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PayPal and Venmo are both payment platforms that can be used to accept money from friends, family, employers or customers. They are both leading digital wallets and while they share common features, a number of factors set the two companies apart. In fact, if you’ve noticed the similarity of these payment giants, you wouldn’t be surprised to learn that PayPal actually owns Venmo. In this article, we will look at what the difference is between PayPal and Venmo and why certain people choose one platform over another.

PayPal: “An eCommerce company that allows for payments between two parties through the online transferring of funds”.

Venmo: “An online service that allows for an easy, safe and fun way to pay friends and family”.

What is the Main Difference Between PayPal and Venmo?

While the majority of online business owners have heard of or even used PayPal, many may have not yet heard of Venmo. The reason for this is that Venmo is mainly used by the everyday users rather than business owners. In fact, you cannot currently accept Venmo payments for goods or services unless you are already using Braintree or PayPal and have been approved. This differs in the way that any merchant with a PayPal Business account can use PayPal’s API, or a plugin such as our very own Simple PayPal Shopping Cart to accept payments for goods or services online.

Venmo in fact is even partly a social media feed, where a user can make a transaction public so that all Venmo users or just their contacts can see the transaction. Due to Venmo being a trendy way to make a payment to an acquaintance, friend or family member, there is no surprise that millennial’s are the largest group of users. While there are some businesses that have jumped on board to accept Venmo, the majority of companies still prefer their sister company PayPal.

While both PayPal and Venmo are digital wallets, the main difference is that PayPal is widely used by small and large scale businesses, whereas Venmo the majority of the time is used for transactions between friends. With PayPal you can look at as the professional approach, whereas Venmo allows you to add personal touches to a transaction you send.

Comparing PayPal and Venmo – Video Tutorial

How Does Venmo Work?

Similar to PayPal, Venmo allows you to link a bank account and credit cards as a means of payment. If you choose to use your Venmo balance or your bank account to send money, you can expect to pay no fee while using your credit card will incur a 3% transaction fee. Just like PayPal, once someone pays you from their Venmo account, the money will appear in your app/dashboard which you can then send to your bank account or allow to sit.

Venmo unlike PayPal was designed for smaller transactions such as splitting a dinner bill among friends. For this reason, the Venmo developers have invested much more time into setting up a phone application that is smooth and simple for their users. Once you have the application on your phone, you can add payment contacts by linking your Facebook account, entering their name or username or directly scanning their Venmo QR code if they have their application up on their mobile device. Venmo is more of a social transacting platform as you can make transaction descriptions public if you wish to. Many people use this as a way to interact with others using the platform.

While Venmo is popular among the younger generation for fixing up debt to friends, in the larger scheme PayPal is still the most popular mainly due to the buyers protection they offer. The buyers protection gives a buyer some come-back if the seller does not provide the goods or service within a reasonable time frame. On the other hand Venmo does not.

Can I Have a PayPal and Venmo Account?

If you’re wondering if you can run a PayPal and Venmo account at the same time, you’ll be happy to know that the answer is yes. This is especially important for business owners who wish to use PayPal for their business transactions and Venmo for their personal transactions. This allows one to separate their personal and private life.

Separating the accounts for their uses makes the most sense. If you have customers flowing onto your website to buy physical or digital items, it makes the most sense to use PayPal to accept their payment. If you are out for dinner and you need a neat way of evenly splitting the bill, if you live within the US Venmo will be your go to application.

Summing Up PayPal Versus Venmo

If you are an everyday US citizen looking for a digital wallet, Venmo may work out a fee free way of transacting money with your family and friends. If you are a business owner on the other-hand, in our opinion PayPal or Stripe are still the best eCommerce solutions which you can read more about here.

You can look at PayPal as the big sister to Venmo. PayPal was first established in 1998 while Venmo didn’t hit the eCommerce world until 2009. This gives PayPal many more years of development and integration opposed to Venmo. For this reason, they have a larger pull in the eCommerce world with a greater following of general personal account holders and business account holders.

Last year in 2018, Venmo accounted for $19 billion in payments while PayPal accounted for hundreds of billions of dollars in transactions. While Venmo may always remain the smaller company, under PayPal’s belt Venmo is sure to become increasingly popular and feature rich in the coming years.

The post PayPal vs Venmo appeared first on Tips and Tricks HQ.

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posted from http://blogstash.com/53-ways-to-make-money-online/

These days many people are facing financial difficulties. If you are one of them, the followings are options that you may want to consider. Whether you are looking for an easy way to make a few extra bucks, a method that’ll enable you to make enough to pay a bill or two, or even an […]

The post 53 Legit Ways to Make Money Online: Extra Income from Home appeared first on BlogStash.com.

