10 Resolutions For Your Home In the New Year

Every year, the New Year arrives, brimming with possibilities. Promises and resolutions are abundant. You feel this time, it’s really going to be different and nothing will stop you from accomplishing your goals.

Now that January has rolled around, you must be really looking forward to a great 2016. You might have vowed to quit smoking, lose some weight, travel new places or spend some more time with your family. But what about your home – the place where you’ll spend most of your year? Below we present to you ten resolutions for your home this year, in the perfect spirit of new beginnings. They say home is where your heart is but a lovelier, better organized, and more comfortable place to live will surely work wonders.

1. Cut down the use of energy.

How about trying to improve the planet as well while you’re improving yourself? Going green could be a great way to make this year truly remarkable. You could start with solar panels or a hybrid car but those are not the only things that can make a difference.

Learn to properly recycle, remember to turn off lights while you’re not using them and turn the taps off when you’re brushing your teeth. This way, you’ll not only contribute towards a better planet but also cut down your bills significantly.

You can trim energy use by sealing and insulating your ductwork. This increases the efficiency of your heating and cooling system by almost 20%. It will make your home more comfortable and also extend the life of your furnace, heat pump and air conditioner.

2. Create a healthy and family-friendly kitchen

The kitchen is the place where families gather together in the midst of all of the hassles of everyday life. While each of us are busy in our work and studies throughout the day, the kitchen is what brings us together.

So why not make as healthy and family-together kitchen as possible? Make your kitchen clean and organized and keep it full of healthy and nutritious ingredients. Look out for some healthy recipes in cookbooks or online. Throw out anything that has overstayed in your kitchen by checking out their expiry dates. And also, transform your kitchen into a place that’s not just about cooking but also about connecting. Make the kitchen more accessible. You could also create a zone for kids in the kitchen. Try to make it multi-purpose and also elegant.

3. Keep indoor air uncontaminated

Indoor air quality is one of the most important indicators of the quality of the environment you are living in. Prolonged exposure to polluted air can lead to complications like chronic respiratory disease, heart disease and lung cancer.

Indoor air can be full of contaminants like dust, pollen and mold spores. The problem can be even more severe during winter when we prefer to keep our doors and windows shut all the time.

The harmful irritants in your home can be eliminated by maintaining your HVAC system and changing furnace filters regularly, using low-VOC paints during remodeling of rooms and using localized ventilation in your bathrooms and kitchens to get rid of smoke, cooking fumes and surplus humidity.

4. Install low-maintenance and durable materials

This year, shift your focus towards materials that are low-maintenance and durable. They will provide you a trouble-free service for a long time and since you have to spend minimal time maintaining them, they will spare you from worrying about looking after them. You could use fiber-cement siding which is weather-proof, exceptionally stable and resistant to fire, dents and rot and lasts for as long as 50 years. LED bulbs meanwhile last a phenomenal 18 to 46 years even when they are used for 3 hours every day.

Seasonal artificial plants can be used to decorate your home if you don’t have time to spend hours every week tending to your flowers and trees in the garden.  Ceramic tiles which look extremely good on floors and walls meanwhile also last for decades.

5. Make your house safe and sound

Your home may look wonderful and it’s properly organized also. How about putting some efforts into making it safe as well? You should ensure you’re not living with a potential fire, health or security risk. Besides installing fire detectors, check your house for gases like radon and carbon monoxide also. The hardware that perform these tests are not particularly expensive either. And, also watch out for dryer lint.

Make sure your house is properly ventilated. You could also install door and window alarms, that don’t cost much these days. And also, ensure that your house is up to date with latest safety standards.

6. Get your space organized

Getting rid of clutter is a must. In fact, it’s probably the best and cheapest way to feel better about your home. Of course, the act itself however can be quite overwhelming but can you think of a better way to start the year than with a clear and organized home? Keeping your space organized basically comes down to two things if you stick to them. One is to periodically get rid of whatever things you don’t use often or don’t like at all. The other is to only bring in things that you actually need.

Creating extra space for storage is another way to keep your home organized. With added space, you can store your possessions easily without your room looking untidy. So this year, how about making use of your imagination at creating a little more space in the most unimaginable places?

7. Spend some time on home improvement projects together

How about trying your hand on some cool home improvement projects this year with your family? Such projects will not only improve your living place but you will also get to spend lots of quality time together as a family. You could try out some DIY projects. They are a fun and creative way to spend time and when finished, you’ll have something elegant to decorate your house with. They come in at all sorts of different budgets. Some of them don’t require much time to complete either.

