Words of Wisdom: Mental Flexibility to Help You Thrive in Difficult Times

Contemplation by Professor Michele Lynn Pruitt

Today we face many changes, different ways of doing our daily chores, and huge differences in the way we purchase our necessities in life.

It was interesting to see the changes in just our phone habits in the course of a few short years: home phones to flip phones to iphones. Now our phones seem a part of us in ways never thought 20 years ago.

We wait in line to buy food, wear masks, don’t hug or shake hands and cannot see smiles.

Our best choice is to be flexible in this situation in order to survive.

Flexible, independent thinking will help navigate these uncertain times. Listening, learning, and making decisions that are best for ourselves is the way to make it.

Anything Goes On Sunday: The Devil Is A Handsome Man

This poem is dedicated to anybody who has fallen in love with a narcissistic person. Let the pain go away. The deceiver will never stop deceiving!

This is a paradox.

-you are a bad man-

You lie like you breathe You cheat and deceive

Your smiles and your jokes Are in fact just a cloak

The sparkle in your eyes As you take pleasure in my cries

And the way you rejoice Hearing the pain in my voice

Made me understand That you ARE a bad man

Under that polished facade, You believe you’re a god

I’m tired of your neglect And of your disrespect

So I pen these words Hoping you’ve heard

That at the end of the day Those games that you play

Maybe you are fun But my dear I am done!

Leslie Bertrand ©Paradoxical Phoenix

Learning Wednesday: Science Knowledge And Wisdom

Learning science, practicing it, understanding it, loving it! I also cherish many scientists who have given us the pleasure of expanding our way of living and our mental horizons and who have worked tirelessly to better humanity. So here there are some quotes from one of the so many scientists that I deeply admire.

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” — Isaac Asimov

“I am not a speed reader. I am a speed understander.” — Isaac Asimov ”

“There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.” — Isaac Asimov

“Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know – and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance .” — Isaac Asimov

One of my Many Pet Peeves: Troop vs Trooper or Soldier Part 1

English is not my native language, Spanish is. I also speak Italian, Portuguese and I am fluent one hundred percent in all these languages. But I admit that I make typos and several mistakes when I write in my non-native languages, but I always try to learn and speak better, even in Spanish and I am always willing to learn from my mistakes. That is why I am a serious critic of misconduct in expressions in the languages mentioned above.

So here it goes, my pet peeve of today: Troop VS Trooper

I often hear reporters on American TV channels talking about “troops”. The first time when I listened to that word being misused was when the war in Afghanistan was being announced by different TV reporters back in October 2001.

They were mentioning the amount of “troops” that President George Bush was sending. I was astonished! They said ten thousand of them were parting from the USA. So I started to make my own calculations and said well, if a troop has a minimum of 3 to 5 platoons;

One platoon has 2 to 4 squads, and each squad has 10 to 14 troopers or soldiers, then a platoon has about 50 soldiers, then a troop has a minimum of 250 men. If President George Bush was sending 10,000 troops then he was sending about 2, 500,000 (two and a half million) soldiers or troopers!

And next week they said more “troops” were leaving for the Middle East. By then I knew how erroneous and non-well educated in their own language they were: when they were saying “troops” they were referring to a singular, to one man, which is wrong.

For some English speakers, a “trooper” is a mounted soldier. For others, a “trooper” is a policeman who patrols the roads of a U.S. state in a car.

As to “how a plural word becomes singular,” the answer has to be “by being used that way.”

However, just because usage is widespread or has been added to a dictionary doesn’t mean that it is worth adopting.

The worst thing of all is that 17 years have gone by and I still hear it and read it. I can’t stop stupidity!

Just because …We Love – For You To Be Happy Today!

Looking at beautiful pictures is an incentive to our brain neurons to produce dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins to makes us feel good, better, happy, up-beat. Also reading few encouraging lines, and peaceful notes of love, is good enough to activate these hormones and neurotransmitters to make us go stronger and more hopeful through out our day. So here are some for today!

When you love, you don’t abandon …ever!

“The sun does not abandon the moon to darkness.” ― Brian A. McBride, 

“But I love your feet, only because they walked upon the earth and upon the wind and upon the waters, until they found me” — Pablo Neruda

“The heart is a the thousand-stringed instrument that can only be tuned with Love.” —Hafiz

“Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.” —Emily Dickinson

Ranting Friday Night: 10 Things I Hate About The Blogging World!