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“It feels good to be accepted, loved, and approved of by others, but often the membership fee to belong to that club is far too high of a price to pay.” ~Dennis Merritt Jones

Like a lot of people, I grew up putting others’ needs and wants first. I learned early that doing things for other people and accommodating their wishes gained me attention and approval. It was only in those moments that I felt good enough and deserving of love.

As a child, I liked nothing more than feeling indispensable and being told I was a good and nice girl. This praise was incredibly important to me, as was making others happy. My own happiness did not come into the equation; I was happy because they were happy. I felt loved, safe, and appreciated, in the short term at least.

As I got older my people-pleasing went into overdrive. I continually tried to gain people’s approval, make them happy, and help them whenever needed.

I hated to see loved ones hurt or upset and felt it was my responsibility to come to their rescue and ease their problems and pain. Before long I became so hyper-aware of others’ feelings that I lost sight of where I ended and where other people began.

For many years, I didn’t question why I felt I didn’t have the right to say no to people’s demands. I just assumed this was how my relationships were meant to be. By the time I was in my late teens, however, I often felt lost, drained, and empty.

After a terrifying anxiety attack, I realized I’d been unhappy for years. Trying to please everyone had made me miserable and ill, and my relationships felt draining and one-sided.

I took a long, hard look at myself and realized I’d become a people-pleaser not simply because I wanted to be a nice person or help others, but due to a specific emotion, an emotion I’d felt since early childhood: fear.

I realized I’d given control over my life to other people out of fear. I’d let an emotion steal my life and well-being.

When I examined my past behavior it was obvious I’d been compelled to people-please due to a fear of certain situations, stemming from my childhood. I believe these specific fears are the reason why many of us become people-pleasers.

Fear of Rejection and Abandonment

Inside every people-pleaser is a little child who never felt worthy of love and was afraid of being rejected and abandoned by his or her loved ones. Being good and nice and striving for approval is a way to try to suppress the fear.

Children know instinctively that their survival depends on other people. As a child I felt I had to be good all the time—one misdemeanor would be enough to make my loved ones reject me.

That’s not to say my family didn’t love me, they absolutely did. But they were often emotionally distant, worried, stressed out, and very busy with other things. My strategy was to do my best to please them so I wouldn’t feel even more rejected than I already did.

Many of us take this fear into our adult relationships too. People-pleasers usually believe they cannot disagree or not do as their loved ones want, or displease them in some way, because their family or partner will stop loving them and leave. They don’t feel emotionally secure in their relationships.

Yet how realistic is this belief? Would our loved ones really reject and abandon us if we displeased them? Is our position in their lives so uncertain and fragile that they would do this?

People-pleasers tend to overestimate other people’s imagined negative reactions to what they do or say. They work hard to gain and keep love and friendship, but assume those ties are easily broken.

Realistically, it’s highly unlikely your loved ones will reject you if you don’t do what they want. They might be disappointed or upset, but ultimately they’ll be able to cope with their expectations not being met. Regardless of their response, you aren’t responsible for their emotions or actions.

When we know this, we can feel more secure about saying no to others. And that in turn helps them to respect our boundaries.

Fear of Conflict and Anger

People-pleasers try to avoid conflict and others’ anger at all costs and will do anything to defuse a confrontation or argument. This usually means backing down or not disagreeing even if the other person is in the wrong. It means saying yes when we really want to say no.

When you fear upsetting someone and causing an argument you don’t speak up about what’s bothering or hurting you, and you don’t reveal your true feelings. You do all you can to keep the peace, believing mistakenly that conflict of any kind is bad for relationships.

The truth is, our peacekeeping behavior builds a barrier to intimacy. It stops our relationships growing and maturing. As a child I feared doing something wrong and being told off and punished, and as I got older I often felt lonely in many of my relationships. I also found trying to keep the peace exhausting.

The harmony I worked so hard to maintain was nothing more than a false harmony; there was often an undercurrent of anxiety and frustration.

Healthy relationships aren’t without disagreements, because conflict and problems are inevitable in life. But the difference is that good, balanced relationships are able to handle conflict and problems constructively and use them as a way to deepen learning and understanding.

As a people-pleaser I wanted to find instant solutions to problems in order to minimize any potential conflict, regain harmony, and soothe any negative feelings. I rarely took my time to find an effective solution, and as a result the problems were never fully resolved.

I was also afraid of my own anger and repressed it or directed it at myself, and this no doubt contributed to my anxiety disorder. I mistakenly believed nice people didn’t get angry, not realizing that we cannot change our behavior for the better or improve our wellbeing unless we feel and recognize all our emotions.

Fear of Criticism and Being Disliked

No one likes to be criticized or disliked, especially a people-pleaser. We hold in high regard other people’s good opinions of us. We crave approval and think that accommodating everyone else will somehow protect us, but it’s rarely the case.