You could also try something organic. Plant a tree in your backyard or spend some time in the garden together with your family. Preparing home emergency preparedness kit or making your entrance more inviting is also a great idea.

8. Get your finances right

This probably could be the year you finally get your finances right. Creating a yearly budget will help you a lot. That way, you know how much you’ll need to spend this year and will also help to avoid overspending.

Do not forget to allocate some budget for improvement and maintenance of your house. Cutting down the use of energy will also help a lot. So turn off your air conditioner when you are not at home and dial your heater down to a lower temperature at night. Sound financial health is assured when you make enough money and when you do not overspend the money that you have worked hard to earn. So think of the ways to make enough money this year and also try to cut down costs as much as possible.

9. Work out a system to keep your house clean

Everybody loves to live in a clean house but almost everyone dreads the act of cleaning itself. Coming up with a solid plan to keep your house clean could be the best thing you did this year. Devise a daily, weekly as well as monthly plan to keep your entire house clean.

It’s best to focus on one particular type of cleaning at a time. You can wipe windows and mirrors first and then move on to sweeping the floors. And also, keep the cleansing utensils like sponge, scraper, cleaning cloths, plastic bags and apron in a place where you can easily find them.

You could also divide the cleaning job among the members of your family. Some of them can do dusting and vacuuming while the others can clean up the bathroom. This way, you can clean the entire house in no time.

10. Make your place more welcoming

Every year, we vow to spend more time with family and friends. So why not make your house friendlier to increase the odds of real conversation and connection this year? All it takes is a little bit of rearrangement and a couple of updates.

You could start with your living room – the place where you welcome your family and friends. It doesn’t need to be very complicated either. Even adding a few bright cushions or placing down a new rug can make a huge difference. Guest bedrooms constitute the other essential part of the friendly experience. The experience of the guests in the places where they sleep can create lasting memories. So try to make them cozy and comfortable.

Featured photo credit: Kitchen Renovation by leyla.a via flickr.com

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How Mentally Strong People Solve Communication Problems

Communication and Long-Distance Relationships

In my early twenties, I said goodbye to my family in New York City and moved to Boston for graduate school. While I’d been living in my parents’ house, I talked to my mother, father, and teenage brother all the time, and felt really good about doing so. After I moved out, I wanted to stay close, so I called my family often. However, phone calls with my brother proved a major challenge. I called him regularly but he usually did not call back. My mother encouraged me to keep calling him, and reminded him often to call me – which he rarely did. I was upset and confused by this, as you can imagine, and when I visited NYC and pressed my brother to call me, he apologized, and said he would call back when I called. He did so for a bit, but then stopped again. My mother was distraught, and I was too. Negative feelings and thoughts kept running through my head: why didn’t he call me back? Didn’t he love me? Didn’t he care about me?

This issue festered for a couple of years, until I decided to deal with it directly. On my next extended visit to NYC, I sat down with him, and had a serious conversation. It turned out that my brother really dislikes talking on the phone. This form of communication just stresses him out. He has a much stronger preference for instant messaging as a mode of communication. Moreover, his Elephant brain developed an “ugh field,” a variety of negative emotions, around communicating with me. This was due to the combination of pressure he experienced from my mother and me, and the guilt and shame that came from him failing to call.

What I Should Have Done

I really wish I knew how he felt! What I should have done was notice that he was not calling me back, and have a conversation about the problem with him right away. I should not have insisted that he call me, but instead express curiosity about why he did not. That way, I would have found out about his anxiety and stress around phone conversations. He would not have felt guilty and pressured. I would not have felt sad and confused. Everyone would have been better off!

Broader Relevance for Communication and Relationships

This story illustrates the importance of adapting one’s communication style to one’s audience. Much has been written about the vital role of communication in the workplace and in civic engagement, especially analyzing and targeting the preferences of your audiences to meet your communication goals. Research shows that such communication is also vital in our personal lives, such as ensuring healthy romantic relationships. Studies of family communication have likewise shown the importance of communicating well and especially being flexible about one’s communication style and preferences.

Flexibility and Anchoring

Such flexibility was the missing ingredient in my communication to my brother. I had the goal of cultivating my relationship to my brother, but was trying to reach this goal in a way that was not intentional. So I decided to be more flexible and started exchanging Facebook messages with him, using Gmail chat, and other instant messaging services. We grew closer and had a much better relationship. We even worked to solve occasional problems that would come up between one of us and our parents!

