You Know What Kind Of People You Want But Do You Know What Kind Of Romance Attracts You The Most?

We always have our own set of answers when it comes to “What kind of people you want to be with?” or “What kind of people attract you the most?”

Some might focus more on personality and their answers will typically be “I like people who are funny, caring, responsible and commit to the relationship.”

There are people who might be more concerned about appearance, some people I know even have a checklist on “How my dream guy/woman should look like” and they will search for their “the one” based on that list.

I think that’s totally fine because everyone has their own standards about how they should pick the love of their lives.

However, I have come across the idea that most people ended up being with a person that’s totally different to what they originally pursuit. That’s interesting, right?

We are so concerned about the type of person we want but we seldom talk about what kind of romance we desire.

Sexual vs Romantic Orientation

Sexual orientation is about who you can be sexually attracted but Romantic orientation describes who you will be romantically attracted. Although we talk a lot about sexual orientation, romantic orientation is actually more important as it determines who and how you will form a relationship with.

You can have a clearer picture of what kind of relationship you TRULY want by understanding the type of romance that attracts you the most.

After all, you cannot start a relationship with a person who failed to get you emotionally engaged, even if he/she fits all your “requirements”.

So let’s take a look different kinds of orientations in the Aromantic spectrum!

Apothiromantic

People who are apothiromantic do not need any romance in their lives. They are romance repulsed and do not experience any romantic relationships. They enjoy relationships such as pure friendships and bondings with their families.

There is no rule in the world that says being in love is a must. It’s ok if you feel like you don’t need it in your life.

Although society nowadays has shaped our minds to think “Single people are sad.”, it’s important to understand that being in love is a want instead of a need, and just because you don’t think the same as what the majority do doesn’t mean you are wrong.

Families and friends can also make our lives fruitful and happy too!

Requiesromantic

This group of people they don’t really want to be in a relationship because of mental or emotional exhaustion.

They might have had bad relationship experiences before and feel tired about starting it over again. They refuse to be in a love or even being romantically attracted just to protect themselves from being hurt again.

One failed relationship doesn’t define you, as a person or a partner. You need to understand there are lots of factors that can affect a relationship.a healthy and sustainable relationship needs two people’s effort instead of one.

A healthy and sustainable relationship needs two people’s effort instead of one.

So if you fall into this group, it’ ok to feel insecure and feel free to take some time off. Reflect on your previous relationship when you are ready.

See what lessons you can take away, embrace and love yourself and I am sure you will meet your Mr/Mrs. Right in your life!

Lithromantic

People who are Lithromantic enjoy being in a relationship but they don’t want the feeling to be reciprocated. They don’t want to develop a relationship with their crush and some of them might lose their affection once in a relationship.

This group of people they enjoy the feeling of “being in love”, they have a belief that once they started a relationship, all the affection and romance will not be the same as before and that’s not the love they enjoy.

Responsibilities scare some of them too.

Feelings in a relationship are constantly changing. It’s a natural process that every couple will encounter. Don’t see it as a bad thing because it means the relationship is getting more mature and you value your partner as a family.

And keep it in mind that you need to take the other person’s feeling into account. If you don’t want to be in a relationship you need to make it clear so he/she won’t get hurt!

Quoiromantic

People who are in this group are often unsure about emotional attraction or feel like romantic attraction is inapplicable or inaccessible.

They find it hard to distinguish the difference between romantic attractions and other attractions.

Not fully understand themselves and lack of experience maybe the reasons why they failed to process the feelings they have.

Before starting a relationship, it’s important for you to know and understand yourself. This doesn’t only help you pick the right person but also saving you from getting into confusing and heart-breaking relationships.

The feeling of love is hard to describe and if you are really confused, try to seek advice from your friends or even parents, listen to their experiences and you will get more ideas on how love should feel like.

The first thing you might want to look for is to feel comfortable about yourself and being with that person.

Know Yourself and change your focus from now

Maybe you won’t fall into any of this group or you are a mix of different kinds, it’s important to understand that you should focus on what kind of relationship you want instead what kind of person you are looking for.

I hope this piece of advice can help you understand yourself before getting into any relationships or give answers to some of your current relationship struggles.

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4 Effective Strategies To Remember Everything You Read

Have you ever encountered the following scenario:

You: I just read a great book!

Friend: What’s it about?

You: (paused and tried so hard to recall what you’ve read)

Or have you forced yourself to finish a book in a day or so, because you worried you would forget the previous chapters after a reading hiatus?

