michellew

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About michellew

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    Wales, UK
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  1. Well, I speak from the dizzying heights of 52 and 11/12ths. What can I add, being that I'm already practically dead You do need to make the most of being under 30 - there's a reason for the phrase 'youth is wasted on the young' - you're at a time in your life when your energy levels are easy to boost, it's easy to get physically fit and stay that way, and it you set in place good habits, they'll see you in good stead for the rest of whatever life you have, not to mention giving you a good chance of a healthy and long life - and yet instead of doing that, it's a cultural necessity to live like bleedin' idiots and waste all that fabulous yoof and energy filling our bodies full of junk food and alcohol, avoiding exercise like it was medicine (well I guess it is really) and generally behaving like our bodies will last regardless of the abuse we give it and those brain cells will always be in easy reach, just like they are now. Now - will your ability to grow cease the minute you turn 30? I can truthfully say I didn't even start to grow, think or improve myself until the last 7 years, a tad past this arbitrary 30 milestone. I had always considered myself a thinker, that I knew what life was about, but I didn't even start living it until I was heading towards my half century at a rate of knots. Do I wish I'd woken up earlier? Hell yes - but the experiences I've had to go through to get to this point happened when they happened, I'm not sure if anything could have made things different. What advice would I give my younger self? Start questioning everything now. The truth is, the only time it's too late for personal growth is when you've taken your last breath. Physically however, you'll greatly improve your capacity by looking after yourself well now.
  2. Think about it this way John - if you live entirely alone and no one ever comes near you, it is not an issue - your nose is a wonderful instrument that will allow you to smell yourself for the first few days, but after a while it becomes accustomed and switches off, so you won't notice it. Any strong smells are switched off, otherwise people wouldn't be able to work in stinky places and smokers wouldn't be able to continue smoking as the smell would nauseate them. But on thing you will notice, if you come across a smoker, or say a fish monger in his work clothes - you can still smell them, even though they're blithely unaware. The same thing happens to people who have an unwashed body odour that makes other people gag, their nose has switched off sparing them what they're inflicting on everyone else. Saying all that - the way your body smells is not something to be ashamed of - being as clean as we are today is a social construct - do your own research and observations to verify this. There are whole industries designed to sell us nonsense that we don't need in order to make others' rich and in order to do that they make us ashamed of the way we are. So balance and awareness is required - basic soap and water is enough for anyone to be clean.
  3. There's no getting away from the fact that the film made by Michael Moore is very emotive - it's designed that way, much of the propaganda we view on a daily basis is designed to do just that, emote people - emotional people often don't question thoroughly the material being thrown their way with such abandon. There is also no getting away from the fact that our current human model is arrogantly destroying our beautiful nest without thought of the consequences. Badly made documentary films based on years out of date information do little to enhance the movement for a saner way of living on our planet. I found this documentary quite useful: It does debunk but in quite a reasonable fashion I think, not at all sensationalist. It appears that footage of the orangutan is actually another product of our prolific use of palm oil, rather than anything to do with climate change, but no less emotive for that reason. But still a bit of nonsense in a film about panning green alternatives in relation to climate change, and giving away the film's appeal to emotion rather than reason. Anything you watch that provokes a strong reaction should make you step back and think before you make decisions, not step forward into that tide of emotion that might just rob you of sense.
  4. Everyone has to do these things, it's just part of life, no one's going to do them for you once you're independent. Start training yourself now to do all these things for yourself, you'll find practice makes perfect, but be wary of giving your parents a heart attack when they see you helping You will find all good habits you learn before you leave the nest will stand you in good stead. Learn to do your routine things to provide a basic tempo for your day, so that looking after yourself becomes second nature/requires little thought and you can then devote your energy to the less mundane for the rest of the day.
  5. You've got to ask yourself in the name of sanity why would any man be pressuring a young woman to get pregnant with his child when he doesn't actually want to spend time with her, having already lost custody of another child? Seriously - what kind of man? Is she ready to be a single parent? Apologise to her child when it gets older for a father that saw it as a commodity to be bought? She doesn't recognise that she's in an abusive relationship - the best thing you can do for her is to help her realise her self worth and that decent human beings don't treat each other like commodities. If he ain't interested in a relationship with her now, he sure as heck ain't gonna want one when her body's been through pregnancy and all those hormones have changed who she is. I mean, on the one hand it might do her good and wake her up to what he really is, but would any of us want to be brought into the world deliberately on that kind of basis. It's very easy to imagine you have limited options when you're very young (and 20 is very young, you're still a child really), and that you have to plump for anyone who gives you attention - but someone who pulls away continually but at the last minute throws you a fish, they're abusing you and deliberately. It's a game to them and they enjoy the power they have over others. The other worrying red flag is why the need for a child by that man? What is the real need behind this. Hope it ain't what I would fear... BUT - berating her will just make her feel stupid and that she needs to cling to the idiot. That doesn't mean you can't make it plain that you think he's a wrong - un, but point her to sources of help and understanding - knowledge is power. There's a website out there called decision making confidence that I read a long time back and helped me to start thinking for myself, that might be a good starting place for her perhaps?