Now, why did this problem occur in the first place? Well, from my background growing up, I developed a reference point, in other words a perception of what is normal and appropriate, of the phone being the “right way” to maintain and cultivate relationships with close people. I suffered from the anchoring bias, a common cognitive bias, the scientific name for thinking errors frequently made by our minds. The anchoring bias occurs when people rely too heavily on information they got early onward, and do not move away from this anchor sufficiently based on new information. I had to acknowledge that I failed at my brother’s mind and forgot that my mental map does not match his mental map.

Dealing with Anchoring

So how does one deal with the anchoring bias? A useful strategy is remembering the benefit of re-examining our cached patterns. This term refers to habits of thought and feeling in our mind that we absorbed uncritically from the social environment around us, as opposed to conclusions we arrived at by our own intentional reasoning. Re-evaluating our cached patterns of thought and feeling enables us to see reality more clearly, make more effective decisions, and achieve our goals, thus helping us gain greater agency in personal relationships and other life areas.

So whenever you notice yourself confused or upset by something that you did not expect, stop and think: what is the origin of your confusion? Is it coming from some sort of cached pattern, where you think something is the only “right way” of doing things? Think about whether there are any alternative ways of achieving your desired outcome. (This is part of a broader strategy of dealing with common thinking errors by considering alternatives, which research shows is a very effective way for avoiding thinking errors.) Try listing at least 3 alternatives, and describe why each of them can be valid and right, at least for other people if not for you. Remember, relationships are a two-way street, and you need to respect the other person and their preferences in order to communicate well.

Questions for Consideration

To help you internalize this information, gain long-lasting benefit from reading this article, and use it effectively in your everyday life for improving your thinking, feeling, and behavior patterns, reflect on and answer the questions below.

• Can you identify any ugh fields you developed? How do you deal with ugh fields?
• In what ways, if any, can you be a better communicator in your professional, personal, and civic life areas?
• Are there any instances where the anchoring effect caused you to make sub-optimal decisions?
• Do you think you have any cached patterns that might be harmful to your mental well-being?
• If so, what steps can you take to deal with these cached patterns?

Featured photo credit: Phone via flickr.com

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What Is the Meaning of Your Life?

“What is the meaning of life?”

I struggled with the question of life’s meaning and purpose throughout my youth. My parents tried to sell me on their view of the meaning and purpose of life. They pushed me to become a doctor or lawyer, make a lot of money, go to synagogue, and not worry about reflecting on life’s big questions.

But I was a bit of a rebel. I didn’t really listen to them. Instead of going to synagogue, I spent long and lazy afternoons and evenings with my friends – hanging out, walking, playing cards, drinking, and arguing, often about the meaning and purpose of life. I particularly remember one conversation when I was 18. My two closest friends and I stayed up until 5 a.m., playing cards, drinking, and trying to convince each other that our individual vision of the meaning and purpose of life was the best one. At the same time as I argued with my buddies and expressed a false bravado, I always felt a certain emptiness in the depth of my stomach, a feeling that I lacked meaning and purpose in life.

Going to college prompted further thought. Listening to professors and reading great books caused me to rethink the meaning and purpose of life many times. I really gained a richer perspective, but never a clear answer to my question – “What is the meaning and purpose of life for me?” That was until discovering research about this question.

But, before going into that, let me answer a question that some of you may have on your mind: why does my story matter? Who cares whether some guy figured out the meaning of life or not? Aren’t there bigger fish to fry in the world – hunger, disease, polarized political debate? Why even spend time worrying about the meaning of life?

Experience a Higher Sense of Well-Being

Recent research shows that people who feel that their life has meaning experience substantially higher sense of well-being and even physical health. For example, Michael F. Steger, a psychologist and Director of the Laboratory for the Study of Meaning and Quality of Life at Colorado State University, found that many people gain a great deal of psychological benefit from understanding what their lives are about and how they fit within the world around them. His research demonstrates that people who have a strong sense of meaning and purpose have greater mental well-being in general. They are more satisfied on a day-to-day basis, as well as at work. Adolescents, in another study, are shown to feel less depressed, anxious, and are less likely to engage in risky behaviors.