I used to feel a sense of betrayal whenever someone criticized me. Didn’t they know how hard I tried to please them? How hard I tried to be good and nice all the time? Their criticism was like an arrow in the heart.

When we fear others’ lack of approval and acceptance, we rarely show them who we really are and often live a life that does not feel authentic. We hide ourselves behind a mask of niceness, and find it near impossible to separate our self-worth from our actions.

Fearing others’ bad opinions of you makes you feel you cannot show you are fallible and flawed—basically, a normal human being.

People-pleasers judge themselves very harshly and often set themselves unrealistic expectations. They feel they need to be perfect in order to be accepted or loved. They feel they cannot make mistakes or risk upsetting or disappointing people.

If you don’t voice your opinions or needs, people will assume you’re happy to go along with what they want. They’ll also assume you’ll accept disrespectful behavior and not retaliate. Like many people-pleasers, I became an easy target for others’ dissatisfaction and nastiness.

When we hand so much control over to other people, their criticism can be devastating, but this is only because we vastly overestimate the importance of what they think.

In time, I realized that someone’s opinion of me is none of my business and it’s impossible to control their thoughts about me, no matter what I do. It seemed crazy to let their opinions dictate how I lived my life because the only person I needed to seek approval from was myself.

Fear of Losing Control and Not Being Needed

People-pleasers need to be needed. It’s their automatic response to help others and try to make others happy, and they very often take other people’s actions, behavior and emotions personally, believing they’re responsible for making others feel better.

I grew up in an environment that was often anxious. Many of my loved ones did not handle their anxiety very well, due to their own upbringing. I became a confidante at a young age, before I had the maturity to handle certain problems or others’ anxiety. It was simply too burdensome for my young shoulders, but it didn’t stop me trying to make things better.

Because my sense of self was closely tied to how other people felt, I couldn’t bear to see loved ones hurting, and so I tried my hardest to ease any upset. Each time I succeeded, I felt needed and in control, but when I failed I felt like I had let everyone down.

I would become anxious if I couldn’t soothe or help someone else. I readily soaked up their negative emotions because I’d become so attuned to how they felt, placing their emotional well-being before my own. Because people-pleasers believe it’s their job to make others happy, they feel they need to control others’ anxiety and pain.

But it’s not our role to make others happy or their lives problem-free; that’s their job. The sky won’t fall in if you cannot help someone. You can still be there for the people you love and empathize with them, but you don’t need to rush in and rescue them or lose yourself in their business. You don’t have to make their problems your own; you can instead trust them to solve their own issues.

When I stopped hyper-focusing on other people, I saw that the only thing I needed to control was my half of my relationships. There’s no need to try to control others’ reactions because I’m not responsible for their thoughts or emotions.

Many of our interactions with people don’t need to have the sort of emotional judgments people-pleasers attach to them. It’s okay to say no and not feel guilty. You aren’t betraying someone if you don’t do what they want or disagree with them. Just because someone doesn’t like you, it doesn’t mean you’re unlikeable. Just because you sometimes want to focus on yourself, it doesn’t mean you’re selfish.

You gain this self-empowerment by easing the fear that’s caused your people-pleasing. While much of the fear comes from your childhood, as an adult you now have control over changing aspects of your behavior that don’t serve you.

This doesn’t involve any self-blame, nor is it about blaming our loved ones. We’re all the products of our upbringing and we all have scars. Most people try to do the best they can with what they have and know. By changing our behavior we can often encourage positive change in others too.

People-pleasing is always linked to self-worth. When you create a strong sense of self, you realize that you aren’t your past, your thoughts or your emotions. You know your self-worth isn’t linked to another person.

How to Ease the Fear

Instead of looking for validation from other people and the outside world, we need to search inwards. In order to ease our fear, it’s important to face it, no matter how painful it feels. Understanding our fear helps us to move forward.

Because our people-pleasing and our fears usually stem from childhood, we need to revisit our child self. Try this exercise:

Find somewhere quiet to sit and relax. Close your eyes and take slow, deep, even breaths and envisage in your mind a time when you felt rejected as a child. Replay the events as you remember them and feel the feelings you experienced at that time.

Then envisage your present self holding your child self’s hand as they go through that moment of feeling rejected. Tell your child self how much you love them and care for them, and that there’s nothing to fear. Each time your younger self feels afraid or rejected, soothe them and let them know they’re in a safe place.

Think about what you’d like to say to your child self and what advice you’d like to give them, knowing what you know now. You are now able to protect, support, and encourage your child self. Think about how you want to feel and be treated rather than focus on any negativity.

When I did this exercise I told my child self that she was worthy, valuable, and precious. I advised her that what she wanted and needed was valid and important, and she had the right to speak up and say no.

