acidalia’s face came into her field of vision. Maybe it was Andromeda’s high-definition cybernetic eye that made Acidalia look more annoying than she actually was… or maybe it was just her obnoxious, holier-than-thou personality.

Well, her absence had been nice while it lasted.

Acidalia was dressed in a long, sweeping dress intricate enough to be a wedding gown, because of course she was. If marriage was still a thing in Eleutheria, she’d have looked exactly like a bride. A delicate, sheer veil was draped over her perfectly-curled hair—a symbol of mourning that wouldn’t be obvious to anyone who didn’t know her intimately enough to understand that she was exactly the type to still use mourning veils, but only when they were bleached white enough to match her style. Andromeda almost wanted to ask what the point of a bleached-white mourning veil was—didn’t its brightness kind of defeat the purpose?—but she already knew the answer; like everything else Acidalia ever did, it was for the aesthetic.

“You look absolutely ridiculous,” she snapped, motioning to the veil. She realized suddenly that it was topped by a pearlescent quartz tiara studded with diamond flowers, and mentally facepalmed.

“My brother is dead,” Acidalia said cooly. Next to her, David Seren shot Andromeda an ugly glare. She’d have told him to stuff a sock in it if his daughter wasn’t standing right next to him.

“Then I guess we’re on even footing,” Andromeda shrugged.

Acidalia’s expression didn’t even change. “You never had any brothers,” she said.

“And now you don’t, either. See?” The see? at the end was unnecessary, but being patronizing felt good, and Andromeda had no time for this type of sentimental bullshit. Acidalia may as well have weighted herself down with six feet of black crape like the widows of old. Leave it to the Imperatrix to turn the death of a seventeen-year-old—who was, naturally, in no way special in any sense of the word when his relationship to Acidalia was removed from the picture—into a whole big elaborate production combined with a fashion statement.

Acidalia’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “You know that witnessing a sibling’s death and being born an only child are two objectively different things, Praetor.”

Andromeda groaned internally at the use of her title, which Acidalia only used when she was trying to be quietly passive-aggressive. It carried the same weight as a parent referring to their child by her first, middle, and caste name all at the same time, and she had a sudden flashback of hearing someone yell Andromeda Amalura, Labora! and knowing she was in trouble. When most people called her a Praetor, she felt powerful—it was the highest military rank anyone in the Revolution could achieve, and she was quite proud of it—but Acidalia managed to make it seem infantilizing, and perhaps the most infuriating thing was that Andromeda responding to it would only make her look more childish.

“Everyone here has lost someone,” she said, hoping she was coming across as stern instead of angry. “You know how many seventeen-year-old boys die on a daily basis? T wasn’t special.”

“Every person’s life is special,” David Seren said with faux-fatherly wisdom.

Andromeda rolled her eyes. “Oh, I’m so very sorry for not dropping everything to mourn some random kid who was exactly as special as every other random kid who ever dropped dead. It’s almost like I don’t place any extra value on his life just because he was related to a powerful woman… or I thought that’s what you wanted? Unless nepotism is acceptable now.” “I never said that. Stop putting words in my mouth—“ “She’s right, David,” Acidalia interrupted, sighing. “More people are going to die if we don’t start coming back from this, and none of those soldiers’ lives are inherently more valuable than T’s was. If he were still alive, he never would have wanted more boys being sent off to their doom because the leadership couldn’t get its lives together.” David’s expression softened, but he still didn’t look entirely too pleased with Andromeda, who decided not to dignify him with a response. She could not possibly care less about the opinions of a random Martian farmer—or secretary of agriculture, whatever the hell that was—when it came to her relationship with Acidalia and her job. “Okay,” she said briskly. “Now that we’ve got that conversation over with, we should probably focus on the imminent military threats, which are much more important to me personally than the death of a guy whose body we can’t even recover. Anyone else agree?” “Yes,” Acidalia said, “but you don’t have to be so crass about it.” “More like you don’t have to be an asshole about it,” murmured a random girl Andromeda had never met before in her life. She was about to retort, but Acidalia said softly, “she’s just being pragmatic, Athena.” “Why do you defend her?” David asked.

“Because her heart’s in the right place, and she’s a military genius.” Andromeda smiled. That’s more like it.

“Can’t argue with that,” David said, “but—“ “No buts,” Andromeda interrupted. “We’re going to the Scorpio. Move.”

***

The Scorpio was the exact opposite of the Revelation in every way, and that was just how Andromeda liked it.

It always astounded her how this military ship—a ship that was pretty much held together with duct tape, no less—managed to be more welcoming and human than the most expensive cruiser the entirety of the solar system had to offer. The Scorpio was a monument to Andromeda’s achievements, but it was organic, living, full of humanity—not some stiff white statue dedicated to short-lived Imperial beauty. She loved it like she’d love her own child—if she liked children, which she didn’t—and she felt that the affection was well-deserved; this ship had seen so many battles and bore so many scars on its steely black hull that it practically warranted its own Purple Heart.

Acidalia, of course, didn’t see it that way. She hated the Scorpio, but she was too infuriatingly polite to say so, and Andromeda didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

As they crossed the threshold of the ship, Andromeda felt everything in the left side of her body settle. Her cybernetics liked this place, and they had enough of a mind of their own that Andromeda thought it best to keep them happy. Human or otherwise, she was more than ready to grant rights to the systems that controlled her labored breathing and the pulse of her overworked heart (hearts? She’d lost track of her organs years ago—they were too numerous and fickle for her to remember any of them, anyway.) The mechanical half of her brain emitted a surge of dopamine, or something like it, in the same way a cat purred in contentment, and Andromeda’s organic mind had to agree with it—the Scorpio was home.

“Take your shoes off,” she called to the crowd behind her. (Why were there so many people here? she wondered. Acidalia and David, of course, and David’s teenage daughter—but who had invited two Scientias, a mutant cantrix, and a random AX-class to this meeting?) Nonetheless, they all complied, even Acidalia—who, Andromeda noticed with annoyance, was wearing ridiculously tall high-heeled shoes that probably cost more than this entire base. She zoomed in on one of them with her left eye and saw diamond fire flickering in the center of each tiny gemstone—yep, those shoes were definitely worth somewhere in the millions to billions of dollars. And Acidalia had just casually tossed them to the side like they were $10 clearance pumps she bought from a department store. Of course she did—if a single jewel broke, she could have a dozen new pairs made for her by tomorrow, each more diamond-studded and more valuable than the last.

“You seem frustrated,” Acidalia said, deliberately non-confrontationally.

“Yeah, well, I’d like to get this show on the road before all of Terra gets invaded by blue alien fish people,” Andromeda replied pointedly. She couldn’t do much, not when Acidalia was mourning a brother and dressed like an overgrown flower girl—anything Andromeda could possibly say would make her look like an asshole. If there was anything Acidalia excelled at, it was delicate, verbal manipulation, and she would have everyone convinced she was the victim within thirty seconds of being insulted. So Andromeda had to speak like a military commander who was worried about her movement instead of an irritated peer who didn’t like the notion of spending millions of credits on shoes, and nobody would judge Acidalia at all. Such is life—or, as Acidalia herself would have said, c’est la vie (because of course she spoke fluent Francogallicus, a language that had been dead for over ten centuries. Again, aesthetic.)

Andromeda shook her head, trying to clear it. She was a Praetor, above all—and that meant that, unlike the Imperatrix, she actually had to do things other than flee from danger and look pretty on camera. She couldn’t afford to be thinking like this any more than Acidalia could afford to grieve for her dead family. There was danger in the upper atmosphere and work to be done, and rationality and logic had to rise above anger and resentment, at least until the threat was gone.

She sat at the head of the table and pressed the big metal button at the center, changing the windows from translucent to opaque. The Scorpio was one of the most technologically advanced starships in the galaxy, and she could easily replace every mechanical switch with sleek holographics, but there was something visceral and satisfying about physically changing things with her fists, and exposed wires and motherboards scared her guests more than plastic and glass ever could. At the clicking sound of the button, the Cantator jumped, and Andromeda felt a wave of sympathy for her—she’d been like that once, too, in another lifetime.

