How Colors Affect Our Emotions
Although it’s pretty easy to appreciate the beauty and enrichment that color brings to our lives, we often underestimate its power. Colors impact our emotions, convey messages, and play a significant role in shaping our perceptions and experiences. Understanding the psychology behind colors empowers us to make informed choices in various aspects of life, and it can even help us lift our mood!
28 Quotes About Relationships
Luckily, relationships are a popular topic of interest among some of the world’s greatest thinkers, which means we have a near-limitless supply of quotes that can help us understand how we’re feeling and how to express those feelings to others. Here is a collection of some unique and compelling relationship quotes that we can turn to when we’re struggling to articulate these sentiments for ourselves.
27 Positive Quotes for Success
Becoming successful can mean different things to different people—creating wealth, achieving fame, building a business, reaching victory, or even finding contentment. Whatever success means to you, reading quotes from people who have achieved success may inspire and motivate you in your own quest for success. Read on to see if any of these quotes can help you achieve success in your life.
How to Improve Your Mental Health
Working toward better mental health is an essential component of leading a happy, productive life. If someone has good mental health, it does not necessarily mean that they’re happy all of the time—it means they have the tools and mindset to see them through the hard times. Bad things may happen in our lives but learning to be thoughtful, insightful, and resourceful can help us move through them more easily.
How to Make a Self-Help Plan
It’s normal to experience hardships in life, and we sometimes let these hardships get us down. Luckily, there are many aspects of our lives that are within our control. Self-help tools can often deepen self-awareness, help you cope with life in healthier ways, and improve your emotional and mental health. Self-help also offers advice and strategies to better understand how your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors contribute to your mental health and well-being.
Inspirational Quotes for Your Self-Care Journey
Every now and then, we may feel the need for a sign, a kind gesture, or maybe just some words of wisdom. Quotes hold power. They’re a form of storytelling. They’re often spoken from the heart. And (arguably) most importantly, they offer a unique perspective from one person’s life that just may impact several others out there. If you happen to be stressed, it may be a good time for some tender loving self-care. Here are some encouraging words that may help you on your self-care journey.
How to Assess Your Personal Needs
One method that can help us to address and identify our needs is to conduct a personal needs assessment. A personal needs assessment involves a thorough evaluation of your current skills, resources, interests, and areas for improvement. By identifying these key elements, you can gain a clearer understanding of where you stand and what you need to focus on.
How to Make a Wish List
A wish list is a tool to keep track of what you want. These lists are often organized by theme–potential travel destinations, hair care products, and what you’re looking for in your next apartment. You can keep a wish list in many formats–in a notebook, on an app, or as a collage. The list can also keep wishes (or goals) at the forefront of your mind so you’re motivated to keep working toward them.
5 Tips for Better Work-Life Balance
Work-life balance is the amount of time you spend doing your job versus the amount of time that you spend at home—home time is, for example, time spent with friends, family, and pursuing your personal interests. When your work-life balance is off-center, there can be a myriad of mental, physical, and emotional problems that arise. Check out this article for tips and benefits on balancing your work and home life.
55 Positive Morning Affirmations to Start the Day Right
Morning affirmations are phrases or statements that we say to ourselves to focus our minds on more positive outcomes. Repeating positive affirmations can help shift our mindset in ways that help us more easily manifest the life we want. Research on related topics like optimism, positive thinking, and growth mindset further support the idea that shifting our thinking in positive ways is good for us, especially since we tend to have a negativity bias.
6 Benefits of Healthy Eating
Healthy eating, or good nutrition, is simply eating adequate, well-balanced meals to support your body’s needs. At the heart of healthy eating is doing what helps you feel well. A healthy diet does not have to look a particular way and can accommodate many types of palates, dietary restrictions, and lifestyles. What matters is figuring out what foods help you feel like your best self.
5 Ways to Relax and Unwind
In American culture, relaxation is considered a luxury, something only those privileged enough to have sufficient resources get to enjoy. However, relaxation is actually an important contributor to our mental and physical health. When we don’t allow ourselves to take time to unwind, the harmful effects of daily stressors begin to accumulate and can contribute to psychological and physical maladies. Relaxing gives our bodies and minds a chance to recover from stress and allows us to live our best lives.
4 Self-Healing Techniques
We all have challenges that we need to heal from. Some of us have emotional challenges, others of us have physical challenges, and some of us have both. Luckily, we actually have a lot of power to make positive changes to our well-being. We can shift the way we think and how we treat our bodies. As a result of these efforts, we can begin to heal and recover from the hardships we’ve experienced.
An Introduction to Spirituality
Our definitions of spirituality usually revolve around some element of seeking purpose and meaning, a sense of peace or positive connections with the world, and feeling connected to a larger life force or power greater than oneself. People often turn to spirituality for support with the things that most challenge them. There may be distinct benefits from actively engaging in spiritual practices, using one’s spirituality to cope with life’s difficulties, and being affiliated with a religious institution.
The Benefits of Presence
How can we define presence? On one level, we can think about presence as the awareness of the moment as it unfolds. What we’re feeling, noticing, and thinking, and what’s happening around us—it’s awareness of these things that constitutes presence. Presence to our own experience is sometimes simple and straightforward, but it’s often effortful, requiring intentionality and deliberate focus.
How to Attain Serenity in Your Life
Serenity is a sense of inner peace that is not subject to the whims of the outside world. For people who describe themselves as having had or are currently experiencing a sense of serenity, this state of being usually follows from having had a spiritual awakening of some kind. Active prayer and meditation, use of other mindfulness skills, coping mechanisms, and in particular the ability to accept life as it comes, letting go of and detaching from one’s negative emotions, are all key components of reaching a state of serenity.
15 Amazing Benefits of Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a mental state characterized by focused attention, heightened awareness, and an open and non-judgmental disposition toward your thoughts and experiences in the present moment. The practice of mindfulness encourages you to observe your thoughts and feelings without attachment or judgment, fostering a greater sense of clarity, calmness, and overall well-being.
How to Cultivate Equanimity
Equanimity is a state of mental and emotional stability, calmness, and composure, especially in challenging situations. It’s maintaining a balanced and nonreactive mindset, regardless of external circumstances or internal thoughts and feelings. People who possess equanimity can face adversity with clarity, focus, and resilience, without being overwhelmed by emotions like fear, anger, or anxiety.
6 Ways to Cultivate Inner Wisdom
Wisdom isn’t so easy to define. Researchers still debate its meaning and haven’t agreed on a universal definition. But most would agree that wisdom goes beyond knowledge or information. It involves a grasp of life's complexities, nuances, and interconnectedness. It's the ability to see the bigger picture, the underlying patterns, and the consequences of choices.
How to Practice Self-Acceptance
Self-acceptance is an act of embracing all of our attributes, whether mental or physical, and positive or negative, exactly as they are. From time to time, we may struggle to accept certain qualities that we have. It's not always easy to find ways to extend compassion to ourselves. Nevertheless, accepting who we are remains vital for our happiness and overall well-being.