Last week we’ve talked about deferring gratification – does it apply to you? 🤔 Does your brain demand a reward here and now? 😬 Do you forget about your goal when you see something you want (e.g. a cake while being on a diet) and you easily succumb to temptation? 🧐
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Don’t worry! The art of deferring gratification can be learned, same as you can train your willpower 💪.
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Try this exercise from Kelly McGonigqal’s book „The Willpower Instinct”: It appears that 10 minutes is not a long time to wait for something we want. Neurologists however discovered that it has great impact on how your brain processes the vision of reward 🏆. If instant gratification is supposed to come after 10 minutes then our brain sees it as future benefit 🔜. Hence the system that processes the promise of a reward calms down and strong biological impulse to instant consummation weakens ⬇️.
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In order for your brain 🧠 to think straight try waiting 10 minutes before you succumb to temptation. If after 10 minutes you still want it, take it/do it 😄. Before the time passes though try to think of long-term benefits you’ll get for resisting temptation. If it’s possible, try also creating some physical or visual distance ↔️.
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If you need to do something you don’t feel like doing you can also use „10 minutes rule” to help you resist the temptation of delaying necessary actions and to force yourself a bit to do them😉. Try making it „do it for 10 minutes, then you can stop”. Let yourself stop working after 10 minutes – it might turn out that as you already had started you will want to continue 😉. For me, it’s always the most difficult to start working and when I do I usually want to finish so this trick works on me quie well 👍
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Try doing that excercise and write down your results. „10 miutes rule” might work great when you don’t feel like working! ☺
Author: smileysociety
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SELF LOVE: Cooling Cucumber Mask 🧖♀️
Ingredients:
🔸️ 1 large cucumber 🥒
🔸️ 2 TBSP Unrefined Coconut Oil 🥥
🔸️ 1/4 cup Aloe Vera Gel
🔸️ 8 drops of Carrot Seed Essential Oil (optional)
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➡️ Blend all ingredients together until all ingredients form a smooth cream. ➡️ Transfer to ice cube tray and freeze. You might hold a bit back and pop it in the fridge so you can use your mask now!
➡️ Apply all around the eyes. Leave on for 10-15 minutes.
It feels HEAVENLY! 😍 So refreshing-you can just feel the puffiness disappearing! If you are using the Carrot Seed oil be very careful-if it gets in your eyes it will burn 😬. If the oil gets in your eyes, rinse out your eye with cool water immediately.
Source: https://thepaleomama.com
Inner child
Don’t mind me asking but… how old are you? 🤔 Are you 20+? 30+? Older? If so, do you act for your age, are you mature and serious all the time? 🧐 You’re no longer a child so you have to be serious, responsible and definitely not spontaneus…. Wrooooong! 🚫👎🥱
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Age doesn’t define us! 😉 I know plenty men who are almost (or already) 40 and act like 20 and that is not a bad thing! 🤪 Of course you need to be responsible and, if the situation requires that, serious from time to time but so you should be crazy, fun and wild! 🙃
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I remember hearing a girl saying „I want to be a kid again, this was so much fun, now nothing is fun” once 🙄. Well… if this is what your life looks like then you made it this way!
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Be crazy 🤪, be spontanous 😎, be passionate 🥰, be wild 🥴 – this is how you create memories! 😃 This is how you make life beautiful, fun and happy!
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Go and dance in the rain 🌂, surprise your friend at his/her door with a bottle of wine 🍷 (even if he/she lives couple hours away), go to karaoke bar 🎤, play hide and seek 🤭, go to a cinema with a bag full of jellies to see a Disney movie 😜…. why not?