I told her she would never be rejected because she had my unconditional love and support, and she didn’t need to strive for love from anyone because she was already lovable. I encouraged her to think about her dreams and goals and not stifle them because of others’ opinions. Most of all, I kept repeating that I loved her.

When you feel ready to end the exercise, bring yourself back to the present moment and think about what the exercise has taught you. Do you understand your child self more and your reasons for people-pleasing? Do you think about those past events in a different way?

You can do the exercise as many times as you wish. It gives you the time to focus on how you feel about past experiences and as a result it also helps you come to terms with what happened and to heal.

When I stopped basing my identity on my relationships and the past, I stopped hiding myself behind people-pleasing behavior. I started to set boundaries, and as my self-love, self-acceptance, and self-respect grew, my relationships improved too. People soon adapted to my new behavior because I showed them how I wanted to be treated—with respect and consideration.

Self-love is essential. It isn’t selfish to think about what you want and need. It isn’t selfish to make decisions about your life based on what you want and need rather than to merely please others.

You owe it to yourself to put your people-pleasing ways behind you. You owe it to yourself to take care of you first, because that is the only real way you can truly help other people.

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

The post 4 Fears That Create People-Pleasers and How to Ease Them appeared first on Tiny Buddha.

posted from https://wealthygorilla.com/highest-grossing-movies/

Which are the highest-grossing movies of all time? Everyone loves a good movie, right? We most certainly do!  You can bet your bottom dollar most people can name their favourite movie in a matter of seconds.  But not all movies do well, even the ones you’d most expect.  The facts are that some movies just […]

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“I know, things are getting tougher when I can’t get the top off the bottom of the barrel.” ~Jesse Michaels

No one thought I was going to live to see twenty. Including me. In fact, I vividly remember telling my father that it would be miraculous if I saw twenty-five. It wasn’t emotional. It was simply a statement of fact. And yet here I am—mid-thirties, wife, daughter, one on the way, house, job, sense of purpose. What happened?

I was one of those kids with questions. Big questions. “What does it all mean?” questions. I used to wonder what the point of all of this was. As young as seven and eight I remember lying in bed at night trying to understand the nature of the world. I would examine my family, my friends, my fears, my aspirations, looking for the thread that would unravel the existential knot.

I loved to learn, and I was frequently drawn to the sciences in a way that I now see as continuing to look for answers to the big questions. When my friends were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up, they gave the common answers—policeman, fireman, professional athlete, etc. I think someone said “Batman” (it might have been me…).

When it came to me, I would usually say, “paleontologist or astronomer.” (I later amended this to astrophysicist, but I hadn’t heard of it yet, and further, didn’t have the math skills.) It was clear to me that this world had a rhyme and a reason, and I wanted desperately to understand it. And then, at twelve, I discovered the answer.

I became a drug addict and an alcoholic. It was beautiful. It did not give me any answers; it simply took away the questions. It shrunk my life to the “one-pointed mind” that I would rediscover later in another context.

Addiction is an all-consuming activity. I compounded this problem by developing a number of co-occurring mental health problems—rage, depression, anxiety. A continuous cocktail of hopelessness and loss.

This spiral was only arrested at the nick of time by the intervention of a loving family and a supportive community dedicated to service to those struggling with addiction.

In the decade and a half since, I’ve watched many friends die, go to jail, disappear, and I have often wondered what the difference between them and me is.

I have heard the “some have to die so others can live” theory and the “they just weren’t ready” platitude. I have heard the “at least they’re not struggling anymore” and the “God must have needed them” explanations. I reject these utterly.

While these statements offer some degree of emotional and psychological comfort, I can’t imagine the reality of what they seem to imply: Some of us are “chosen” and some of us are not.

I think about a friend of ours who died Christmas Eve morning from an overdose. I couldn’t conceive of going to his grief-stricken family and saying, “Bummer about your son, guess he wasn’t chosen.” I’m sure that would’ve helped lift their Christmas spirits every year.

I have been to seventeen funerals in the past few years, all for people under thirty and most under twenty-five. Each time I have asked myself the same question: Why them and not me?

I don’t pretend to have an answer. Furthermore, I don’t think there is an ANSWER (capital letters intentional). When I discovered my spiritual and meditative practice I was strongly drawn to the fact that these practices openly admitted they had no answers, only a means to investigate the questions.

Meditation doesn’t give me any answers. It doesn’t allow me to sidestep grief or pain or rage. It doesn’t make good times better or bad times suck less. It doesn’t offer me a way to disassociate from my very real human experience. Although, for the record, I have tried to use meditation to do all of these things.

So what difference does it make to me?

The meditation practices that I employ bring me face to face with the pain and hurt and fear and rage. The pain of losing my friends; the hurt that no one could help them, not even me; the fear that I very well could fall victim to the same delusions; the rage at the utter injustice of why beautiful, talented men and women at the beginning of their lives are lost to us.

