Growing up : Reality vs Expectations

Thinking about the good old time, remembering how bad I wanted to grow up, leave my parents’ house and go live my life the way I intended it and waking up every morning thinking this is not what I signed up for, yeah that’s about how frustrating life has seemed to be the past few… I don’t know… years? As a kid or a teenager we have a very narrow perception of what being an adult is like. All we see is being able to take our own decisions, to do whatever we want to do, go wherever we want to go and do things just the way we want them done. But reality is a whole different story than what you have been playing over and over in your head since your early childhood. With growing up comes responsibility and being responsible sometimes means that you will sometimes along the way take shitty decisions, make stupid mistakes but hopefully you will learn from them.

Growing up also means that life becomes more complicated with the years passing. Think about it for a minute: you go from being a baby to toddler to pre-teen to a teenager. Your body starts to change, your mind too. Your heart starts overruling your head, throw in a couple of heartbreaks and failed relationships which totally destroy the ideal you had of love. And then you graduate from high school and go to college and things only get a tad bit worse. You add new factors to the equation such as 2 part time jobs to have enough money to survive after you have paid your rent and bills every month, loans to finance your college years which can go anywhere from 4 years (if you are lucky) to 6 years for the most unfortunates who, after 3 years of college still can’t figure out what major they want to declare or a year before graduating realize that they are not ready to pursue a career in the major they declared 3 years ago. I mean we all make mistakes don’t we? Well some of them are just slightly more expensive than others.

Dating and being in a relationship doesn’t get any better either: you either end up with someone who doesn’t give a shit about your feelings or a stage 5 clinger whose favorite hobby is to talk to you at 5 am in the morning. Then one night, you lay awake on your bed having an honest conversation with yourself and figuring out that being single is not so bad and could be the best option for you. Then you try to convince yourself of that while pouring a glass of wine every night, sitting on your couch watching Bridget Johns and also try to sell that idea to your friends who are also trying to fix you up because they feel like your life is quite boring and that love is the sparkle that would set fire to your life and make your world a better one (which might be probably true or it might just reduce whatever you have left into ashes).

And then you leave your college years behind you someday and start working and you go from the weirdo to the workaholic, you get married and have kids and you  kiss goodbye to that seemingly wild and selfish life and no string attached  lifestyle you used to live because guess what? You have some solid strings attached: you are married! From the top of my 20-something years, I come to spend most of my time missing the good old days where the only things I would worry about were: 1-what am I going to have for lunch/diner; 2-whose friend’s house am I going to play at and 3-what am I going to ask for my birthday or for Christmas. And then I look at my life and I am  baffled at how messed up my life is and even more baffled when realizing  at the same time how well I seem to be navigating  and finding my way through that mess. I only wish I could be as carefree as I used to be when I was a kid because boy… I was living THE life.

But let’s acknowledge that there are some good sides of being an adult though. Which ones? Can’t think of any right on the top of my head but I am sure there are some. I yet have to look for them while pouring a glass of wine, sitting on my couch. Meanwhile think about how blessed you are from having the life you have because one: there is someone out there wishing to live it and two: honestly it could be worse...

..So smile and be happy

The sixth sense

Myth or reality ? no one will ever be able to know if it is true or not even though some scientific facts claim that women are not that crazy.

It has been around forever and every woman has at least once in her life (if not everyday) creeped out her husband/boyfriend/kids or whoever tried to mess up with her. Women have been gifted with that ability to sense things miles away, waaaaaaaaaaay before men do and waaaaaaay before it is all rotten. We like to pretend that we don’t sometimes so that we can keep on leading our investigations or even until we have enough proofs to make a decision.

I like to think of intuition as God's power in us and for us to warn us from things we are not necessarily aware us or maybe as something more complex like a defense mechanism to protect us and protect our hearts from things that could possibly harm us physically as well as emotionally.

women foresee things before they happen because of that intuition, that thing to sense stuff our mothers used to talk about or that sixth sense as men like to call it. It is that intuition that tells us something is wrong when people are trying to hide things away from us. It is that same intuition that allows us to spot fake people thousand of miles away. And again, it is your intuition that tells you something is wrong or that your Relationship is about to fall apart when the way he looks at you, talks to you, holds you, is not the same anymore.