Acidalia sat at her right hand side and David at her left, and that probably meant something, etiquette-wise, but Andromeda had no idea what it was. The others arranged themselves around the three seats of power awkwardly, like they’d never been in this type of situation before—save for Cressida Seren, who sat right next to her father with an air of arrogance and immediately started examining her fingernails in the universal sign of “I’m bored.” Andromeda surveyed them all from left to right: a very clean-cut looking Scientia with short ombré gray hair and understated makeup, a significantly more disheveled Scientia with a bored smirk, a frightened and clearly genetically modified Cantator, and a soldier boy with tears in his eyes. “First order of business,” she said, “who are these people?” “David Seren, Cressida Seren, Carina, Athena, Lyra, and Ace,” Acidalia said, rattling off the names like an Auctor teacher would say words on a spelling test. “David is the Secretary of Agriculture on Mars, quite obviously, and Cressida is his daughter. Athena and Carina are both astrophysicists who risked their lives to warn me about the assassination attempt staged by Cassiopeia. Lyra is a new recruit who accompanied Ace to Mars as a plan to safeguard him from Alestra, and Ace is my late brother’s best friend, who saved me at the coronation. Each one of these people deserves to be commended for their bravery—they’re risking everything they’ve ever known just by being around me.”

Andromeda looked at them again. None of them looked particularly brave, and she was about 75 percent sure that Athena had stolen good sticking out of her pockets. Cressida was already scrolling through a Martian social networking website on her metadit, clearly not paying attention to anything that was being said, and Carina was rubbing the back of her neck like she didn’t quite know what to do with herself. There was a decent chance that Acidalia had simply taken a personal liking to them and exaggerated their backstories for their sakes, but Andromeda decided not to question that—after all, these six strangers were the only people on the planet who knew Acidalia was alive, and that would be supremely important later.

“Okay,” Andromeda huffed. “I’m assuming you’re all trustworthy, right?” It really didn’t matter if they weren’t—this meeting wasn’t exactly a secret. Acidalia nodded, though she did glance quickly at Athena’s overflowing pockets and shot Andromeda a look that said, leave it be.

“I’m taking that as a yes,” Andromeda continued. “So, second order of business: we might be getting invaded by aliens.”

If that news surprised Acidalia at all, she didn’t show it, but everyone else around the table jumped—save for Cressida, who had transitioned from Martian social media to a cheap mobile game with lots of flashing lights and obnoxious noises. “What do you mean?” David asked.

“I mean that the interstellar mermaid gladiator people who have been orbiting our planet for decades have finally made landfall,” Andromeda said. “Look.” She pulled up a map of Appalachia City and pointed to a glowing dot that hovered somewhere around the Imperial District. “That ship isn’t Terran or Martian, and the signals I’m getting from it are showing me that it belongs to the Mira.” “How many are there?” Acidalia asked, concerned. “Just the one, but that could change. We’ve been on even footing for a while, but now that our army is fighting itself, I think they’ve found the chinks in our armor. This might be their opportunity to land.”

“Well, have they deployed any weapons?” Acidalia asked, “or done anything to indicate they want to harm us?”

“They’re Mira, of course they want to harm us.” “But they wouldn’t have sent just one ship if that were the case, would they?” Acidalia tilted her head in a pointed way, not exactly self-satisfied but close to it, and a surge of anger shot through Andromeda’s body again. She was so infuriatingly good at being eruditely snobby without making herself snobby at all, and it bothered Andromeda because she knew damn well that her level of politesse was simply not high enough to counter Acidalia’s. It didn’t matter what she thought or said or did, every conversation she could possibly have with the Imperatrix Ceasarina would wind up making her look like an imbecile and Acidalia like an eloquent space queen.

“We don’t know,” Andromeda said, gritting her teeth. “They sent us a message, but I don’t trust it.” “Play it for me,” Acidalia said.

“It’s written. Like an email.” Andromeda pulled it up anyway and handed it off to Acidalia, who read it quietly for a few minutes. It was nothing remarkable—mostly it was an extraordinarily generic statement about wanting to meet with an Eleutherian diplomat, the type of thing any sovereign would send to another leader in the hopes of forging some kind of political relationship. If it hadn’t come from an alien civilization Terra had been in a war of attrition with for the past God-knows-how-long, it wouldn’t have rung any alarm bells.

“Well,” Acidalia said, “they definitely know just what to say. This entire letter is written in Roman Latin too, did you notice that?” Andomeda hadn’t noticed that, but now that she was looking right at the words, it was obvious—the grammar was perfect. Eleutherian Latin didn’t even bother with any sort of grammar as long as the speaker could get their point across, but Roman Latin was fancy and full of itself, with complex systems of declensions and phonemes and other linguistic words she could only half-remember. Not even the Imperials spoke in Roman Latin outside of very, very formal events, none of which Andromeda was privy to, and even then it was purely ceremonial—nobody actually put effort into speaking in that archaic dialect of a dead language. And yet, the Mira had put in all that effort.

“How would they even know what ancient Romans spoke like, anyway?” Athena asked, voicing what Andromeda was thinking. “Nobody even talks to the Mira. The cultural exchange between us is like, zilch.”

“Well, it’s not quite zero,” Acidalia replied, “as we do know some things about them… namely that they’re significantly weaker than us physically, and also much more aggressive, it seems. But that’s all stereotypical and based on the experiences of a few men. They don’t like to take prisoners and they most certainly don’t like to be prisoners, so contact has been limited, to say the least. I do wonder why, out of all things, they would choose to learn an extremely antiquated form of Latin. Perhaps it’s for the sake of getting our attention?”

“If they wanted attention, why are they just sitting there quietly?” Andromeda pointed out. “I think they’re trying to lure either you or Alestra there, and then kill you. I mean, think about it: they have the perfect opportunity now. Eleutheria is tearing itself to pieces, you and your mother are both desperate to get the upper hand, and they’ve managed to breech our defenses, land in our capitol city, and bring a whole ship with them—not just a tiny fighter. If they want to occupy Terra, this is a good time. All they have to do is bring in their army and clear us out, and that starts with the leadership.” Acidalia frowned. “You may be right.”

“Aren’t I always?” David rolled his eyes. “I think you’re being a little pessimistic here. They aren’t doing anything just yet—I think they might genuinely want to talk to us. If they want Acidalia dead, why haven’t they hunted her down already?” “Because she’s in one of the most secure places on the planet? Not even the Nova have access to this base, and they’re just as Terran as we are. The Mira are aliens. How could they possibly find it?” Andromeda said. “They’re just waiting for Acidalia to come out of the woodworks.” “Doesn’t the entire planet think Acidalia’s already dead?” David asked.

Oh, right, Andromeda thought. Shit. With the Imperatrix sitting right here in front of her, she’d completely forgotten the fact that Alestra had announced the demise of her daughter to the entire planet just a few hours ago.

Acidalia sighed. “Do we know how much the Mira know? Because that could change everything. If they think I’m dead, then they wouldn’t be trying to kill me, and they’re not after Andromeda, either, because they have no idea she exists.” “Don’t know she exists?” David said incredulously. “Isn’t she like your equivalent of a general?”

“Yes, and I am a very, very, very secretive general,” Andromeda replied. “If a job is well-done, people won’t even realize that it was done in the first place. You know how many ‘accidental’ deaths were a result of me?” Her mechanical arm sprang to life, LEDs blinking like sleep-clouded eyes, and she flexed her hand to show off the metal. “I’ve got built in tasers and brass knuckles, plus a cybernetically reenforced steel skeleton. I’m about seven times stronger than the average man, and just as fast. I can beat someone to a bloody pulp and be gone before anyone saw me, and in case I need a little more subtlety than what a cyborg soldier can offer, I have the whole damn Revolution underneath me—including the spies. I can do whatever I want and nobody has to know.”

