#they dont always succeed they cannot control everything in the world because most things are luck based and affected by others actions

[undert33th]

I really like your Chara design can you talk about your interpretation of them?

First off tysm !!!!!!! I’m so glad u like them ;0

Second off yes of course ! Here’s a few things about them :

-they r mongolian-american

-they lived in northern Oregon/southern Washington for most of their life on the surface, both in civilization and out on the woods (I’ve always had this idea of Chara being a forager, super self sufficient, it’s one of the first things I developed abt my interpretation of them)

-lived in a group home as a child (along with that they love kids !)

-Chara has inattentive ADHD as well as bipolar disorder

-SpIn’s include: fungi, knives, sewing and geometry (which they suck at but it’s challenging and stimulating and fun work)

-they were 9 when they ‘fell’ underground and 12 when The Plan was enacted

And now for more game related stuff:

-i whole-heartedly support NarraChara

-I know everyone likes to think that Chara has a special connection with Frisk but I like to think that they could interact the same way with every fallen (that includes influencing their choices)

-going with influencing the choices of the fallen they initially did their best to cause the children to fail in hopes of saving their family after death

-they talk Like That at the end of NM to appear more intimidating (by Like That I mean like a walking dictionary)

-the no mercy route was NOT their doing (I like to think of the player as an entity, while Chara is more of just an outside force if that makes any sense? Chara can certainly control Frisk as a vessel, but only of A) frisk has given them that option, B) they’re anxious/angry/emotional enough that their power amps up and allows them to overtake frisks living soul, or C) the player is controlling Frisk through Chara) (I can post more of my ghost stuff if y'all want it just shoot me an ask) back on track for this one the no mercy route was not their doing, but they do give you, the player, not frisk, an ultimatum at the end of the no mercy route because they’re fucking pissed at you

-Goopy Chara? Cool! It’s congealed blood

-Chara only finds out that Flowey is Asriel in true lab which is why its so weird (i cannot for the life of me find the post but its super popular, probably a birdsareblooming or undertale-in-2k19 post)

Personality wise:

-theyre super skittish and jumpy. Startle at everything and wear headphones Everywhere

-theyre semi-verbal and have selective mutism (won’t speak in public at all, rarely in front of Toriel and Asgore, and frequently to Asriel and Frisk)

-with that, they’re super light on their feet and hardly make any noise when moving

-also; very quick and hard to catch

-they tend to fall apart under pressure . In a situation where something is expected of them they’ll either overwork themselves into a burnout or stop functioning all together .

-very logical and has a hard time processing strong emotions (mostly anger)

-does a lot of mimicking and can take a while to trust

-hyper empathetic 

-they can be very charming and good at manipulation; take that how you will

Extra HC’s:

-Chara knows magic! It’s not much, and it really drains them, but Asgore taught them (it’s mostly enacted through hand signs and they know healing and self defense)

-they stim a ton! Cracking their knuckles and chewing are the big ones

-Worn Dagger is a survival knife gifted by an older human brother from before falling who I’m referring to currently as Anthony . It’s got a wood and resin handle and a seven inch blade with gold embossing of flowers (specifically daisies). The sheath is hand made and embroidered by them !

-they know sign language and are constantly making new slang terms . Their signing is so modified and personalized that a lot of people have a hard time understanding what theyre saying

-arthritis in their hands and wrists from a couple injuries that never healed right and constant use of their knife only made it worse (they have these splints designed to look like gloves that hold their wrist in place)

-listen to me . Listen to me. They get their hands on Tetris and never let go . Tetris is the coolest game to them . Have y'all seen Tetris tournaments ? If not watch one they’re addictive . Chara gets in . Chara rocks it . They don’t win but they get up there . They fucking rock at Tetris guys

-also after frisk shows them minecraft they fucking lose it okay . ‘Frisk’ starts making houses or rooms fully furnished for seemingly no-one and Tori only . raises an eyebrow

-they listen to lots of rock and early 2000′s alternative/techno once they can get their hands on it. Frisk hates it so they’ll debate about it a lot

-super sensitive to smell and textures

(ps: its worth mentioning that a lot of my chara is based around myself! chara is one of my comfort characters and so a lot of them is just kinda … me, or who i wish i was on some level owo)

and might as well throw in some thoughts on canon compliant chara:

-we dont really know much about canon chara, but theyve shown to be somewhat manipulative and have a really strong case of suicidal idealization . this sort of ties into the idea of them being a martyr, the future of humans and monsters; thats like a huge fucking load for a kid to carry that i definitely feel could have some effect on mental health. like, telling a kid that they’re the future of two separate races, while theyre also learning about 1) how horrifically humans acted towards monsters and 2)  how the barrier can be broken, especially while already having a tendency towards self harmful actions (i.e: jumping off a fucking mountain), and given how presumably awfully humans treated them in comparison to all the kindness theyve been shown by monsters, I think I’d get some ideas too.

- I’ve already said that i don’t think they’re evil, and I’ll stand by that opinion until the day of my death

-that said, their plan was flawed. I mean, obvi. the things they did, such as attempt suicide on 2 occasions,  and succeed on one with the help of Asriel (as well as taking him down with them !) were wrong for quite a few reasons. I think ultimately they were blinded by the pressure placed on them, whether it was intentional or not, and not having a place to diffuse that anxiety, they sort of absorbed it and honed it into a plan to save everyone important (monsters, who showed some bare minimum decency and kindness) and kill everyone who wasn’t (that being themself.) And, once the first part of that plan succeeded, they sort of exploded; being on the surface, with humans, the people who hurt them, the people they hated, was a good enough motive to release all that built up tension .

-also, i might as well go into no mercy- I think Chara winds up with a lot of power, a lot of anxiety, and anger built up, so when every monster in the underground is killed theyre sort of gaining power bit by bit- until the end, after you kill flowey, and we get to meet them for real . I think they’re pissed off, and they try to convince you that you’re in the right, they thank you, etc; they try to appeal to the player, who throughout the run weve only seen as a mindless killing machine, in an attempt to get you to erase the world and go back on your decisions . When you don’t, they get frustrated, explode, using all the power they’ve gained through the run to erase the file themself.

I just . I dunno . i could talk about chara for hours please ask me more questions about them

#man oh man ! #long post #txt #chara #blease ask me about bitch of living and K9 #also would yall be interested in fic ? #i have an ask !!!!!!!!!

[benjaminpoulter]

10 Easy Money Habits That Will Help Build Wealth In 2021

It doesn’t matter what are you are, A habit can develop in anyone.

The trick is to keep the bad habits, use 10 Easy Money Habits That Will Help Build Wealth In 2021.

Focus On What You Can Control.

There has been many things going on in the world at the beginning of 2021, most of it has carried over from 2020.

However, personally we cannot control what goes on in the world. That should not be a main focus at the moment.

If we stop watching so many news reports and concentrate on what matters. The task at hand.

I myself am a victim of this and have so many tabs open on the computer. So many things Im trying to do, articles I keep meaning to read.

Get rid of them and close them down!

If the local government tells you to say at home — Dont go out and protest. That sort of thing will get you nowhere.

If you need to generate traffic to your business inn order to make money for your family, Thats down to you.

That’s what you should focus on!

The Early Bird Catches The Worm

That’s what my dad used to say all the time to get me out of bed. He was complacently right.

If you wake up and maybe laze in bed for an hour, maybe snooze the alarm. Its going to have a knock on effect through the day.

This goes the same for getting a good night sleep. Your body will need to recharge, so give yourself a good nights sleep in order to function properly.

When you get up early and begin to go through your daily tasks, if you get out of bed early there is more time to get things done.

Its a medical proven fact that there are Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Brain Functional Network.

The 10 Easy Money Habits That Will Help Build Wealth In 2021 can be put into effect from today.

Fuel you brain and body

Look at your body as a machine — A well oiled machine will function much better when it is maintained.

Think about when you are hungry. You body is craving energy to function.

What you put into your body will inevitably have a reaction to what the output is.

