“People have become a slave to technology such that they allow it to control their awareness. As soon as a notification beeps, one reaches out to check it. If you practice this kind of a behaviour all day, you are just practising distraction."

Scenario: Okay let me focus on my work...The next moment beep beep!Huh? Alright first let me check my notification...Woah...A new follow request on my insta..let me check!And then you are totally off from your actual work.Action plan: TURN ON THE DO NOT DISTURB MODE OR BETTER SWITCH OFF YOUR PHONE WHILE YOU ARE DOING YOUR FULL FOCUS WORK.

Turn Off All The Notifications Of Your Phone! Will Ya?

Do you know that multitasking reduces your productivity up to 40%So focus on one task at a time. So that means no texting and doing your homework simultaneously!

NO MULTITASKING!

Your posture sends a signal to your brain as to how active or lazy you feel.So sit back straight while doing your work.A good posture creates an active mind and an active mind creates a productive YOU!

SIT BACK STRAIGHT! NO SLUGGISH POSITION.

Yup, just a morning exercise is not enough!Take 5 minutes of walking or stretching breaks in between your work.Sitting for long hours can lead to back pain which is not healthy.

EXERCISE AND GET MOVING

When you are working on something, instead of focusing on the hours put in, focus on what you want to get done.Get it?

FOCUS ON YOUR GOAL NOT ON THE HOURS

Books with better structures encourage us to think in sequence — the more we read, the more our brains are able to link cause and effect.You’ll be surprised at how much focused you get. Losing yourself in a book is the ultimate relaxation.

MEDITATE! 

Remember you master what you practice. Why are we so good at distraction? It's because we "practice distraction." So take these small action plans today and let's break this habit of distraction together!

The human attention span has been never been so low. A study conducted by Microsoft in 2015 suggests that the average human has an 8-seconds attention span. The number has shrunk over the years due…

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

health

Health

problemsolving

Problem Solving

timemanagement

Time Management

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

7 Proven Ways to Develop Razor-Sharp Focus

Emotions mostly originate in the limbic system and the most primitive part of the brain. On the other hand, feelings come from the frontal lobe. In other words, feelings result from abstract thinking. Emotions are innate and genetically determined as the result of evolution. Although it seems weird, there’s a maximum number of emotions we can have - there’s no maximum number of feelings we can have.We verbally define feelings, while we define emotions psychophysiologically. Feelings originate from our interpretation of events and sensations. Emotions come from a nervous system response.

Automatic vs. reason

Emotions are characterized by being quite immediate. They represent the body’s alarm and survival system. In order to have a feeling, it’s necessary to think about what has happened (value the emotion), reflect on how we behaved, and thus begin to elaborate on it psychologically.Because emotions come and go quickly, our body has another assessment and motivation mechanism: feelings. Feelings represent the remnants of emotions. One of the main differences between emotions and feelings is that a feeling develops little by little.

The speed in which they appear and change

The basic and universal emotions include joy, anger/rage, fear, surprise, and sadness. In this sense, surprise is a neutral emotion whose function is to help us stay alert and very aware of what’s going to happen.For example, sadness makes us distance ourselves from others. However, feelings are much more varied and slow. They lead us to reflect on what we can do to stop feeling uncomfortable or unpleasant.

Emotions are very powerful while feelings aren’t as intense

Finally, because there are differences between emotions and feelings, there are also different ways to manage these experiences. While emotions require disconnection (for example, to avoid increasing anger and losing control), feelings need to be heard and redirected. In any case, it’s possible to both regulate emotions and reinterpret feelings and these things help us have better psychological health.

Managing feelings versus emotions

Because there are differences between emotions and feelings, there are also different ways to manage these experiences. Read more here!

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

mentalhealth

Mental Health

Three Differences Between Emotions and Feelings

1. Your favorite diet foods2. Low in calories3. Blueberries Sources of fiber4. feels complete longer5. Full of vitamin c6. Source of antioxidant7. Gains power8. Promotes muscle fitness9. Lowers cholesterol degree10. Helps diabetic11. Loss belly fat12. <a href="https://megabloginfo.com/pomegranate-health-benefits/">Antioxidants</a><a href="https://megabloginfo.com/blueberries-for-weight-loss-benefits/">Blueberries nutrients in 150 grams</a><ul><li>85 calories</li><li>Fat only 0.5</li><li>Carbohydrates 81 grams</li><li>Sodium only 1.6mg</li><li> Vitamin C 15mg</li><li>Protein 1grams</li><li>Sugar 17grams</li><li>Fibers 4rams</li><li>Water 85%</li><li>114 grams potassium</li></ul>