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If there are any activities you liked as a child and you wish you could keep doing them just…keep doing them! 😃 Don’t let age, or actually not the age itself but the society pressure to BEHAVE YOUR AGE 🙄, stop you! Do whatever you wish! 🥰
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I, for example, love being goofy with my husband and e.g. do funny faces 🤪 and voices or sing with high-pitched voice (our neighbours must hate us haha 🤣), I watch cartoons and I love it ❤, 90% of the time I want to be a businesswoman/boss babe/independent woman 💪 but 10% of the time I want to be spoiled, eat candy and watch silly romantic comedies 🤭 like a teenager… and that’s fine! 😀
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Just do whatever you want to do, be your true self! ☺
7 things I’ve learned about Mayans while being in Mexico
➡️ 1. There’s still plenty Mayans among Mexicans and some of them will actually get a bit angry if you call them Mexican, not Mayan 😉.
➡️ 2. Mayans were VERY intelligent people who could meassure days, calendar and solar systems centuries ago just by observing the nature around them 🌹🌒🌓🌕🌖🌗🌙 and their calculations compared to nowadays’ calendars were mistaken by only 6 seconds! 🤯
➡️ 3. Mayan calendar is very complicated, it is actually a combination of 3 different calendars, and each day had a special name in calendar and everyone got a name after the day they were born.
2012 actually wasn’t the end of Mayan calendar. Their whole calendar cycle lasts over 5000 years and 2012 was the end of 1st cycle 😉
➡️ 4. The ancient Mayans believed that the world was created on 11th August, 3114 BCE. The Mayan calendars start counting from that date.
➡️ 5. Do you know how to write number 10 in ancient Roman numbers? It’s ‘X’, right? 😃 5 is ‘V’ and so on. But how do you write ‘0’ in Roman numbers? 🤔 There is no sign for that because the concept of number ‘0’ was invented later by Mayans! 😃
➡️ 6. There are plenty words in modern language that were invented by Mayans. One of them is ‘chocolate’ 🍫– ‘chocolhaa’ in Mayan that means ‘bitter water’
➡️ 7. Mayans kind of invented soccer but the rules were quite different 😅 – you could hit the ball only with your hips, forearms or calves and you had to aim the ball to a stone hoop that was couple metres above the ground 😃
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MOTIVATIONAL MONDAY – STEP 11: Deferring gratification
What ability do you need to learn/practice in order to empower your strong will and be able to stand up, take that first step and go work on your dreams/projects when you don’t feel like it? 🤔
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Please read and let me know if it sounds familiar 🧐. Your friend brings cake to work and you can’t resist. You feel lilke dropping everything and taking an evening off to watch TV instead of work (and you keep doing that everyday)…
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Your brain 🧠 demands a reward here and now! You forget about your goal and all the reasons why you wanted to achieve it. You succumb to temptation…🤭😜
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Or maybe…? With your last remains of strongwill you leave that cake from friend somewhere out of sight, you turn TV off and and work on your dreams thinking thay each hour spent working gets you closer to your goal 💪.
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The ability to postpone pleasures or rewards is called ➡️ ‘deferring gratification’ ⬅️ in psychology. It is crucial to realize long-distance goals because it helps you not to succumb to temptation each time 😉.
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Why is it so hard to defer gratification? Because seeing temptation or reward instantly launches more primitive and oldest part of our brain demanding gratification right away 😬. Luckily we also have prefrontal cortex (part of our brain 🧠) that can cool that instant rush because it is responsible for controlling our impulses .
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Task for today 📝: think how deferring gratification looks in your case? In what situations is it easier or more difficult to you? What helps you defer gratification?
SELF LOVE: All Natural Homemade Bronzer Recipe
Ingredients:
🔸️ 1 Tbs. cinnamon powder
🔸️ 1 tsp cocoa powder
🔸️ 1 tsp nutmeg powder
🔸️ 2 tsp arrowroot powder
🔸️ 15 drops lavender or rosemary essential oil
*If you prefer a loose powder, leave out the essential oils.
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Directions:
➡️ 1. Adjust the levels of ingredients to your shade and mix well in a small bowl, and break up any clumps until it’s smooth 😎.
➡️ 2. Place the powder in a clean, empty compact and pack it in firmly.
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A few tips on the color:
Cinnamon provides glow 💫.