In not trying to avoid the pain, I get to experience it and learn from it.

I have repeated the negative and destructive patterns of my life not because of lack of will or lack of desire to change, but merely because I didn’t see them. I’ve looked away from my pain and my trauma, and so it’s had no choice but to reemerge over and over again.

Sitting “on the cushion” has given me a stable and safe place from which to step into the sea of suffering, find the part of me that needs comfort and compassion, and try to bring it into the light.

My practice has shown me that the answers we look for are whatever we want them to be. Meaning is not an inherent quality. Things happen, and we, as human beings, assign them meaning. Sometimes the meaning is that we “live for them” (the people who have past). Sometimes we “make it matter.”

I once asked out a girl in one of my graduate school classes because I had just helped bury a seventeen-year-old kid who I realized would never get to ask a girl out again. So what the hell? I asked her, thinking maybe Danny would give me an assist from wherever he was. She still said no. I swear I could hear him laughing at me.

Sometimes we use things to reinforce the negative story that we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world we live in. We create our own victimization and tell ourselves it’s not our fault. The world is terrible. I did this forever, reinforcing the story of my own victimhood until it almost killed me.

Meditation helps me examine all of these storylines. It helps me embrace the things that make my life better and discard (almost always with assistance) the things that are detrimental to myself, that cause pain to those around me.

It offers me the opportunity to “turn the volume down” on the rage and anxiety and depression. It brings me back within the bounds of experiencing these without them becoming the monsters they used to be.

It also helps me accept reality as it is. Nothing is supposed to be happening. It’s just what is happening. Embrace it or fight it, it makes no difference. It will, has, and does happen exactly as it’s happening. I only need to adjust to conditions as they are, not how I would wish them to be, to be truly content. Meditation helps me see things closer to how they really are.

I write this having attended a funeral last week for a twenty-three-year-old man who was my student and my friend. I am selfishly grateful in a strange way that his death was accidental and not related to any substance abuse. I’m not sure if that matters, but it feels different.

I loved and will continue to love Josh. He was amazingly talented. I met him when he was fifteen and couldn’t play a note. By the end of our time together (I was a music teacher then) he could play four instruments well and a few poorly (harmonica is tough). He had interned at a local music festival during high school and eventually parlayed that into a full-time gig at one of our local venues. I am so proud of him.

His service was packed. Friends, family—he touched so many lives. The greatest gift that my practice afforded me is that I was there. Really there. I cried. I laughed. I hugged people. I snuck one of my medallions into his casket when no one was looking. I thought he’d like that, both the medallion and the sneaking. (We share a bit of an anti-authority streak.)

I didn’t run—from his death, from my feelings, or from the people around me. I hugged his dad and told him how much I adored his son and how grateful I was to have helped him along his journey. I stood with my friends and offered a shoulder when they needed it and received one when I did.

I am so deeply moved to have been able to be there, without a buffer, to help send off my friend. I can be uncomfortable and be okay with being uncomfortable. Pain and sorrow are my teachers. So are joy and love. Meditation brings me to the place where I can experience all of it. I wouldn’t trade this life for anything.

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

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posted from https://www.dumblittleman.com/why-you-should-ignore-your-horoscope/

Do you read horoscopes? If so, you could be wasting not just your time but your precious brain cells, too. Come on, do you really believe that half a billion people in the world are going to have the same day/week/month?

Your horoscope isn’t exactly personalized. It applies to a twelfth of the world’s population. Horoscope writers use a lot of tricks to make you believe what they’ve said.

Here are some of the most common ones:

We Believe A Personality Analysis – Even If It Doesn’t Really Apply To Us

A famous experiment was carried out in 1948 by the psychologist Bertram R. Forer. He gave his students a personality test and gave them the exact same “results” which he’d assembled from horoscopes:

“You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage. Disciplined and self-controlled on the outside, you tend to be worrisome and insecure on the inside. At times you have serious doubts as to whether you have made the right decision or done the right thing. You prefer a certain amount of change and variety and become dissatisfied when hemmed in by restrictions and limitations. You also pride yourself as an independent thinker; and do not accept others’ statements without satisfactory proof. But you have found it unwise to be too frank in revealing yourself to others. At times you are extroverted, affable, and sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, and reserved. Some of your aspirations tend to be rather unrealistic.”

The students were asked to rate the personality profile’s accuracy from 1 to 5, with 5 being the most accurate rating. Guess what?

The average rating was 4.26- despite the fact that every single student had received exactly the same rating. This has been dubbed the Forer effect and it’s been borne out by study after study ever since 1948.

So, if you have one of those key rings that tells you your personality based on your star sign or name, ignore it.

