How sharp are your visual skills? Can you spot all of the differences in all 5 pictures? Test yourself with this game. It starts off easy but gets more difficult as each level progresses. If you’re able to find all of the differences in under 2 minutes, you definitely have a sharp eye for detail!
Have you ever heard of a plank? We bet you have! It is one of the most effective exercises that makes all of the core muscles work. A plank also helps to make your shoulders toned and strong. This a plank challenge that we dare you to take. Are you ready?
This 28 Day Planking Challenge Can Help Tone Up And Tighten Your Tummy:
The challenge itself lasts 28 days. While that might seem like a long while, you get a nice time to rest every 5 days. During your training you need to increase the amount of time spent in the plank every couple of days.
Enjoy this invigorating workout and follow the steps below:
Day 1-3: Hold the plank for 20 seconds Day 4: Increase to 30 seconds Day 5: Today for 40 seconds Day 7-8: 45 seconds Day 9-11: 60 seconds Day 12: 90 seconds Day 14-16: 90 seconds Day 16-18: 150 seconds Day 20-23: 150 seconds Day 23-24: 180 seconds Day 26-27: 240 seconds Day 28: Until you fall down 😉
Plank #1
– Start in a standard plank position, palms planted firmly on the ground. Maintain a straight line from your shoulders to your heels by engaging your core muscles. Your feet should be hips-width apart.
– Lift your right leg two or three inches off the ground and bring your right knee towards your right elbow while keeping your hips as stable as possible.
– Return your right leg back to the ground, and repeat on the left side.
– Alternate legs at a brisk pace for 30 seconds.
Plank #2
– Lie on your right side. Place your right hand firmly on the ground and, engaging your core, raise your body up into a side plank, creating a straight line from your head to your toes. Your feet should be stacked on top of each other.
– Extend your left arm out from your shoulder so it is straight up in the air.
– Lower your arm in front of you and bring it below your right hip, like you are reaching for something behind you. Your shoulders and hips can twist a tiny bit, but your core should be working hard here.
– Bring your arm back above your body, extended upwards from your shoulder. Repeat for 30 seconds, then switch to the left side and perform for 30 seconds.
– For an extra challenge, hold a light dumbbell in your free hand.
Plank #3
– Start in table top position and extend your legs behind you so you are balancing on your hands and toes. Your shoulders should be directly above your wrists and your feet should be together.
– Keeping your core engaged and maintaining a straight line from head to toe, swing your right leg to the side and gently tap your toes on the ground. Your right leg should be approximately 45 degrees from your left leg.
– Bring your right leg back to center. Now perform the movement with the left leg.
– Repeat these movements at a brisk pace for 30 seconds.
Plank #4
– Start in a standard plank position.
– Extend your left arm and lift the right leg. Your spine should remain straight. Hold for a few seconds.
– Repeat the same move with other arm and other leg.
– Lie on your side on an exercise mat. Fully extend your legs with one resting on top of the other. Fully extend the top arm down the side of your body.
– Bend the arm at floor level to 90 degrees. Your upper arm should be parallel to your body, while your forearm is at 90 degrees. This is the start position.
– Lift your body off the ground and balance on your forearm and the side of your foot, while keeping your body in a straight line.
– Start to do leg lifts with the right leg.
– Repeat on the other side.
Plank #6
– Start in a high plank position with hands planted firmly on the ground, wrists directly below your shoulders. and body in a straight line from head to toe.
– Jump your feet apart like you would do for a jumping jack. Keep your knees soft to help absorb the impact.
– Jump your feet back together, landing softly on the balls of your feet.
– Repeat at a brisk pace for 30 seconds.
Plank #7
– Remember the “Donkey kick” exercise? Good.
– Stay in a plank position and lift your left leg, bend the knee and start to perform kicks. Your should feel the tension in your muscles!
– Rest in a plank (don’t lay down) and repeat with the other leg.
Plank #8
– Start in the plank position with your elbows shoulder-width apart.
– Press yourself up from the floor one arm at a time into a push-up, maintaining your body in a straight line.
– Slowly return to the starting plank position the same way, one arm at a time.
– Repeat the movement alternating sides.
Stay motivated and remember why you started, you can do it. As with any type of training to tone down your tummy, to achieve the best results you also need to pay attention to your daily calorie intake and make sure you are not consuming more calories than your body is using each day.
When your calorie intake is less than what is being used, then the body begins burning excess tummy weight to sustain its energy. You can achieve your goals by staying consistent.
Are you going to start the plank challenge? Let us know in the comments.