For example:

We drink 3 cups of coffee and we are rearing to go and are wide awake. But what goes up must come down.

It we eat healthy and drink plenty of water along with a good amount of exercise, Our body and brain will give us the best performance it can.

I’m not saying you have to join a gym to be able to achieve this, but eating health and taking part in exercise is going to help you get the best out of the body.

Set Yourself Goals

If you are anything like me you have a million and one things you want to get done. Sometimes we give ourselves such a high target that we get disappointed if we don’t achieve them.

So when we sit down at the beginning of the week and set a goal for each day, we have a direction in which we are heading.

Then if on that particular day we reach that goal it is down to us to go above and beyond. This way we feel a sense of achievement and it feels like we are getting progress.

Having a goal can also help you stay focused on the task in hand. You know what you need to get done that day, so you close all other tabs that will distract you from that task.

Tip — Maybe put your phone on silent too and everything pings up on there 😏

Reading Books to help Build Wealth In 2021

I never used to read many books at all. The only time I would pick a book up was if I was on a long flight where there was nothing else to do.

Or of course reading to the children when they were young 😁.

But I never knew the importance of reading in order to grow the knowledge in your brain.

Think of it as if you wanted to have big muscles, you go to the gym and do exercises to improve the size of your muscleses in your arms.

This works escaley the same for your brain. The more information you feed into your brain the better it will function.

They say that traveling the world can educate the mind of a wise man. Depending on what type of books you read they can open your mind up to completely new way of thinking.

Break The Bad Habits

Bad habits are in every single person. Weather it be from sitting down in front of the TV and bingeing on a boxset to getting caught up in a rabbit hole looking for an answer on the internet.

Its the shiny object syndrome in us all.

https://youtu.be/7Of0sMa6gqE

I have even been caught up in it and not even know its happening. This all come back to focusing on the task in hand.

It all leads back to 10 Easy Money Habits That Will Help Build Wealth In 2021.

Get Honest With Yourself

I can keep telling myself that Im doing the best I can. I can do any better because I am actually putting in 110%.

Really? Are You?

So why did I spend an hour watching motorbike car chase on youtube!

Things like this, where you convince yourself that it needed to be done, or I was just taking 5 minutes but it turned into an hour!

You smiling right now right! Yes you!

Take 5 minutes for some fresh air and stretch your legs but dont get distracted into doing something else.

If you have you mind set on the goals in hand you are more then likely to reach them goals by breaking the bad habits.

Dont Stay Stuck

There will always be challenges that come up. In order to overcome the certain challenge always have a plan to resolve the problem and do it.

Its human nature that we feel we have to figure everything out on our own. When we have this mindset it will lead us down a path where we give up or start something else.

The thing is that problem will almost always come back up another day.

We have the power of the internet at our finger tips and there are lots of people willing to help at the push of a button.

Weather you are part of a group on social media or simply use google to find the answer — Don’t stay stuck!

9 times out of 10 there is someone else out there who has encounted the same problem you are having.

If you just ASK for help the problem will get resolved a lot quicker and keep you moving forward.

Work Out a Strategy

Having a strategy to what your doing will help you have a clear plan of where your heading.

For me it is -

Create content on my blog

Repurpose that content of different platforms

Engage with people in my network

Repeat

The more content I have out on the internet, the more people will engage and interact with me and my business.

Once you have worked out the strategy STICK to it.

Also if its a proven method that works for many other people who have been successful in the same business you are building, stick to that strategy until you see results.

I can understand that when your working on a strategy and not getting the results you had hoped for, it can be disheartening at first.

But being consistent and sticking to the plan is going to help in the long run.

Track Your Progress of Money habits

Running your own business is a numbers game. The more you create — the more you will be noticed.

If you track the engagement on an article or post to see what your target audience is interested in it will help in the future.

When a piece of content has high engagement you can use that as a signel that you audience interested in what you have put out.

Take note of what that content was about, also the comments which people have spoken about. Use your audience to figure out your next step.

Above everything else — NEVER GIVE UP! if you dont try your wont succeed.

These 10 Easy Money Habits That Will Help Build Wealth In 2021 and for the rest of your time whiles building business.

Breaking bad habits and developing new ones that keep pushing you forward is the only way to go.

#bad habits #good habits

[jamesdazell]

Happy New Year 2020

Happy New Year. I hope this year brings more love and less hate. More peace and less pain. More kindness and less jealousy. More self-love and less comparison. A time to embrace new beginnings and wave goodbye to toxic times.

I

I posted one thing to Instagram last year. I had a really productive year and it was so full of growth in every important way to me. You cant Instagram that. It's something within you. You dont photograph it; you recognise it by a change of behaviour and outlook. Everything else in a year to year comparison is acquisition, age, or a change of scenery. I'm more excited and fulfilled by the experiences of personal growth and major changes of perspective than a drive for success in a career reshaping myself after the ideal habits and image that would more undo me than make me. I have no interest in a success wherein at the end of the journey I wouldn’t know myself, nor enjoy the company I shared. Success at all costs, is not very interesting. At the moment, if I were a successful writer by exactly what I wish to do.. who would I sit with when I got there? No. I won’t become published. There is more to success than pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and rolling up your sleeves. That’s a straight white male Christian’s romantic rhetoric. who gave themselves a free passport to show up anywhere and set up an imitation of success back in Europe. Nothing betrays the reality of white male priveledge like success and failure as an act of one's own will or quality of mind.  In reality, there are circumstances and situations to take in to account. Success in the end is a kind of assimiliation; a manner of fitting in, and imitating the model of success. One finds the same thing succeeds in the same place time and time again, with subtle novelty to make it seem new. But on deeper analysis, there are places where certain achievements never occur at all, even in the richest conditions, because it wasn’t the nature of the place; it's not to their particular temprament or personal contstitution. One is successful because they lend power to already existing success. They are useful to power or that which desires it.

My existence fulfills me, more than the world’s idea. Life and all its difficulties and lessons, learning how to become a better and a more contented me. In a way my life is a series of finding ways of preserving myself and not being shaped after the pressures of life or adapting after the world's image and excitement, because I've always known who I am and what I'm about. But it does become hard to preserve and to affirm oneself in the ever changing world with its innovations that change the very farbic of society. There is always a need to find my defensive and offensive strategies to preserve and affirm myself in the face of the world. And my interests and passions - though this may be true of everybody - are ways of retaining, maintaining, and developing the best parts of myself, without giving them up for popular fads that rise and fall. Learning about myself, the world, and what everything is really about. Finding my own drama, meaning, goals, and adventure of life on my own terms, out of my own experiences, not those shoved into me from media and social pressure. How could I Instagram that. The moment I post a moment I am happy with is the moment I doubt my happiness and put my memory up for public validation. No. I validate myself and I validate my own experiences and memorable moments. I dont need to know how much something is likeable: I have liked it. I dont need to know how agreeable a thought is: I have thought it. I dont need to know how achieved an act is: I have done it. I dont need to know how good this is: I am proud of it.

I envy the blind person who has no use for the narcissism of Instagram, is spared of the passive agressive anxiety and pessimism on Twitter, and still appreciates life for all the things truly worth appreciating. Whose appreciation for life cannot be photographed, and does not know the dopamine addiction for a validation 'like' counter to compensate their low self-esteem. Social media is a petri dish for narcissism. And every woke person is a basket case with the same narcissistic anxiety as everyone else on it hoping to be validated and gain followers for their wokeness. Narcissists crave validation. Disable them by disengaging. Narcissists are made not born. They are overindulged in validation and underindulged in emtional connection. They dont reflect. They socialise to have conversations about their problems in order to be forgiven and receive consoling kind words about themselves, and pretend they dealt with it. Because all narcissists want is validation. And it’s the epidemic of our time.

