nineteen-flowers reblogged
Katie Ledecky of Team United States reacts after winning the gold medal in the Women’s 1500m Freestyle Final on day five of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games 📸 by Clive Rose and by Maddie Meyer
nineteen-flowers reblogged
As I get older I’m starting to let go of the guilty urge to build permanent habits. Like, a while ago I decided I would start jumping rope every day. I did it for like three weeks and felt good about it. Then I got bored, because of course I did, because I’m a human person. So now I do a bit of kickboxing because that’s what I like now. The other week I cut all sugar from my diet, just for a week, to challenge myself. Now I’m back to eating sweets but I don’t crave them as much.
Growth is about stretching, trying new things, and setting small, realistic goals for yourself, not picking a “good habit” you’ve decided you will be doing always and forever from now on. That’s not discipline. That’s pointless self-torture and unhealthy resistance to change.
What’s good for you today will not necessarily be what’s good for you tomorrow.
nineteen-flowers reblogged
nineteen-flowers reblogged
thinking about when i was small, how my mom told me that pipe cleaners were just a tool until people started idly shaping things with them and it grew so popular that they were marketed as crafting materials. and that story about how the original frisbees were disposable pie plates that students flattened to throw. and how when i was a child i had a wooden mancala set with shiny, colorful stones, but on invention it was played with rocks and grooves dug into the dirt. and middle school, paper football and tic-tac-toe and mash and mad libs, games that just need pen and paper. and before that, games of pretend with pirates and princes and masked marauders. how at slumber parties after lights out, we used to whisper storytelling games, i say one sentence and you say the next. and shadow puppets. and the way all the kids in the neighborhood used to divide into teams and throw fallen pine cones at one another. and the floor is lava game, and the quiet game, and the games i play with my coworkers that are just words and retention. and "put a finger down" on the high school bus. and little girls clapping together, and how the first jump-rope was undoubtedly just a length of rope who knows how long ago, and how natural it is to play, how we seek play at every age and with any resources we have and with whatever time we can squeeze it into in a day. i'm not an anthropologist or a psychologist but i think after food and shelter and water and air what comes next is games and stories and laughter. i think that there is nothing -- not sex or fighting or forming unlikely bonds with animals -- there is nothing more human than to play.
nineteen-flowers reblogged
You did it! You broke 2020 down to its bare essentials!
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jalilnajafov on ig
nineteen-flowers reblogged
During his time on earth, people would ask Jesus to let them come with him, but he would occasionally tell them no, and give them a different mission. Like the man who had been possessed by demons. Jesus sent him back home to show them the miracle that had been done to him and preach God's word to them.
I think about all this a bit, and Y'know, there's a good point in it. We don't all have the same calling. Jesus wants us all to spread the gospel, obviously, but we can't all spread it in the same place, or to the same people, or in the same way. We all have our own place to be in this world and it doesn't matter if someone else is called to do something that is 'more holy' than you. You don't have to go to the ends of the earth to preach, I swear if God wants you there, He'll tell you. Sometimes, you just have to spread the word to your family or your hometown. Or to someone you meet who seems to need reassurance. Or to a new believer. Or even to an enemy.
This is a bit rambly and it is midnight right now, but I guess my point is that we have different gifts and different purposes and if we all did the same thing, only one thing would get done. So... Yeah.
this is a beautiful reminder. I needed to hear this. God-bless you 💛
nineteen-flowers reblogged
I’m very pro-rereading books you loved as a child at different stages in your life
nineteen-flowers reblogged
Do not fear the struggle; rather, embrace it. Embrace it in the knowledge that the Grand Weaver will take all of your struggles, questions, disappointments, and fears and use them to build your faith and increasingly make you into a man or woman who looks like Jesus Christ.
nineteen-flowers reblogged
Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker
THIS BOOK is life changing. (Even Bill Gates thought so!) I learned so much, and not just scientific facts that satisfy my curiosity. My (seemingly defunct) sleep habits have been validated, and I’m now empowered with ways to drastically improve my physical, mental, and emotional health. Ever since finishing the book I’ve been enthusiastically telling others to please read it.
Some things I’ve personally learned:
- Being a night owl, early bird, or somewhere in the middle is genetic. We literally can not change this “habit”, because it’s not a habit; it’s a biological function. About 40% of people are early birds, 30% are night owls, and 30% are in the middle. The theory as to why we’ve evolved this way is because as a social species, this natural ability to take turns keeping watch at night improves our survival as a whole. Thus we as a society need to rethink and rework the ways that our world favors early birds and shuns night owls.