We Give Too Much Importance To Co-incidences

You might be reading this and thinking “but, my horoscope has come true on several occasions!”

Well, I’m afraid that’s just an example of subjective validation. It means that you pick up on co-incidences and assign them an incorrect meaning. This particularly happens when it’s something that has personal meaning to you or when you want it to be more than a co-incidence.

Think of it this way:

Have you ever had that experience when the phone rings, you think “It’ll be John” and it is? Spooky, huh? But what about all the times when you think “It’ll be John” but it wasn’t?

You probably forgot all about those.

Horoscopes Use Vague Statements and Generalizations

Here are a few statements taken from typical horoscopes-all from the Daily Mail newspaper:

• There will be ups and downs financially with nothing going quite to plan.
• But if you can give yourself space to ponder, you may be able to answer one or two questions which have been bothering you recently. Nothing superficial will really help so you will need to focus and get right down to the nitty gritty.
• You won’t suffer fools or slow coaches gladly and will express yourself firmly but forcefully at times. Just don’t go a step too far since you may want support when you get into a muddle towards mid month.

Notice anything in common?

These statements could apply to anyone:

Aren’t everyone’s finances up and down, especially during current times?

DLM readers probably know that getting to the heart of tricky questions in life involves focusing and pondering, not just looking for a quick fix. This is good advice, but why on earth would it only apply to one particular star sign?

Do any of us suffer fools and slow coaches gladly? And don’t we all get into a muddle on a regular basis? “Towards mid month” is vague enough to cover at least a ten or twelve day period, too.

The Big Reason You Shouldn’t Place Your Trust In Horoscopes

Even if you’re a horo-sceptic like me, imagine for a moment that you do believe every word of a horoscope or personality profile. You could end up hugely limiting yourself because of it.

For example, if your horoscope warns of money problems ahead, you might get anxious or even use it as an excuse to spend unnecessarily, thinking that hard times are inevitable.

One of the horoscopes I looked at included the line: “You’ll occupy yourself happily spending money on all manner of frivolities since you reckon you need pampering.”

Now, how many of us have the self-discipline not to use this as an excuse to think “Yes, my horoscope is right. I should buy that new CD/shirt/game even though I want to pay off my loans”.

You could be subconsciously sabotaging yourself because you believe in a nonsense personality profile.

Perhaps, you think you’re an impetuous and sometimes angry person, because of your star sign. This is preventing you from dealing with your hot-headed nature (which might be half-imagined anyway). Or maybe you think that you’re shy, because your star sign’s always told you so and you’ve never made an effort to overcome this.

None of us are “stuck” with our foibles. We can all improve ourselves, break bad habits, and establish good ones. Instead of reading horoscopes, find some truly worthwhile reading (Dumb Little Man is a great place to start – and the blogs linked to in the Blender) that can actually help you improve your life.

What do you think about horoscopes? Whether you agree with me completely or think I’m an idiot, let me know your views in the comments!

See Also: How to Control Your Luck

The post Why You Should Ignore Your Horoscope appeared first on Dumb Little Man.

posted from https://wealthygorilla.com/colin-firth-net-worth/

Introduction  Colin Firth is an English actor who has received an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, two BAFTA Awards, and three Screen Actors Guild Awards.  As of 2019, Colin Firth’s net worth is roughly $25 Million dollars.   Early Life Colin Andrew Firth was born on the 10th of September, 1960, in England. Firth […]

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“Understanding is love’s other name. If you don’t understand you can’t love.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

I recently attended a weekend workshop, and there was a man in the group who always had a strange look on his face whenever we had to look for a partner to work with. I noticed that some people avoided him, like they didn’t want to work with him. Perhaps it was the vibe he gave off because of the way he looked at people.

At some point later in the weekend I sat with him. It was hard to put my finger on it, but there was something about him that did feel a little strange, and I could see that other people were put off by him.

After the weekend had finished, we happened to be sitting next to each other and started talking, which somehow led to him telling me that he is almost completely blind. With his contact lenses in he can see okay, but the low light of the room made it very hard for him to make out faces.

In that moment I understood. That was why he gave off a weird vibe—because he was having trouble seeing. The “look” he gave was simply a result of him trying to see and ultimately connect with someone.

The internal label I’d given him of “strange” dissolved in an instant, and in that same moment I felt an opening in my heart. It was an unconditional level of understanding that brought with it a sense of peace and connection.

Understanding and Letting Go

We often get frustrated or angry with the people around us, projecting our emotions and frustrations onto them when we don’t understand them. The moment we understand, it can change our whole attitude, creating a space of opening.

Imagine you’re driving your car, and the car in front of you starts slowing down. You don’t know why they’re slowing down, so you get frustrated and possibly impatient. Maybe you start verbalizing your frustration, or perhaps you even honk your horn in an effort to release some of your tension.

