Lovely post. Would expand point 11 slightly by something like “don’t worry if you don’t know the difference between Star Wars and Star Trek. You’ll learn it pretty quickly from your sons đ “
1) Pay attention to the way a man loves his mother. That is the way he will love you.
2) You can do anything a man can do, including organic chemistry, unclogging toilets and assembling IKEA furniture.
3) Older women wear makeup so THEY can look like YOU. Less is more. A lot less is a lot more.
4) People will judge you by the way you look. It isnât fair, but itâs the way the world works. Keep that in mind as you pick your outfit in the morning.
5) Never let anyone do your thinking for you. There are far too many people with far too much invested in you believing what they believe.
6) Liberal arts grow your mind. Science and business keep you fed. You will need both.
“I am content in my later years. I have kept my good humor and take neither myself nor the next person seriously.”
Albert Einstein
Possibly the most important attribute of people who lived long, healthy, lives and still had sharp, vibrant minds and brainwave well into their nineties was their ability to laugh, especially to laugh at themselves. Researchers have found that humor stimulates at least three areas of the brain. The hypothalamus, the center that controls our basic drives; the releases endorphins, the body’s natural “feel-good” chemicals; the cortex, the thinking part, gets involved as you try to “get” the joke. And attention and memory are stimulated as you compare the joke to jokes you have heard in the past. These effects last for several hours after a good laugh. So smiling and laughing should be done frequently during the day.
Taking yourself less seriously
We’ve all know the tight-lipped sourpuss who takes everything with deathly seriousness and never laughs at anything. You’ll be happy to know that he or she has a much higher chance of death than the person who laughs frequently, especially at him- or herself. So take your laugh, but not yourself seriously!
Ways to help yourself see the lighter side of life:
Laugh at yourself. Share your embarrassing moments. The best way to take ourselves less seriously is talk about times when we took ourselves too seriously.
Attempt to laugh at situations rather than bemoan them. Look for the humor in a bad situation, the irony and absurdity of life. This will help improve your mood and the mood of those around you.
Surround yourself with reminders to lighten up. Keep a toy on your desk or in your car. Put up a funny poster in your office. Choose a computer screensaver that makes you laugh. Frame photos of you and your family or friends having fun.
Keep things in perspective. Many things in life are beyond our controlâparticularly the behavior of other people. While you might think taking the weight of the world on your shoulders is admirable, in the long run it’s unrealistic, unproductive, unhealthy, and even egotistical. Deal with your stress. Stress is a major obstacle to humor and laughter.
Pay attention to children and imitate them. They are the experts on playing, taking life lightly, and laughing. This one is so important I need to repeat it â
Pay attention to children and imitate them. They are the experts on playing, taking life lightly, and laughing. Research has shown that adults who interact with children on a daily basis live longer, healthier lives.
âTo be womanly is one thing, and one only –Â it is to be sensitive to man…; to be manly is to be sensitive to woman.â
Jane Harrison
Women often believe that they are more emotionally sensitive than men. Is that really so?
Celia Lashlie provides an intersting example of woman’s and man’s emotional sensitivity in her book “He’ll be OK: Growing gorgeous boys into good men”:
DIARIES
Girl Monday 17 November 2003
“Saw John in the evening and he was acting really strangely. I went shopping in the afternoon with the girls and I did turn up a bit late so I thought it might be that.
The bar was really crowded and loud so I suggested we go somewhere quieter to talk. He was still very subdued and distracted so I suggested we go somewhere nice to eat. All through the dinner he just didn’t seem himself; he hardly laughed and didn’t seem to be paying attention to me or to what I was saying.
I just knew that something was wrong.
He dropped me back home. I wondered if he was going to come in; he hesitated, but followed. I asked him again if there was something the matter but he just half shook his head and turned the television on.
After about 10 minutes of silence, I said I was going to bed. I put my arms around him and told him that I loved him deeply. He just gave a sigh, and a sad sort of smile…
I started to think that he was going to leave me, and that he had found someone else. I cried myself to sleep…””
Boy Monday 17 November 2003
“New Zealand lost to Wallabies [in rugby]…”
Is the girl in this example emotionally sensitive to the boy? Not 100% as she can’t make any sense out of all the non-verbal clues he is giving her. However she is trying very hard to understand him in her terms and she is trying very hard to communicate with him in her way, using words.
Is the boy in this example emotionally sensitive to the girl? Not 100% as he can’t make any sense of what is going in her mind and fully understand her, but he is trying very hard to please her: he follows all her suggestions, goes out to dinner with her etc. Is he emotionally available? Yes, he is. He keeps communicating with her, but in his own way, using non-verbal communication: sighs, smiles etc.
As Celia Lashlie points out, “Men are highly intuitive, and they appear to use their intuition as a communication tool… The challenge for women is to recognise the communication that is occuring in the silence and trust it, let it be, rather than insisting that everything be openly discussed…”
So, may be, instead of labelling each other non-sensitive, ’emotionally unavailable’ or ’emotionally demanding’, we just need to learn to look at things from different perspectives, respect each others feelings, views and communication styles without losing sense of humour?
Take the good with the bad smile when you’re sad love with all you’ve got remember what you had always forgive, never forget learn from mistakes and never regrets people can change things can go wrong just always remember life does go on.
“Like the keys on the piano, we have our own tone, our own note. And they sound fine by themself. But how much richer the music when they are all played together?”