Health benefits 

<ul><li>1. Your favorite diet foods </li><li>2. Low in calories </li><li>3. Blueberries Sources of fiber </li><li>4. feels complete longer </li><li>5. Full of vitamin c </li><li>6. Source of antioxidant </li><li>7. Gains power </li><li>8. Promotes muscle fitness </li><li>9. Lowers cholesterol degree </li><li>10. Helps diabetic </li><li>11. Loss belly fat</li></ul>Dietitians suggest fruits and vegetables are the keys to good health. <a href="https://megabloginfo.com/the-best-top-10-fruits-for-weight-loss/">But selecting good fruits for weight loss is challenging</a>.

blueberries Weight loss benefits

Do blueberries good for weight loss? benefits! Antioxidants, Anti-aging, Nutrients high fiber low calories, Hair memory growth

Does blueberries good for weight loss? benefits! Antioxidants, Anti-aging, Nutrients high fiber low calories, Hair memory growth, heart pros

food

Food

Are blueberries good for weight loss? health benefits - Health Fitness Blog

Be the interesting person in the room and share a fact or two. But before you do that, try not to say woah to any of these facts. Ready?

46 Interesting FACTS You Might Want To Know 

1. Hot water will turn into ice faster than cold water.2. The Mona Lisa has no eyebrows.3. The sentence, "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" uses every letter in the English language.4. The strongest muscle in the body is the tongue.5. Ant's take rest for around 8 Minutes in 12 hour period.6. "I Am" is the shortest complete sentence in the English language.7. Coca-Cola was originally green.8. The most common name in the world is Mohammed.9. When the moon is directly overhead, you will weigh slightly less.10. Camels have three eyelids to protect themselves from the blowing desert sand

11. There are only two words in the English language that have all five vowels in order: "abstemious" and "facetious."12. The name of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with.13. There are two credit cards for every person in the United States.14. TYPEWRITER is the longest word that can be made using the letters only on one row of the keyboard.15. Minus 40 degrees Celsius is exactly the same as minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit.16. Chocolate can kill dogs, as it contains theobromine, which affects their heart and nervous system.17. Women blink nearly twice as much as men!

18. You can't kill yourself by holding your breath.19. It is impossible to lick your elbow.20. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.21. People say "Bless you" when you sneeze because when you sneeze, your heart stops for a millisecond.22. It is physically impossible for pigs to look up into the sky23. The "sixth sick sheik's sixth sheep's sick" is said to be the toughest tongue twister in the English language.24."Rhythm" is the longest English word without a vowel.

25. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die.26. It is impossible to lick your elbow.27. 111,111,111 x 111,111,111 = 12,345,678,987,654,32128. A crocodile cannot stick its tongue out.29. A snail can sleep for three years.30. All polar bears are left handed.31. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by eliminating one olive from each salad served in first-class.32. Butterflies taste with their feet.33. Elephants are the only animals that can't jump.

34. In the last 4000 years, no new animals have been domesticated.35. On average, people fear spiders more than they do death.36. Stewardesses is the longest word typed with only the left hand.37. The ant always falls over on its right side when intoxicated.38. The electric chair was invented by a dentist.39. The human heart creates enough pressure when it pumps out to the body to squirt blood 30 feet.40. Rats multiply so quickly that in 18 months, two rats could have over million descendants.41. Wearing headphones for just an hour will increase the bacteria in your ear by 700 times

42. The cigarette lighter was invented before the match.43. Most lipstick contains fish scales.44. Like fingerprints, everyone's tongue print is different.45. 99% of people who read this will try to lick their elbow.46. 98% of people who read this, don't know, What is SEO?

Savit has most interesting unknown facts you should know

entertainment

Entertainment

🅸🅽🆃🅴🆁🅴🆂🆃🅸🅽🅶 🆄🅽🅺🅽🅾🆆🅽 🅵🅰🅲🆃🆂

Love, Death, and Friendship in a Time of PandemicBy Paula FindlenThe Italian poet and scholar Francesco Petrarch lived through the most deadly pandemic in recorded history, the Black Death of the 14th century, which saw up to 200 million die from plague across Eurasia and North Africa. Through the unique record of letters and other writings Petrarch left us, Paula Findlen explores how he chronicled, commemorated, and mourned his many loved ones who succumbed, and what he might be able to teach us today.

Petrarch's Plague

What will we remember of this year of COVID-19 and how will we recall it? In 1374, during the final year of a long and interesting life, the Italian humanist and poet Francesco Petrarch observed that his society had lived with “this plague, without equal in all the centuries", for over twenty-five years.1 His fortune and misfortune had been to outlast so many friends and family who perished before him, many of them from this devastating disease.