A deeper sense of life meaning and purpose also predicts better physical health. Greater meaning and purpose has been associated with a reduced risk of Alzheimer’s disease. An increased sense of life meaning and purpose correlates with reduced risk of heart attack, the leading cause of death in the United States, and stroke, another of the top five leading causes of death. Brain scans using functional magnetic resonance imaging indicate that a deep and rich sense of meaning and purpose decreases the production of cortisol, a stress hormone, resulting in better mental and physical health alike.

Ask the Right Question About Your Purpose

Additionally, research on life meaning and purpose shows that it does not matter how you get this sense of meaning and purpose in life. What’s most important is that you experience your life as having a meaning and purpose. The key question is not “What is the meaning of life?” In fact, research seems to show that there is no one clear answer to this question. The only question that matters is “What is the meaning of life for you?” Each of us is free to formulate her or his own answer to this question. By doing so you get a personal sense of life meaning and purpose, and thus gain a sense of agency and choice by and through understanding your own personal life goals.

Now, should you worry about your health and well-being based on your current sense of meaning and purpose? It’s wise to evaluate it, which you can do using this handy science-based web app. If you find it lower than you want, there are plenty of science-based resources to improve your sense of meaning and purpose, such as this book, this online class, this videotaped workshop, and plenty of other resources. It’s up to you to choose to use them wisely!

Featured photo credit: Question via flickr.com

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Find Difficulty In Achieving Your Goals? You Should Adopt This New Way Of Thinking

Do you have a major goal in your life that you are trying to achieve, but you are stuck in a rut as to how to get there? Have you broken down the steps needed to reach this goal? Sure, you probably have. Yet, you may be unsure about how to get started. The problem may lie in the way you look at your goals. You may be looking at the steps as problems to overcome instead of solutions to reaching your goal.

If you can change your mindset and start looking at goals as solutions, science has shown that you can develop more creative ideas. In the 1980s, business professors at Stanford University started teaching a relatively new business concept called Design Thinking. Design Thinking in business is intended to help businesses research and develop new products for customers based on their needs.

Design Thinking is based on five steps. They are:

1. Empathize: This requires the researchers to fully understand the experiences of the person for whom they are designing the solution. It’s done through observation, interaction, and working side-by-side to learn their problems.

2. Define: This step is where the researchers process the results of their findings in the first step in order to find a point of view to address with the design of the product or solution.

3. Ideate: Now, the researchers will brainstorm and work to develop numerous different possible solutions. They should be as diverse as possible to allow the researchers to step outside the box and explore many original ideas.

4. Prototype: Here is where researchers take their best ideas and develop them into physical solutions. Perhaps it’s a new product or service. This will be delivered to users in the last step.

5. Test: Of course, after developing the prototype solutions, the researchers must test them with the users they empathized with. Testing includes feedback on results to refine and improve the prototypes. It even includes learning more about the user and possibly adjusting your definitions even more to perfect your solution.

So, now that we know how businesses use Design Thinking, how can you use this mindset to accomplish your personal goals? One writer recently used Design Thinking to help her lose 25 pounds. It can also be used to find a life partner, a new job, go on that dream vacation, start a new hobby, or whatever goal you truly have.

Let’s take one of those goals from above and talk about how Design Thinking can help you achieve it. Imagine with me that your goal is to find a new job. We’ll go through the steps to see how we can accomplish that goal.

Empathize: Why do you want a new job? If you’re not working currently, that’s an easy question to answer—you need to make money. If you are currently working, what is it about your current job that makes you want to find another? Is it better compensation and benefits you’re looking for? Is it a better environment, or do you want a more rewarding work experience? Understanding the reason why you truly want a new job will help you in finding it. The key is to start asking yourself why you want this and what it would accomplish for you.

Define: After asking yourself these questions, here comes the hardest part—defining which answer is the real reason. Maybe you are disappointed with the money you’re getting paid, but the real root of the problem is that you are bored with your job and you need a new challenge in a new field. The point is, this where you find the true answer to those why and what questions.

Ideate: If you decide that you need a new challenge, and you’re not getting that through your current employer, you need to start formulating ideas of what potential employers can provide you with those opportunities. Start making a list of those companies and the positions you want. Be as radical as you can here to make sure you think of the best ideas. Changing jobs is not a minor decision to make.

Prototype: In our case here, this may seem hard to do. In reality, it’s not. Imagine the job you want. Create it in your mind and then develop a model of it at home or at another location outside of your current place of work.