David looked nervous. “Great,” he said, sounding forced. “That’s… cool.”

“And,” Acidalia continued, “they have no reason to want anyone else dead, either. I mean, they could be targeting Alestra, but again, why wouldn’t they just kill her? We know she’s not buried in some hidden Nova base—she was giving a speech about my ‘unavoidable and tragic accidental death’ a couple of hours ago, and she was standing right on the palace balcony. Surely they could have killed her then if they wanted to really cause chaos.”

“There’s still Mars,” David said. “What about Arlen Tycho?” “Do you really think they give a shit about Mars?” Andromeda laughed. “Come on, man. It’s Mars. Not even Martians care about Mars. Besides, we all know the presidents are all doomed. Didn’t the last guy die in office after he was rude to Alestra in public?” “Last four,” Acidalia corrected. “And their vice presidents shortly thereafter. I believe President Tycho was… President pro tempore of the Senate? He was third or fourth in line; my mother murdered all of his predecessors.”

“Jesus,” Athena huffed. “I never imagined the bureaucracy could be so exciting.”

Before David could respond to that, Acidalia effortlessly inserted herself back into the conversation, interrupting so fluidly that it didn’t feel like she was interrupting at all. “Either way,” she said, “I think we’ve come to the conclusion that they don’t want to kill us. I think we should send a diplomat.” “Or we could nuke them to death and forget the whole thing,” Andromeda shrugged.

Acidalia practically gasped. “Have you gone mad? That’s what landed us in this war in the first place.”

“What?!” Andromeda snapped. “It’s an effective display of power, at the very least. It’ll show them we mean business. And, for the record, they have committed a crime—they’e trespassing on Imperial territory without permission.”

“That is absolutely 100% not a nuke-worthy crime,” David said, as if Andromeda would ever care about his opinion at all.

“I just think that sending a diplomat to this is dangerous and ridiculous,” Andromeda said. “Who knows what they want? It’s an eat-or-be-eaten world out there, literally. They kill us or we kill them.” “Not everything has to come down to that,” Acidalia replied. “But I do agree that this is a mine field. This situation that calls for civility and grace, not nuclear bombs and indiscriminate murder. So, if we do send a diplomat, I propose that I go myself.”

A chorus of questions acme from the rest of the table. “You can’t do that,” David said. “It’s too risky, and we need you.” “But it’s a power play, and it gets them on our side,” Acidalia argued. “Look at it this way. They’re currently staring at a war-torn city on a planet they’ve thought of as backwards and barbaric for the past few centuries at the very least. They don’t see a noble cause fighting against tyrannical overlords; they see two equally bad warring factions killing each other in a brutal and bloody civil war. But if we could get them to see us as friends and my mother as the enemy, two things happen: one, this war of attrition might end and they’ll stop trying to hurt Terra, and two, we gain someone on our side, backing us up. But imagine what would happen if my mother got to them first. Either she kills them all and makes them angrier than ever, and all of Eleutheria falls to pieces because divided we fall, or she gains an ally. Both are bad.” David groaned. “I hate that you’re right about this." “And,” Acidalia continued, “if I go myself, that immediately shows them that Alestra—and, by extension, the Nova—is duplicitous, manipulative, and all-around untrustworthy. What better way to showcase that than by proving that they lied about the death of an enemy leader? The Mira aren’t dumb, and I’m sure they’ve had their suspicions for a while, but this will confirm them. And, hopefully, we can make them sympathetic to us. But it’s going to take an expert politician to navigate this, which is why I propose that I go. Not to sound arrogant, but—" Andromeda started playing white noise in her ears and promptly stopped paying attention. Whatever Acidalia was about to say after that but was not worth listening to—she’d learned that much. Listening to her talk about how good at politics she was was could bore any sane human being to tears, and it was especially grating to Andromeda, who had to put up with it almost constantly. She waited until Acidalia’s sparkly red lips stopped moving, then returned to the conversation, hoping nobody had noticed her brief vacation from having to listen to the Imperatrix talk. Honestly, though, even if they had, she wouldn’t care.

“I still think this is inordinately risky,” David said. “Even if they’re benevolent towards Acidalia, and that’s a big if, what if they also just genuinely want our planet for their own? It’s not like we can do anything now when the whole Earth is divided in two.”

“We can still nuke them,” Andromeda said again. Next to her, Acidalia rolled her eyes in annoyance. “What?” Andromeda asked. “Got any better solutions?”

“Yes. Diplomacy.”

“And what if they kill you?” “The planet already thinks I’m dead. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me. It matters to the Revolution.”

“You’ll get over it.” “The scientists won’t.” Acidalia sighed, looking very overburdened, and stared off into the distance—or, at least, she tried to. It would have come across as less spacey if she wasn’t looking blankly at the Scorpio’s opaque windows. “That’s true,” she admitted, her voice soft. “But they could learn.” “They won’t learn without someone to teach them,” Andromeda said, hoping she looked more enthusiastic than she felt. She had seen this type of thing before in dozens of people; one person died and suddenly everyone was borderline suicidal. Acidalia, for all her high-and-mighty queenliness, was not as immune to grief as she thought she was.

“You are right,” Acidalia said, “but they aren’t going to kill me. I’ll go, and I’ll take a guard and an entourage. It would look suspicious if I showed up alone, anyway—I want them to see me as a legitimate leader ousted from the palace, not a bastard rebel out for blood because my pure-bred little sister is getting the throne. Why doesn’t David come with me?” David sat up straight as a board, looking panicked. “What? Me?!” “You’re much physically stronger than I am,” Acidalia said, “and I can’t exactly bring anyone else, seeing as no one has any idea I’m alive. I suppose I could reveal myself now, but I’d rather stay silent and make a big show of it later—that way, if I should die before the victory comes, nobody will have known I was alive to begin with. As it stands, I’m a martyr and the Revolution is mourning me—they’ll fight harder than they ever have before, because it’s personal this time, and they’re angry. So guards are out of the question..” “But its been years since I was in the army,” David stammered. “I’m not as tough as Andromeda, and I’m not a real a politician like you.” Andromeda snorted. “You’re the minister of farming on a planet known for its farms, how is that not political?” “Secretary of agriculture,” Acidalia corrected. “But she’s right; you are a politician.” “In name only! Mars is a meritocracy built around a computer program created a thousand years ago by some religious fanatics; the only reason I ever got power to begin with was because the whole internet thought my baby daughter was cute and that drove up my social points so much that my boss named me as his successor, and then my boss got shot and here I am. It was all just luck! Besides, nobody in the Martian government does any actual work—the Algorithm runs everything, we all just stand there and look handsome.” Beads of sweat poured down from his curly hair into his unshaven stubble, and Andromeda wondered not for the first time where Acidalia was even finding these people. David Seren was like a bad one-credit-store, off-brand version of someone respectable—what help could he possibly be? And it wasn’t like anyone else here would be useful, either—both of the Scientias seemed absolutely clueless, Cressida was still playing on her phone, and Lyra and Ace looked too sad to serve any real purpose.

Fucking fantastic. We’re supposed to be meeting aliens and this is the team we have? When Andromeda was sixteen, she’d escaped from a jail cell with a crack team made up of four stim addicts and three separate men who had been arrested for public indecency, and every single person in that little cohort still managed to be more competent than any of the supposedly high-ranking, important officials standing around blankly right now. Andromeda had never felt smarter—probably because her IQ drove the mean of the people in this room up by at least ten points. She couldn’t possibly let all of these morons go off to meet the Mira alone—with her luck, they’d all manage to stumble into the path of an asteroid or fall off a cliff or meet some other hilariously unlikely and horrible fate, because the universe just didn’t seem to like them very much.

“You know what?” Andromeda said. “Fine. Fine. We’ll go talk to the Mira, and David can stay on the ship and wait and see if they want a Martian representative before he gets off. And we can bring this disphit—“ she gestured to Ace—“because one immune is better than nothing. As for the rest of you, do what you want—just be quiet about it. And I’m coming.”

