Happy New Year!!

I want to wish you all a Happy New Year.

Let 2019 be the year that you will do the things you always wanted to do, but never did because you were scared, insecure or whatever the case may be. Make sure that this year you will finally do it,

don't let fear hold you back.

Love yourself, don't let people walk all over you  anymore, don't give yourself all the way if you don't receive the same from others. Make yourself a priority this year, don't let others make decisions for you or have the control over you. This life is yours, so start living your life and make the best of it.

Have fun, make memories with your family, friends & loved ones. Be thankful & grateful for what you have in your life and enjoy it.
I want you to do better for yourself this year! Live your life, it's yours and nobody else's.

Let's Get Some Knowledge

With all the technology we have nowadays, many people don't like to read anymore, I mean really pick out a book and actually sit down & read it.
We have such a busy life that there is no time to sit down & read, and why would you? If you can play games on your phone or watch hours & hours of Netflix series.

However one of the ways to gain knowledge is by reading books, not only will it give you knowledge,  it will also improve your focus &  your concentration. Reading books improves your imagination, your brain, it reduces stress, it builds your vocabulary and so much more.
Who knew reading books could benefit you on so many levels, so what is stopping you, start reading today! Let it be a new year's resolution.

If you're not a reader, the only advice I can give to you is.... Just start! It's not that difficult, if you don't like to read, there are lots of audio-books out there, start with that, eventually you will pick a book and read it for yourself.

If you don't know what kind of books to read, here is a list with a few books to start out with.

Books to Read

The power of Selfdiscipline, No excuses ~ Brian Tracy

The 7 habits of highly effective people ~ Stephen R. Covey

Winners never Cheat ~ Jon M. Huntsman

The subtle art of not giving a fuck ~ Mark Manson

Rich dad, Poor dad ~ Robert Kiyosaki

You are a Badass ~ Jen Sincero

The Samson Syndrome ~ Mark Atteberry

Change your thinking, Change your life ~ Brian Tracy

The Last Month Of 2018

Wow!! This year went by so fast, I still can't believe that 2018 is almost over, its like every year passes by faster than the year before.

For me this is a time to sit down and look back at what I've done and what I've learned this year & also what I can do better the next year.

By taking time and reflect back on this passing year, you can see your improvement or the lack of in all area's of your life and come up with different ways to change it.

For the last couple of years I have been doing this and I really see how it has change me as a person, but also how it has change my life.

What has 2018 brought you so far

• Get yourself a notebook, or do it on your laptop, but I suggest you get yourself a new notebook so you can use it as a journal for the rest of the new year. 

• Take some quiet time for yourself, make sure you have at least an hour or more to sit down in peace with no distraction. Turn off your phone and everything around you that might distract you. Pick a comfortable seat, or your favorite spot on the sofa and make sure you have everything you need, so you don't have to get up. 

• On the first page of your journal. or blank sheet. you gonna write about this year. Write down in your own words what you have learned and what you have achieved this year. Also write down the problems you had to face and how you solved them, you get your best learning moments in times of misery. I think it's important for yourself and for your self growth to look back at where you were at the beginning of this year, where you are now at the end of it & what you can do to change it for the better the next year. 

• Now that you wrote down your milestones & your lessons learned of this year. Take a new page and write down what you want to accomplish for this upcoming year, the person you want to become and what you need to do to get there. Write down 3 goals for every area in your life, your mental,  your psychical, your financial, your family & your spiritual life. And what you need to do to accomplish your goals. 

Now that you had your time to reflect back on 2018 & wrote down your new goals for 2019. Don't forget to spend these last days of 2018 with your family & friends, enjoy your time, have fun and make some great memories.

Let's Get Healthy

How fun is it to love yourself or should I correct myself and not only say love, but also say to value yourself. Well... we tend to love other people, but forget to love and especially to value ourselves.  A lot of people don't love or value themselves, don't know how to, or they think they do, but they don't.

Before we get into it, let see what the definition of love & value is.