What will we remember?

Petrarch spoke on behalf of an entire generation of plague survivors, following the pandemic of 1346–53 and its periodic return. He skillfully wielded his pen to express his society’s collective grief in the most personal and meaningful ways, acknowledging the effect of so much pain and loss. In the immediate aftermath of the particularly devastating year of 1348, when plague engulfed the Italian peninsula, his good friend Giovanni Boccaccio in his Decameron sketched an indelible portrait of young Florentines fleeing their plague-ridden city to wait out the storm by telling one hundred tales.

Petrarch

For his part, Petrarch documented the experience of plague over several decades, probing its changing effects on his psyche. The Black Death sharpened his sense of the sweetness and fragility of life in the face of the endemic reality of disease that came in so many different forms. He had big questions and was in search of answers.

The Experience of Plague

“The year of 1348 left us alone and helpless", Petrarch declared at the very beginning of his Familiar Letters, his great project to share carefully selected versions of correspondence with friends. What was the meaning of life after so much death? Had it transformed him, or for that matter anyone, for the better? Could love and friendship survive plague? Petrarch’s questions allowed his readers to explore how they, too, felt about these things. He gave them permission to express such sentiments, indeed took up the burden, which was also his literary opportunity, to articulate the zeitgeist.

Alone and Helpless

Petrarch was famously a self-professed wanderer who rarely stayed in one place very long. He alternated between periods of self-imposed isolation in the countryside and full immersion in the life of cities, even during the worst outbreaks of disease. This mobility made him an especially unique observer of how plague became a pandemic. At the end of November 1347, one month after Genoese ships brought plague to Messina, Petrarch was in Genoa.

Petrarch the Wanderer

Disease spread rapidly by land and sea — through rats and fleas, though at the time it was believed to be a product of the corruption of the air. Petrarch’s awareness of the course of this pandemic comes through clearly in a letter written from Verona on April 7, 1348, when he refused the invitation of a Florentine relative to return to his native Tuscany, citing “the plague of this year which has trampled and destroyed the entire world, especially along the coast”.

Rats & Fleas

Returning several days later to Parma, still a plague-free zone, Petrarch learned that his relative the poet Franceschino degli Albizzi, on his way back from France, had died in the Ligurian port of Savona. Petrarch cursed the toll that “this pestilential year” was now exacting.4 He understood that the plague was spreading, yet perhaps this was the first time that the escalating mortality struck close to home. “I had not considered the possibility of his being about to die". Plague now touched him personally.

"This Pestilential Year"

As the year progressed, Petrarch felt increasingly surrounded by fear, sorrow, and terror. Death came suddenly and repeatedly. In June, a friend who came to dinner was dead by morning, followed by the rest of the family in a matter of days. In the poem “To Himself”, an effort to capture the strangeness of this experience, Petrarch imagined a future that would not understand how awful it had been to be alive in “a city full of funerals” and empty homes.

"A City full of Funerals"

Petrarch talked of retreating from the plague-infested cities with his closest friends. After bandits attacked two of them as they traveled from France into Italy, murdering one, nothing came of it. Perhaps the survivors recognized the folly of an idealistic plan that simply did not fit their dispersed circumstances. In July 1348, Petrarch’s most important patron, Cardinal Giovanni Colonna, died of plague, along with many members of this distinguished Roman family whom he served in Avignon. The poet was now out of a job, more restless and unmoored than ever.

Out of Job

Petrarch deeply mourned the “absence of friends".7 Friendship was his joy and his sorrow. He compensated for this loss by writing eloquent letters to the living as well as rereading his favorite missives to the deceased, preparing the best ones for publication. In an era of almost instantaneous communication via email, phone, and social media, it is easy to forget how important correspondence was as a technology to bridge social distance. Letters, as Petrarch’s ancient Roman hero Cicero famously declared, made the absent present.

"Absence of Friends"

The act of correspondence could also bring anguish. Petrarch worried about whether friends were still alive if they did not respond quickly. “Free me from these fears as soon as possible by a letter from you", Petrarch encouraged one of his closest friends, nicknamed Socrates (the Flemish Benedictine monk and cantor Ludwig van Kempen), in September 1348.9 He fretted that “the contagiousness of the recurring plague as well as the unhealthy air” might precipitate another untimely death. Communication may not have been swift but it was nonetheless effective and, ultimately, reassuring.