1. I hate that a blogger follows/subscribes to your blog, you follow him/her back, and then s/he unfollows you, hoping you don’t notice. I really don’t like this.
2. I hate it that you give likes to a blogger, comment on his/her blog, and they never return the favor, not even at least once!
3. I hate it that people unfollow you if your political or religious views or the lack thereof are different from theirs. What? Why? Can we be a little bit mature and respect other people’s views? Thank you very much.
4. I hate it that people want to copy your content to benefit their own website or social media without giving you credit. Geez!
5. I hate it that sometimes I have written almost the whole blog post and uploaded images and pictures and I click the wrong button and the post disappears! Have to start over or use the autosaving that WordPress left for me.
6. I hate trolls. Icky internet trolls that pick on people, write hateful comments and are completely unhelpful.
7. I hate Alexa Traffic Widget It doesn’t matter if your Alexa traffic rank is 1,000 or even 100 when the quality of your blog sucks. I mean, you know that Alexa traffic rank is just a number and it doesn’t reflect the ‘real’ traffic stats.
8. I hate insane publishing frequency, like more than 8 or 10 posts a day?!
9. I hate it when I don’t have enough time to respond to all my subscribers comments on my blog.
10. I hate it when I visit a blog and it has infinite ads and pop-ups. I had a blog like that 2 years ago and it was driving ME crazy, LOL

On a side note, I’m pretty sure that there are some things that you hate about my blog. Criticism is always appreciated (as long as it’s constructive and NOT judgmental in my persona or MY freedom of speech), so do share it as a comment below.

Happy Blogging!

Communication The Beauty of Speaking and Listening…Peace! (video and quotes)

Communication starts not from the mouth that speaks but from the ear that listens.

https://videopress.com/v/Qpertmsz?loop=true&preloadContent=metadata

“Communication occurs when, in addition to the message, a soul supplement also passes.”
(Henri Bergson)

“What you cannot communicate ruins your life.”
(Robert Anthony)

“The most important thing in communication is to listen to what is not said.”
(Peter Drucker)

“There is a loquacity that says nothing and there is a silence that says a lot.”
(Thomas Hardy)

Sunshine Blogger Award Nomination … Yes!

Sunshine Blogger Award

I have kindly been nominated by Dr Sarah Mehta Mahajan from her blog HeartyPsych for the Sunshine Blogger Award. I am sincerely grateful to Dr. Mehta for having me taken in consideration for this award. It means a lot to me, especially because it is about a sunshine, and a sunshine is about life and hope. Again, thank you!

What is the Sunshine Blogger Award?

“The Blogosphere community holds several awards that bloggers use to nominate a blog in appreciation for its creative, inspiring, or motivational content.”
“The award also helps other blogger receive recognition and free exposure for their blogs.”

Award’s Rules

There are some basic rules to follow if you decide to participate:
1. Thank the blogger who nominated you and link their blog so everyone can visit.
2. Answer the questions asked by the blogger who nominated you.
3. Nominate 11 other bloggers and ask them 11 new questions.
4. Notify the nominees by commenting on their blog post.
5. List the rules and display the Award logo on your blog post.

Questions from HearthyPsych are:

1. How old is your blog? A= 3 years

2. What do you enjoy most about blogging? A=Inspiring with my writing, making people happy and sometimes even ranting, creating some interesting discussions in the comment section.

3. How important do you think Social Media is for the success of a blog? A= It is very important for marketing and PR but most important than that is the quality of your blog.

4. How would you define a successful blog? In other words, what do you think a successful blog looks like? A= I can only answer for the success I want for my blog: quality followers and subscribers, people showing me some love through their likes and comments, interacting with me. Some other bloggers probably desire to make money or become famous, which is perfectly fine with me.

5. Have you ever thought about monetizing your blog? A= Yes

6. If so, what do you think is the best method for monetizing? A= The best method depends on what the blogger wants and his or her qualifications, career, etc.

My nominees are:

WALKIN’, WRITIN’, WIT & WHIMSY

magicandbeauty

nz

When Women Inspire

View from the Back

Made of sticks and stones

Edge of Humanity Magazine

Chantel Keona

David, earth planet , knopfler and a humble man

Contemplation

Victoria Ray

My questions to the nominees are:

1. How old is your blog?
2. Why do you like blogging?
3. Do you like interacting with your followers in the comment section?
4. Do you prefer blogging than social media?
5. Do you like being nominated for blogging awards?
6. Do you plan blogging for long time?
7. What is the best accomplishment or satisfaction you have had through your blogging?
8. Have you ever blogged about very controversial topics?
9. As a blogger, do you think that there should be more bloggers than Facebook addicts?
10. Do you like html and have you created a code of your own?
11. What do you think about live blogging, video, podcast?

Thank you for reading my blog and take care of yourselves. Don’t forget to laugh today!

Dr. Martha Castro Noriega, MD