 

 

It is something innate, something women are wired with, a defense mechanism that is launched automatically when we are frighten by something; when there is an imminent danger we might not even be aware of. But most of the time, we just suppress it in part because we are scared what we suspect might be true. We suppress it because we are scared he might be cheating for real, or might be the end of a relationship which has been our all and everything for years. We deliberately shush our intuition and shut down that mechanism because maybe we are too scared to see the truth, to accept the facts, to walk away, to close a door, to leave behind something that seems to be so perfect but which is in fact just a mirage…

 

Or maybe we shush it because people just won’t stop calling us crazy or paranoid even though there is a huge chunk of truth in what we say hidden somewhere in the mind of the people calling us those names who has he talk are saying: “how the eff does she knows all that? I better be careful” we don’t know: we just feel it and that’s how we roll.

 

 

And then when the truth hits us in the face, we seem shocked, surprised, caught off guard wondering how we didn’t see things coming. But deep down, after countless nights pouring glasses of wine, eating boxes  and boxes of chocolates, using up the full stock of tissues we had while watching Bridget Jones, we realize that we had once been warned that it would all end up this way but we just chose to not listen and pretend we were just being “crazy”.

 

 

 

 

We spend a lot of time looking for answers we already have but are too afraid to accept. We live in a world full of misery, lies, cheaters and dishonest people; looks are deceiving and people’s words are not to be taken for an absolute truth. In such a world, the most powerful and pure tool a women can have to protect herself is her intuition for as Laurenn Martin said “it’s one of the few honest things in our lives.” So go ahead and tune in.

Ditch the "what if" and start living

Have you ever met one of those what if people? The one constantly trying to make scenarios and asking questions such as : what if it  didn’t happen? What if it did happen? What if things were different? And the list goes on... Well I used to be one of them and if there is one thing I can tell you it would be that this is one of the most unhealthy ways to live a life and I am not proud of the fact that I have been stuck with that unhealthy state of mind for years. For years it seems like a habit I couldn't let go off even though it was tiring. But reaching the point where it started to  kill me softly and slowly, I wondered about ways to break free of that poisonous lifestyle. And around that time ,  I happened to have a conversation with friend of mine and I got to experience that “ahaa!” moment I needed to be able to move forward in my life. With the amount of pressure I experienced lately, the lifestyle I had unconsciously chosen to live took up a whole other turn. I found myself upgrading from  I-can't-fall-asleep-so-let's-think-about-the-different-combinations-of-what-ifs-a-potentially-sane-mind-can-pounder-on intermediate level to level pro a.k.a Insanity. And as I am working my way back to being sane (again), I wanted to share with you few reasons why it is so important for you and for the people around you to let go of the “what ifs” and get going with your life.

First you have to keep in mind that if you decided to take a decision or act a certain way it is because at this very moment of your life it is what you needed. It might not be the best decision, it might not be the best choice you could have made and you might not even understand why back then you made the choices you made. But one thing you need to understand is that we are constantly evolving and making mistakes is part of human nature so if those things/ choices were not the best, you need to break free from that unhealthy cycle of thinking/living in term of "what ifs" and ask yourself what it is that you can take away from the experience you just had. Once you have done that let the what ifs go and move on.

Another reason you need to let go of the “what if”s is that at this point there is nothing you can change. I recently lost someone that was dear to me and the only question I was able to ask myself was: “ what if things could have been different?” and my friend whom I was having a conversation with told me “At this point there is nothing you can do. Your friend is gone and I know it is hard but you have to accept it. That is the way it is. Mourn, cry, grieve then let it go because you have to keep moving with life.” As hard as it sounded (and believe me it sounded a notch harder than that), it was true and tasted very sour. Nothing I can possibly do or imagine as a “what if” scenario could bring that back to life my friend that passed away or change anything to the whole situation. We all need to understand it and take things as they come. It can be hard sometimes but we do not have the choice. Okay we do and that other choice is denial but I even with that, at some point you have to swallow the pill of the truth not matter how big it is.

Most importantly you have to give up on the “what ifs” because life goes on. By holding on to that you are missing on so many important things, you are missing on life, love, happiness, opportunities to create something better for you and for the people surrounding you. “what if”s prevents you from living your life to the fullest because you are stuck in a fantasy where in theory everything is fine,  refusing to see the truth because it hurts too much. Or you are too busy anticipating the future and giving yourself an unneeded  amount of anxiety. the mind can only take so much of being stuck in the past and living too much in the future. and beyond that point you are just setting yourself up for destruction and misery. And by the time you wake up and realize what you have been missing on, it will probably be too late because time is doesn't  to stop and life will go on with or without you.