Then you see an elderly woman crossing the road, moving very slowly.

In that moment your frustration softens, because you now understand why the driver in front of you was slowing down. They saw something you didn’t.

We can take understanding in this example even further. You also understand the woman moving slowly. Perhaps you have a mother or grandmother who moves slowly, or you realize that one day, as you age, this could be you, and you’d appreciate drivers slowing down for you. Or maybe you’re young but injured.

Understanding creates a mental shift enabling us to replace reactive emotions and disconnection with compassion and connection.

Understanding Is a State of Mind

Understanding is more than something we do, as in trying to understand someone else’s perspective or how they feel. Yes, this is part of it, but understanding is also a state of mind that we can cultivate. Just like joy, enthusiasm, sadness, or frustration are states of mind that govern the way we experience life.

When we feel joyous, we think, act, and respond to life in a certain way—joyfully. When we feel frustrated, we think, act, and react to life in a different way—finding reasons to justify our frustration everywhere.

Understanding is a state of mind that makes us feel more peaceful, compassionate, and connected, creating an attitude of “us” as opposed to a “me vs. you” mentality.

When we proactively nurture an understanding mindset, we approach people with openness—even if they’re difficult—because we’re committed to always looking beneath the surface instead of making judgments and assumptions.

We may not always know why someone acts the way they do. But an attitude of understanding does not actually require us to know the exact details of other people’s story.

Understanding at its deepest level is just like love—an unconditional understanding of another’s humanness. We don’t have to know their story, but we can appreciate they’re going through the human experience, just like us.

Cultivating an Attitude of Understanding

There are various ways to cultivate understanding in your life, but I’d love to share a reflective exercise here to help you understand and connect more deeply to yourself and humanity.

Think of a time when you lost it. A situation when you got angry or frustrated. Maybe a family member did something that really upset you, or maybe someone undermined you at work. The reason why does not matter here; you’re not trying to justify it, and you’re definitely not judging it as right or wrong.

When you have that memory in mind, just feel it. Feel the sensations in your body—the intensity, the heat, or the thoughts and emotions that come with it. If it’s uncomfortable, that’s okay.

Don’t try and change it. Just feel it.

As you feel it, notice that in that moment you were unable to maintain peace inside yourself.

We can’t be at peace inside while reacting with anger.

I’m not suggesting there should be a suppression of anger in any way. This is about recognizing the truth of what’s happening inside us when we react with anger. When it happens unconsciously there’s nothing we can do about it—the result being we act mindlessly. But when we consciously pay attention, we deepen our self-awareness, and this gives us the opportunity to choose how we act.

I had an experience at a coffee shop where I was returning my drink because they’d made the wrong one. When I told the woman at the cashier they’d made the wrong order she was quite rude, and told me bluntly, “That’s what you ordered!”

It caught me by surprise. Her attitude made me feel like I was being accused of something I didn’t do. I could feel myself getting angry and ready to defend myself.

I felt a wave of intensity come up inside me.

As I was about to react and get into an argument with her, there was a moment where instead of feeling my anger, I could feel she was stressed. Something was bothering her, even before our interaction. I don’t know what it was, but it was enough for me to pause, reflect, and understand that we often don’t know what’s causing someone to act the way they do. We can never know what’s happened in their lives just before we began interacting with them.

There are so many different reasons why someone might be stressed or upset—an argument or breakup, chronic back pain, the death of a loved one, or inability to pay their mortgage to name a few possible explanations.

That moment of understanding her human nature allowed me to let go of my reaction. I’d taken her reaction personally, and it put me in a state of “you vs. me” where I was ready to fight to defend myself. And I would have felt quite justified in doing so because I felt falsely accused. But if I had, it would’ve just been me reacting to her reaction, and we likely would have ended up in an argument.

Reaction versus reaction = conflict.

The world is already so full of conflict. If we want to create more peace in the world, we have to choose not to take things personally and instead respond with understanding, compassion, connection, and peace.

I’m not suggesting it’s easy, but I believe moments like these offer an opportunity to live from our heart when a natural reaction is conflict.

For me, in this case, the shift to understanding opened my heart and created a sense of peace and connection to the woman.

She must have felt it on some level, because without me pushing back at her with my own reaction, she also softened. Something dropped, and she simply asked the barista to make me a new beverage.

Whatever was bothering her before was still there, but I could feel she wasn’t projecting it outward onto me.

A moment of understanding can change everything.

The World Needs More Love (Understanding)

We often judge or complain about other people’s actions, but if we can pause and be honest with ourselves, we’ll realize we often do something of a similar nature ourselves.

Everyone has different life stories and traumas that condition their unique personality, but we all experience moments when we’re unable to maintain peace inside, so even though we may not know someone’s exact story, we’re still capable of understanding.