Lack of Communication

At the end of this awful year, Petrarch predicted that anyone who escaped the first assault should prepare for the viciousness of plague’s return. This was an astute and ultimately accurate observation. During the following year, Petrarch continued to enumerate plague victims as well as the cumulative effects of quarantine and depopulation. He wrote a poem commemorating the tragic death of Laura, a woman he had known and loved in southern France, only to discover that the person to which he’d sent the poem, the Tuscan poet Sennuccio del Bene, later died of plague as well.

The Death of Laura

This made Petrarch wonder if his words bore the contagion. Another sonnet was required. The act of writing, which had initially been impossibly painful, began to elevate his spirits. Life had become cruel and death unrelenting but he compensated by taking pen in hand — the only useful weapon he had besides prayer and the one he preferred. Others advised flight and proposed temporary public health measures such as quarantine, but Petrarch seems to have felt that he might think and write his way through this pandemic.

Writing & Prayers

Everywhere he traveled, Petrarch observed the absence of people in the cities, the fields that lay fallow in the countryside, the disquiet of this “afflicted and nearly deserted world". By March 1349, he found himself in Padua. He was dining with the bishop one evening when two monks arrived with reports of a plague-ridden French monastery. The prior had shamefully fled and all but one of the thirty-five remaining monks were dead. This was how Petrarch discovered that his younger brother Gherardo, now celebrated for his courage and caring, was the sole survivor of this pestilential holocaust.

A Deserted World

The hermitage in Méounes-lès-Montrieux, which Petrarch visited in 1347 and wrote about in his work On Religious Leisure still exists today. He immediately wrote Gherardo to express fraternal pride in having a plague hero in the family. In October 1350, Petrarch moved on to Florence and it was here that he first met Boccaccio. By this time the city was no longer the epicenter of the pandemic, but its effects were still tangible, like a raw wound, or more accurately a lanced yet still pustulating bubo, that had not yet healed. Boccaccio was in the midst of drafting the Decameron.

Second Pandemic

Although there is no record of the two writers discussing how to write about plague, we do know that Boccaccio avidly consumed Petrarch’s poetry and prose, copying lengthy passages in his notebooks at many different moments throughout a long friendship that lasted until their deaths one year apart. It was Petrarch’s early plague writing that spurred Boccaccio to complete his own take on how 1348 became the year their world changed.

Petrarch & Boccaccio

Around 1351, Petrarch began to memorialize those whom he loved and lost by inscribing his recollections of them on the pages of a much-treasured possession — his copy of Virgil’s works adorned with a beautiful frontispiece by the Sienese painter Simone Martini. He began this practice of commemoration by recording the death — from three years earlier, in 1348 — of his beloved Laura, the subject of so many of his poems. Petrarch resolved to use every ounce of his eloquence to make her eternally present in his poetry but also in his Virgil.

Recording the Death

On its flyleaf, he inscribed these unforgettable words: “I decided to write down the harsh memory of this painful loss, and I did so, I suppose, with a certain bitter sweetness, in the very place that so often passes before my eyes". He did not want to forget the searing pain of this moment that awakened his soul and sharpened his consciousness of the passage of time. Boccaccio was among Petrarch’s friends who wondered if Laura ever existed outside of his poetic imagination, but he never questioned Petrarch’s determination to remember that year as transformative.

Laura

Among the other inscriptions in Petrarch’s Virgil — now held by the Ambrosian Library in Milan — is notice of the death of his twenty-four-year-old son Giovanni on July 10, 1361 in Milan, “in that publicly ruinous though unusual outbreak of plague, one that found and fell upon that city, which up to that point had been immune to such evils". Spared the devastation of the first wave of plague, Milan — where Petrarch had been living since 1353 — became the focal point of a second pandemic in 1359–63. By 1361, Petrarch had left for Padua, but his son stubbornly chose to remain behind.

Milan Focal Point

In 1361, after his son’s death, Petrarch once again took up his pen. He began his Letters of Old Age, his second collection of correspondence, with a letter to a Florentine friend Francesco Nelli bemoaning the loss of his beloved friend Socrates. Socrates had been the person who informed Petrarch of Laura’s passing, and Petrarch added a note in his copy of Virgil about this latest plague death to pierce his heart. In his Letters of Old Age, he wrote: “I had complained that the year 1348 of our era had deprived me of nearly every consolation in life because of my friends’ deaths.

Letters of Old Age

Now what shall I do in the sixty-first year of this century?”12 Petrarch observed that the second pandemic was worse, nearly emptying out Milan and many other cities. He was now determined to write in a different voice, no longer lamenting but actively combatting fortune’s adversity. During this second pandemic, Petrarch launched a fierce critique of the role that astrologers played in explaining plague’s return and predicting its course. He considered their self-proclaimed truths to be largely accidental: “Why do you feign futile prophecies after the fact or call chance truths?”