- All teenagers have a shift in circadian rhythm that is different than young children and adults. They literally can not naturally fall asleep until well past midnight, and thus should not be waken up until after their 8 hours of sleep. What parents–and society–expecting teens to go to bed by 10 pm and wake up by 6 or 7 am for school is like asking an adult to go to bed at 7 or 8 pm, and then wake up at 4 am. Horrible, right? And yes, that chronic sleep-deprivation does have real consequences, such as a link to increased physical and mental illness.
- The natural human sleep schedule is a continuous 7-8 hours at night, and a brief 30 - 60 min nap in the afternoon. Studies have shown that in cultures where this schedule has been suddenly disrupted (like a study in Greece), people with no history of cardiovascular disease suddenly showed a 37% increase in the chance of dying from heart disease (vs those who still maintained a mid-day napping schedule) over the 6-year study period. Yikes.
- Oh, btw, that whole observation in Western Europe about people sleeping in 2 segments in the night (and waking up in the middle to eat, socialize, etc) is not a biological thing, but rather, cultural. That is not how humans have evolved to sleep.
- I think we’re all kind of familiar with knowing that sleep is attached to remembering facts, but sleep is also necessary for learning new facts. Thus a good night’s rest is not just essential for doing well on tomorrow’s exam, but also for remembering tomorrow’s lecture in another class. To put it another way: you retain short-term memories in the hippocampus, but it has a storage limit (like a USB stick). Thus sleep helps move those memories into long-term storage so you can remember them, and by doing so, also frees up that space for new memories.
- Sleep is also essential for learning new motor skills. If you’re having trouble with say, playing a difficult piece on the piano, try again after a full night’s rest. When you’re sleeping, your brain is still actively working perfecting that sequence of piano keys you need to press. Thus the adage of “practice makes perfect” should be amended to “practice and sleep makes perfect”.
- Sleeping 6 hours/night for 10 days straight will cause a cognitive decline equivalent to staying up for 24 hours straight. And for those of us who keeps that exact same sleep schedule and think we’re “fine”, we really don’t realize how not fine we are because we think that’s our baseline normal. If you’ve ever wished to have more energy and be more productive, sleeping more may just be your magical wish-granting-genie.
- Every hour in the US someone dies from a car accident caused by someone behind the wheel not getting enough sleep, due to the brain essentially “blacking out” to outside stimulus for a few seconds during a micro-sleep. As a perspective: a drunk driver is merely slow at reacting to say, slamming the brakes; a sleep-deprived driver going through a micro-sleep doesn’t react at all.
- Heart attacks across the US spike significantly the day following daylights savings when everyone loses an hour of sleep. The opposite is true when we gain back that hour in the fall: heart attacks drop the following day. And that’s just one piece of evidence that sleep supports a healthy heart.
- Sleeping 4 hours/night for just six nights increases your blood glucose levels so much you would be classified as pre-diabetic.
- It’s well known that alcohol can disrupt REM sleep. What was interesting is that alcohol-disrupted sleep can interfere with memory (and thus learning) even up to three nights later, even if you get 2 full nights of sleep before consuming alcohol. Therefore, if you have an exam on Monday, drinking on the Friday before will interfere with remembering everything you’ve studied the previous 2 days.
- Blue light, like those emitted from LED lightbulbs and the phone/tablet/computer screen you’re reading this from, stimulates our brain to wake-up and to stay awake. The evolutionary hypothesis for this is that we–and all land animals–evolved from marine life in the ocean, where the only visible light is blue, and therefore our brains recognize blue light as a cue to wake up.
And that’s just a small fraction of the super interesting life-changing things I gained from this book. So if you found these tid-bits fascinating, I highly suggest checking it out!
nineteen-flowers reblogged
sometimes making tea is less about drinking it and more ab it keeping you company
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petalstofish-deactivated2022041
nineteen-flowers reblogged
sometimes I just wanna crawl in a mason jar with moss as a blanket and just live in a terrarium sealed off from the rest of the world
nineteen-flowers reblogged
violentwavesofemotion-deactivat
It’s so healing to wake up in a silent house and silently make your own coffee or tea and enjoy the beautifully intricate fullness of the morning silence while remaining calm and collected and unbothered by all outer and inner noise and it’s so low-key elevating and pacifying to rejoice in the silent atmosphere of your own house and just silently block the rest of the world…it’s a slice of heaven
nineteen-flowers reblogged
Dyffryn Gardens greenhouse, Cardiff, Wales, via Haarkon
nineteen-flowers reblogged
Natural History Museum, London
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Beautiful orchids and fluffy bee in the Temperate House of Kew Gardens, London