You’re so afraid of what people might say
But that’s okay cuz you’re only human
You’re so afraid of what people might say
But that’s okay you’ll soon get strong enough
~Nelly Furtado~

Many people complain about having a phobia, but in reality, what they experience is a simple fear caused by the preservation instinct. A phobia is much more than this, as it’s irrational and can affect one’s life completely. But no matter how severe a phobia is, it’s not impossible to cure. However, this is not a matter of medication, as their effect lasts only for a short period of time, it’s a matter of will and of knowing yourself.
Although there are strange fears such as the fear of snow, clocks, numbers or sitting which are less frequent, other fears such as the fear of being ridiculed, social phobias or the fear of failure can be found in many individuals.

The Fear of Crowds And Open Spaces (Agoraphobia)

It is experienced by quite a lot of people and even more claim to feel bad physically in such situations. It manifests itself through nausea, sickness and trembling but also psychologically through an unexplainable and very strong fear of traveling alone in a plane or bus or even of crossing a street or a bridge. Does this situation sound familiar? Don’t be ashamed! Therapy is not for mad people so don’t be afraid to talk to a specialist as soon as you’ve acknowledged you have a problem. Moreover, don’t let the others pamper you, so try to travel alone, at first on small distances and then more and more. It’s not impossible to fight your own fears! This fear can also be caused by childhood experiences so finding the exact cause can also help! (more…)

If you enjoyed this article, then please consider subscribing to our blog via RSS or e-mail.

Every other day, every other day,
Every other day of the week is fine, yeah
But whenever Monday comes, but whenever Monday comes
You can find me cryin’ all of the time
~The Mamas and the Papas~

We all hate Mondays, that’s a fact. Just thinking about this day can cause head aches to any student or to anyone having a job. Maybe this is why this day is the least productive of the whole week. So how about a little change of attitude in order to be more successful?

1. Remember that it’s all in your mind and the way you see this situation affects all your behavior. So don’t spend your Sunday thinking about the fact that you will start work again, that you’ll have classes and that it will be hard to do everything! Be positive and optimistic about it as there is nothing particularly scary about a Monday.

2. Get yourself a head start - knowing that the second part of any Friday isn’t too productive you could use it to make a plan for the following week so that your Monday morning will be less agitated. Then, by cleaning your desk and arranging your papers you will find your Monday start a lot easier and you will improve your work. (more…)

Nightmares made of hash dreams, the devil in my shoes
What have I done wrong?
Yeah nothing can go right with me it must be that i’ve been smoking too
Long
~Placebo~

What makes you start smoking again? Anger? Stress? Boredom? Tiredness? The first two are universally known to make people return to this bad habit. Each of these make you want to kill for a smoke, but cigarettes do nothing but to increase stress and to affect your health and even social relations. Learn to handle these situations and not to turn to cigarettes!
1. Take care of yourself! By depriving your body of smoking, assure that it won’t suffer because of this. Try to have a balanced diet and choose healthy, nutritious food. Ask a specialist about what you should eat and about what you should avoid. Fresh fruits and vegetables should help you the most! Give good quality “fuel” to your body and drink more water to be hidrated. Avoid drinks which have too many chemicals as you need to purify your organism. Take vitamins as nicotine has emptied your body of nutrients, in order to recover faster. Still, ask your doctor for a recommendation!
2. Give up caffeine! Drinking coffee in a time like this might make you nervous even angry so try reducing the quantity of coffee you drink every day. Even a simple coke can have unsuspected effects so you may even give up on it totally for a while. These two habits are usually associated so you may gain a lot more by forgetting about both of them!
3. Take a warm bath! It’s an excellent way to relax and to get rid of stress. Add just a little salt and it will be perfect! Relax and think about something pleasant. A little time spent like this everyday may bring even more benefits to both your body and mind.
4. Have a massage! If you can’t go to a specialist or you don’t have the time for that ask a friend or your partner to help you with that. You will also have time for a little chat and you will forget about how much you need a cigarette. Keep this habit in the future too as it’s pleasant and useful. Remember: even 15 minutes can do miracles! (more…)

We don’t need no education
We don’t need no thought control

~Pink Floyd - Another brick in the Wall~

These days I am kinda busy - you know, exams are close. I think everybody felt at least once that there are too many things to do and the time just isn’t enough, so one post about time management and good practices when studying should be useful.