The Role of Astrologers

He chastised friends and patrons who revisited their horoscopes, considering them a false science predicated on the misuse of astronomical data. As plague spread through the urban centres, a physician friend encouraged the poet to flee to the country air of Lake Maggiore, but Petrarch refused to succumb to terror. Remaining in cities, he began to spend the bulk of his time between Padua and Venice. When plague reached the Venetian Republic, friends renewed their entreaties, leading Petrarch to comment: “it has very often happened that a flight from death is a flight to death".

A Flight from Death

Boccaccio came to visit and decided not to tell him of their mutual friend Nelli’s demise, leaving Petrarch to discover his most recent loss when letters returned, unopened. Plague returned to Florence in the summer of 1363. In this heightened atmosphere of renewed anxiety, Petrarch redoubled his criticisms of astrologers who deluded the living with predictions of when the latest pandemic would end. An anxious populace hung on their every word. “We do not know what is happening in the heavens", he fumed in a letter to Boccaccio in September, “but impudently and rashly they profess to know".

The Return of the Plague

A pandemic was a business opportunity for astrologers who peddled their words to “parched minds and thirsty ears". Petrarch was hardly alone in pointing out that the astrologers' conclusions had no basis in astronomical data or the spread of disease. They sold false hope and certainty in the marketplace. Petrarch longed for a more reasoned response to pandemic with better tools than the science of the stars.

The Science of Stars

What then of medicine? Petrarch was famously skeptical about physicians who claimed too much certainty and authority. He believed that physicians needed to acknowledge their own ignorance as a first step towards knowing anything. Ignorance itself was “pestiferous”, a disease to be rooted out and eradicated even if there was no vaccine. While professing great respect for the art of healing, he had no patience with what he slyly dubbed “pestilential incompetence” in his Invectives against the Physician. Plague alone did not reveal medicine’s failure but it brought its limits into stark relief.

No Vaccine

Petrarch befriended some of the most famous physicians of his age and stubbornly debated their advice regarding his own health as he aged. “When today I see young and healthy doctors falling ill and dying everywhere, what do you tell others to hope for?”Petrarch expressed this sentiment in a letter to the famous Paduan physician and inventor Giovanni Dondi upon hearing of the premature death of the Florentine physician Tommaso del Garbo in 1370. (Cont. go to link to read full book))

Death Everywhere

The Italian poet and scholar Francesco Petrarch lived through the most deadly pandemic in recorded history, the Black Death of the 14th century, which saw up to 200 million die from plague across Eurasia and North Africa. Through the unique record of letters and other writings Petrarch left us, Paula Findlen explores how he chronicled, commemorated, and mourned his many loved ones who succumbed, and what he might be able to teach us today.

communication

Communication

Petrarch's Plague: Love, Death, and Friendship in a Time of Pandemic


Medieval monks had a terrible time concentrating. And concentration was their lifelong work! Their tech was obviously different from ours. But their anxiety about distraction was not. They complained about being overloaded with information, and about how, even once you finally settled on something to read, it was easy to get bored and turn to something else. They were frustrated by their desire to stare out of the window, or to constantly check on the time (in their case, with the Sun as their clock), or to think about food or sex when they were supposed to be thinking about God.

Concentration

They even worried about getting distracted in their dreams. Sometimes they accused demons of making their minds wander. Sometimes they blamed the body’s base instincts. But the mind was the root problem: it is an inherently jumpy thing. John Cassian, whose thoughts about thinking influenced centuries of monks, knew this problem all too well. He complained that the mind ‘seems driven by random incursions’. It ‘wanders around like it were drunk’. It would think about something else while it prayed and sang.

Demons

It would meander into its future plans or past regrets in the middle of its reading. It couldn’t even stay focused on its own entertainment – let alone the difficult ideas that called for serious concentration. That was in the late 420s. If John Cassian had seen a smartphone, he’d have forecast our cognitive crisis in a heartbeat.

John Cassian

But, instead, his mind lay elsewhere. Cassian was writing at a time when Christian monastic communities were beginning to boom in Europe and the Mediterranean. A century earlier, ascetics had mostly lived in isolation. And the new enthusiasm for communal enterprises resulted in a new enthusiasm for monastic planning. These innovative social spaces were assumed to function most optimally when monks had guidelines about how to do their jobs.