“You?” Acidalia asked, alarmed. “We can’t have the both of us go; it’s far too risky. We’re putting all of our eggs in one basket, and there is no designated survivor or line of succession here. They think I’m already dead, but you—you’re one of the biggest assets we have, we can’t lose you and me both.” “Well, if I don’t go, all of you are going to get your asses kicked,” Andromeda snapped. “I mean, look at you. Acidalia, you’re an excellent shot, but you’re a twig. You got all cut up just from Ace trying to protect you—imagine what you’d look like if someone really wanted to hurt you. And these other people are, what, Scientias? Cantatores? They’re not made for fighting. The only physically strong people here are Ace and David, and even David might be pushing it a little with that dadbod. You need someone to smash those blue fuckers’ skulls in if things get dangerous.”

“I have smashed plenty of skulls in throughout the course of my life, for the record,” Acidalia said, “but if you’d like to accompany me, I have no real qualms with that. I’m just concerned that both of us will—“ “‘Both of us die? Anyone who wants me dead will have to fight me first.” Andromeda flexed her metal arm. “No offense, but carbon nantoubule bones and steel muscle are a little harder to break than weak-ass myoblast fibers covering osteoporotic calcium bones.” “I am not osteoporotic, my ancestors were just accustomed to lower gravity—“ “Doesn’t matter, the point has been made.” Andromeda leant back and put her feet up on the table, partially to establish her dominance in the room and partially to show off her fancy new 3D-printed, custom-made metal prosthetics. Noir-black titanium alloys just seemed so much more intimidating than pasty pale flesh and blood, and they were prettier than the brusied, burnt skin that used to cover her body. “I’m going with you.” Acidalia looked like she wanted to protest, but she didn’t. Instead, she swallowed her words and looked down at the holographic pinpoint representing the starship, examining it with uncomfortable closeness. “We should leave soon,” she said finally, “before they assume we aren’t coming. I’ll draft a response to their letter.” “Sounds good,” Andromeda said. “And as for the rest of you people, do what you want. Nobody here cares if you live or die, so you’re free to make your own decisions.”

Ace and the girls at the table looked at each other, semi-alarmed, as Andromeda strode away. It must be freeing, she thought, to live like that—to be a teenager with no real connections to anybody and no responsibilities. She’d never had the luxury of freedom; her entire life had just been falling from one type of slavery into another. Being a wage slave to the Revolution was better than being an actual slave to the Eleutherian government, but it still wasn’t true freedom the way she’d always envisioned it—she was still trapped here, forever working. Serving the state and serving a master were not entirely different things, especially when she still had to put up with people as dumb as David Seren and as infuriating as Acidalia Cipher. And sure, this job allowed her to use her strategic mind a little more, but what was even the point if she wasn’t allowed to play with her favorite toys? Nuclear bombs were horrific and useful, and they seemed about as appropriate a response to an alien landing as anything else.

But Acidalia said no, and that meant no.

Andromeda tried not to think about her as she stormed off down the landing ramps. Acidalia would get her dues someday, when she tried to fix some problem with friendly diplomacy but her enemies brought guns to a knife fight. Then she’d be sorry—sorry that she hadn’t listened to Andromeda, the military genius who’d won every war she’d ever fought, and sorry that she’d been so inordinately idealistic about war, where everything is fair and the victors make the only rules long after the fight has ended. Andromeda played with fire, but she did it well; Acidalia just sat there surrounded by gasoline and matches, wondering what she should do.

Whatever. There was a time for diplomatic relations and a time for mushroom clouds, and Andromeda would be getting her way soon. If there was anything her life had taught her, it was that there are some situations where violence is the only answer—and if this war continued on the trajectory it was heading towards, it would be time for mushroom clouds very soon.

#on the edge of eureka #POV Andromeda #Acidalia #Andromeda

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cedarrrun · 4 years

Link

Kirschen Katz is the go-to yoga teacher for many Hollywood A-listers, but her most fulfilling work—teaching kids—comes after the school bell rings.

Lindsay Tucker: How did you transition into becoming a yoga teacher?

Kirschen Katz: When I was 34 years old, I was trying to become an actress in Los Angeles, and I had many, many jobs. I have been practicing yoga since 1989. I come from a running background—competitive runner at 12 years old, full athletic scholarship. I just always ran, and really was not competing anymore but started to breakdown. So I ended up getting into a yoga practice on my mother's recommendation in 1989. I did my first class with Steve Ross, one of the godfathers of yoga in Los Angeles. I practiced yoga until ’96, and then I was able to take a year off and think about what it is I wanted to do. I decided to become a yoga teacher, and I did teacher training. That's my pre-divorce—I go pre-divorce and post-divorce—pre-divorce was teaching, but I was in a financial life where I didn't have to really struggle. And then he moved me to Hawaii, and my marriage ended there.

Photo by Diana Ragland

LT: So how did you end up working with actors?

KK: I came back to LA, and I really had to boogie to make a living. I was really lucky to be in the right place and open to abundance—that was my mantra after my marriage crumbled. I had signed a prenup and was left very little money. Anyway, I came back to LA, and I was in my hairdresser's salon, and there was a Hollywood wife there, and she said, “Come and teach me yoga.” Through her I met Jenny Belushi—who was married to Jim Belushi, the actor—and Shannon Motenburg, whose husband ran a management production company. And so then these women (and this is now in 2005), they introduced me to just wonderful women in the entertainment business, and one of them introduced me to Julia Roberts. And then the other one introduced me to Reese Witherspoon.

I never went back to teaching classes. I just settled into the private yoga world. I tapped into this niche of, you know, Hollywood and entertainment people, and it's all referral base, as you can imagine, and it's about keeping people’s secrets, about trust. It's a lot of yoga therapy and just really listening to people. I've incorporated running with some of my clients, so for maybe 30 minutes of the private, we’re walking, running—we're doing more of the therapy session—and then the other 30 minutes is yoga. It's not always that way. A lot of clients just want their yoga, but I have been in so many different situations. I've had the royals from Liechtenstein. I've had royals from Abu Dhabi. But I am also a secret, because I am not really involved in the Los Angeles yoga scene. I know the players in it, but it's like I'm just kind of doing my own thing.

See also 10 Business Secrets to Starting a Successful Yoga Career

LT: You work with the Just Keep Livin Foundation teaching yoga as an after-school program in inner city schools. Is that just straight yoga, or are you involved in other ways?

KK: Last year, they asked me to go in and tell my story. It's a story. I grew up with the Nazi- loving father, and I had to heil Hitler until I was older. I didn't know what it was. I grew up in Upstate New York. My mother was loving, but she had no voice. She had no self-esteem. And the father—I refer to him as “the father” and not my father—he grew up a Hitler youth, and I grew up in a very violent, verbally and physically abusive home.

My inspirational story of transformation is something that I want to share with these students, so I go into the schools and I share it. We practice yoga, we talk about my story, and then we have a gratitude circle. But getting back to growing up, yeah, I changed, a violent verbally abusive traumatic childhood and I got out. Running was something that helped me, and yoga was something that helped me process trauma.

Katz leading a Just Keep Livin Foundation yoga class

LT: And how has yoga helped you process your trauma?

KK: I process it by being still. PTSD comes from war, but it can come from abuse as well. I had tremendous anxiety. I had dyslexia. Nobody ever took me to a doctor or therapist, so I was always running on Cortisol and my adrenals were blown out. I was running 90 miles a week, highly competitive. My body fat was very low. I developed bulimia. I couldn't stand still long enough to tap into my consciousness. You know what I mean?

Running is helpful to produce serotonin and dopamine, but yoga was what I needed to really slow down and tap into my breath and become quiet. Then I was able to approach [the trauma]. Yoga can bring up all your injuries and also all your mental anguish and trauma.

See also A Yoga Therapist Shares the Truth About Trauma

LT: What’s different when you’re solely a private yoga teacher?