  6. @Natasha on the desktop version of facebook, on the dropdown where you log out there are 2 options, settings and news feed preferences - go through both these to turn off the various options. I don't see people's story any more, maybe you need to log out and in again to set that in motion?
  7. @Natasha Good call, enjoy your freedom
  8. @Natasha It's easier said than done isn't it! Firstly remind yourself that the makers of facebook intentionally made it addictive. It's a tool at the end of the day and if you find it useful (I use it to keep in touch with my adult son), make it work for you. If that means decimating your news feed, believe when I say I don't miss it - It's a primary weapon in the facebook armory to keep you there another 5 minutes. I'm old enough to remember the days before computers, let alone before facebook, so I grew up in a world where if you didn't write actual letters to people who moved away, you lost touch. As I never got round to sending these letters to people, I often lost touch and then came the days of friends reunited and facebook. I can say hand on heart that there was a reason most of the time that I lost touch lol... Quite often people just want to be nosey, there's no real interest in me as a person. Now, we have facebook and those people we'd have lost touch with are forever on our facebook feeds, and we're faced with an actual decision of whether or not to jettison them from our consciousness. Maybe put a note at the top of your feed saying you're going to delete people that you don't speak to, but if they want to stay, do get in touch? Then grab that bull by the horns and get deleting
  9. I've actually unfollowed everyone on so that I have virtually no news feed, apart from one or two groups that I enjoy the content (horse photography mainly). All it means is if I want to see what someone is up to I have to go to their profile and look which I rarely do lol... I'm quietly printing off the photos from over the years that I want to keep with a view to maybe ditching it entirely one day in the future. I do find the lack of news feed means a reduced lure, I can keep facebook in its place rather than letting it lead me by the nose and losing hours to it.
  10. There's a difference between being rational and assessing carefully what other people think, and 'not giving a sh**'. When you consider that many people live in the tidal wave of other's opinions without even considering if they're even valid (that voice I have telling me I'm a lazy moo when I'm relaxing instead of doing something 'useful' isn't mine but a learned response from my parents), then it makes sense to step back and consider how much you're being swept along in a similar tidal wave. It's part and parcel of developing yourself as an independent and self reliant human, but it doesn't mean loneliness, it means choosing to make sure your thoughts and feelings are your own, not a conditioned response to what you've always known.
  11. I struggled with smoking after starting when I was about 11 years old, continued smoking mostly on but managing to quit for up to 4 years at a time. I got breast cancer at age 38 and managed to smoke all the way through chemo etc., then again when I was 44 when it came back on the other side, I smoked through treatment. I genuinely thought I was doomed to die a smoker and couldn't understand why, even when I'd quit for some time, that I kept falling prey to smoking again. It wasn't until I found a particular website about quitting that I finally understood what it was that was tripping me up every time. You will not find the right help to quit by attending your doctor or pharmacy, it's very rare that they actually understand how to help. I've now been free of nicotine for 2 1/2 years and am confident that I have all the tools I need to stay that way, even when I get the odd craving (i.e. once or twice a year!). What made all the difference for me was understanding how nicotine trapped me in the first place, how it was keeping me there and the effects it was actually having on my body. Crucial also was understanding all the mythology and sheer bullshit involved with cigarettes, whether you smoke or not - we all believe an astounding amount of rubbish about nicotine. You also need to realise that there is a huge industry out there in whose interest it is to maintain that smokescreen of bullshit - ever notice how someone will post about 'personal choice and freedom' when it comes to such issues. Funny how it isn't socially acceptable to say the same things about heroin addiction. You need to understand that smoking is an addiction, no one would ever inhale those toxic fumes otherwise and most smokers are snared before their powers of self preservation are fully formed. I can post the website address if that is permissible? It's the first time I've posted on here, not sure what the protocol it. It's a totally free website with all the information any nicotine addict needs to quit and stay quit.