Monastic Communities

Their job, more than anything else, was to focus on divine communication: to read, to pray and sing, and to work to understand God, in order to improve the health of their souls and the souls of the people who supported them. For these monks, the meditating mind wasn’t supposed to be at ease. It was supposed to be energised. Their favourite words for describing concentration stemmed from the Latin tenere, to hold tight to something. The ideal was a mens intentus, a mind that was always and actively reaching out to its target.

Divine Communication

And doing that successfully meant taking the weaknesses of their bodies and brains seriously, and to work hard at making them behave. Some of these strategies were tough. Renunciation, for instance. Monks and nuns were supposed to give up the things that most people loved – families, properties, businesses, day-to-day drama – not only to erode their sense of individual entitlement but also to ensure that they wouldn’t be preoccupied by that stuff in their professional lives of prayer. When the mind wanders, the monastic theorists observed, it usually veers off into recent events.

Renunciation Strategies

Cut back your commitments to serious stuff, and you’ll have fewer thoughts competing for your attention. Restraint had to work on a physiological level, too. There were many theories in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages about the connection between the mind and body. Most Christians agreed that the body was a needy creature whose bottomless appetite for food, sex and comfort held back the mind from what mattered most. That didn’t mean that the body must be rejected, only that it needed tough love.

Mind & Body

For all monks and nuns, since the very start of monasticism in the 4th century, this meant a moderate diet and no sex. Many of them also added regular manual labour to the regimen. They found it easier to concentrate when their bodies were moving, whether they were baking or farming or weaving. There were also solutions that might strike people today as strange, which depended on imaginary pictures. Part of monastic education involved learning how to form cartoonish cognitive figures, to help sharpen one’s mnemonic and meditative skills.

Moderate Diet and No Sex

The mind loves stimuli such as colour, gore, sex, violence, noise and wild gesticulations. The challenge was to accept its delights and preferences, in order to take advantage of them. Authors and artists might do some of the legwork here, by writing vivid narratives or sculpting grotesque figures that embodied the ideas they wanted to communicate. But if a nun wanted to really learn something she’d read or heard, she would do this work herself, by rendering the material as a series of bizarre animations in her mind.

Mind Animations

The weirder the mnemonic devices the better – strangeness would make them easier to retrieve, and more captivating to think with when she ‘returned’ to look them over. Say that you wanted to learn the sequence of the zodiac. Thomas Bradwardine (a 14th-century university master, theologian and advisor to Edward III of England) suggests that you imagine a gleaming white ram with golden horns, kicking a bright red bull in the testicles. While the bull bleeds profusely, imagine that there’s a woman in front of it, giving birth to twins, in a gory labour that seems to split her up to her chest.

Thomas Bradwardine 

As her twins burst forth, they’re playing with an awful red crab, which is pinching them and making them cry. And so on. A more advanced method for concentrating was to build elaborate mental structures in the course of reading and thinking. Nuns, monks, preachers and the people they educated were always encouraged to visualise the material they were processing.

Concentrating Methods

A branchy tree or a finely feathered angel – or in the case of Hugh of St Victor (who wrote a vivid little guide to this strategy in the 12th century), a multilevel ark in the heart of the cosmos – could become the template for dividing complex material into an ordered system. The images might closely correspond to the substance of an idea. Hugh, for example, imagined a column rising out of his ark that stood for the tree of life in paradise, which as it ascended linked the earth on the ark to the generations past, and on to the vault of the heavens.

Substances of Ideas

Or instead, the images might only be organisational placeholders, where a tree representing a text or topic (say, ‘Natural Law’) could have eight branches and eight fruits on each branch, representing 64 different ideas clustered into eight larger concepts. The point wasn’t to paint these pictures on parchment. It was to give the mind something to draw, to indulge its appetite for aesthetically interesting forms while sorting its ideas into some logical structure. I teach medieval cognitive techniques to college freshmen, and this last one is by far their favourite.

"Natural Law"

Constructing complex mental apparatuses gives them a way to organise – and, in the process, analyse – material they need to learn for other classes. The process also keeps their minds occupied with something that feels palpable and riveting. Concentration and critical thinking, in this mode, feel less like a slog and more like a game. But caveat cogitator: the problem of concentration is recursive. Any strategy for sidestepping distraction calls for strategies on sidestepping distraction.

"Caveat Cogitator"

When Cassian made one of his simplest recommendations – repeat a psalm over and over, to keep your brain reined in – he knew what he was going to hear next. ‘How can we stay fixated on that verse?’ the monks would ask. Distraction is an old problem, and so is the fantasy that it can be dodged once and for all. There were just as many exciting things to think about 1,600 years ago as there are now. Sometimes it boggled the mind.