KK: You are in these homes and in these people's lives. I have been fortunate enough to have many of my clients for literally 14 years. I've gone through their children with them. I’ve gone through [their] marriages. I have been to more bar and bat mitzvahs than I can share. You know these people intimately on an infinite level. You’re on their journey with them. But what is really nice for me is there are no distractions. It's one on one. I am solely focused on them. It's more intimate, and I love intimacy. I love having my clients feel vulnerable [in a way] that maybe you can’t in a class. You can really devote this hour to their wellbeing and their healing or their nourishing.

If you have a class of 30, 40, 80 people, you cannot really make anything individual. [With private lessons,] you really make it specific to them, what they are feeling that day. I show up and my clients could be crying, and you have to be flexible. I go there, I open the door, I’m invited in, and within a minute I read my clients and know what they need at that moment. That's a unique thing. I love that. Being vulnerable, and that's what I get. I get people on a path, trying to always improve themselves and grow. You get to share that and see that, see people evolve. Traveling with clients is really wonderful. Eat, Pray, Love, that was a great experience. I mean, really interesting. It was so nice to have Julia take me to India.

LT: Can you share more about that experience?

KK: She had been my client for a while. I got a phone call—I am going home on the freeway from my day—and she goes, “Pull over.” She’s like, “I’ve got this movie. It's Eat, Pray, Love.” I knew the book. I knew the book, and I love Elizabeth Gilbert. I was so happy I was going to have the experience with someone who actually wrote something I love to read. You know?

I left for three months: one month in Rome, one month in India, and the best month in Bali. I left my clients, which was tricky. I left them with support yoga teachers. I took videos of them doing yoga, and I sent them to a local studios.

India and Bali are otherworldly. Bali was a wonderful reward for India. India was very challenging. I have heard people say poverty [there] is astounding, but it's way more than I thought it would be. But I embraced it all, and it ended up being wonderful. And the Bali portion was some of the most fun yoga.

It’s funny—I work with these Oscareen actresses, but you forget who they are because you know them as Laura or Reese or Julia, and that whole other part of them is such a different part. They become so much more interesting when you get to know them aside from all that fame.

LT: Tell us a little bit about your personal practice.

KK: It's literally like 20 to 30 minutes a day, and I fit it in whenever I can. It's really just working on the poses. It changes daily; it changes with my mood, with whatever injury I am trying to avoid. I am not the most flexible person. If you looked at my Instagram, the most bearing pose that I can do, Natarajasana and Crow Pose, is strong. I have to be careful because running is very important to me, and I can't do anything where I blow anything out. I use my body for my career, my business, so I don’t ever try anything too daring. I do a lot of pranayama in my own practice, driving around Los Angeles, always doing pranayama counting. I do a lot of mantra and essential oils. Basically I do the practice similar to what I teach. So it's level 2. I love inversions, so I am constantly upside down. Like before this interview I just went upside down a couple of times to calm myself down. If I go three days without practice, I am hard to be around.

See also 30-Minute Beginner Sequence to Reset Your Perspective on Life

LT: What is the hardest thing about being a yoga teacher?

KK: For me, the only downside is all the damn driving that I do—that's it. I put 25,000 miles a year on my car. I just drive a lot. But I love teaching yoga. I love doing it with my clients, and I don’t think about anything in my life. I'm present, and it's pure, and we are moving, breathing, and our breaths are in sync. I am really fortunate enough to teach yoga to people on a journey toward a beautiful life or enjoying a beautiful life or evolved people. I am grateful I have created this too. There is a deep sense of pride for having created this in a moment of trauma. I just came here wishing abundance not only for me but for everyone around me, and the universe presented me with this opportunity. I took advantage of it. I was very open for that. I believe yoga has really helped me to manifest this life I have.

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

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amyddaniels · 4 years

Text

Meet Hollywood's Favorite Yoga Teacher

Kirschen Katz is the go-to yoga teacher for many Hollywood A-listers, but her most fulfilling work—teaching kids—comes after the school bell rings.

Lindsay Tucker: How did you transition into becoming a yoga teacher?

Photo by Diana Ragland

LT: So how did you end up working with actors?

See also 10 Business Secrets to Starting a Successful Yoga Career

LT: You work with the Just Keep Livin Foundation teaching yoga as an after-school program in inner city schools. Is that just straight yoga, or are you involved in other ways?

Katz leading a Just Keep Livin Foundation yoga class

LT: And how has yoga helped you process your trauma?

See also A Yoga Therapist Shares the Truth About Trauma

LT: What’s different when you’re solely a private yoga teacher?

LT: Can you share more about that experience?

LT: Tell us a little bit about your personal practice.

See also 30-Minute Beginner Sequence to Reset Your Perspective on Life

LT: What is the hardest thing about being a yoga teacher?

0 notes

krisiunicornio · 4 years

Link

Kirschen Katz is the go-to yoga teacher for many Hollywood A-listers, but her most fulfilling work—teaching kids—comes after the school bell rings.

Lindsay Tucker: How did you transition into becoming a yoga teacher?

Photo by Diana Ragland

LT: So how did you end up working with actors?

See also 10 Business Secrets to Starting a Successful Yoga Career

LT: You work with the Just Keep Livin Foundation teaching yoga as an after-school program in inner city schools. Is that just straight yoga, or are you involved in other ways?

Katz leading a Just Keep Livin Foundation yoga class

LT: And how has yoga helped you process your trauma?

See also A Yoga Therapist Shares the Truth About Trauma

LT: What’s different when you’re solely a private yoga teacher?

LT: Can you share more about that experience?

LT: Tell us a little bit about your personal practice.

See also 30-Minute Beginner Sequence to Reset Your Perspective on Life

LT: What is the hardest thing about being a yoga teacher?

#sleep sounds #sleep music #white noise app #nature sounds #relaxing sounds #rain sounds for sleeping

0 notes

everythingbychoice · 5 years

Link

Getting over someone you loved can feel like an impossible task, but there is hope! You feel a lot of pain right now because your relationship gave you a boost of dopamine, which is a chemical that makes you feel happy. Now that your ex is out of your life, you’re no longer getting that happiness boost. Fortunately, you can work through your painful emotions and come out stronger than before!

[Edit]Steps

[Edit]Coping After a Breakup

Keep yourself busy for 2-3 weeks after a breakup. Going through a breakup is especially painful because the love and attention you got from your ex is gone. Now that your ex is out of your life, you’re probably feeling painful withdrawals. To help yourself feel better, fill your day with self-care and fun activities with your friends and family. Here are some ways to take care of yourself:

Spend 15-60 minutes in the morning focusing on your intentions.

Do a fun exercise like dancing or kickboxing.

Take care of your basic needs, like eating, bathing, and cleaning your space.

Do something nice for yourself, like getting a spa treatment or buying a special cup of coffee.

Go to work or school.

Spend time working on a personal goal or hobby.

Create a routine to help you take care of your needs. When you were with your ex, you likely had a routine that involved talking to and seeing them. Switching up your routine may help you focus on the future. Develop a new schedule for yourself that focuses on the life you want. Be sure to include reminders to keep up with your responsibilities, like paying your bills, washing your clothes, and eating healthy meals.

During a breakup, taking care of yourself can be really hard. Following a routine can help you keep up with your healthy habits!

Use distraction to keep your mind off your ex in the first few days. Since your relationship made you happy, you’re naturally going to be craving that feeling after you breakup. However, thinking about your ex and remembering your relationship will only make your pain last longer. Instead, do an activity that requires you to focus on the present to distract yourself from your pain. Pick something that makes you feel happy and helps you have fun without your ex!

For instance, invite your friends over for a game night, go for a nature walk, do a scavenger hunt, take a painting class with your friends, read an exciting book, or go to a Meetup.

Don’t use distraction to avoid your feelings altogether. Eventually, you’ll need to deal with the painful emotions you’re feeling.