Love 

• A profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person, 
• feeling of warm personal attachment or deep affection, as for a parent, child or friend
• sexual passion or desire

Value  

• The regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth or usefulness of something. - the material or monetary worth of something / The worth of something to the price paid or asked for it.
• Principles or standard of behaviour; one's judgment or what is important in life

We talked about how we as people always show our love and value to others and forget about ourselves, but it's about time that we show that same amount of love & value even more to ourselves and start taking care of ourselves.
To go through this journey called life, you need YOU! And to cope with this life you need to love and value yourself.
Taking care of yourself doesn't mean you survived another day, so on to the next day. You tend to forget about yourself having a lifestyle like that, and before you know it, life passes you by in just one smoke.

You need to take care of yourself mentally, physically & spiritually.
In this topic I want to talk about our physical health, you need your health to be in the best condition it can be.
Your health is so important if you want to have a healthy and long life ( until it's your time to go ) & able to enjoy it, don´t cut your own life short.


We live in a time where the majority of us has become lazy, we cook less... Why should you? If you can order in, buy microwave- meal or deep-freeze food.
We walk less... Why should you walk if you can uber your way around, take the subway, the bus or your car.
No wonder people get sick & obese at an early age. Let´s change that & Let's get healthy, remember every change starts with you!

Let´s get healthy

Physical health starts on the inside, nowadays a lot of people may look healthy & beautiful on the outside but they are rotting on the inside. My best advice to you is, start with your inner-health first.

Start walking at least 30 minutes a day, if you have 2 properly working legs, use them! Don´t take them for granted. Walking has lots of benefits for your health, just by walking everyday you will improve your health so much.

Walking is good for your;

• Blood circulation
• Lungs
• Heart
• Muscle & Bones
• Cholesterol
• Weight
• Memory

And so much more. Just do yourself, especially your health, a big favor and start walking.

Drink water, we all know that drinking water is good for our body and our health, but we're still looking elsewhere for what´s healthy. Just go 'back to basic' and drink some water,

it comes with a lot of benefits such as getting rid of toxins out of your body,  you get better skin, your kidney's will be grateful, and much more.

Eat Healthy, by eating healthy also means less takeaway & microwave meals. Start by preparing and cooking your own meals and do this the healthy way, don't eat fried food every day.
Eat more fruits & vegetables, educate yourself on what is healthy for your body and what's not.

Sleep well, make sure you have a good night sleep. Sleep is important for you to have energy during the day, you'll concentrate better, be less irritated & more. Make sure you get enough sleep.

I can go on and on, on what you can do to become healthier, but you already know what YOU need to do for yourself to get there. Maybe you need to work on your mental health first before you can even start thinking about your physical health, if that's the case... DO IT!!

All I want to say is, that you need to do everything you can do to love & value yourself, so you can do the same for others.

Let's Get Motivated

It's time to get motivated! Life is passing you by and maybe you didn't achieved anything you set out to do at the beginning of this year. Do you even remember where you left your 'goal list'.
If you still have your list, I want you to read it and see if you have achieved any of your goals written on your list. If not, don't worry, you are still alive and that's great, because it means you can start today by achieving any of your goals.
If you have achieved your goals or at least some of it, maybe this article can give you a little boost  by being a little bit more motivated.


With anything you want to start in life, you first have to be motivated to take the first steps.
For a lot of people, me included, it can be hard to motivate yourself and start doing the things that needs to be done, in order to get where you want to be in life.
Once you see days, months & years passing by and you're stuck in one place, it's time to change.  The first thing that needs to change is YOU, So.....

LET'S GET MOTIVATED

You are the change

First of, know that change lies in YOU, this is really important. You have to know & realize that it's YOU that needs to change, everything you want in life YOU have to really want it to make the sacrifices you need to take to get there. Once you make a choice to change and take the steps to get there, you already made the first and most important decision, from now on you'll see a lot of changes  happen in your life if you stick to your decision to change.

Feed Your Mind 

Now that we've got the first step out of the way let's start by feeding your mind with motivational speeches. It's important to switch your mindset into the right direction &  have a clear mind on what you want. Everything starts in your mind, if you can think it you can achieve it and this is so true.
Listen to motivational video's of different speakers such as Les Brow, Eric Thomas, Jim Rohn and many more. Click Here to see a motivational video.