2

Our self-impression of ourselves we upload onto (anti-)social media, is not nearly as interesting and attractive, as the details, humour, idiosyncracies we are unaware of, because it's not interesting when we try to impress - especially by such superficial things, most of which aren't even things to do with ourselves, but places we arrive to and things we acquire. Images of ourselves without context, a macroscopic gaze devoid of the energy and life of its context: namely, existence. All the things that make up the rest of the picture that a healthy perception takes into account. It rubs away so much of a human being that they are left little more than a skin surface. It makes us into journalists of our own lives (except not reviewers), and advertisers of everything we don't need.

I understand I could use social media to gain success in my aims, but I dont want to become what that entails in the process nor want a success that would depend on other people being on these platforms to grant me it. Work hard and succeed quietly, making your work your achievement. Do good deeds in silence. Don't do it to then post on social media because you still need the excess validation. Do it because it was a good thing to do. Absolving your mistakes by your own conscience is the long road round of not caring about that you made them all. If its not forgiveness by a change of behaviour, or attitude then nothing has been learned and nothing changed.

Dont just travel to places. Make memories there. Theres nothing impressive about boarding a commercial plane and showing up where it lands. What else was expected. If there was no growth or contribution there, were you even there. Just passing through like an invisible wind. Lifestyles are for people with no real meaning in their life. It's a way to fill the void of daily meaninglessnes that they have to stylise their life. It used to be that there were things unnecessary to buy. Now it is things unnecessary to know. You must know? What for? Knowledge without purpose is decadence. Keep to your lane. If it's youre job to know, then know and do your job. One voice of reason well articulated can silence a room of idiots. Thats how the world works. On social media, the idiots gain ascendancy by liking each others idiocy 10k skyward. Power is reversed online.

Once you no longer care for the validation and public reception, and once you realise that politically social media is ineffectual to substantial change - snce it's effectively a right wing publishing model with every ounce of sense falling off the algorithm - it's just watching the world go to hell one post at a time. And that to thrive on it is to assimilate with its ideal: a narcissist. A juvenile superficial arena of naval gazing dopamine addicts. Everything else on it is somewhere between a complaint box, click bait, and ‘food-food advertising.’ Then there feels no point to it regarding your health and self-esteem. Filling your mind, your eyes, with things which were not present a moment ago, which may have stirred and disturbed you for a much longer time. It's made by and for narcissists to peak dopamine hits.

Dopamine acts as a neurotransmitter made by different parts of the brain that is part of our evolutionary chemicals that gave us the drive to do things that were positive for our survival. The chemical that made our brain drive us to eat when hungry, find warmth and shelter when cold, to reproduce our genes to survive, now that same reward chemical in the brain floods in excess. Your brain wants the dopamine not the thing. Its the motivation chemical. We need it. We evolved by it. It keeps us positive by controlling memory, focus, attention, motivation. Without can cause lack of focus, restlessness and irritability, erractic impulsive bodily movement, and indecision. And prologned deficiency due to the excess of it swell and depletion it, cause stress, anxiety, depression to ensue.

We live in a dopamine driven culture. We sell this idea that drugs are enhancing. Drugs are not enhancing at all. It's evident that no feeling of reward from alcohol, smoking, cocaine, heroin, cannabis, meth, other pain relief and psychoactive drugs, etc is giving you anything that your body wasnt already giving you, and if anything those substances only reduce the same chemical that is desired to attain by one using them. And naturally this deficiency therefore leads to dependency and addiction, because the person thinks these substances are where they got them and how they got a boost of them. When actually they use them up and it takes a couple of weeks to restore to normal regulation which is why people go back to substances, then bulld up a tolerance and need more. Tolerance is actually your body's natural adaptation trying to regulate your body to new circumstances. Tolerance isn’t you handling the substance more. It’s a natural adaptive response that the body undergoes to re-regulate, to counter-act the effect of alcohol and drugs. Your body thinks it’s sick and adapts to the change. That’s why you get drunk faster if you drink less frequently than if you drink regularly long-term. It’s like resetting the zero point on weighing scales manually. So, a drinker will need more to tip the tolerance, because your body reset ‘a-lot-more-alcohol’ to the new zero point. The reason a person gets drunk less quickly after drinking regularly is because the body reduces its GABA inhibitiors and increases the exciters, because the effect of the alochol had been increasing the GABA inhibitiors and reducing the exciters. But the alcoholic wants the GABA inhibitors because the dopamine has now associated it with the reward chemical, and so drink more to tip the balance in favour of the GABA inhibitors because they get the “good feeling.”All which the body would have given you anyway. Whats more, is that its the same of one-click online shopping, advertising, high sugar food and drink, high carbs, junk food, binge watching TV, image scrolling sites, porn, dating apps, and social media. As well as anything that increases stress, because it depletes dopamine, which results in further stress, anxiety, attention deficit disorder, depression. Our cultural lifestyle is dopamine addiction. But it’s effect is the reverse. It’s self-depricating and makes us less ambitious because dopamine is needed for motivation. The only thing that adds extra boost of reward chemical of dopamine, endogenous opioid, serotonin, and endogenous cannabinoid, is by eating healthy food, getting sufficient sleep, and getting regular and intense aerobic exercise, and some stretching/strength building. The healthier we are, the more powerful and stronger we feel, the motivated and ambitious we are, the more daring and inspired, the happier and more tolerant of things that would otherwise stress. We are a better human being for it. Big business exploiting our evolutionary chemicals to keep us addicted to unnecessary lifestyles, media, and products. And because it takes a week or more to replenish naturally, an addiction cycle to quick fix substances occur. It used to be that a person should just not do drugs, but now its a whole lifestyle that should be avoided.

Our most legal drugs are the worst. Alochol and cigarettes have more death related incidents than illegal substances. 5 minutes of doing nothing is better for your brain than 5 minutes of social media. You improve your brain and subsequently your body, having the same feel good pain relieving chemicals that are desired,  and subsequently the power over your environment and subsequently your life by doing nothing, compared to engaging with most of culture available.

Here is a video explaining drug addiction and dopamine (same applies to carbs, sugar, fast food, junk food, and other quick fix dopamine reward high)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxHNxmJv2bQ&t=2s

The reason is people want the inhibitors. Even though its not giving them anything that their body wouldnt give for free. Its wiring the brain to respond to stress, suffering, and pain. Drugs alleviate pressure. But whether for pleasure or for stress, it’s a response to a situation. It’s not the danger of drugs that matter to me. It's a mental health issue. But your body gives you what it needs, and drives you to get what it needs. If you would only allow it to do its job. You want to make life lighter. But in reality all real things are heavy. The pressure of life ought to stimulate a response that demands more health and more strength. The body wants to give you more health and strength. The very feeling of struggle in life, psychological feeling, and at times physical strife, is your body signalling to you that you need a higher health and strength. In strife, the body fights or flight. In other words, innately decides if it behaves decadently or towards health; existentially or ecstatically. The proper reaction to pressure is to be stronger, the reaction to signals of low moods is be healthier, the reaction to de-motivation is to eat dopamine increasing foods, get exercise, sunshine, and sleep; the proper reaction to insecurity is do something daring that would require confidence. “To have strength, one must first need it” Nietzsche. It’s a resilience and strength of mind that has to be trained. Drugs don’t alleviate depression, they perpetuate it, by never solving the problem. They decrease the feel good chemical in the brain that would have pulled the person out of depression. That’s what rehab centres are really doing, they are taking the person out of the habits that are disrupting the body’s natural chemical regulation. The body has to rewire itself to desire healthier habits, feel good, and motivation. The pressures of life are life demanding you to be more and you have to go meet it. That's just the game of being a functioning human being.

You are getting the feel good drugs all the time. You are actually depleating your body of things which it thinks it wants. You get those chemical in such a surge that they create deficiency. You think its an uplifting buzz. You're getting a buzz from things that wont improve your life when your body is trying to give those chemical to you to motivate you for things that will. Knowledge is not power. Health is power.