Engage in activities that make you feel good to get a dopamine boost. Replacing the dopamine boost you got from your relationship may help you feel better post-breakup. Do at least 1 activity every day that makes you feel great. Pick things that are healthy for you and support your lifestyle goals rather than using unhealthy coping strategies. Here are some ideas:

Exercise for at least 30 minutes a day.

Take an art or cooking class.

Join a recreational sports team.

Get a pet if you’ve been wanting one.

Join a club that’s focused on your interests.

Volunteer for a cause you care about.

Surround yourself with friends and family to create a support system. During a breakup, you need to be a part of a community. Reach out to your family and friends for help during this time. Invite them to spend time with you and talk or text with them daily. This can remind you that you’re well-loved.[1]

You might feel tempted to withdraw during a breakup, but you need to be with people you care about. If you don’t feel like going out, ask a friend or relative to do something fun with you at home, like watching a movie or making a craft project.

[Edit]Processing Your Emotions

Shake your body to burn off excess energy. When you feel strong emotions like sadness, anger, and anxiety, your body releases negative energy as part of your survival response. However, this negative energy can make you feel bad if you don’t get it out. An easy way to release the energy is to shake your body. Start at your shoulders and slowly move down to your feet, shaking yourself as you go. As you do this, imagine that the negative energy is leaving your body.

If you don’t like shaking yourself, try releasing the energy through a vigorous workout.

Vent your feelings to someone you trust. Talking about how you feel can help you feel better. Choose someone you can trust to share your feelings with. Then, tell them about what happened and how it's affecting you. Additionally, share any worries you have.

Ask the person to listen to you without giving you advice. Say, "This breakup is really hard. Do you mind if I vent a little?"

Examine the reasons why your ex isn’t right for you. Don’t idealize your ex after your breakup. Instead, focus on the qualities that make them a bad match for you. Think about the times they let you down or the qualities they don’t have. Let this convince you that things weren’t meant to work out between you.[2]

Consider the things you want in a partner. Later, you can use this list to help you find a better partner for yourself.

Confront beliefs that you won’t find love again if you feel this way. Your breakup may be more painful if you thought your ex was “the one” for you. It might be hard to imagine yourself with someone else, but it will happen one day. Stop thinking that you have just one soulmate out there. Instead, remind yourself that you will find love again.

You don’t have just one match out there in the world. Everyone has several different potential love matches, so it’s no big deal if one relationship ends.

Use a gratitude journal to identify what’s going well in your life. Focusing on the positives in your life can help you balance out your negative emotions, and expressing gratitude for the good things in your life is a great way to think positively! In your gratitude journal, write down 3-5 things every day that you’re grateful for. These can be big or small things! When you feel down, re-read all of your lists to help you feel better.

For instance, you might write, “my friends, my cat, and beautiful weather today.”

[Edit]Removing Your Ex from Your Life

Get rid of physical reminders of your ex. Seeing things that remind you of your ex will keep you locked in the cycle of craving their affection. Go through your living space and remove anything that makes you think of them. Take down photos, remove gifts, and collect mementos. Donate or throw away the items so they won’t remind you of the past.[3]

If you don’t want to throw the stuff away, put the items in a box that you can give to a friend. When you’re ready, your friend can either discard the box or return it to you.

Do a digital detox to avoid reminders of your ex. Your digital world is likely full of reminders about your relationship, and seeing them will be painful. Don’t scroll through photos of you and your ex during good times because it will make it take longer for you to get over them. Here’s what you need to do to detox digitally:[4]

Unfollow all of their social media pages.

Delete all of your ex’s text or email messages.

Save your relationship photos to a folder you can access later, then delete them.

Block their phone number.

Stay off social media in the days after the breakup.

Focus on yourself instead of worrying about what your ex is doing. You might be wondering about who your ex is seeing, what they’re doing, or if they feel bad about what happened. Don’t give them one more second of your time! Instead of worrying about them, keep your mind on your own needs and wants.

When you catch yourself thinking about your ex, turn your attention to a hobby or interest.

Say “no” to post-break up sex with your ex. It’s normal to feel tempted to hook up with your ex, but doing so will only make the pain worse. Your brain is hardwired to form an emotional connection during sex, and it’ll be an even stronger connection if you’re doing it with someone you used to love. Don’t be alone with your ex after the breakup so you won’t be tempted.

If you have to see them, ask someone to go with you so that you won’t be alone with them.

[Edit]Returning to Yourself

Focus on your existing relationships and on making new friends. Healthy relationships with your friends and family can help you be a stronger, more independent person. Plus, they will help you realize that you don’t need your ex! Spend time with the people who are important to you so you can grow closer to them. Additionally, go to local events, clubs, Meetups, or classes to meet new people.[5]

Keep in touch with your friends by talking or texting daily.

Join your friends for coffee dates, dinner, and games.

Pursue the interests you set aside during your relationship. While you were with your ex, it’s likely that you gave up part of yourself to become a partner to them. Now that you’re apart, regaining what you lost can help you enjoy being single! Think about the things you enjoyed before you got with your ex. Then, start including those things in you routine.

For instance, you might have given up your gym membership because you never had time to go. Now is the time to renew it!

As another example, you might have stopped painting or doing photography because you were spending more time with your ex. Break out your equipment and dive back into that hobby!

Start a new passion project to help you feel fulfilled. Pick a goal you’ve always wanted to accomplish or something that’s always interested you. Then, make a list of steps you can take to start working on it. Dedicate a block of time each day to work on your goal, and try to check off the steps on your list. This can help you stop thinking about your ex and build your independence.

For example, you might decide to pursue a degree or to start a photography business.

As you work on your passion project, remind yourself that you’re building a future for yourself that isn’t dependent on a relationship.

Try new things that your ex refused to do with you. Think about the times your ex said “no” to something you wanted to do, like trying a new restaurant or visiting a local museum. Then, create a breakup bucket list of these items. Ask a friend to join you or go alone as you check off each item on the list. Each time you do something, remind yourself that your ex was holding you back from it.

For instance, join a friend for Indian food at the restaurant your ex wouldn’t try, paint pottery with a group of friends, play beach volleyball, go on a picnic in the park, visit the planetarium, and go to a slam poetry reading.

Identify the future you want for yourself. Picture yourself in a year, 5 years, and 10 years. Think about how you want to live and what type of things you want to do. Then, write down what you hope to accomplish in the coming years so you can start working toward those goals. This can help you create a life you love as you move on from your ex.

For instance, you might want to buy a home, build your career, and take your dream vacation.

Similarly, you might realize that you want to add more creativity to your life or that you want to move to a different area.

[Edit]Video

[Edit]Tips

Do not rush into a new relationship. You don’t want to drag a bunch of emotional baggage into someone else's life. You may end up realizing that your new partner is someone you barely know or do not have any real interest in. Focus on feeling better about yourself.

Focus on building new memories with your friends to replace bad feelings about your ex.

[Edit]Warnings

Ignore all the rumors and things that might be going around about you and your ex. They are not worth your time.

Make sure you do not use another person to make your ex jealous. It won’t work, and you may end up hurting both yourself and the other person.

Don’t waste your energy trying to get back at your ex. The best revenge is creating a life you love and pursuing your own happiness!

[Edit]Related wikiHows

Get Your Ex Back

Get Your Ex Girlfriend Back

Forget Your Ex Girlfriend

[Edit]References

[Edit]Quick Summary

↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201501/7-mistakes-you-need-avoid-after-breakup

↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201603/is-your-brain-breakup

↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201501/7-mistakes-you-need-avoid-after-breakup

↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/having-sex-wanting-intimacy/201612/4-reasons-stay-out-contact-your-ex

↑ https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-squeaky-wheel/201501/7-mistakes-you-need-avoid-after-breakup

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hellosaltysaladcollectionstuff · 5 years

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LARB presents an excerpt from Geert Lovink’s latest book, Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism, which was released this month by Pluto Press.