When it comes to widening our knowledge base, unfortunately, we usually prioritize quantity over quality. Yes, the more you read, the more information you get, but we tend to forget the things we read after a short period of time. Our inability to retain information from what we have previously read is dauntingly common. We sometimes skim through the passages; or read word by word, letter by letter, without understanding the content; or even scan the book and get to the next — to bombard ourselves with piles of knowledge. But how often does loading and stacking help us retain what we read?

If we can’t remember anything from the books we read, what’s the point of reading? To make your reading effective and meaningful, here are 4 strategies to help you retain what you read:

1. Generate questions and look for answers

One reading habit we have is to completely immerse ourselves in the text and drill into the details when we read. We think the best way to get the most out of a book is to complete all of the chapters, but we don’t always remember the walls of text upon closing the book. One method to retain our memory is to first go through the table of content (the table of content is here for a reason!) and generate a list of questions, then actively search for answers in the book. When we have a purpose to read a book, it is easier to find and remember what we read.

2. Scribble in the margins while reading

Jotting notes is definitely a great strategy to better knowledge retention. When a certain paragraph stands out to us, we will usually highlight or copy the text, but instead, we should use our own words to summarize key ideas to make a stronger impression. Through this process, you are teaching and explaining to yourself on the points. If you are able to give an outline of the passage without hesitating, you can ensure you have really comprehended and digested the content.

3. Research on points that you don’t understand

When you try to rewrite the summary with your own words, you may encounter points that you find ambiguous or vague. Take the extra 10 minutes to research deeper to get a fuller understanding. This doesn’t mean to throw yourself in at the deep end. Taking the extra step to research can help you understand the subject matter with more details, because most authors assume their readers have some sort of background knowledge of the topics prior to reading the books. For example, for a philosophical book, the writer automatically assumes the readers have a certain level of knowledge on different ideologies in the era that the book is written.

4. Apply the knowledge to your real life

As mentioned above, jotting notes leads to a better retention of information. Many people hold the misconception that the more detailed our notes are, the better we will retain what we have read from a book. While we are so focused on cramping every single bit of a book into our notes, we often forget that we are simply copying paragraphs from the book to our notes. Also, how often do you revisit your notes? Most people’s answer is never. So your hard work in jotting notes have completely gone down the drain.

To make your reading and note-taking session more effective, try to incorporate your own life into whatever you are reading. What this means is when you are taking notes, also think about how the knowledge you read could benefit your life and solve real-life problems. When you do this, your notes will become more insightful and useful, helping you remember what you read from the book.

Reading requires devotion of time and effort

It may sound unnerving and stressful to spend much more time just to retain what you have read. It could be quite heavy at first, but as you follow the strategies more and more, your efforts will pay off and you will definitely have a better retention after reading each book.

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How Confidence Can Be Worked From The Outside In

We have all been scared to death for our job interviews, anxious to meet someone, or afraid to be in a new environment. You may say you have seen people who seem so confident when they walk in the room, but the truth is that even the most confident person on earth has struggles in these situations.

What sets this bunch apart from the crowd is that they know the key to being confident. So, how do we boost and build up our confidence? Fake it ’til you make it.

The key to confidence is to be able to act like you are confident even when you are not. How you present yourself is crucial.

The way you dress affects your psychological state.

How you dress is a basic rule that we follow when we go to different occasions. Others usually gravitate towards the person who “dresses the part”, and contribute positive attributes to that person. For example, a person who wears glasses^[1] and dress up formally is perceived as smarter than one who dresses very casually in an interview. At the same time, what we wear affects how we see ourselves.

Researchers have coined the term “enclothed cognition”,^[2] meaning that what you wear affects your physical and psychological state. The clothes you put on can either make or break your self-confidence level.

The researchers conducted a test on the effects of wearing a lab coat.

A pretest found that a lab coat is generally associated with attentiveness and carefulness. We therefore predicted that wearing a lab coat would increase performance on attention-related tasks.

Because of the symbolic meaning and physical experience of wearing the lab clothe, physically wearing a lab coat increased selective attention compared to not wearing a lab coat. Wearing a lab coat, which is also called a doctor’s coat, increased sustained attention compared to wearing a lab coat described as a painter’s coat.

Your posture very much represents your mental status.

How do you sit? What posture are you in right now? When a model walks down the runway, if they walk with a straight spine, they will be more confident comparing to those who slouch. Your posture is very important to show that you have confidence.