Drugs just block stuff. It doesnt give. It just blocks so that your body supplies more of what it already has because it thinks it cant provide. This deprives people of realising the native vigour of their human potential. Whats needed to realise the ecstatic nature of a human being has always been Great Health. There are however obvious remedies, none of which define post modern culture if you bring them all together. Getting plenty of sleep, exercise, sunshine, socialise better, have healthier and uplifting hobbies, read, draw, learn an instrument, learn often, eating certain dopamine increasing foods, less carbs, less meat, less sugar, less coffee, less alcohol etc less of everything that is post-modern American culture. Read more, great things, with charisma and intelligence, with depth and meaning, things beautifully written and timeless. Listen to music that reaches into you and excites as much as it calms, a catharsis of emotion that needed to be recognised and explored. Visual art that belongs to great times, and not artists who think their pain is worth your attention. A culture that brings out the best of you. The best mind. The best health. The best company to be around. The best aspirations for yourself. The best diet and lifestyle. It’s an interesting time because it feels to go with the flow is the worst thing to do, not only boring, but bad health. And to experiment with exploring your own direction is essential. Find yourself in your own culture you invent. Design your own culture. Experiment with everything and explore what brings out you the most at your best.

Our genetic code is like a piano. It has all the notes laid out. But it makes proteins, and it decides which to make based on responses to situations and experiences, that is epigenetics. So it's like your genetic code is a piano, all the available notes laid out, and epigenetics is like the music being played on it. Choosing which of the available notes to use when in response to situations and experiences. We live by the piano made by generations of our ancestors. Each one of us trying to play new beautiful music to pass on.

Foods that help increase dopamine are fish for omega 3, oregano and oregano oils, probiotic foods that help absorb amino acids to make dopamine, green tea (as it helps electrical signals to move around the brain), tumeric (easy way is to add it to rice or pasta) which lowers inflammation in the brain allowing for more dopamine release, high magnesium foods like pumpkin, beetroot, spinach (this also helps for good sleep), blueberries, everyday vegetables like broccoli, tomatoes, garlic, asparagus. Plus good for boosting serotonin are walnuts pistachios, lactose free milk. For both, have avocados, and eggs.

3

This is not to denounce hedonism and Epicureanism. On the contrary give me all the Saturnalia  Lupercalia  Bacchanal you like, the more ecstatic culture the better. Music and dance are the only arts of the twentieth century that got anywhere toward the ancient ecstatic culture. And because it looked beyond European tradition to world cultures, on other continents like Africa and Asia. But this trans-Altantic post-Modern culture is just decadent self deprecation. Naturally, spawned by Christian cultures, which favoured transcendence from everything bodily. And has always had an aversion to power and strength. which the body is trying to supply but we keep kicking it away for cheap fixes. Principle causes for a love of Minoan-Mycenean-Greco-Roman cultures, utterly in contradiction to Abrahamic faiths. Not Ancient and Modern. Polytheism versus Monotheism as a whole frame of mind. Ecstatic versus Existential. Greco-Roman vs Abrahamism.  I don’t want to get rid of Abrahamism, but there are much  better alternatives healthier mind and body, from which emanates a whole  culture and art, indeed, civilizations.

There was a recent study of the healthiest countries in the world with the obvious result that the Mediterranean (listing Spain and Italy first and second) and Japan as the healthiest cultures. Of course, the traditions of their culture are entirely health driven. "a Mediterranean-style diet, which has been shown to reduce cardiovascular events, mostly stroke, compared with a Western diet. A Mediterranean diet includes generous quantities of olive oil, fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, and fish; limited portions of red meats or processed meats; and moderate amounts of cheese and wine." explains Dr. Ron Blankstein, a cardiovascular imaging specialist and preventive cardiologist at Harvard-Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.

Post-war America created post-modern society and the PR/advertising industry. Post-modernism, not only a juvenile variation of modernism, but a hijack of evolutionary biology. Everything innate to our nature stimulated into an excessive overkill, exploited in order to get us hooked on unnecessary media, lifestyles, and products. To be healthy is to be unAmerican, to be unPost-Modern. Everything introduced is psychologically detrimental. Walk around and try to find a place that isn’t junk food, gambling, alcohol, shopping, coffee.

The more capitol cities are the epicentre of post-modern culture as we 'move forward' into regression, I am lured away to less notable locations, that have been spared and still retain some health without artificial substance abuse just to keep afloat. Cities now brim full of juvenile yuppie narcissistic kidults on finance living like they’re still at university, and cultural funding dwindling as we’ve regressed back into the 1980s yuppie culture that made all the baby boomers rich. You can almost map the baby boomer life with the creation of post-modernism. The PR industry, nicotine, plastics, sugar, the colour television, LSD, ketamine, the 60s in their teens, the 70s love-in in their twenties, the 80s wealthy cocaine yuppies in their thirties, repackaging their youth to kids in the 90s, and ever since, and the masterplan that has been the 21st century of white nationalism they were raised on in their earliest memories in the 1950s. And what is “progressive” today is only what was progressive in the 60s almost as a left-wing conservativism because things have moved so far-right,

But it has become clear (as big business, big tech, fossil, and right wing gain ever more ascendency) that our knowing is ineffectual and only depresses us. "We absorb so much information that we've lost our common sense" Gertrude Stein once said. Politics has become worse since the advent of social media, not better. We don’t know more, but find those comments that argue our own opinion for us. People buy books, go to the theatre, to hear about things they already believe. Armchair activists are not as effectual as they think. And hardworking Foundations and Charities still exist. The richest of the rich only take care of things that concern them, and believe if the poor suffer enough they'll take care of themselves. The detriment of engaging with the platform, outweighs the good intentions of using it. And consequences are always more important than intentions. It's not important to know, if prudence and profoundness are lacking. 

4

My life has its own universe, and social media inhibits that to the degree that I cannot see the situation of my own universe enough to do enough about it for its own sake. My existence is it's own universe. Make your world your passion. Better to do whatever makes you feel empowered and proactive and take care of your lane as much as you can. The more you listen to the news the more you live after it. You react to whats todays news and tomorrows and the next, forgetting your own personal power. Be disruptive as a child that is full of energy and aim not living after the world but their own happiness. The world must always find its arrangement. Where people find where they belong. Not fitting in to any success at all costs, but knowing who you are and what you are about and finding an environment which stimulates enriches their potential. What a life needs to thrive is not social comparison, but a mirror to reflect ourselves. that we enjoy ourselves, to make the positive changes necessary, and to be present within our own existence, with our own circumstances, working within its own sphere of influence.

Be the light and goodness in your own knowable and experiential world. Avoiding unnecessary information entering your mind that really serves no purpose but to inform you of things others are doing, or have, that is far beyond your sphere of influence, that wouldn't have entered your mind at all if you had not taken out your phone.

There is a real luxury: Living without concern for the conversation on social media and the news. Being present in your own existence. Not thinking about every corner of the globe, but what you can do where you are. Feeling your own life and being present within it, positively effecting things around and within your physical proximity.

🧘‍♀️🧘‍♂️🚶🏽‍♂️🚶‍♀️

#happynewyear newyearnewme socialmedia detox rehab dopamine cleanse purify feelgood health narcissist narcissistic power

[kvaldez6-blog]

Undocumented kids don’t belong in cages

      As we all know Trumps administration began deporting a lot of undocumented families and making the impossible for undocumented people to be able to work and succeed in the united states.

          There have been many reports about children in “detention centers” which is just another word for jail (for children and families that are undocumented) that have been mistreated and been treated worst than imitates with felonies. Just as Claudia Koerner a BuzzFeed News reporter interviewed a kid who said “I’m hungry here at Clint [detention center] all the time. I’m so hungry that I have woken up in the middle of the night with hunger. Sometimes I wake up from hunger at 4 a.m., sometimes at other hours. I’m too scared to ask the officials here for any more food, even though there is not enough food here for me.“ Kids are being separated from their families; they are not being treated like the children they are.

          These kids are being forced to take responsibility for things they don’t even know they were responsible for. The kids are sleeping in the worst of conditions are given the poorest medical attention.