Read books, by reading books you will expand your knowledge and your vision in your life. Reading on other people their success story will give you a different take on your own vision to success and it let you know that it's possible. Many of us start in a position that looks impossible to get where you want to be, but by reading and seeing other people that started in the same position as you or even worse, you realize that maybe your dream isn't that far fetched as you thought it would be.

Time For Self

You have to have a routine either in the morning or at night, where you take some time for yourself, in this space of time, you will do things for yourself that will keep your mind clear, so you can be motivated to progress towards your goals. You can read a book or a Bible, maybe you will use this time to pray, or to write in your journal. It doesn't matter what you do, as long as it is something that you love to do and you feel completely relaxed.

Plan Your Days 

It's all fun to have some motivation but you need to turn it into action to get something out of it.

So it's time to plan your days, the best time to do this is the night before, write out the things that needs to be done for the following day & try to stick to it. Don't get discourage if you don't accomplish everything you wrote down to do, the more you do it, the more it will become like second nature and you will accomplish more on a daily. This alone will get you more motivated and that's exactly what we need...More motivation!

The Bad Effects Smoking Has on You

As we all know smoking has a bad effect on you, in no way that smoking does anything good for you, you may think that it does, but your mind is playing a delusional game on you.
When you quit smoking you'll immediately start to see & notice difference in just a couple of days. It's the same when you start smoking, you will see the short term effects showing rapidly. Let's get right into it.

Blood Pressure & Heart Rate

As soon as you start smoking your blood pressure and heart rate increase, the cause of this is tar in cigarettes that enters your blood. Tar is filled with poison, poison that's not made for your body and it's not healthy for you, that's why your body's first response is to react like this.

That's not the only thing tar does, another thing it does is make your blood thicker which increases the chance of clot formation

Smelling Awful Like Smoke

One of the first thing people around you notice is the horrible smell of smoke. Most smokers know they smell like smoke and a lot of them don't like the smell of it. But it's when you quit smoking that you realize how bad the smell is. For some the smell alone can urge them to quit smoking, or better yet, never start.

Bad Mouth Hygiene

Smoking will cause yellow & brown stains on your teeth. Bad breath is a common thing among almost every smoker, a lot of time smokers aren't even aware how bad their breath smells, that little mouth spray or gum you take after a smoke won't do magic. Your gums will become weaker and your healthy pink color will fade into a dark brown color. Eventually your gums will recede and you will have a lot of infection problems like gingivitis.

Skin

Smoking will cause early wrinkles on your face, especially around your mouth and eyes. Having wrinkles on a early age that you don't need is not a pleasant feeling. Smoking deprives your skin from oxygen and  nutrients this will give the skin a pale appear or some will develop uneven coloring . When you just started smoking you think a lot of these things don't apply to you, your thinking will deceive you into believing that you'll quit before all these negatives affects of smoking starts showing. Nonetheless more then 80% of the smokers continue smoking without realizing that it's already happening to them.

Nails

If you're smoking for a couple of months you might noticed that your nails have turned into a yellow color and or have brown stains on it. Tar and nicotine from the cigarette your holding stains your nails and your skin around your nails. Another reason is that smoking blocks the oxygen to your fingernails.

Infections

When you smoke you are more susceptible to get a virus, bacteria or an infection, also they are more frequently to get a cold or a flu. Smoking causes your cilia to paralyze, this is one of the toxic effects that cigarette smoke has on you. Cilia are tiny hairs that protect us from infections they line the respiratory tract, the trachea and the bronchial tubes. 

Money

Smoking now a day's cost you a lot. And it's like smoking has become more addictive so it's easy that you'll end up spending a lot of money on it, even if it wasn't your intentions when you started smoking you may end up spending a lot.

What Happens To You After You Quit Smoking

In this topic I want to talk about the positive things that happens to your body & health the moment you decide to quit smoking.
Let's get right into it.

The Checklist

20 minutes:

After just 20 minutes your blood pressure & pulse drop back to normal.
You may get extreme cravings after 1 or 2 hours, just know it's a mind battle, your pulse & blood pressure are still at normal rate.

12 hours :

You have half a day behind you! Just take it day by day to be a better you. After 12 hours your body cleanses itself of the excess carbon monoxide from the cigarettes. 

By now the amount of carbon monoxide & nicotine in your blood has dropped to half of what it was & your blood oxygen level has increased to normal. What a great start!!