A study shows that having good posture affects a person’s testosterone and cortisol.^[3] Testosterone is the dominance hormone, and cortisol is the stress hormone. A person with a powerful posture has an increased testosterone level, and a decreased cortisol level, meaning high self-confidence and low stress.

On the other hand, a person who slouches or has a bad posture is more likely to have a decrease in testosterone and an increase in cortisol.

Next time you are waiting for an interview, don’t hunch and crunch up your shoulders. Go to the bathroom and stretch out, the very small acts will probably make a great difference.

The way you act changes how others see you and also how you see yourself.

In relation to posture, a person’s body language also has a major impact on self-confidence. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy has previously done a study on body language and confidence.^[4] She concluded that people who take a wider, more spread out movement tend to be more confident.

Strong body language and taking up more space contribute to a more dominant and confident image. At the same time, because of displaying powerful poses, one’s stress level is reduced, which in turn boosts a person’s confidence.

Make sure to watch Amy Cuddy’s TED talk to find out more, or just save this article and watch it later!

Start with small changes for great confidence.

It’s simple, the principle of letting others believe that you are confident is to dress, look, and act the part to build self-confidence.

Stand up straight but relaxed

1. Stand with your feet as wide as your hips
2. Pull up your head to make yourself as tall as possible
3. Then relax your shoulders and your neck

Sit up straight but not rigid

When you sit up straight, you will feel quite tall when sitting at a table. Keep your back straight, but relax as much as possible.

Position your feet at about hip width apart

Putting your feet closer together generally signifies insecurity, and a wider stance indicates confidence.

Smile like you are happy to be there

Smile like you really like what you are seeing. A single smile is so powerful that it can often turn a low self-esteem and negative person positive.^[5]

Don’t lean on or against objects

Leaning on or against an object signifies passivity and insecurity. Try to remain a good posture all the times.

Dress up with what makes you comfortable in different occasions

Consider your body shape and style, find something that makes you confident and comfortable. You can check out the essential tips to dress with confidence: 6 Essential Ways To Start Dressing With Confidence

Make sure your body language is strong when you speak next time.

It will make you feel more confident and comfortable to speak your mind!

You might still wonder if you are naturally unsure or insecure, it might be a treacherous journey to boost your self-confidence. But don’t worry and just take your time. Don’t be afraid to invest more time and effort in fashion, don’t hesitate to pull your shoulders back, and don’t wait to take a powerful body position. Start small, finish big.

Featured photo credit: Ron Sachs—Picture Alliance/DPA/AP via timedotcom.files.wordpress.com

Reference

[1]	^	Inverse: Psychology Explains Why People With Glasses Look Smart
[2]	^	Science Direct: Enclothed cognition
[3]	^	Prevention: 7 Weird Ways Your Posture Messes With You
[4]	^	Amy Cuddy: Your body language shapes who you are
[5]	^	Brian Tracy: How A Smile Can Affect Self-Esteem: Building Healthy Relationships With A Positive Attitude

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Loving What You Do Doesn't Mean You'll Be Good At It And Succeed One Day

Do what you love and love what you do, and success will come? Well, we wish.

Reality is not as simple as we want it to be. It takes more than just passion to succeed in anything.

“I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter.” — Walt Disney

Disney’s words echo with what I’ve recently read – an article written by Stephen Guise that talks about why you don’t need passion to succeed. Instead of needing passion to succeed, he says that you need to care about succeeding in what you want to do.^[1]

Passion is just emotion; care is an action.

Wishing hard and wanting something really badly won’t give you anything.

Passion (NOUN) – “strong or barely controllable emotion.”

Care (VERB) – “Feel concern or interest; attach importance to something.”

Passion is a “barely controllable emotion”, and emotions’ not always reliable. Care is different, it implies actions.

In today’s world where people always talk about finding your passion, it still seems vague to many. On the other hand, if you’re asked to find something you care about, it’s easier for you to name it.

You can choose to care anything at any time. When you care about something, you see that thing as really important to you and you’ll do what you can to protect it.

I know some of you may then say, “But Steve Jobs said people with passion can change the world and he really did change the world with his Apple products!”

Steve Jobs is undeniably a passionate entrepreneur, and he’s passionate about making an impact on this world. But he also had his down times when that passionate emotion would fade. What’s left in Steve Jobs when the passion’s not there suddenly? There’s definitely a lot more than passion in him.