          A Guatemalan mother whose daughter died because of a virus that was mistreated in the detention center is now failed a claim against the us government said that “she begged medical staff for help, only to watch the giggly child turn weak, feverish, thin.” These kids and families are being treated so inhumanly that there is no excuse for the government. There are kids being left to sleep on cement benches because of the overcrowding of children in these detention centers.

Resources;

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/claudiakoerner/children-border-detention-conditions-immigrants-hungry

https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/kids-in-cages-house-hearing-to-examine-immigration-detention-as-democrats-push-for-more-information/2019/07/10/3cc53006-a28f-11e9-b732-41a79c2551bf_story.html

Color blindness and its brainless excuse

      In America a term that has been becoming popular over the time is they’re “color blind” or they don’t “see color” all though a lot of people use this term to get themselves out of trouble they make their situation worst. Worst in a way that they try to make it seem as if they don’t have a side, they don’t have any type of preference over any race. But instead they chose to turn their head to the other side when they see discrimination, when they see something wrong, they decide to not do anything to stand up and talk about it.

              The fact that people try to use the word “color blind” or the phrase “I don’t see color” is a nice idea but the fact that you can obviously distinguish color doesn’t change anything. What people should then do is control the way they interact with the races. Just as the article “Why The ‘I Don’t See Color’ Mantra Is Hurting Your Diversity And Inclusion Efforts” they say how instead of trying to not see color we should “ recognize that each of us, no matter our color, have preconceived notions and expectations about different racial groups. Recognition and acknowledgment are crucial.”

          This is something to take away and really think of the ways that we can improve society and really stop thinking of being in a make-believe world that is something that probably won’t happen, but we can change our way of thinking.

Resources;

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/color-blindness-is-counterproductive/405037/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/janicegassam/2019/02/15/why-the-i-dont-see-color-mantra-is-hurting-diversity-and-inclusion-efforts/#7c2803fc2c8d

https://www.google.com/search?q=i+don%27t+see+color&safe=strict&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS863US863&sxsrf=ACYBGNQeOm3ahWE19uSGRMPD2F8-VGYYKQ:1575862998513&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiwvvaR06fmAhXTu54KHbTkDRMQ_AUoAXoECAwQAw&biw=1366&bih=657#imgrc=edNLPOLldsKnyM:

What is “Equality” For Women in America

      According to the “WEF estimates that it will take the United States another 208 years to reach gender equality” says USA today. Starting off with this said, its more than obvious that American still has a long way to go to gain gender equality. For women in the United States this is more than sad. Sad because there have been many struggles to get to the point of where we’re at, and still have a long way to go. All though women get higher college degrees they’re still viewed in a nonprofessional way. People don’t take women seriously; they don’t think of women being capable of doing these things.

          USA today reported that “On the political front, women are 51% of the U.S. population, but hold only 24% of seats in Congress.”  Which gives to mean that mean that Women are still being seen as less than a man. Women could hold a lot of power even more than men is this why because they’re afraid we will overpower them? Women everywhere we go we are always getting cat called, assaulted, and raped. Not saying this cannot happen to men also but it is something that is very common for women and we have had awareness about this, but it doesn’t change the fact that it’s still happening.

Overall, I think gender equality still has a long way to go, but there will always be something that will never make it equal.

Resources;

https://time.com/longform/gender-equality-america/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/06/21/equality-for-women-cant-wait-208-years-melinda-gates-column/1511613001/

The ignorance of White privilege amongst whites

      Something that I have noticed from my own experiences is that there’s a few whites that are poor and born into unhealthy families. But my main question is why? Why is it that they’re poor? Is it because they don’t want to succeed? In all this I came across an article of New York Times, talking about a story of a black women asking a white male about his privilege. As soon as the women proceeded to ask about his privilege, he denied it. He said he had worked for everything he has.  As well as there’s many white men and women who do work for the things, they want the real question is how hard did you have to work for it? Obviously, it couldn’t have been harder for them than a person of color. The system is set up to favoritism of white people. So how hard did you really have to work? In case of them being a person of color would they even gotten as far as they are now if the worked the same hard as they did when they were white?

          How often do you see a white person being pulled over? How many times do you see a cop pointing a gun at a white person? How many times do white people have to fear for their life when they’re being pulled over even when they have done nothing wrong? And the answer to that is NEVER. White people these are things that play a huge part of privilege and they want to make it seem like they didn’t have any? Owning up to it is a start to changing this world and realizing not everyone has the same opportunities and chances as everyone.

Sources;

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/magazine/white-men-privilege.html

White privilege and unpacking the invisible knapsack

      All though there are many economic unhealthy whites, most of them use their white privilege without realizing it. As Peggy McIntosh decided to unpack some of the privilege, she has a white woman in America.

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to

mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can

afford and in which I would want to live.

4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely

represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization,” I am shown that people of my

color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their

race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person’s voice in a group in which s/he is the

only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket

and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find

someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the

appearance of financial reliability.

Sources;

https://www.racialequitytools.org/resourcefiles/mcintosh.pdf

[themoneybuff-blog]

How to budget: A pain-free guide to building a budget that works

A budget is telling your money where to go instead of wondering where it went. John C. Maxwell I've had more one-on-one money coaching meetings during the past year than my previous twelve years writing about money combined. I used to claim that I'd never do money coaching. Apparently, I was wrong. As I meet with folks, certain common themes stand out. For one, most folks have no idea how much they're actually earning and spending. Their finances are like a black box. They get paid, put the money in the bank, then spend it until it's gone. Almost nobody actively tracks what they earn and spend. Do I have money in my checking account? I can buy something! Because people don't track what they spend, it's tough for them to plan what they spend. Frequently, I suggest that the people I meet with make a budget. Because budgets have been demonized for so long, there's a lot of resistance to this idea. That's too bad. Budgets don't have to be a bother. When used correctly, they're an excellent way to take control of your money. If you pick a budget that fits the way you live, it can help you meet your goals more quickly. The key? Dont think of a budget as a constraint. Real Life is a constraint; a budget helps you break free so that you can spend on whats important to you, on the things that bring you joy. Why Budgets Fail A lot of people get frustrated with budgeting because it never seems to work. They never reach their spending targets. Or emergencies break the budget. Or it seems like so much work for so little reward. I hear you. I've been there. But if you follow a few rules (or maybe guidelines, if you prefer), budgeting can be less stressful and more useful. Based on my own experience and based on comments of GRS readers like you I believe there are a handful of reasons most budgets fail. You may encounter trouble with your budget if: It's too complicated. People have a tendency to make budgets more complex than they need to be. A simple budget is usually more useful.It doesn't reflect your values. A budget should help you achieve your goals, so make it personal. If you try to use somebody else's budget, you're going to have a tough time.It doesn't reflect reality. When you build a budget, base it on your actual income and behavior not on some imaginary ideal you.It seems like a chore. Don't let your system bog you down. Your goal is to have a budget that works, so keep looking until you find one that works for you. To summarize: To minimize the risk of failure, a budget should be simple and easy to use while reflecting both current realities and your future goals. [embedded content] That's all rather esoteric, though. What does a simple, easy budget look like? There are a lot of approaches that work. While some people do manage to make detailed budgets work, I've found that budget frameworks are more effective for me and the people I coach. Today, we're going to take a deep dive into the world of budgeting. Based on my thirteen years of reading and writing about money, here are my thoughts on how to budget effectively. How to Build a Budget A lot of times when a person decides to get their financial house in order, the struggle to figure out how to build a budget that works. It's common to build an elaborate budget that confuses even the person who created it. Successful budgets are usually simple.