Test: Now, try doing that job and record the results. Does it increase your happiness? If yes, then start pursuing that new job in the field you want until you find it. You may even need to use Design Thinking to land that interview with the specific company you want to work for. If your answer to the happiness question is no, then you will need to return to step two and make sure you have defined the true issue and continue from there until you get a yes.

By using the Design Thinking method, you are able to better understand your goals, why they mean so much to you, and you instantly become more creative in figuring out ways to achieve them.

Featured photo credit: Paxson Woelber via flickr.com

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Science Says Walking Barefoot On Earth Can Make You Much Healthier

One of the most exhilarating feelings is to kick off your shoes and feel the earth beneath your feet. Whether it be dewy grass, soft dirt or squeaky sand, something wonderful happens to us when we go walking barefoot on the ground. Not only do we free our feet from the confinement of shoes and socks, we connect with the earth.

Scientific research has started to uncover the health benefits that this simple act can provide to your entire body and its basis lies in the energy that enters your body and spreads when you stand directly on the ground.

Maintaining a healthy body and slowing down the aging process depends a lot on controlling what scientists refer to as free radicals. Free radical damage is when your cells deteriorate, whether it be through the process of aging or other external factors such as poor diet, alcohol and drug abuse or a sedentary lifestyle. Antioxidants are molecules that can prevent this process and are found in many foods that we consume in the form of vitamins.

The earth is a powerful supply of antioxidants

Maintaining a healthy body and slowing down the aging process depends on achieving a balance between antioxidant electrons and free radicals to ensure that the damage from free radicals, whilst inevitable, is not excessive.

Osteopathic Physician Dr Joseph Mercola, a New York Times Best Selling Author, says that the earth is “a powerful and abundant supply of antioxidant and free-radical-busting electrons” on Mercola.com.

Dr James L Oschman, an energy medicine expert who Dr Mercola references, along with many other researchers have published several studies in peer reviewed journals that confirm the possibility that grounding can improve well being.

“Our main hypothesis is that connecting the body to the Earth enables free electrons from the Earth’s surface to spread over and into the body, where they can have antioxidant effects.” – James L Oschman et al.

The studies show that walking barefoot on natural substances feels good because it maintains the body’s negative charge. Free radicals have a positive charge and the earth’s energy is negative. As the energy from the earth moves through your body, it neutralizes your body energy.

In layman’s terms, free radical damage is much like what oxygen and water does to metal; it destroys it. Harnessing the negative charge of the earth into our bodies causes a cooling or slowing down environment that not only heals damaged cells at the site of the inflammation, it also prevents ‘collateral damage’ of the surrounding tissue of the wound. It also helps to heal the original wound by minimizing smoldering inflammation.

Grounding, combined with eating well and other aspects, brings excellent health

Earthing has been shown to assist with the relief of pain, the reduction of inflammation, the improvement of sleep, which in turn increases general health.

When the body responds to grounding, muscle and joint pain can improve, circulation is optimized by making the blood more viscous, the heart rate is stabilized and stress is generally reduced because the person feels better, sleeps better and thinks better.

Walking barefoot on the earth’s natural surface could be the missing link to maintaining excellent health. Combined with the other essential elements to well being like moderate sunshine without excessive exposure to harmful UV rays, fresh air free from toxic pollution, good nutrition with less sugar and fat, plenty of clean water daily and exercise to counteract increasingly sedentary lifestyles – grounding can contribute significantly to a holistic approach to being healthy.

How to include grounding into your daily routine

Staying grounded can become an effortless daily habit that is inexpensive and simple to sustain.

• Wear leather soled shoes when you can not be barefoot. Rubber and plastic are insulators and prevent the earth’s energy from being conducted

• When an opportunity presents itself, take your shoes off. A lunch break in the park, a walk along the beach, gardening or barbecuing in your backyard are instances when you don’t need to have shoes or flip flops on. Just be aware of possible hazards such as prickly weeds, broken glass, poisonous jelly fish and other things that can injure your feet

• If you are renovating or replacing flooring in your home, try to choose natural surfaces so that every time you happen to be walking barefoot at home, you are essentially earthing. Flooring such as unsealed and unpainted concrete and brick for outdoor areas and unsealed ceramic tiles for indoor surfaces can keep you connected to the earth

• Invest in some earthing and grounding products. You will be surprised to learn how many things are available to help you stay grounded when you can’t be walking barefoot outside. From shoes to bedding, grounding mats and pads and other products that help to conduct energy into your body are available to make the process easily accessible

• Researchers highly recommend practicing grounding in your bedroom while you sleep. First of all your bedroom is often the place filled with the most electrical and radio devices that emit harmful electromagnetic radiation even while they are switched off. Secondly, you can practice grounding while you sleep allowing you to undo the previous day’s pollution and recharge yourself ready for the next day

By simply re-connecting with the energy of the earth, you can heal your body and reverse the effects of modern day life.