credits photo

Create a good environment! If you can go to library and stay there it is very good - there you have the motivation and the atmosphere that helps you concentrate better. Of course, there are cases when you can’t use that space - for example if you have something to talk you can’t do it there. Your room can be a good solution too, but here you have more temptations (more…)

Photo by Giorgio Tomassetti

He deals the cards to find the answer
The sacred geometry of chance
The hidden law of probable outcome
The numbers lead a dance
~Sting - Shape of My Heart~

Whether you believe in fate or that you totally make your life, you have to agree that what decisions you make decide who you are. It’s paradoxical in a way, but sometimes your decisions decide for you. There’s no magic recipe for making the right decisions or something like that; the huge (or not so huge) amount of things you have to take into consideration when making a decision has to be analyzed, and most of the time there’s no right decision, and usually two appear: one that’s more daring, and the other one that’s more conservative.

Photo by Eduardo Cavasotti

Making the right call every time is not possible; making the right call as most of the times as possible… that’s the point. Have you ever watched House MD ? If not, you really should. A significant part of the show is aimed at finding the right diagnosis of a certain patient, through more or less orthodox means. House (the main character) almost always takes chances; but the chances he takes are always (or almost always) less riskier than not taking a chance would be.

House MD. Photo by mabe85

These days you see a lot of people who haven’t become as good as they could have, simply because they were afraid to follow their dream. On the other hand, you see a lot of waitresses who wanted to be actresses. So where do you stand? Myself, I’m a believer in taking chances. But not crazy 1 in a million chances - I’m talking about calculated, logical risks where the positive outcome has realistic chances of happening. Taking a chance just for the sake of it… may make you feel good for a while, but it won’t last and the odds are you’ll regret it. If you really believe you can win based on logical arguments, then you should go for it. There are some things that could help you remove obstacles from achieving that:

Photo by AksZindagi

Still… the coin has two sides. For example, for every aspiring actor that actually got to the carreer he wanted, there’s 19 others that didn’t. Number don’t lie. Also, even when you’re sure you can achieve your goal, your senses could be deceived and the fall from a dream is really painful. Also, when in pursuit of a dream, breaking away from reality is quite possible, and it should be avoided… because most of the times it will only mean a harder fall.

Whenever you choose to take or not to take a risk, you define yourself, because you’re not making a singulary decision, but you’re going towards the same decision you’re always going to make in this sort of situation.This depends on your personality and your case, but you shouldn’t be influenced by something else other than that. Again, a calculated risk is definitely the way to go, at least that’s how it seems for me. What about you?

Photo by br3nda

The internet has grown incredibly much in the past years especially because it appeals to people in a way that nothing else has appealed. There’s always something new to do, new people to meet, news to read, all sorts of stuff to do. But what do you do when you have work to do, and all these attractions (for others) become distractions (for you)? You have to know where to draw the line and when to say no. Otherwise you’ll just enter a vicious circle and tons of unfinished work will just clutter up.

Photo by Wesley Yendrys

The TV could be the biggest distraction; you’ll probably just end up checking the latest news or results, or watching some show. Listening to music is OK, but do it from your computer or mp3 player, music videos tend to distract your attention. Actually, for some (including me) listening to music is a productivity booster.

Photo by dontodd

Yeah sure your friends wanna chat with you and tell you the latest gossip, but it will totally screw up your work plan. Twitter can also become a pain.

Acknowledge the fact that you have to finish the job!

Otherwise you’re just going to find excuses for yourself and find other “better” things to do. Finish your job, even if it may seem that you’re on a really long and winding road.

The distractions are various, and vary from case to case, but these are the major ones which pretty much apply to everybody. The thing is that you have to understand that although it may seem like you’re just wasting a few minutes or even just seconds, these things gather up and disturb your own natural way of working.

Sunny days
Where have you gone?
I get the strangest feeling when you belong.
Why does it always rain on me?

~Travis - Why does it always rain on me?~

You casually look out the window and when you see the beautiful weather outside you feel like going outside and enjoying yourself. If it’s sunny out you get in a ’sunny’ mood. If it’s windy then you’re probably going to be a bit agitated and anxious. But it’s by far the worst when it’s raining. If you’re like most people, you’ll feel apathetic, always tired and you could just sleep forever. The weather has a strong impact on people’s moods and you should keep that in mind whenever you organize your schedule.