This words reflect the essence of the blogosphere for me. Thanks to all of you, my dear fellow-bloggers, for making the blogosphere so much richer with your thoughts, words and images.
A few days ago, I got nominated for this interesting award, Illuminating Blogger Award, by Cristi M. Check out his blog for inspirational quotes and amazing photos from different parts of the world.
The rules for this award are:
1.Visit and thank the blogger who nominated you. Thanks, Cristi M. Much appreciated đ
2.Acknowledge that blogger on your blog and link back. Please visit Simple.Interesting
3. Share a random thing about yourself
Hm, for that one I’ll share one of my favourite cartoons that I liked a lot in my childhood. One character in particular reminded me myself a lot. Can you guess which one? Even though I never liked those squeeky furry creatures in real life, my childhood friends often called me ‘Little Mouse’. I wondered why. May be, this cartoon character reminded them me a bit as well đ
4. Select 5 or more nominees for the award, a link to their blogs in your post, and notify them on their blogs.
I came across a few interesting new blogs this year, which I want to nominate for that award. My nominees are :
I used to be a very âwordyâ person â and Iâm still a âwordyâ person to some extent as I often think and analyse problems while talking about them. Although it might work well for verbalised thinking, it often does not work well when it comes to communication and effective message transmission. As one of my wise friends once pointed out to me, often âless is moreâ in communication. Last week I came across a brilliant example of that point in Nigel Lattaâs book âThe Politically Incorrect Guide to Teenagersâ. He called it âa bad punctuation in communicationâ â apparently, a very COMMAn mistake, especially in inter-gender communication:
âPerhaps the worst offender is the humble comma⌠Whilst it might seem extreme, my advice would be to declare your home a comma-free zone. The comma will only bring trouble, and if you are wise you will have none of it. The rule of thumb is that anything which comes after the comma is nagging. Anything after a comma is simply going on about things.
The full-stop, on the other hand, is your friend. The full-stop can prevent many arguments. It can be used liberally with little fearâŚ
Mothers tend to have far more difficulty with this basic⌠Commas come naturally to mothers that they are often unable to tell when they are using them. Mothers also take more convincing about the need to limit the use of question marks. Mothers often thing the best follow-up for one question mark is another question mark. Fathers are more full-stop oriented.â
Bad Punctuation:
âNo, you canât go to your friends place tonight, and before you ask me why, let me tell you, because if you were to speak a little more nicely to me and your father, and show us just a modicum of common courtesy, then I might have let you go, but youâre the one who decided to be rude, so youâre the one who can stay home, and if you want someone to blame for that, then donât blame me, because Iâm not the one who doesnât think about anyone else in this family, although you probably donât even notice the fact that I do lots of things for you that I never get any thanks for, like your washing, and cooking all the meals, and keeping this place clean, and âŚ.â
How to fix that:
âNo, you canât go to your friendâs place tonight.â
“Mass media became one of the main sources of popular culture in modern capitalist society. Media, however, not only entertains and offers news to people, but also transfers the stereotypes, beliefs and values of the society to reproduce the existing order of social life.”
Lily Gataullina
Mass media exert extraordinarily powerful influences upon the way we think. For a number of years women has drawn attention to and fought against stereotypical and sexist portrayals of women in mass media. Unfortunately sexism against women remains, as pointed out in the recent documentary called Miss Representation:
What about men? Are they being treated nicer by the media?
As Jim Macnamara points out in âDissingâ men: the new gender warâ, âUntil recently, gender theorists and media researchers have argued or assumed that media representations of men are predominantly positive, or at least unproblematic. Men have allegedly been shown in mass media as powerful, dominant, heroic, successful, respected, independent and in other positive ways conducive to men and boys maintaining a healthy self-identity and self-esteem.
However, this view has come under challenge over the past few years. John Beynon, a Welsh cultural studies academic, examined how masculinity was portrayed in the British quality press including The Times, The Guardian and The Sunday Times over a three-year period from 1999-2001 and in books such as Susan Faludiâs 2000 best-seller Stiffed: The Betrayal of Modern Man. Beynon concluded in his 2002 book, Masculinities and Culture, that men and masculinity were overwhelmingly presented negatively and as âsomething dangerous to be contained, attacked, denigrated or ridiculed, little elseâ.
Canadian authors, Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young in a controversial 2001 book, Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture reported widespread examples of âlaughing at men, looking down on men, blaming men, de-humanising men, and demonising menâ in modern mass mediaâŚ
An extensive content analysis of mass media portrayals of men and male identity undertaken for a PhD completed in 2005 through the University of Western Sydney focusing on news, features, current affairs, talk shows and lifestyle media found that men are widely demonised, marginalised, trivialised and objectified in non-fiction media content that allegedly presents facts, reality and âtruthâ⌔
The most disturbing is the difference in the way some people react to negative portrayal of women and men, especially when it comes to depiction of violence – see a few examples provided below:
The negative portrayal of women and female identity is not only a matter of concern for women, but also for men. What is happening to women has an impact on men who live and work with them and who care about the health, welfare and happiness of their wives, partners, sisters, female friends and their daughters.
In the same way, the negative portrayal of men and male identity is not only a matter of concern for men, but also for women. What is happening to men has an impact on women who live and work with them and who care about the health, welfare and happiness of their husbands, partners, brothers, male friends and their sons.
Letâs free our minds from the negative stereotypes promoted by mass media and support each other in finding our true nature â who we really are.
Otrazhenie 