In The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need, Andrew Tobias offers the following simple yet effective budget: Destroy all your credit cards.Invest 20% of all that you earn. Never touch it.Live on the remaining 80%, no matter what. Although Tobias is being glib, this is actually an excellent system. If you can develop the discipline to follow just these three steps, you can become rich. That said, this budget framework is too loose for most people. (I mean, come on, it only has two categories: saving and everything else.) The 60% Solution A decade ago at MSN Money, editor-in-chief Richard Jenkins proposed a budget that he dubbed the 60% Solution. (That link leads to a Web Archive summary of his framework. The original is article is no longer available because MSN thinks it's smart to throw away awesome old content.) After twenty years of budgeting, Jenkins decided that a detailed budget was too much work for too little information. He developed a simpler framework. With this framework, his goal was to keep Committed Expenses manageable. (Jenkins says that Committed Expenses are Wants or Needs that you can't or won't compromise on. You're committed to them.)

The 60% Solution suggests allocating your monthly gross (pre-tax) income like this: 60% to Committed Expenses such as taxes, clothing, basic living expenses, insurance, charity (including tithing), and regular bills (including things like your cell phone).10% to Retirement.10% to Irregular Expenses such as vacations, major repair bills, new appliances, etc.10% to Long-Term Savings/Debt money set aside for car purchases, home renovations, or to pay down substantial debt loads.10% for Fun Money to be used for dining out, hobbies, indulgences, etc. Jenkins believes that the best way to relieve money pressure is to reduce Committed Expenses. When your Committed Expenses rise, so does your stress level. If you can keep these costs under 60% of your income, you'll have more money to spend on other things like retirement tomorrow or fun stuff today. The 60% Solution looks simplistic but it's powerful. In fact, I Will Teach You to Be Rich author Ramit Sethi (who famously hates budgets) uses this as the basis for his Conscious Spending Plan (which, sorry Ramit, is just a budget). If Ramit likes a budget, you know it's good. The Balanced Money Formula My favorite budget framework the one I teach in workshops and encourage friends to use is the Balanced Money Formula from All Your Worth: The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Tyagi. (Yes, that Elizabeth Warren. I'm endorsing her budget framework, not her Presidential bid.) The Balanced Money Formula (which sometimes gets billed as the 50/30/20 budget by bloggers too lazy to do research) is meant to help people save and pay off debt while simultaneously leaving room for financial electives like going out to dinner and cable television.

Warren and Tyagi argue that in order to succeed financially, you must keep three broad areas of your finances in balance. They divide your net (after-tax) income as follows: Allocate no more than 50% to Needs (which the authors call Must-Haves). Needs include housing, transportation, groceries, insurance, and clothes you really need.Set aside at least 20% for Savings, which includes both debt repayment and retirement contributions.Spend the remaining (roughly) 30% on Wants. Wants include cable television, clothing beyond the basics, restaurant meals, concert tickets, comic books, knitting supplies, etc. Warren and Tyagi insist that to maintain financial balance and to be happy, you cannot spend more than 50% of your income on Needs. (Spending less is even better.) From Warren's experience with bankruptcy law, she's seen that too many Americans dig a deep hole for themselves by taking on huge mortgages and car loans. If you want to keep a balanced budget (and eventually build a wealth snowball), it's vital that you spend less on the Big Stuff especially housing. Note that the Balanced Money Formula considers debt reduction to be a part of Saving. I like this. I like it so much, in fact, that it's now part of my personal financial platform. Note: One shortcoming to all three of these budget frameworks is that they target twenty percent (at most) for debt reduction and saving. Twenty percent is great. It's more than financial advisers generally recommend, and far more than most people save. But I consider twenty percent a starting point, not an end point. Ultimately, I think most folks are best-served by aiming to save half of their income. Automating Your Budget Budget frameworks let you wrap your head around the Big Picture, but the framework by itself isn't very helpful. To build a budget that works, you need a system. You need a way to work with framework. I have clear memories of my parents trying (and failing) to budget in the 1970s. Mom and Dad would get frustrated with how broke they were, so they'd sit down at the kitchen table to make a plan. After much heated debate, they'd draw up a budget in a spiral notebook. Over the next few weeks, Mom would track their spending and compare it to their projections. The budgets never worked. It took too much effort. (There were other relationship reasons the budgets failed, but sheer labor involved played a major role.) After a couple of weeks of frustration, Mom and Dad would give up. No wonder they were always broke. Nowadays, things are easier. If other bloggers are too be believed, many folks use Personal Capital to track their spending. While expense tracking isn't the same as budgeting, it's absolutely part of the process. If you don't track how much you spend, there's no way to know if you're sticking to your budget. [embedded content] From chatting with Get Rich Slowly readers, I suspect that You Need a Budget (YNAB) is a better choice than Personal Capital when it comes to automating your budget. This shouldn't be surprising, I guess. After all, YNAB is a tool specifically designed for budgeting! (Here's my review of the YNAB software.) Apps like these do have downsides. Personal Capital is a great free tool, but it's also designed as a lead generator for a wealth-management firm. They're hoping that if you use their software, you'll eventually become a client. YNAB has no nefarious motives in fact, the company is awesome but the tool comes with a small monthly fee. For most folks who need to budget, however, this fee is worth it. Still, you have other options. It's possible, for instance, to buy stand-alone desktop software that lets you both budget and track your expenses. It's no secret that I manage my money with a copy of Quicken 2007. (I'll eventually move to a new version of Quicken. For now, the old version works just fine.) My buddy Jim at Wallet Hacks is a proponent of building personalized budget spreadsheets. In fact, he recently wrote that budgeting with spreadsheets beats automated tools every time. But Jim is a ginormous nerd who loves noodling with numbers. If you're less of a nerd, Personal Capital and/or YNAB might be a better fit. Ultimately, it doesn't matter which tool you choose. There's no single right answer. Try several and figure out which works best for you and your budget. What matters most is that it's something you'll use, and that it's something that will help you reach your goals. [embedded content] Envelope Budgeting Automated budgeting tools are great for most people. Some, however, might need to take a different approach. When I met with my friends Wally and Jodie recently, I got a sense that while they're making progress with their debt, they're still struggling with organization. I think part of the problem is that their budget is abstract. It's not a real, tangible thing but something that exists only on paper or in their heads. Have you heard of envelope budgeting? I asked. No, Wally said. What's that? I gave a brief explanation. The envelope budgeting system is a simple method that you can use with any sort of budget to help you manage your spending. You can use it with the 60% Solution, with the Balanced Money Formula, or for more complex budget systems. The basic idea is this: When you get paid, you divide cash into various envelopes designated for specific budget categories. Here's how it works: Choose budget categories. Use one envelope for each category you plan to track. Write the category's name on each envelope. Wally and Jodie, for instance, might have an envelope for their upcoming wedding, an envelope for travel, an envelope for groceries, and envelope for utilities, and so on.Set money aside. After your paycheck gets deposited, withdraw cash for each budgeted category. If Wally and Jodie have budgeted $200 for two weeks of groceries, they'd put $200 in their grocery envelope and note this amount on the back.Spend normally. Throughout the month, take cash from the appropriate envelopes as you make purchases. When you take money out of an envelope, note the amount on the back. Also note how much remains in the envelope. After you buy something, put the receipt and change back in the envelope.When an envelope is empty, you're done. If you run out of money in an envelope, you have two options. Hardcore budgeters argue that if your Dining Out envelope is empty, you need to suck it up until your next paycheck. Once you've spent your restaurant budget, that's it. Others say that it's okay to take from one envelope to fund another. Which route is right for you is a personal call. But please, don't resort to credit to compensate for an empty envelope.Decide what to do with surplus cash. At the end of the pay period, you're likely to have money left in certain envelopes. You should have a system to handle this. Maybe you want to leave the surplus there, effectively giving you a larger budget in the next pay period. (If you have $87 left in your grocery envelope and add $200 more, then you have $287 for the next pay period!) A smarter move might be to take the surplus cash at the end of a pay period and put it toward a long-term goal. (Wally and Jodie could take extra grocery money, for example, and put it in their wedding envelope.)Do it again. Repeat this process each pay period. If you discover that you consistently have a deficit (or surplus) in certain categories, make adjustments. Here's a terrific step-by-step envelope budget tutorial from YouTube: [embedded content] The beauty of envelope budgeting is that it's system agnostic. It doesn't care what kind of budget you use. You can use it for all of your budget categories or just a few. (I think most people would use it for variable expenses, not fixed expenses like mortgages and phone bills.) Plus, it's physical. The money is real and you're forced to actually handle it and experience the pain of paying. I should note that some people want to use the envelope system but don't want to hassle with actual envelopes. For these folks, a budget spreadsheet is a good way to simulate the system. (Or, you might try to replicate it with the You Need a Budget software.) In 2013 here at Get Rich Slowly, Kristin Wong shared her adventures in returning to the envelope system. How to Build a Better Budget That's a lot of information about budgeting, I know. It might be overwhelming. But before we wrap things up, I'd like to offer a few final tips. Let's start with what I consider the four cardinal rules of budgeting. The first rule of budgeting: Dont worry about perfection. A budget is a target. Your spending wont be perfect the first month. Or the second. Or the third. If you cant get your money into perfect balance, get as close as you can. Learn to make adjustments, and dont give up.The second rule of budgeting: The big stuff makes more difference than the small stuff. Yes, you should clip coupons and shop at thrift stores. But you can save thousands of dollars at once by being smart when you buy a house or a car. Decrease your major expenses like housing and transportation and youll have a lot more room in your budget for the fun stuff.The third rule of budgeting: Make plans based on your real life, not how you wish life would be. Dont budget for possible salary increases and ideal spending habits. If you spend money on coffee every day, make that part of your budget. If you havent received a raise at work, dont count that in your income. Budget for reality, not wishful thinking.The fourth rule of budgeting: Keep it simple. If using your budget is a chore, youll never follow through. Include only as much detail as you need. Find a way to track your spending that works the way you do. Lastly, if you struggle with keeping a budget, it may be because you're trying to predict your spending in time chunks that are just too small. A 2008 study published in the Journal of Consumer Research found that people who made annual budgets were better able to predict their spending than those who made monthly budgets. From the original press release: [Researchers] found that, contrary to popular advice, people were more accurate when constructing an annual rather than a monthly budget, even when they were logging their expenses weekly. Consumers' default tendency is to underestimate their budgets, for both next month and next year frames, write the authors. However budgets for the next year are closer to recorded expenses because consumers feel less confident when estimating these budgets, and therefore, adjust them upward. One reason yearly budgets are more accurate is that consumers consider a greater number of expense categories when they construct them. If you construct your monthly budget in April, will you remember to include a category for Christmas gifts? If you've followed my own spending adventures this year, you know I've encountered some of this. Oops! I forgot I'd have a huge tax liability in April. Oh wow, I forgot that we booked a September 2019 vacation in April 2018. Now the balance is due. And so on. Yearly budgets aren't very useful, however, for planning your day-to-day spending. The obvious solution is to take the best of both worlds: Since people generally do a better job of estimating yearly expenses rather than monthly expenses, create an annual budget.Once you've arrived at your annual budget, divide your estimated expenses in each category by twelve. This will give you a monthly number to work with. The results of this study reiterate that over-confidence is an enormous drag on the average person's finances. We believe we're immune to advertising, that we can handle credit responsibly, that we can pick winning stocks. Yet study after study demonstrates that this just is not the case. In fact, those who lack confidence often make the best financial decisions. This is also true with budgeting. In this study, subjects who were told that budgeting was difficult made more accurate estimates regarding their expenses than those who were told that budgeting was easy. [embedded content] Budgeting Sets You Free For many folks, budget is a four-letter word. Not for money bosses. A money boss views a budget as a useful tool with which she can help build the life she wants. At the same time, she knows that a budget isn't fixed in stone. It's always a work in progress. When you use a budget, even one as simple as the Balanced Money Formula, you need to make constant adjustments. But once you get the most important expenses figured out (your Committed Expenses or Needs), you usually dont have to worry about them much. Your housing payment doesn't fluctuate from month to month, for instance. Your insurance premiums stay pretty constant. The same is true for your Savings. Once you get used to saving a certain amount, that becomes a habit. Your goal, then, is to trim your Needs and boost your Savings until they're both at respectable, sustainable levels. If you can keep these two broad categories where they should be, you can spend everything else on Wants. Spending on fun stuff is less stressful when you know you can afford it. Budgeting isn't a straitjacket. Budgeting sets you free. Want more help building a budget? Try these tools: Remember: If one budget doesnt work, try another. Dont just blindly use a budget from somebody else even Dave Ramsey or Suze Orman. Use their ideas as a starting point, but tailor them so that your budget fits your life. That's what I did, and it worked. Note: This is a substantial re-write of an article originally published 02 May 2011. In fact, I'd go so far as to call it a new article. I've moved forward many of the comments on the old article and, as usual, have placed a marker so you can tell where old comments end and new comments begin.