24 hours :

You are a hole day in right now!! Keep it up & be proud of yourself, just know the urge to smoke will eventually leave. You don't even notice it but your body is working hard to get rid of all the toxic chemicals you've poisoned yourself with. Your lungs are working hard to get rid of the mucus &
the risk of a heart attack begins to decrease

48 hours :

Due to smoking your nerve endings responsible for smell and taste are damaged. These nerve endings starts to regrow and heal. Your senses of smell and taste are returning back to normal. By now you will taste and smell way better than you could during smoking. Imagine what it would be like after 1 year without smoking.
Also there is no nicotine left in your body. Keep up the good work & keep on being nicotine free!

72 hours :

By now you may noticed that breathing has become a lot easier  and you  have more energy due to the increase of your levels of energy. You feel more active during the day so it's important to know to what you will commit yourself when you feel this energy, spend more time on your hobby's or develop new ones, fitness & exercise more. meet up with friends, work harder towards your goal. Just know you will have to make yourself do & think about something else when the urge pops up.

1 month :

You are a month in now. You don't even know how grateful your body is, you finally decided to leave those things alone.  You blood flow has improved a lot and is still improving, also your lungs are stronger and clearer.

2 to 9 Months :

That ugly smoker cough is way less to non- existing and so is the shortness of breath, this makes exercising and just going about your day a lot easier.

1 Year

After one year without smoking your body is way healthier than it have ever been since you've started to smoke. you may have experienced another life since quitting.

After one year your risk of a heart attack, heart disease & stroke has dropped to half of what it was a year ago.

5 Years :

Keep up your healthy life, you non-smoker. How great is it to say, 'Oh no, I don't smoke'. Your risk of getting a stroke or cervical cancer is the same as that of a non smoker.

10 Years :

Ten years in and your body is still recovering from all the damage you've done to yourself.  You risk between 30% - 50% to be diagnosed with lung cancer, and you're half as likely to die from lung cancer compared to someone who still smokes. Your risk of getting cancer to the mouth, throat or pancreas has dropped.

Facts About Smoking

# Fact 1

Nicotine was named after the French ambassador, Jean Nicot. In the middle of the 16th century Jean Nicot was the first to bring tobacco to France. He introduced it and distributed it as a medicine. He brought it to help queen Catharin de 'Medici of her headache.

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# Fact 2

The ash remains in your lungs. Recent studies have shown that after two years of smoking up to 10 cigarettes a day, there will remain about 2 kg of ash residues in the body.

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# Fact 3

The first efforts to ban smoking started in the 1600s. King James tried to ban smoking around 1604, he saw it as the cause of laziness and moral laxness, he imposed a 4,000 percent tax hike on tobacco. The patriarch of Moscow was one of the first to ban smoking in 1634, if people would violate this order they would get whipped.

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# Fact 4

At birth, Pablo Picasso was considered stillborn by the midwife. The midwife left him on a table to help his mother, it was the doctor named Don Salvador, who was his uncle, that saved him. In that time it was normal for doctors to smoke cigars, when his uncle saw him lying on the table, he blew some smoke in his face, this made Pablo react.

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# Fact 5

The first one's to discover tobacco were the native people of Mesoamerica and South America.
Tobacco was used in religious rituals, they saw it as something sacred. The smoke of tobacco was food for the spirits, tobacco smoke was seen as carrying one's thoughts and prayers to the spirits. To this day people still use tobacco in religious rituals.

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# Fact 6

Tobacco is an unregulated commodity. This put the tobacco industry in a position that they can put anything they like into their products.

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# Fact 7

In just one hookah tobacco smoking session, you inhale 25 times more tar then smoking one cigarette

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# Fact 8

Urea is the main ingredient in urine. Tobacco companies use urea and add this to their cigarettes, this is to enhance the flavour of their cigarettes, that you are smoking.

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# Fact 9

Smoking cigarettes causes damage in minutes, not in years. Just one single cigarette contains over more than 4,800 chemicals, 69 of these chemicals are known to cause cancer. Secondhand smoke contains over 7000 chemicals, 70 of these chemicals cause cancer.

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# Fact 10

   

The level of smoking is higher among people who live below the poverty line and those who are poorly educated.

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