Instead of wasting our energy judging or complaining about others, we can put ourselves in their shoes and understand that we struggle with similar emotional challenges. This allows us to be more present and compassionate, cultivate deeper self-awareness, and connect on a human level.

Imagine a world where more people chose understanding and truth rather than reaction and conflict.

But ultimately imagining it is not enough; it’s a good start, but we need to act. We need to live and engage life from our heart.

“Understanding is love’s other name…”

“Understanding is an avenue into love. It’s also an expression of love in action. When we enter into understanding we are entering into love… and “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ~Jimi Hendrix

What kind of a world do you want to live in?

Will you choose understanding instead of reaction today?

Get in the conversation! Click here to leave a comment on the site.

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posted from https://addicted2success.com/success-advice/3-foolproof-ways-you-can-win-in-the-online-space/

Lets take a second and remind ourselves how revolutionary the Internet is… we can buy a $200 plane ticket, fly 18 hours away to a new place, and still have the connection to people back home (and around the world), as if we never left! But to experience this revolution, we first need to show up.

Showing up is 90% of the battle. If we show up, we can connect with others, express ourselves, share information, create memories, and incubate ideas. We can share laughter, spread joy, and transfer energy. If you’re nodding your head in agreement, you are already on your way to understanding how you can WIN in the online space.

In this Influencers Exposed Podcast episode, Joel breaks down three foolproof ways you can win in the online space…ways that aren’t talked about as much but should be.

1. Embrace your vision as unique and authentic: There is only one you

You and your friend can walk into a bar with all variables the same (same outfit, intention, knowledge), but experience something completely different. Why? Because you’re two different people. It’s as simple as that.

The beauty of authenticity (a potentially cliché word that many might not thing they embody) is that your perspectives, your life experiences, and your emotions are the reasons why you and your friend will walk out of that bar having two completely different stories to tell.

Joel elaborates on this concept in the episode, sharing how this perspective has been a huge proponent as to how he gets over impostor syndrome while consistently sharing online. So the next time you want to post about something but already saw someone else talk about it, remember how your delivery and perspective of that information is unique and authentic to YOU. It will resonate with those who will most likely turn into followers and friends.

2. Shift from comparison to curiosity: Find the inspiration and greatness within others

Lets bring ourselves back to our childhood years where we questioned everything, asking, “Why?” so many times that our parents had no choice but to keep coming up with answers until we got tired. Well, fast forward to our adult years, why don’t we approach social media and those that are successful in our areas of interest in the same curious manner?

Instead of looking through your feed and comparing where they are, what they have, what they’re doing, or how happy they look compared to your current situation, Joel shares the question he asks himself to turn the tables.

“Where is the inspiration and greatness within them that I can find in myself? If I learn those things, would I be able to get to my vision sooner?”

I challenge you to ask yourself these questions next time you feel less than or unhappy while consuming someone’s content. You might just evolve from comparison to curiosity. Scarcity mindset to abundant mindset. Unhappy state of being to joyful and empowered state of being. You’ve got nothing to lose and everything to gain.

3. Zero-structure sharing: Stop forcing it and just do it when it feels right

Oh the beauty and satisfaction in a cohesive feed. You know what I’m talking about… you go to someone’s profile (on Instagram) and the Lightroom presets are on point, every third picture is a quote, followed by a nice picture and vulnerable caption, and then another picture with an informative caption. It’s visually appealing, and your OCD is satisfied. But just like with anything else in this world, after a while, doing the same thing gets old, boring and uninspiring.

Joel shared his experience with this exact social media strategy and how it led to his current  ‘zero-structure sharing’ approach. He realized that his vulnerable captions were becoming a burden because they had to be scheduled, therefore feeling forced and less authentic. Since one of his core values in delivering content to his audience is to remain genuine and transparent, he broke the pattern.

The result? When inspiration or a moment of vulnerability struck, he would post about it. Whether it was three times a week or once every other week, Joel elaborated how much more effective this was through the feedback of his followers. Not only did this zero-structure sharing make Joel feel more in alignment with his message, but his followers and community benefited from it immensely as well!

Posting on a certain topic when it feels right is the most authentic and vulnerable we can get. It’s a bonus that it is most effective for others as well.

Listen to the full episode at the top of this article to hear even more from Joel about how you can kick-start your self-development journey, along with perspectives he never talked about until now.

If you enjoyed this episode and blog post or if you have anything to add, please leave a comment below!

RESOURCES:

Connect with Joel:

Instagram- @iamjoelbrown

Website- iamjoelbrown.com

Monthly Mindset Mentorship Program: mindstrongalliance.com

Connect with Alexis:

Instagram- @alexisquiterio

EPISODE LINK:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/influencers-exposed-podcast/id1469424090?i=1000448471071