Distraction vs Fantasy

Let’s get medieval, and learn from the great tools for concentration practised by the nuns and monks of the Middle Ages

How to reduce digital distractions: advice from medieval monks | Aeon Ideas

There’s no doubt that today’s modern lifestyle can be stressful. Between work, family, and social obligations, it can be hard to make time for yourself. But it’s important to find the time.Relaxing can help keep you healthy, in both your body and mind, helping you recover from the everyday stresses that life throws at you. Luckily, no matter how busy you are, it’s simple to learn how to create time for chilling and also how to best relax.If you can find five minutes of your day for yourself, you can easily slip in a simple relaxation strategy. Here are some easy ways to help relax:

Breathing exercises<a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/box-breathing"> </a>are one of the simplest relaxation strategies, and can effectively calm your stressed-out body and mind anywhere at any time. Sit or lay down in a quiet and safe place such as on your bed or the floor in your home and put one of your hands on your belly. Breathe in to a slow count of three, and then breathe out to the same slow count of three. Feel your belly rise and fall as you breathe in and out. Repeat five times, or as long as you need to feel relaxed.

#1. Breathe it out. 

When we feel mentally stressed, we often feel physically stressed as well. Releasing any physical tension can help relieve stress in your body and mind. Lay on a soft surface, such as your bed, a carpet, or a yoga mat. Tense up one part of your body at a time, and then slowly release your muscles. As you do this, notice how your body sensations change. Many people start either with the muscles in their face or those their toes, and then work their way through the muscles across their bodies to the opposite end.

#2. Release physical tension. 

Getting things off your mind by writing them down may help you relax. When you feel stressed, take a few minutes to write down some short notes about how you’re feeling or how your day is going. You might do this in a notebook or in a notes app on your smartphone. Don’t worry about being poetic or spelling everything correctly. Just focus on expressing yourself to help release some of your stress.

#3. Write down your thoughts. 

Making a list about what you’re grateful for can help some people feel relaxed. Experts say that when we’re stressed, we tend to focus on the negative parts of life rather than the positive. Thinking about the positive parts of your life and writing them down may help you chill out. Try to think of three good things that happened to you today and write them down, even if they’re small things like getting to work on time or eating a delicious lunch.

#4. Make a list. 

Have you ever heard the expression “find your happy place”? Sit in a quiet and safe place, such as your bedroom, and begin to think about a place in the world where you feel most calm. Close your eyes and imagine all the details linked to that place: the sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile feelings. For example, if you think of the beach, you might imagine calm waves, the sound of children playing in the sand, the smell of sunscreen, the taste of cool ice cream and the feel of gritty sand under your feet. The more you get into your visualization, the more you can relax.

#5. Visualize your calm. 

Spending just a few minutes in nature when you feel stressed may help you relax. When you’re feeling stressed, take a step outside and go for a short walk, or simply sit in nature. But you don’t necessarily need to be in nature to feel its stress-reducing effects. Scientists have found that simply looking at images of nature with greenery for five minutes on a computer screen can help calm you down. So, thanks to technology, even people living and working in big cities far from nature can still experience its calming effects.

#6. Connect to nature. 

Learning how to relax can prevent a host of stress-related ailments from headaches and fatigue to irritability and poor performance at work or school. Techniques such as breathing, visualization, and enjoying nature are just a few effective ways to relax that you can do today.

mindfulness

Mindfulness

How to Relax: Easy Ways to Relax, Recharge, and Vanquish Stress

W hen did you feel so lonely last time? Have you asked Why? Did you feel so.. if no! Ask yourself why? If, Yes then Good! You are not the only one who is feeling lonely or lonely. Everyone feels that way from time to time, from breaking up to losing someone through death. And sometimes, it is also ok! To have loneliness, thoughts. It only gets worse when you have it for too long.

Our biggest problem that is making us feel lonely is the Internet and Covid 19. The Internet made us more isolated than ever and the Japanese have their own term called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFgWy2ifX5s">Hikikomori </a> . Where one decides to isolate themselves completely from the world and it is a serious issue there.

More you stay! connect with the people who we don't know virtually, more you feel lonely. We are happy and more alive when we meet someone physically than virtually we can be friends with anyone virtually. But, it lacks the real connection that we could have through face-to-face interaction.

1. Accept this, when you feel, your lonely, you will feel it :-  You won't feel until you feel so that means I won't feel lonely if I don't. You are feeling lonely because you think you are that is why? You are feeling. My dad is no more and it totally depends on me to feel good or bad.  You can still, feel lonely even when you're with someone you love the most. The main thing is I don't feel it in the first place and that is why? I never feel lonely. Because once you start the circle will continue as a never-ending process.