“Solitary tears are not wasted.” — René Char

“I dreamt about autocorrect last night.” — Darcie Wilder

“The personal is impersonal.” — Mark Fisher

Try and dream, if you can, of a mourning app. The mobile has come dangerously close to our psychic bone, to the point where the two can no longer be separated. If only my phone could gently weep. McLuhan’s “extensions of man” has imploded right into the exhausted self. Social media and the psyche have fused, turning daily life into a “social reality” that — much like artificial and virtual reality — is overtaking our perception of the world and its inhabitants. Social reality is a corporate hybrid between handheld media and the psychic structure of the user. It’s a distributed form of social ranking that can no longer be reduced to the interests of state and corporate platforms. As online subjects, we too are implicit, far too deeply involved. Likes and followers define your social status. But what happens when nothing can motivate you anymore, when all the self-optimization techniques fail and you begin to carefully avoid these forms of emotional analytics? Compared to others your ranking is low — and this makes you sad.

Omnipresent social media places a claim on our elapsed time, our fractured lives. We’re all sad in our very own way. As there are no lulls or quiet moments anymore, the result is fatigue, depletion, and loss of energy. We’re becoming obsessed with waiting. How long have you been forgotten by your love ones? Time, meticulously measured on every app, tells us right to our face. Chronos hurts. Should I post something to attract attention and show I’m still here? Nobody likes me anymore. As the random messages keep relentlessly piling in, there’s no way to halt them, to take a moment and think it all through.

Delacroix once declared that every day which is not noted is like a day that does not exist. Diary writing used to fulfil that task. Elements of early blog culture tried to update the diary form for the online realm, but that moment has now passed. Unlike the blog entries of the Web 2.0 era, social media have surpassed the summary stage of the diary in a desperate attempt to keep up with real-time regime. Instagram Stories, for example, bring back the nostalgia of an unfolding chain of events — and then disappear at the end of the day, like a revenge act, a satire of ancient sentiments gone by. Storage will make the pain permanent. Better forget about it and move on.

In the online context, sadness appears as a short moment of indecisiveness, a flash that opens up the possibility of a reflection. The frequently used “sad” label is a vehicle, a strange attractor to enter the liquid mess called social media. Sadness is a container. Each and every situation can potentially be qualified as sad. Through this mild form of suffering we enter the blues of being in the world. When something’s sad, things around it become gray. You trust the machine because you feel you’re in control of it. You want to go from zero to hero. But then your propped-up ego implodes and the failure of self-esteem becomes apparent again.

The price of self-control in an age of instant gratification is high. We long to revolt against the restless zombie inside us, but we don’t know how. Our psychic armor is thin and eroded from within, open to behavioral modifications. Sadness arises at the point when we’re exhausted by the online world. After yet another app session in which we failed to make a date, purchased a ticket, and did a quick round of videos, the post-dopamine mood hits us hard. The sheer busyness and self-importance of the world makes you feel joyless. After a dive into the network, we’re drained and feel socially awkward. The swiping finger is tired, and we have to stop.

Sadness has neighboring feelings we can check out. There is the sense of worthlessness, blankness, joylessness, the fear of accelerating boredom, the feeling of nothingness, plain self-hatred while trying to get off drug dependency, those lapses of self-esteem, the laying low in the mornings, those moments of being overtaken by a sense of dread and alienation, up to your neck in crippling anxiety, there is the self-violence, panic attacks, and deep despondency before we cycle all the way back to reoccurring despair. We can go into the deep emotional territory of the Russian toska. Or we can think of online sadness as part of that moment of cosmic loneliness Camus imagined after God created the earth. I wish that every chat were never ending. But what do you do when your inability to respond takes over? You’re heartbroken and delete the session. After yet another stretch of compulsory engagement with those cruel Likes, silly comments, empty text messages, detached emails, and vacuous selfies, you feel empty and indifferent. You hover for a moment, vaguely unsatisfied. You want to stay calm, yet start to lose your edge, disgusted by your own Facebook Memories. But what’s this message that just came in? Strange. Did he respond?

Evidence that sadness today is designed is overwhelming. Take the social reality of WhatsApp. The gray and blue tick marks alongside each message in the app may seem a trivial detail, but let’s not ignore the mass anxiety it’s causing. Forget being ignored. Forget pretending you didn’t read a friend’s text. Some thought that this feature already existed, but in fact two gray tick marks signify only that a message was sent and received — not read. Even if you know what the double tick syndrome is about, it still incites jealousy, anxiety, and suspicion. It may be possible that ignorance is bliss, that by intentionally not knowing whether the person has seen or received the message, your relationship will improve. The bare-all nature of social media causes rifts between lovers who would rather not have this information. But in the information age, this does not bode well with the social pressure to be “on social,” as the Italians call it.

We should be careful to distinguish sadness from anomalies such as suicide, depression, and burnout. Everything and everyone can be called sad, but not everyone is depressed. Much like boredom, sadness is not a medical condition (though never say never because everything can be turned into one). No matter how brief and mild, sadness is the default mental state of the online billions. Its original intensity gets dissipated. It seeps out, becoming a general atmosphere, a chronic background condition. Occasionally — for a brief moment — we feel the loss. A seething rage emerges. After checking for the 10th time what someone said on Instagram, the pain of the social makes us feel miserable, and we put the phone away. Am I suffering from the phantom vibration syndrome? Wouldn’t it be nice if we were offline? Why’s life so tragic? He blocked me. At night, you read through the thread again. Do we need to quit again, to go cold turkey again? Others are supposed to move us, to arouse us, and yet we don’t feel anything anymore. The heart is frozen.

Social media anxiety has found its literary expressions, even if these take decidedly different forms than the despair on display in Franz Kafka’s letters to Felice Bauer. The willingness to publicly perform your own mental health is now a viable strategy in our attention economy. Take L.A. writer Melissa Broder, whose So Sad Today “twitterature” benefited from her previous literary activities as a poet. Broder is the contemporary expert in matters of apathy, sorrow, and uselessness. During one afternoon she can feel compulsive about cheesecakes, show her true self as an online exhibitionist, be lonely out in public, babble and then cry, go on about her short attention span, hate everything, and desire “to fuck up life.” In between taking care of her sick husband and the obligatory meeting with Santa Monica socialites, there are always more “insatiable spiritual holes” to be filled. The more we intensify events, the sadder we are once they’re over. The moment we leave, the urge for the next experiential high arises. As phone and life can no longer be separated, neither can we distinguish between real and virtual, fact or fiction, data or poetry. Broder’s polyamorous lifestyle is an integral part of the precarious condition. Instead of empathy, the cold despair invites us to see the larger picture of a society in permanent anxiety. If anything, Broder embodies Slavoj Žižek’s courage of hopelessness: “Forget the light at the end of the tunnel — it’s actually the headlight of a train about to hit us.”

Once the excitement has worn off, we seek distance, searching for mental detachment. The wish for “anti-experience” arises, as Mark Greif has described it. The reduction of feeling is an essential part of what he calls “the anaesthetic ideology.” If experience is the “habit of creating isolated moments within raw occurrence in order to save and recount them,” the desire to anaesthetize experience is a kind of immune response against “the stimulations of another modern novelty, the total aesthetic environment.”

Most of the time your eyes are glued to a screen, as if it’s now or never. As Gloria Estefan summarized the FOMO condition: “The sad truth is that opportunity doesn’t knock twice.” Then, you stand up and walk away from the intrusions. The fear of missing out backfires, the social battery is empty and you put the phone aside. This is the moment sadness arises. It’s all been too much, the intake has been pulverized and you shut down for a moment, poisoning him with your unanswered messages. According to Greif, “the hallmark of the conversion to anti-experience is a lowered threshold for eventfulness.” A Facebook event is the one you’re interested in, but do not attend. We observe others around us, yet are no longer part of the conversation: “They are nature’s creatures, in the full grace of modernity. The sad truth is that you still want to live in their world. It just somehow seems this world has changed to exile you.” You leave the online arena; you need to rest. This is an inverse movement from the constant quest for experience. That is, until we turn our heads away, grab the phone, swipe, and text back. God only knows what I’d be without the app.