Author: J.D. Roth In 2006, J.D. founded Get Rich Slowly to document his quest to get out of debt. Over time, he learned how to save and how to invest. Today, he's managed to reach early retirement! He wants to help you master your money and your life. No scams. No gimmicks. Just smart money advice to help you reach your goals. https://www.getrichslowly.org/how-to-budget/

[uniteordie-usa]

It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 1 (Indoctrination)

http://uniteordie-usa.com/its-time-to-rethink-education-part-1-indoctrination/ http://uniteordie-usa.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/We-dont-need-no-education-pink-floyd-the-wall.jpg It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 1 (Indoctrination) Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned. – Mark Twain As a father of two young children, my thoughts have increasingly started to center around their young lives and the future world they’ll inhabit. Such considerations quickly lead to stressful questions such as, what are the best s...

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned. – Mark Twain

As a father of two young children, my thoughts have increasingly started to center around their young lives and the future world they’ll inhabit. Such considerations quickly lead to stressful questions such as, what are the best schools in the area? Which option can provide the best environment in which to thrive? If the best options aren’t public, can we afford them? Is it worth the money? All these questions and more have filled the minds of my wife and I over the past couple of years, but lately we’ve started to ask even bigger questions; such as whether the compulsory education system as it exists in the U.S. in 2017 makes any sense in the first place. I’m increasingly starting to conclude that it doesn’t.

Before I get into that, let’s take a step back. A lot of what I do here at Liberty Blitzkrieg is highlight what’s perverse and destructive about human behavior at this time, and how things can be made dramatically better in the future. If I had to summarize my worldview concisely, I’d state that human beings at the moment are living under highly centralized, hierarchical power structures which are gamed by unethical, greedy and corrupt people at the top who exploit the masses ruthlessly.

Since the worst of humanity will always work hardest and most violently to attain power (this will always be the case), the only way to achieve lasting, positive change is to systemically move to a different model for human activity. Trying to get decent people at the top of a highly centralized power structure is counterproductive and merely a short-term solution if it can even be achieved in the first place. What we need to do is tear down and reduce centralized power as much as possible in the first place. If power becomes distributed far more widely across the planet, the ability for mass control and consolidation becomes much more difficult, if not impossible.

The most significant theme of the next hundred years (at least) will be a dramatic shift toward decentralized networks in nearly all aspects of human affairs. We’ve already seen its profound impact in a dramatic decentralization of information/media content creation and distribution, and we’re starting to see its impact when it comes to currency/monetary systems. Without the arrival and viral adoption of the internet, none of this would’ve been possible. More importantly, only 50% of the planet is currently online and massive social media networks have only been going for a decade or so. If we assume the internet isn’t going anywhere, we’re only in the very, very beginning stages of how it’ll ultimately shape human affairs.

As I noted in the recent post, Bitcoin, Terence McKenna and the Future of the Internet:

I remain in awe of the implications of people across the world easily talking to one another in real time and forming global networks. We’ve become so accustomed to social media at this point many of us already take for granted how extraordinary and revolutionary it really is. Nothing like this has ever happened before in human history, and it’s hard for me not to be extremely optimistic about its impact on life here on earth over a longer time horizon.

One of the most remarkable things about humans across the world talking to one another, is it becomes increasingly difficult to manipulate distinct populations into hating each other and rallying around wars that only benefit elite sociopaths in the first place.