2. Appreciate this life you have :- We often think happiness exists outside and that is not true. Happiness is created by your thoughts, not the things you have. When you appreciate the things you have you love yourself more and once you love yourself more you feel more alive and peaceful. You may have everything you need still you will empty. So, start appreciating the things you have.

3. Loneliness and Depression are interconnected :- Loneliness and Depression are two sides of a coin. If, one starts another starts too, the point is to feel alive each and be grateful for the things we have. When we stay alone we learn more about ourselves as I say it  "Being alone is not a curse, by being alone you get a chance to know yourself better " let this loneliness feeling be your guiding light towards new you not towards self-destruction of your own life.

5.  What loneliness teach you? :-  It taught me many things in my life. I feel happier alone than with someone it makes you love yourself even more. Accepting that you can still be happy being alone is nothing wrong. Every great human that lived, was the lonely person they felt being more alone gave them the opportunity to come up with a better idea than being in a crowd.

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

How to overcome loneliness?

“Why are you setting yourself up to fail when there is so many people in this world already trying to do that for you?”

<ul><li class="ql-align-justify">Prioritize yourself in the morning, then focus fully on what you do.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">Be patient and empathetic with your team.</li><li class="ql-align-justify">To figure out your mission and vision you should start with a purpose to help some group.</li></ul>

Key Insights (I)

<ul><li>Authenticity has to remain.</li><li>We shouldn’t judge someone who puts something good in the world.</li><li>Be prepared for judgment.</li></ul>

Key Insights (II)

<ul><li>Ask yourself why you are doing what you are doing. </li><li>Your decisions have to be mission-led and not profit-led.</li><li>Powerful why’s will keep ourselves doing what we know is good for us. </li></ul>

Key Insights (III)

<ul><li>Showing up is what makes us go, not motivation.</li><li>When you feel like wanting to fail to do something, do the thing anyway that day; but give yourself permission to fail the next if you’re feeling the same. </li><li>Choose consistency rather than intensity. </li></ul>

Key Insights (IV)

<ul><li>Start with a why and remember it when you’re in the process. </li><li>Ask yourself all your why’s.</li><li>Treat your team like people.</li></ul>

Key Insights (V)

<ol><li>Find your why.</li><li>Drop all the excuses behind your why.</li><li>Find the time to execute your why.</li></ol>

How To Do Anything 

It introduced me the struggle of having 2 businesses at the same time 

‎"There's one of you in this world, you're in this world for a very short period of time, do something magical with it" - Krissy Cela

In this weeks episode of Deep Dive Ali sits down for a chat with Krissy Cela. Krissy first started posting fitness videos on Instagram and YouTube in 2017 while study…

moneyandinvestments

Money & Investments

exerciseandfitness

Exercise & Fitness

‎Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal: E8 Krissy Cela On Finding Your Vision, Mission and Why en Apple Podcasts

Find 100+ Facts about Health - Curated from popular Videos, Podcasts, Books, Guides & Articles - Genuine Insights from like-minded Users like You!

7 Proven Ways to Develop Razor-Sharp Focus

Three Differences Between Emotions and Feelings

Are blueberries good for weight loss? health benefits - Health Fitness Blog

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Petrarch's Plague: Love, Death, and Friendship in a Time of Pandemic

How to reduce digital distractions: advice from medieval monks | Aeon Ideas

How to Relax: Easy Ways to Relax, Recharge, and Vanquish Stress

How to overcome loneliness?

‎Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal: E8 Krissy Cela On Finding Your Vision, Mission and Why en Apple Podcasts

How to get rid of addiction?

It's time to
Read like a Pro.

7 Proven Ways to Develop Razor-Sharp Focus

Three Differences Between Emotions and Feelings

Are blueberries good for weight loss? health benefits - Health Fitness Blog

🅸🅽🆃🅴🆁🅴🆂🆃🅸🅽🅶 🆄🅽🅺🅽🅾🆆🅽 🅵🅰🅲🆃🆂

Petrarch's Plague: Love, Death, and Friendship in a Time of Pandemic

How to reduce digital distractions: advice from medieval monks | Aeon Ideas

How to Relax: Easy Ways to Relax, Recharge, and Vanquish Stress

How to overcome loneliness?

‎Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal: E8 Krissy Cela On Finding Your Vision, Mission and Why en Apple Podcasts

How to get rid of addiction?

It's time to Read like a Pro.

It's time to
Read like a Pro.