Cocoa gives depth and darkness 🖤 .
Nutmeg will give a sun-kissed brown 🤩.
Cornstarch spreads it all out and lightens it 🤗.
Essential oil keeps it together and thickens it 💪.
Source: http://www.thankyourbody.com
8 things I’ve learned about Mexico while being there
➡️ 1. Everything I knew about Mexican food was a lie 😬. Mexicans don’t eat burritos (they do only in the north part), they don’t eat quesadillas or tacos as we know it – this is all Tex-Mex cuisine, not traditional Mexican food 😉. Mexican cuisine is not that hot 😉, there’s less bean & corn I’d thought there’d be and there’s plenty seafood! 🦐
Dishes I got to know there:
🔸️Cochinita Pibil (shredded pork stew)
🔸️Mole (sauce made from dried chilies, tomatoes, chocolate, seeds & spices)
🔸️Flautas (traditional Mexican tacos made with rolled corn tortilla and filled with mashed potato, cheese, chicken, etc.)
➡️ 2. Mayans are still very much alive and there will be a seperate post about them 😃
➡️ 3. Dia de los Muertos, Day of the Dead 💀, is a beautiful holiday celebrated on Nov 1st & 2nd. Those are colorul and happy days because Mexicans believe that the souls of their close ones who have passed away come to earth to visit them ☺. Families set altars (like this one on the photo) with a photo of a lost one, fruit 🍌, special sweet bread they bake for that occasion called Pan de Muerto, characteristic orange flowers called cempasuchil 🏵 & something that this family member liked – e.g. some book, guitar etc. Later, they go to the cemetary bringing treats and they spend whole day at the grave talking, laughing and being close to their lost one ❤
➡️ 4. If you get a gift like a sugar skull with your name on it or they’ll give you some miniature coffins saying „those are for your family” it does not mean they wish you death and that they don’t like you! 🤭 This is a gift from the heart and you should accept it!
➡️ 5. Apart from tequila & hot peppers 🌶, Mexico is a big exporter of chewing gum as this is made from the tree that grows there!
➡️ 6. Yukatan peninsula is a big land that arised from the ocean when meteorite hit the Earth – this is why this land is totally flat (the highest peek of Yukatan peninsula is… 235 m above the sea 😳) and there are no rivers!
➡️ 7. Mexicans are sweet and loving people! 🥰
➡️ 8. It’s not a poor country!
I honestly fell in love with Mexico ❤
Appreciate your time
Do you appreciate your time? Do you value it? 🤔
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„Time is a currency you can only spend once” – remember about it! ⚠️
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There are plenty things that you can get back after losing it 😉 – any material thing of course but abstract things like relationship 💏, trust 🤝or confidence 💪 can be brought back to you too!
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Yet there are 2 things that you can’t get back once you lose it – health and time 😬. As much as with modern medicine and some cures you can get your health back in some cases, you will never get lost time back. 😔
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That’s why it is so important to choose wisely what you do with it but also to cherish your time, to appreciate the time you have for yourself 🙏.
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If you don’t feel like you belong somewhere (you’re bored and not learning anything at work 🤷♀️, you’re invisible and being ignored at a party 🙄, you’re pouring your heart out and not getting anything in return in a relationship 💔…) just drop it. Don’t waste your time on a job you dislike, on hobbies you’re not passionate about or on people who don’t care about you 😚.
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Cherish your time, this is the most expensive value/currency you’ve got 💰. Use it to spend it on something that matters to you, something that is important to you 😉.
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Also remember to save some time for yourself 🙏, to regenerate, to get your energy back. Stop putting others’ needs first – if you booked some time for yourself and somebody calls you asking for help or simply to spend some time with him/her just be open about your needs and say that you want and need to spend some time on your own ❤ (unless it’s really urgent and somebody really needs your help). There’s nothing bad about it! 😉
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Everybody needs and should have some me-time from time to time! This is the time where we truly relax, truly are ourselves. Respect that need and that time! 🙏
How to be HAPPY 