Credits photo

Let’s say it’s raining for 2 days now. You’re already very tired, you miss your bed even though you’ve got up 5 minutes ago and you are so bored … What can you do? (more…)

I read your book
And I find it strange
That I know that girl and I know her world
A little too well~Sheryl Crow - The book~

When we started writing this blog, for the first article we had only two comments - one of them stated that reading is for dorks and after reading the article Andrei has written, I’ve got to a point when I must ask myself and I must ask you - is reading really for dorks?

I think that now is the moment to try another type of article - educational, of course, but in other ways. If until now we gave some tricks to improve your life, how about some ideas to clear your thoughts? I don’t say you have to agree, but I’d like to know your opinions on different subjects.

credit photo

You already know the first thing I’ll talk about and probably you infer my opinion (more…)

Photo by carloseduravier

Get ur freak on
Headbanger.. hit me, hit me, hit me, hit me

Missy Elliot ~ Get ur freak on ~

Nobody (or almost nobody) likes to study; I know I don’t. But it’s something we have to do, it’s a natural and necessary part of our development as human beings, not just for your school or carreer. But just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it has to become a drag; no way! You can make it acceptable at least, perhaps even rewarding. Studying should become a decent activity, here’s what you should do.

1. Understand studying!

Picture by sosarem

Learning is an unpleasant activity not just because it feels like you’re wasting your time or stuff like that; in most cases, it’s a subconscious response. That’s just a clever way of saying that your brain thinks studying is bad. Why? Well because of our society; when parents punish their kids, they often make them study. Also, the feeling that it’s too hard or pointless can actually make it pointless. If you want to learn something, you have to make yourself understand that first. Once you understand that you have to finish this and you stop kidding yourself, you’re half way there.

2. Learn the right things!

Photo by sidereal
So you’ve motivated yourself, you want to do this, you’ve got the right attitude… what now? Make sure you have the right books, reference, whatever, and put them in the right order. Learning things in the correct order will actually speed things up. Sounds like a paradox? Not really. It’s just common sense; do it the wrong way and nothing will catch, and you’ll just waste a lot of time. Go back to 1. if that’s the case. Also, if you’re using the Internet, be careful, cause there’s a lot of wrong or partial information. Use the big boys (Wikipedia, Britannica, etc)for a bit more safety, but even there you’ll find some small mistakes. So be careful with the learning material.

3. Learn the right way!

Photo by chotda

So you have the attitude, you have the learning material and still not learning? Well if the TV’s on and the dog’s barking there and that kind of stuff… it’s really understandable. You need to find that learning place, that is different for different people. Whether it’s quiet or filled with music, bright or darker, there should be no distractions (window, TV, pet, etc). Also, try to estimate your time - a realistic approach. If you don’t have enough time…

4. Turn useless time into productive time!

Photo by un4gtableann

Useless time can actually be… useful. Good all around tips here, but for studying, it’s a bit different. You should especially pay attention to time used for transportation and bath time. When you’re on the bus or other ways of transportation, try and do a quick recap (which by the way is really important) or read something new. When you’re taking a bath, do a light read or something; nothing too big, because this way it won’t spoil your relaxation. Also if you want to gain more time, you should know yourself. Know what’s good for you, how you can focus, things like that. It’s important that you find your own way of studying. Make notes, write down the most important ideas, listen to music, whatever gets you going. Also, it’s really important to know if your auditive memory is better than your visual memory. If it is, it’s definetly a good idea to read the stuff out loud, record it, and then listen to it. This can be a good idea even if it’s not (you can apply it on the bus).

5. Finish things up!

Photo by Fort Photo

Even when you feel like you’re making progress, you have to do things all the way, otherwise it’s your loss. Even if it feels like you know bits and pieces and you can put them together when needed, you shouldn’t rely on that. Also, don’t delay everything until the last moment, that won’t get you very far. Start things right, work your way to the top, and be careful at the finish. That’s what the champions do.

“Talk to me, show some pity
You touch me in many, many ways
But I’m shy can’t you see”

~Sonata arctica ”Shy”~

Have you given up many times because of your shyness? Have you ever lost opportunities because you were simply afraid to ask? About 80% of us would probably answer “yes” as a study shows. However, this fear of attracting attention can be healed by having a strong will and by understanding that it is impossible to succeed without the other’s help.
A shy person can be seen by others as boring, unfriendly or weak so why not change your attitude to prove them that you can be a great friend and a valuable workmate? Get out of your shell!
1. It might be hard at first but try to change your way of thinking into a positive one. Be relaxed and even if someone makes you feel uncomfortable try to start a conversation. (more…)