Anxieties that go untreated build up to a breaking point. Yet unlike burnout, sadness is a continuous state of mind. Sadness pops up the second events start to fade away — and now you’re down in the rabbit hole once more. The perpetual now can no longer be captured and leaves us isolated, a scattered set of online subjects. What happens when the soul is caught in the permanent present? Is this what Franco Berardi calls the “slow cancellation of the future”? By scrolling, swiping, and flipping, we hungry ghosts try to fill the existential emptiness, frantically searching for a determining sign — and failing. When the phone hurts and you cry together, that’s technological sadness. “I miss your voice. Call, don’t text.”

We overcome sadness not through happiness, but rather, as Andrew Culp insisted, through a hatred of this world. Sadness occurs in situations where the stagnant “becoming” has turned into a blatant lie. We suffer, and there’s no form of absurdism that can offer an escape. Public access to a 21st-century version of Dadaism has been blocked. The absence of surrealism hurts. What could our social fantasies look like? Are legal constructs such as creative commons and cooperatives all we can come up with? It seems we’re trapped in smoothness, skimming a surface littered with impressions and notifications. The collective imaginary is on hold. What’s worse, this banality itself is seamless, offering no indicators of its dangers and distortions. As a result, we’ve become subdued. Has the possibility of myth become technologically impossible? Instead of creatively externalizing our inner shipwrecks, we project our need for strangeness on humanized robots. The digital is neither new nor old, but — to use Culp’s phrase — it will become cataclysmic when smooth services fall apart into tragic ruins. Faced with the limited possibilities of the individual domain, we cannot positively identify with the tragic manifestation of the collective being called social media. We can neither return to mysticism nor to positivism. The naïve act of communication is lost — and this is why we cry.

Geert Lovink is a media theorist and internet critic and the author of Zero Comments, Networks Without a Cause, Social Media Abyss, and Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism. He founded the Institute of Network Cultures at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and teaches at the European Graduate School. He stopped using Facebook in 2010.

The post This Is Why We Cry: From “Sad by Design: On Platform Nihilism” appeared first on Los Angeles Review of Books.

from Los Angeles Review of Books http://bit.ly/2YAr2Re

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ashleyjacksonblog · 7 years

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3 Differences Between True Love And Lust That’ll Tell You A Lot About Your Relationship

“And the sex was 100” is a phrase that I recently texted someone from my past. (Cringe city.) We were mid-conversation, and hadn’t caught up in eons. I had planned on eventually emailing him about the grad program he graduated from, which I am applying to. When his Instagram handle popped up as having “liked” my photo, I was tipsy and certain that 10 p.m. was a brilliant time for essay advice. (Oops.) The one great thing about those five words? Typing them out reminded me while I liked him, it soooo wasn’t true love. I had just been lusty AF.

My mind has a terrible time telling the difference between love and lust. If I had to define “lust” on my own, sans Google, I would say it’s that rush of physical and intellectual chemistry you have with someone who makes both the drinks part and the bedroom part of a date exhilarating. It’s definitely what I imagine crack feels like. “Lust” is more than just great sex, but less than “I will eventually pee with the door open when you are home.” (Which, while unromantic, I would say falls into the “love” category.)

Considering that I sent the aforementioned uncouth text just this past weekend, and that I have just admitted to you all that I confuse love and lust quite regularly, I decided to do some research in order to discover what the actual differences between the two L-words are. Here’s what I found:

1. Lust Is Driven By Different Hormones Than Attachment

How You Know When You're In Love.

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Let’s start with science: A team at Rutgers University led by Dr. Helen E. Fisher published an article about romantic love that breaks it down into three categories: lust, attraction, and attachment. “Lust” is driven entirely by testosterone and estrogen in the brain, “attraction” is driven by dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin, and “attachment” is created by oxytocin and vasopressin. Whew, that’s a mouthful.

You can think of it like this: Lust really is about the sex being 100. Estrogen and testosterone, the hormones that drive lust, are involved with reproduction and evolution, plain and simple. Think: a one-night stand.

While lust and attraction are closely related, you can actually have one without the other. Attraction has to do with “reward behavior.” Dopamine is released in our brains when something feels good to us, whether that’s sex, drugs, gambling, or donuts. Think: the giddiness of the first few months of dating someone you really like.

Attachment, which is a prerequisite for true love IMO, is in fact not only present in romantic relationships. Attachment has to do with oxytocin, which is released during childbirth and is sometimes called the “cuddle hormone.” Think: your best friend or a family member.

I think we usually lump lust and attraction together, and consider the addition of attachment the piece that solidifies a true, loving relationship. Science says all three of these pieces together make up true, romantic love, so if you’ve only got the sex happening, you might just be in lust.

2. Lust Happens Quickly, While Love Happens Slowly

What Your Favorite Cuddle Position Says About Your Relationship

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This tidbit is less scientific, and more easily digestible. Dating and relationship coach Monica Parikh of the School of Love NYC told Elite Daily: “Infatuation begs for an instant relationship. Love understands that true intimacy is developed over a long time and through many seasons of life.” Pretty much a much more nicely-stated version of what I was saying about eventually peeing with the door open.

Lust is immediate, as is attraction. There’s a palpable chemistry that leaves you feeling quite frenetic and sometimes even obsessed with seeing your person as often as possible. True love only happens when you’ve spent a lot of time together and gone through the ups and downs of life that you’ll inevitably continue facing together if you keep dating. You know that friend who moved in with her boyfriend after a month? Are they still together and in love? Yeah, didn’t think so. Takeaway: Time is money when it comes to love, too.

3. Lust Is Physical; Love Is Emotional

Why You Can Never Be Just Friends With Benefits

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OK, so this seems pretty obvious. According to Dr. Judith Orloff in an article for Psychology Today, if you want to get black-and-white about the difference between lust and love, there are some actual behavioral signs you can look for. She states that the signs of lust are: being focused on a person’s looks, being interested in sex but not conversations, not wanting to cuddle the next morning, and being simply lovers and not friends.

Cool, sounds like a hookup. That makes sense, but feelings are tricky, even when you’re just boning. Dr. Orloff says that the signs of love include: wanting to spend time together outside of sex, getting lost in conversations together, wanting to listen to each others’ feelings and make each other happy, and meeting family and friends.

Uh oh. Now I feel like maybe I’ve been in love with everyone I’ve ever dated again. I’ve pretty much always had a healthy dose of emotional chemistry before doing the deed with someone I’m seeing. But before you, too, confuse yourself about whether you are in a lustful or loving relationship, remember that science told us that lust, attraction, and attachment are all part of true, romantic love.

If you don’t lust after your partner’s body, but love spending time with them, they probably are (or should be) your best friend and not your SO. (Hello, friend zone.) On the contrary, if you love your partner’s body, but also enjoy stimulating conversations with them before the sex over drinks, you don’t necessarily need to get married. (I’m speaking from experience here.)

The balance between lust and love is tricky, and I would say that maybe it’s not about defining your relationship as “lusty” or “loving” but identifying what you are looking for in your partner and making sure that both of your needs are met in an equitable way. Don’t settle for lusty sex sans sleepover if all you want is for your boo to cuddle you until the sun comes up, you feel me?

Check out the entire Gen Why series and other videos on Facebook and the Bustle app across Apple TV, Roku, and Amazon Fire TV.

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3 Differences Between True Love And Lust That’ll Tell You A Lot About Your Relationship

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chadpetersondatingblog · 7 years

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3 Differences Between True Love And Lust That’ll Tell You A Lot About Your Relationship

1. Lust Is Driven By Different Hormones Than Attachment

How You Know When You're In Love.

2. Lust Happens Quickly, While Love Happens Slowly

What Your Favorite Cuddle Position Says About Your Relationship

3. Lust Is Physical; Love Is Emotional

Why You Can Never Be Just Friends With Benefits

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3 Differences Between True Love And Lust That’ll Tell You A Lot About Your Relationship

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talabib · 6 years