Like it ≠ Good at it

There’s a lot of work to do besides being passionate. For example, you can be passionate about painting, but if you don’t have any art sense and painting skills, you can hardly become an expert in painting. To become an expert, you need to be always learning and improving your skills.

The perception that you’ll do it well anyway when you like it is just an illusion.

Let’s say, I like eating and I eat quite a lot; that doesn’t mean I can just become a food guru and know how to analyze the quality of food and write good reviews for restaurants and dishes. To know how to rate foods, I have to learn the basic of what makes up good quality of food. I need to study the nature of different kinds of food like seafood, meat and vegetables etc. and understand the different types of cooking methods. I also have to learn the word usage and tone when writing a review for public to read.

Becoming an expert is one thing, becoming successful is another thing. To succeed, you need a pinch of luck too besides working hard.

What you do gotta be able to connect with what the world needs.

To be successful in anything, you need to get to the overlapped sweet spot of the three aspects: what you care, what you can do and what the world needs (where a bit of luck maybe needed).

Don’t get turned off, luck doesn’t play everything here! When you do enough research to understand what the world needs and try to think about how you can utilize your strengths, you will meet that sweet spot. Making the seem-to-be uncontrollable factor controllable is definitely possible.

Now you understand that merely passion is not enough to lead you to success, what to do next?

Make what you care a Focus Foundation.

After you’ve figured out what you care about most, make that your focus foundation.^[2] Being passionate about something can be a kind of motivation to make things easier because it helps you focus on what you want and care about most.

Passion fuels resilience and provides you with the ambition to learn and strive to become more competent at what you do. Most importantly than anything else, it affords you the ability to focus.

When you’re clear about the very thing you want, you know what things are actually distractions that stop you from reaching your goal.

Learn not just what you care about, but what’s around that too.

When you’ve got your focus, try to map out the skills you need to get better at that.

Steve Jobs loved design so much that he took a calligraphy class just for the fun of it. He believed that the dots would connect in the future, all he did was to follow his heart to learn and let himself exposed to all the related stuff he was interested in.

To kickstart mapping out the skills you need, try to get yourself a skill chart. This is suggested in Jon Westenberg’s framework to keep track of your skills learning progress after finding what you want to do.^[3]

It’s easy, you just have to create a table with these columns:

• A column that lists the skills you have to learn
• A column for Research
• A column for Action
• A column for Progress

I changed the table a bit by adding one more column called “Target” to make the objective even clearer to me:

Research and write down the things you need to do in the “Action” column and estimate how far you are from taking up the skill in the “Progress” column.

When you have the learning plan ready, apply that course you need, get yourself the tools required and kickstart learning and practicing.

Aspire to make a difference in the world with your strengths.

When you’ve become really good at what you care about, you can start to think about the connection between your strengths and the world’s needs.

You’re good at something and you need the world to know. The best way to do that is to find out what the world wants and needs most at the moment and connect that with your strengths.

Steve Jobs thought the world needed some different technology to make life easier. Technology used to be so inconvenient, everything was too big to carry around. So he created ipod-nano, ipod touch and ipad.

Success is way to go, but you can start right now.

Passion alone doesn’t guarantee success. But if you’ve already got your passion, that’s good enough to make that your foundation and motivation to keep moving.

Start mapping out the skills you need and take actions. Instead of passively letting your passion wander around, be proactive and do something that will push you forward.

Reference

[1]	^	Stephen Guise: The Experts Are Wrong – You Don’t Need Passion To Succeed
[2]	^	Ken Sundheim: Does Passion Guarantee Success
[3]	^	Jon Westenberg: The Westenberg Framework

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Happiness Isn't About How Much You Have, But How Much You Enjoy Life

Many of us believe that the more we have, the happier we are. But is it really the truth?

As economy develops, we seems to be able to live a better life. Earning money to buy the things that we desire, that’s how it goes. But do these material possessions always guarantee long-lasting happiness?

There might be a time that you have been saving money to buy yourself something, like a new gadget, a luxury car, or a grand apartment. Yes, you might be uplifted at the moment but the delight never lasts. The happiness recedes after a day, a week, a month, a year, or a decade. The new gadget will become old, the luxury car will depreciate, the grand apartment will become boring.

The truth is that although we have much more than the previous generations do, we are not happy as we are supposed to be.