As things stand now, people from all over the planet are examining the way the world functions and coming to the conclusion that it’s completely insane and anti-human. We live in a world where we’re told to be slaves to authority and expert judgement, despite the fact that such figures are consistently and spectacularly wrong, with their proclamations often leading to massive levels of death, destruction and economic collapse all over the world. To summarize, the world as it’s currently organized is transparently insane and cannot stand up to even the slightly degree of scrutiny. As more and more people wake up to this reality, the world will change in unimaginable ways. The earth as it stands today will be unrecognizable in 25 years.

Although I’ve discussed what this means when it comes to governing institutions and monetary systems frequently this year, one area that I’ve only begun to explore is education. As our kids creep toward the age where most children enter the school system, my wife and I have started to examine what this system looks like, and if it’s as insane as everything else about the world today. The answer seems to be, yes.

Earlier this year, I came across a 1990 speech given by famed teacher and author, John Taylor Gatto, and it completely and totally blew my mind. I highlight a few excerpts below, but cannot stress enough how important it is to read the entire thing. It’s one of the most powerful pieces of information I’ve ever shared.

Enjoy:

Our school crisis is a reflection of this greater social crisis. We seem to have lost our identity. Children and old people are penned up and locked away from the business of the world to a degree without precedent – nobody talks to them anymore and without children and old people mixing in daily life a community has no future and no past, only a continuous present. In fact, the name “community” hardly applies to the way we interact with each other. We live in networks, not communities, and everyone I know is lonely because of that. In some strange way school is a major actor in this tragedy just as it is a major actor in the widening guilt among social classes. Using school as a sorting mechanism we appear to be on the way to creating a caste system, complete with untouchables who wander through subway trains begging and sleep on the streets.

I’ve noticed a fascinating phenomenon in my twenty-five years of teaching – that schools and schooling are increasingly irrelevant to the great enterprises of the planet. No one believes anymore that scientists are trained in science classes or politicians in civics classes or poets in English classes. The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions. Although teachers do care and do work very hard, the institution is psychopathic – it has no conscience. It rings a bell and the young man in the middle of writing a poem must close his notebook and move to different cell where he must memorize that man and monkeys derive from a common ancestor.

Our form of compulsory schooling is an invention of the state of Massachusetts around 1850. It was resisted – sometimes with guns – by an estimated eighty per cent of the Massachusetts population, the last outpost in Barnstable on Cape Cod not surrendering its children until the 1880’s when the area was seized by militia and children marched to school under guard…

Here is another curiosity to think about. The homeschooling movement has quietly grown to a size where one and a half million young people are being educated entirely by their own parents. Last month the education press reported the amazing news that children schooled at home seem to be five or even ten years ahead of their formally trained peers in their ability to think.

I don’t think we’ll get rid of schools anytime soon, certainly not in my lifetime, but if we’re going to change what is rapidly becoming a disaster of ignorance, we need to realize that the school institution “schools” very well, but it does not “educate” – that’s inherent in the design of the thing. It’s not the fault of bad teachers or too little money spent, it’s just impossible for education and schooling ever to be the same thing.

Schools were designed by Horace Mann and Barnard Sears and Harper of the University of Chicago and Thorndyke of Columbia Teachers College and some other men to be instruments of the scientific management of a mass population. Schools are intended to produce through the application of formulae, formulaic human beings whose behavior can be predicted and controlled.

To a very great extent, schools succeed in doing this. But our society is disintegrating, and in such a society, the only successful people are self-reliant, confident, and individualistic – because the community life which protects the dependent and the weak is dead. The products of schooling are, as I’ve said, irrelevant. Well-schooled people are irrelevant. They can sell film and razor blades, push paper and talk on the telephones, or sit mindlessly before a flickering computer terminal but as human beings they are useless. Useless to others and useless to themselves…

It is absurd and anti-life to be part of a system that compels you to sit in confinement with people of exactly the same age and social class. That system effectively cuts you off from the immense diversity of life and the synergy of variety, indeed it cuts you off from your own past and future, scaling you to a continuous present much the same way television does…

I could name a few other conditions that school reform would have to tackle if our national decline is to be arrested, but by now you will have grasped my thesis, whether you agree with it or not. Either schools have caused these pathologies, or television, or both. It’s a simple matter [of] arithmetic, between schooling and television all the time the children have is eaten away. That’s what has destroyed the American family, it is no longer a factor in the education of its own children. Television and schooling, in those things the fault must lie.

What can be done? First we need a ferocious national debate that doesn’t quit, day after day, year after year. We need to scream and argue about this school thing until it is fixed or broken beyond repair, one or the other. If we can fix it, fine; if we cannot, then the success of homeschooling shows a different road to take that has great promise. Pouring the money we now pour into family education might kill two birds with one stone, repairing families as it repairs children.

Genuine reform is possible but it shouldn’t cost anything. We need to rethink the fundamental premises of schooling and decide what it is we want all children to learn and why. For 140 years this nation has tried to impose objectives downward from the lofty command center made up of “experts”, a central elite of social engineers. It hasn’t worked. It won’t work. And it is a gross betrayal of the democratic promise that once made this nation a noble experiment. The Russian attempt to create Plato’s republic in Eastern Europe has exploded before [our] eyes, our own attempt to impose the same sort of central orthodoxy using the schools as an instrument is also coming apart at the seams, albeit more slowly and painfully. It doesn’t work because its fundamental premises are mechanical, anti-human, and hostile to family life. Lives can be controlled by machine education but they will always fight back with weapons of social pathology – drugs, violence, self-destruction, indifference, and the symptoms I see in the children I teach…

Independent study, community service, adventures in experience, large doses of privacy and solitude, a thousand different apprenticeships, the one day variety or longer – these are all powerful, cheap and effective ways to start a real reform of schooling. But no large-scale reform is ever going to work to repair our damaged children and our damaged society until we force the idea of “school” open – to include family as the main engine of education. The Swedes realized that in 1976 when they effectively abandoned the system of adopting unwanted children and instead spent national time and treasure on reinforcing the original family so that children born to Swedes were wanted. They didn’t succeed completely but they did succeed in reducing the number of unwanted Swedish children from 6000 in l976 to 15 in 1986. So it can be done. The Swedes just got tired of paying for the social wreckage caused by children not raised by their natural parents so they did something about it. We can, too.

Family is the main engine of education. If we use schooling to break children away from parents – and make no mistake, that has been the central function of schools since John Cotton announced it as the purpose of the Bay Colony schools in 1650 and Horace Mann announced it as the purpose of Massachusetts schools in 1850 – we’re going to continue to have the horror show we have right now. The curriculum of family is at the heart of any good life, we’ve gotten away from that curriculum, time to return to it. The way to sanity in education is for our schools to take the lead in releasing the stranglehold of institutions on family life, to promote during school time confluences of parent and child that will strengthen family bonds. That was my real purpose in sending the girl and her mother down the Jersey coast to meet the police chief. I have many ideas to make a family curriculum and my guess is that a lot of you will have many ideas, too, once you begin to think about it. Our greatest problem in getting the kind of grass-roots thinking going that could reform schooling is that we have large vested interests pre-emptying all the air time and profiting from schooling just exactly as it is despite rhetoric to the contrary. We have to demand that new voices and new ideas get a hearing, my ideas and yours. We’ve all had a bellyful of authorized voices mediated by television and the press – a decade long free-for-all debate is what is called for now, not any more “expert” opinions. Experts in education have never been right, their “solutions” are expensive, self-serving, and always involve further centralization. Enough. Time for a return to democracy, individuality, and family. I’ve said my piece. Thank you.

This above excerpts are from a speech by John Taylor Gatto accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990. Please read the entire thing and share it with the following link: Why Schools Don’t Educate.

Read More: https://www.theburningplatform.com/2017/12/13/its-time-to-rethink-education-part-1-indoctrination/

#anti-human #Barnard Sears #Horace Mann #Indoctrination