No matter what happens we have to let go of the “what ifs” and realize that it will do more harm than good to us physically & emotionally. We need to realize that happiness is now, here, at this very moment and unless we let go of the "what ifs" we can’t fully enjoy it and make the best out of it. We need to let go of all them and all the crappy emotions associated with them and move on for ourselves, for the people we love and are surrounded by as well as those who are not around anymore. Even if we don’t feel like we can do it, just not yet, we should always remember that they would not have wanted us live in the pass while life has so many things to offer. If not for ourselves we should at least acknowledge that moving on with life is something we owe them.

Let us bow our heads...

My post was due this morning online and yet it is only now that I am posting it (and I apologize to all the people who have been waiting on it). The truth is this is not the article I was originally supposed to post. I had another one but then I just left it on the side because I just didn’t feel it was right. Right for the day, right for the moment, right for the emotions that were actually filling my heart and moving my soul in some kind of ways.
As I was later in the day sitting and just letting my mind wander around, I started thinking about all I went through, all the mistakes I had made that just turned me into that person I am today. I was thinking about all the battles I still have to fight, some now, some in a close future and some years from now. And I have to admit it is one of the things I constantly think about and that hunt my mind every day, every night. I am just the type of person that wants to know how things will happen, how messy situations will just get solved and everything will fall into place. But at some point in my life, I realized that it was a burden that was too heavy for me to carry every single day.

I realized that worrying too much was driving me away from the things that were the most important to me: my goals, my career, my family and friends but mostly my relationship with God. You know how sometimes you are just so worried that all you want to do is just sleep all the time? Yeah that’s how bad it used to be. I would worry for all and everything and the more I would, the less I would pray and the more things would get complicated. When I realized it, I asked God to give me strength to overcome all this adversity and beyond everything to always give me to strength I need to bow my head and call upon his name in times things would get really tough. Don’t go and believe that things just got better and that all the issues where solved like that. But one thing I know for sure is that I tend to worry less than I used to. I do pray and call upon the Lord’s name whenever things are good and even more when things are bad. Because what people need to understand is that God is not only God when things ain’t right, He is also God in good times. 

 I also trained myself to keep in mind that I don’t have to worry too much about things: if they are meant to happen they will, if they are not then they will not and there is not much I can do about it. And I want you to keep that in my too. Only God can change the course of a situation and you as a human can’t do anything except pray and keep a positive attitude. Yes attitude is also important because it sets up the perfect atmosphere for things to happen. If you believe what you want and are striving for can happen and will happen then it might happen. I say it might because, well, you have no power about it happening. You can only hope for it, pray about it and work for it to happen because ultimately it all depends on God.

Tough times are meant to reveal the good in you as well as the strength you didn't even know you had and many other things I have not yet an idea of but that I hope I will soon figure out. So my tip for you today is just an encouragement to let go of all your fears and abandon yourself entirely in the hands of the Lord. He has the power to carry you through these rough times, bring peace to your life and make everything fall back into place. All you have to do is to bow your head, pray and keep a positive attitude. So smile and let God and your Faith do the trick. God bless you

Manhood 101: Tie it like a Boss

The training for manhood is made of many things and learning how to tie a tie one of them. Sure you can be a man without mastering the art of tying a tie but at some point in your life you will end up with a tie looking more like the one on the left rather than the one on the right

Ahem... I highly doubt this is what you are aiming for. Of course some types of tie knots such as the Eldredge require a lot of practice and are not necessarily the ones you would venture into sporting unless you are adventurous…
 Anyway the post of today is about how to tie a tie and is dedicated to all the men who up to now still struggle to properly tie a tie. Gentlemen, the day of glory has come so open your eyes, pay attention because this is going to change your life.

There are over 20 (and I am sure it is a lot more than that!) ways to tie a tie and when choosing one of them you have to take into account the type of fabric the tie is made of, the occasion you are sporting the tie knot for and also the collar of the shirt you are wearing the knot on. I won’t go over all of the different ways to tie a tie but I will talk about the most common ones. So here we go!


