Falling and Staying in Love

Love is a common word we hear every day. Love is equated to so many things. As you may have heard the famous cliché, we sometimes look for love in all the wrong places. What is love? What should I love? Is too much love a dangerous thing? Merriam-Webster defines love as a strong assurance of affection. I can say I love you, but if you’re not strongly affected in any way, love cannot be perceived from such words. Hugs, kisses, random talk, and spending time with someone all falls under the meaning of love.

In today’s society, it’s very easy to fall in love, but staying in love is where the game begins. Some fall in love at first sight while others fall in love as time progresses and they learn new things about the person or thing they admire. Love comes in categories. The four categories of love are Storge, Philia, Eros, and Agape. In order to reach an area in your life where you remain in love, you have to reach the agape level. Think about your favorite food or dessert for a moment. When I was young, I enjoyed candy apples. I would help my mother bake them and glaze them in the wee parts of the afternoon. Putting on the peanuts was my favorite part. It took a while for me to love candy apples. Once I gained an agape love for them, I began doing anything I could to obtain one or a few. I hope this blog post achieves the very same thing you are seeking for.

To begin, one must understand that “love” and “hurt” cannot mix just like light and darkness cannot. They are separate entities. Many times, people can accept hurt as a form of love. In my childhood years, they called it tough love; the child that got kicked out of his parent’s house and forced to live on his/her own. True love is not tough and it shouldn’t hurt. True love requires sacrifice, not hurt. If someone tells you about your actions and how you are hurting them, you’ll change or make progress to change if you love them. If not, you’ll continue hurting them. Love is sacrifice and will be discussed when I talk about agape love.

Secondly, you must love yourself. You cannot love anything or any person until you love yourself. Love what God created you to be from the inside out. Many times, we focus on the physical appearance and if we don’t look the part or fit in with the crowd, we feel we’re rejected and not loved. Loving you starts on the inside. Take a moment to sit down and write down all the things you like about yourself; your gifts, your smile, your skills, and so forth. There’s always something you can love about yourself if you try really hard to think about it; even if it’s small.

Thirdly, find a reason to love. When you find the reason to love, find out if it’s healthy or detrimental to your emotional health. Your joy and self-esteem interprets your view and mindset on the things around you. Ask yourself – why do I love this? How does loving this benefit me? Love is give and take. The giving is the sacrifice and the taking is the benefit you receive from loving. It’s a two-way street and if both parties aren’t making “love” work, it won’t be successful.

In closing, make the sacrifice to achieve love! Sometimes, you’ll be placed into circumstances where you have to agree to disagree and give up the right for the wrong. A mother’s birth is the best example. Though she didn’t agree with the pain and procedure to bring you into the world, she loved you so much that she was willing to sacrifice. What are you willing to give up today to show your love? Would you give up money and time? Would you give up some selfish ways and become selfless to others? Once you make the sacrifice to love, love yourself, and find a reason for loving, you can fall and remain in love with anybody and anything. It’s a process, but it’s worthwhile in the end!

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No Fear Shakespeare Books

If you are like me, you love literature and always have high hopes for your English classes…then you attend the first class and realize you will be reading text written a million years ago that you can’t possibly relate to even if you wanted. In a frenzy to get the full original text editions of the books online I came across something that I don’t think a lot of college students really know about. You may have herd about No Fear Shakespeare, a really useful section on the SparkNotes website that has old books written in todays terms. What you may not know is they also have published print editions of many classic drama books that have the original text on one side of the page and the modern translation on the other side.

There really isn’t much to worry about when you have a story written in terms that you can truly understand. I would go to say students, including myself, who read these books using todays terminology will get more out of it than students who stick to trying to understand and interpret the original text themselves. In the age that we live in, if there’s some sort of assistance when it comes to hard classes or understanding the impossible, I say we should take advantage of that. Oh, and get this, on Amazon they are all around $5-$6. That’s super cheap, if you know anything about college books then you would agree. Just go to Amazon or your favorite book seller and search for “No fear Shakespeare, then your book or drama’s title”. I hope this little golden nugget of advice helps you out as it has helped me!

Apps For A Healthier You

It seems anymore that technology is a permeant fixture in the lives of just about everyone. To some this may be an excuse to not live healthy or put health on a lesser priority, but it is actually a great way to stay healthy. Some of the most effective and popular apps on the market today deserve some recognition. If you own any iod device, basically an Apple product such as an iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad, then you already have the base for what these apps are all about! Here are the best fitness and health apps on the market.

MyFitnessPal – Now you don’t need an ios device for this because they have a website that does the same thing, but this app makes it very simple to track weight loss, manage your diet, connect with other people wanting to stay healthy and loose weight, and it has just about every feature someone looking to stay healthy on the go would want. This app is FREE!

Couch-to-5K – Talk about an effective app! This app not only sets a simple to follow plan to get you healthy and ready to run a 5K if you want to, but it has a built in music player for when you are doing the plan, three different digital trainers to choose from to guide you along, and offers the option for finding 5K’s near you and even gives you a discount for registering for a 5K. This app cost $1.99.

Sleep Cycle – Everyone knows that you can’t exercise and be healthy if you are tired and exhausted to begin with. Sleep Cycle is an app that monitors your motion while you sleep and determines when you are in your lesser sleep cycle, meaning you aren’t in as deep a sleep, and it goes by the time you set to be woken up. It gradually wakes you up by playing your choice of sound, music, or regular alarm noise. This app is important because it wakes you up on time and does it in a way that makes you feel like you have gotten a great nights sleep every time! This app is $0.99.

Pedometer – There is a paid and free version of this app, both are great! This app takes the pedometer to the next level by allowing you to listen to your music while walking, running, jogging, etc. it also records spikes in how fast you are going, as well as time, and it does all of this while setting goals for walking with you. If you plan on having your ios device with you, then this is the app to get, but it is ment for iPod Touch and iPhone, sorry but I doubt you would want to carry an iPad with you while you go jogging.

These are some of the best health and fitness apps on the market, some are free, and some cost, but none are over $3. Health is such an important thing, so I have a feeling you won’t mind putting down a dollar or two to make your tech life a little more healthy.