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Signs That You Seem Childish But You’re Actually Very Mature

Have you always been a rebel who was opposed to growing up? I have always been like this, and I still am, but this doesn’t mean that I remained a kid. There is a big difference between how people perceive you and how you really are as a person. You may appear childish to others due to some habits which are typical for immature people, but this doesn’t mean that you don’t take care of important things in your life.

This can have a negative effect on you. Why? Simply because you will start to think that it’s true. Furthermore, this may lead you to feel bad about yourself, thinking that you are worse than everybody else since you don’t seem to be growing up. Just stop. Don’t go down that road—it won’t do you any good. Some people are boring, they stop having fun at some point, and just because you like to fool around doesn’t mean that you are doing something wrong. Here is how your childish habits may actually be signs of maturity.

You admit to not knowing things

When someone admits that he or she doesn’t know simple things, people tend to think of them as immature. For example, if you admit things like not knowing how to turn on the washing machine, it does not mean that you are incompetent. One of the major steps towards improving as a person is to face your shortcomings, so that you can correct them in the future.

You have the courage to do things that scare you

No matter if we are talking about riding a skateboard, taking martial arts courses, or asking the person you like out, you’ve got to have the guts to do it. Going for things in life and risking failure or rejection is much better than sitting in your comfort zone, watching your life pass by. This courage you have empowers you to progress in life and make changes that others are scared of.

You make quick decisions

To others, it seems like you don’t think when you make certain choices. In actual fact, you think faster than the rest, and that’s why you don’t need as much time to make a decision. Rather than thinking about the things you like, you focus on actually doing them, and this can give you an advantage at work or in other situations that require quick decision-making.

You disagree with your parents

Parents will always be parents. They like to meddle in our lives and tell us what to do even when we are fully grown. It is a common belief that, as we mature, our point of view starts to align with how our parents think. This is not true, and you prove this every time you make decisions that your parents dissaprove of. If every generation thought the same, we wouldn’t have evolved much as a civilisation.

You admit you’ve been hurt in the past

Talking openly about your feelings is a healthy thing and it helps you deal with your past. Insecure people don’t like showing their human side and how fragile they are. By speaking openly about your hardships, you overcome baggage and become a more stable person who cannot be shaken by similar things.

You enjoy sitting home and watching your favorite TV shows

After a hard day at work, the thing you like doing the most is to prepare some tasty food and binge watch your favorite TV shows. You’ve outgrown partying all the time and you now enjoy partying at home with a popular epic fantasy series rather than with people. Who needs people when you have Game of Thrones, right?

You like sleeping

This is one of the things on which you disagree with your parents, and even your friends. You like to go to sleep when you feel like it. Even though people think you are lazy, you know that getting a good night’s sleep is essential for being fresh and ready for each new day. There is no point in staying awake if you are incapable of performing the simplest of tasks.

You go crazy when you party

You don’t go out very often, since you like to take a good nap or watch TV, but when you do, you go out with style. In a way, you try to make up for everything you’ve been missing out on during your night out and do crazy things, meet new people, drink and dance, even if you don’t really know how to do it. You simply don’t care! The important thing is that you’ve fulfilled the need to do meaningless things and you’ve recharged your batteries for the next week.

You speak honestly

Beating around the bush is not your favorite thing and you like to tell it like it is. If you dislike someone, you will let them know, because there is no need for pretending. Adults don’t waste time on things that they don’t like, and that’s why being honest with others and yourself gets you where you want to be.

You try to have fun as much as you can

When you have some free time on your hands, you like to make the most of it. You enjoy doing things you’ve always dreamed of doing and have no shame when it comes to trying something new. Others may think you are crazy, but you don’t care. Being mature doesn’t mean that you have to be old, and why should you care if others don’t know how to enjoy life?

These are just a few of the significant signs that you are probably more mature than you (and others!) might think. Being mature is very important for making progress in your career, improving your life skills, and having meaningful relationships. However, I will always nurture the child in me. Sometimes, it’s better to have a less serious outlook on life, and through this perspective, you can even come up with positive solutions to serious issues.

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