1- The Four-in-hand knot

 This is the most common and the simplest way of tying a tie. It a very narrow knot and is best used for tie made of heavy fabrics. It should be worn with a tab, button-down or regular spread collar. Personally I’m not a big fan of it due to my OCD for things to be symmetrical (especially for ties)
below is a drawing showing you how tie a four-in-hand tie which by the way is a classic knot that works for any non-dressy type of occasion.



· 1. Start with the wide end of the tie on the right and the small end on the left. Begin with the small end slightly above your belly-button (will vary depending on your height and the length & thickness of your tie). Only move the active (wide) end.

· 2. Wide end over the small end to the left

· 3. Under the small end and to the right

· 4. Across the front and to the left

· 5. Up into the neck loop from underneath

· 6. Down through the loop you've just made in the front

· 7. Tighten the knot by pulling down on the wide end. Slide the knot up & adjust.


2- The Shelby-Pratt knot.

it is a great alternative to the four in hand you can never go wrong with. not too big and not too small, the Pratt knot provides you with the neat look and the symmetry you need without trying too hard. It goes with any collar style and can be worn for any occasion. It is best used with ties made of medium weight to heavy fabric. Find out of to do it and figure out if you like it or not. Personally I do J

· 1. Begin with the backside of your tie facing forward, the wide end of the tie on the right and the small end on the left. The tip of the small end should rest slightly above your belly-button (this will vary depending on your height and the length & thickness of your tie). Only move the active (wide) end.

· 2. Wide end under the small end to the left.

· 3. Up to the center, towards neck loop.

· 4. Through the neck loop and down to the left.

· 5. Across the small end to the right.

· 6. Up into the neck loop from underneath.

· 7. Down through the loop you've just created in the front.

· 8. Tighten the knot by pulling down on the wide end. Slide the knot up & adjust


3-The half-Windsor knot

 It is a knot that is a bit wider than the Pratt knot and looks good for about any occasion, talking more specifically about formal ones (gives you an assertive look when wearing this to a job interview. Go ahead and blow your interviewer mind away!). it works best with wide collars and ties made of light to medium weight fabrics. Because this knot is highly symmetric the chance to mess it up is higher. So follow the steps bellow to master the art of tying the perfect half-Windsor knot


· 1. Start with the wide end of the tie on the right and the small end on the left. The tip of the small end should rest slightly above your belly-button (this will vary depending on your height and the length & thickness of your tie). Only move the active (wide) end.

· 2. Wide end over the small end to the left.

· 3. Under the small end and to the right.

· 4. Up to the center, towards neck loop.

· 5. Through the neck loop and to the left.

· 6. Across the front, over to the right.

· 7. Up into the neck loop from underneath.

· 8. Down through the loop you've just created in the front.

· 9. Tighten the knot by pulling down on the wide end. Slide the knot up & adjust


 4- The Windsor knot

Okay so we are moving into the more classy stuff. The Windsor is not the type of knot one should be sporting everyday: it is a thick and full knot that projects confidence. It captures the look of everyone so if you are the person that feels awkward whenever people are staring at you too long or too much don’t attempt the Windsor knot. It works best with ties that are slightly longer than normal (a foot longer than usual) and made of light to medium weight fabrics. It must be worn with a wide spread collar. When to wear a Windsor knot? Wedding, business and political occasions but it doesn’t mean you cannot wear it whenever you want so indulge ;)

· 1. Start with the wide end of the tie on the right and the small end on the left. The tip of the small end should rest slightly above your belly-button (this will vary depending on your height and the length & thickness of your tie). Only move the active (wide) end.

· 2. Wide end over the small end to the left.

· 3. Up into the neck loop from underneath.

· 4. Down to the left.

· 5. Around the back of the small end to the right.

· 6. Up to the center, towards neck loop.

· 7. Through the neck loop and down to the right.

· 8. Across the front to the left.

· 9. Up into the neck loop from underneath.

· 10. Down through the loop you've just created in the front.

 · 11. Tighten the knot by pulling down on the wide end. Slide the knot up & adjust.


I hope this article helped you into solving the mystery behind how to tie a tie. Liked the article? Share it! Want to know more about other ways to tie a tie? Visit How To Tie A Necktie where you can discover amazing things and! watch video tutorials.
Happy? yeah I know... I know... Well... Enjoy