Probably we have fallen into traps which keep us away from the long-lasting happiness that we have been chasing for throughout our lives. Check if you have fallen into one of these 3 traps and try to get rid of them:

We play hard but become slaves of desires

There is a kind of people who always play hard and sometimes we call them the hedonist. The hedonists always strive to maximize pleasure and hunt for excitement to satisfy their desires without realizing the negative side of their behaviors. They only look for pleasure and try to escape from pain. It is not uncommon that they would gradually become the slaves of desires with only vanity left after the excitement fades away.

We work hard but suffer from the pain

The busy bee is the exact opposite of the hedonist. They work hard in exchange for more material possessions. They look for the pleasure that comes in the future but suffer from the present pain. They do not realize that they are just running on a treadmill, running hard but only marking time. Ironically, the material possessions that they work hard for can only give them temporary happiness.

We do nothing hard but lose the passion of life and the hope of future

Then, you might think that it is better not to play hard or work hard. However, being a nihilist can neither guarantee you long-lasting happiness. Being a nihilist is the worst case because the nihilists believe that life is meaningless. They do not enjoy what they have got at the moment, nor do they have any hope for the future. Without passion and hope, one can hardly have feel any kind of happiness.

We spend years living our lives on this planet and it would be a pity if we cannot get a taste of what it is like to be truly happy. Easy come, easy go. The long-lasting happiness that keeps us living our lives passionately is something that worth us spending time to build. There is something we can do to pursue the happiness that lasts a lifetime.

1. Capture and collect positive emotions

Capture your happy moments every day.

To put it simply, the more positive emotions you capture in a day, the more likely your happiness sustains.

Positive emotions are not limited to joy and excitement. Psychologists say that positive emotions also include joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, hope, pride, amusement, inspiration, awe, and love. ^[1] These positive emotions can broaden and build our long-lasting psychological, intellectual, physical and social resources which increase our well-beings.

Try to capture and collect your positive emotions every day. Keep a diary or take some photos. Instead of recording what happens, describe how you feel is rather more important. This will build your psychological resource and one day it will remind you what kinds of positive emotions you have experienced.

2. Engage with what you do

Wanderers with no goals often feel unhappy. They disconnect with the world and tend to be over-absorbed in their emotions or abstract, unexplainable thoughts. They are on a road to nowhere.

But instead, if we are more present in our lives and feel engaged with whatever we do or say, we can feel more grounded and happier. Being engaged prevents your mind from wandering and stops you from overthinking too much. On the other hand, when you are engaged in something, maybe your job or your hobby, you work for improvement and accomplishment. The pleasure of eventually achieving something gives you the feeling of pride and also makes whatever you are doing meaningful.

3. Derive meaning from everything you do

If we can’t find any meaning in what we do, we tend to have a sense of loss, thinking that we have wasted our time and energy. It is just like the nihilists who think life is meaningless and a waste of time.

Frankly, there are some times that we really find something meaningless. Those things that are supposed to disappoint or frustrate us are exactly what keep us from the long-lasting happiness. Try to derive meaning from them and think in the other way round. Losing a competition might be a chance for you to realize your room for improvement; failing in a interview might be a chance for you to look for a better opportunity.

4. Build in-depth relationships with others

An in-depth relationship makes you feel fearless.

We always need some kinds of connections with people, friends, families, and lovers. But what makes us feel satisfied from relationships is not the quantity but the quality.

Some might be satisfied with the fame but it is only the vanity. An in-depth relationship is a totally different story. It allows you to open up your mind fearlessly. You can have deep chats with your friends, hearing their stories and telling yours. You do not only gain practical support but also emotional supports from them. There is nothing better than being deeply known by someone who knows you better than yourself and speaks your mind.

5. Broaden your definitions of success

Success is not only about winning a game or trumping others. It can mean completing things you want to do or should do. It can be small or big, which does not really matter. It can be as simple as finishing a small task on your work. Sometimes people judge and they define the meaning of success as numbers. But bear in mind that you are the only one who can define your success.

And by celebrating your accomplishments, even the smallest ones, every day can make you happier. Just because of finishing a small task on your work, you can celebrate it by giving yourself a little treat. It is the mark showing that you are capable of achieving something and giving you a sense of pride.

Be happy and shine like a diamond

Happiness is sometimes a very abstract idea and we might be lost on the road to the long-lasting happiness. The pursuit of happiness is a lifelong lesson that we all have to take. But once you and I get the clues, we will all shine like a diamond, with an everlasting shiny light that everyone would admire.

Reference

[1]

^

The Huffington Post: What Are The Top 10 Positive Emotions?

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