“Study me as much as you like, you will not know me, for I differ in a hundred ways from what you see me to be. Put yourself behind my eyes and see me as I see myself, for I have chosen to dwell in a place you cannot see.” ~ Rumi
Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Balkhī, also known as Rumi, was a famous 13th-century Persian poet, jurist, theologian, and Sufi mystic who, wrote some of the most beautiful and most profound words that have ever been recorded in history. His words contain deep truths that you can feel resonate in your heart when you read them, the heart seems to know them to be true.
Here are 25 life changing lessons to learn from Rumi, lessons that have the power inspire and empower you to live a more authentic, beautiful, loving and meaningful life:
1. Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion.
“You were born with potential. You were born with goodness and trust. You were born with ideals and dreams. You were born with greatness. You were born with wings. You are not meant for crawling, so don’t. You have wings. Learn to use them and fly.”
“You sit here for days saying, This is strange business. You’re the strange business. You have the energy of the sun in you, but you keep knotting it up at the base of your spine. You’re some weird kind of gold that wants to stay melted in the furnace, so you won’t have to become coins.”
“Why should I stay at the bottom of a well when a strong rope is in my hand?”
“Become the sky. Take an axe to the prison wall. Escape.”
“Do you know what you are? You are a manuscript oƒ a divine letter. You are a mirror reflecting a noble face. This universe is not outside of you. Look inside yourself; everything that you want, you are already that.”
2. The treasures that can be found outside of you can’t even compare with the treasures that can be found inside of you.
Img: Pixabay
“You wander from room to room Hunting for the diamond necklace That is already around your neck!”
“If you knew yourself for even one moment, if you could just glimpse your most beautiful face, maybe you wouldn’t slumber so deeply in that house of clay. Why not move into your house of joy and shine into every crevice! For you are the secret Treasure-bearer, and always have been. Didn’t you know?”
“Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.”
“Why are you so enchanted by this world, when a mine of gold lies within you?”
“In your light I learn how to love.
In your beauty how to make poems.
You dance inside my chest where no one sees you,
but sometimes I do, and that sight becomes this art.”
“You go from village to village on your horse asking everyone, “Has anyone seen my horse?”
“Don’t knock on any random door like a beggar. Reach your long hand out to another door, beyond where you go on the street, the street where everyone says, “How are you?” and no one says How aren’t you?”
“There is a fountain inside you. Don’t walk around with an empty bucket.”
3. Your job is to live your life in a way that makes sense to you, not to “them”.
“Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah…it makes absolutely no difference what people think of you.”
4. Ignorance is God’s prison.
“Ignorance is God’s prison. Knowing is God’s palace.”
“When you go through a hard period, When everything seems to oppose you, … When you feel you cannot even bear one more minute, NEVER GIVE UP! Because it is the time and place that the course will divert!”
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.”
6. When you let go of who you are, you become who you might be.
“Knock, And He’ll open the door. Vanish, And He’ll make you shine like the sun. Fall, And He’ll raise you to the heavens. Become nothing, And He’ll turn you into everything.”
“Forget safety. Live where you fear to live. Destroy your reputation. Be notorious.”
“Don’t be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”
“Set your life on fire. Seek those who fan your flames.”
“Be melting snow. Wash yourself of yourself.”
7. There is something you can do better than anyone else.
“Everyone has been made for some particular work, and the desire for that work has been put in every heart.”
“Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone’s soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd.”
8. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.
“As you start to walk out on the way, the way appears.”
9. When you commit to something, do it with all your heart.
“Half-heartedness doesn’t reach into majesty. You set out to find God, but then you keep stopping for long periods at mean-spirited roadhouses.”
“When you do things from your soul you feel a river moving in you, a joy. When action come from another section, the feeling disappears.”
“Wherever you are, and whatever you do, be in love.”
10. Good things come to an end so that better things can fall together.
“Do not grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”
11. The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
“What hurts you, blesses you. Darkness is your candle.”
“Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.”
“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”
“Grief can be the garden of compassion. If you keep your heart open through everything, your pain can become your greatest ally in your life’s search for love and wisdom.”
“You have to keep breaking your heart until it opens.”
12. Do what you love and do it with love.
“Let the beauty we love be what we do.”
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.”
“Be occupied, then, with what you really value and let the thief take something else.”
13. Think less. Feel more.
“Reason is powerless in the expression of Love.”
“Put your thoughts to sleep, do not let them cast a shadow over the moon of your heart. Let go of thinking.”
“Only from the heart can you touch the sky.”
“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?”
“Be empty of worrying. Think of who created thought! Why do you stay in prison When the door is so wide open?”
14. Love is worth it all.
“Gamble everything for love, if you’re a true human being. If not, leave this gathering.”
“Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy, absentminded. Someone sober will worry about events going badly. Let the lover be.”
15. Appreciate both the good and the bad in your life.
“Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?”
“When someone beats a rug, the blows are not against the rug, but against the dust in it.”
16. You change your world by changing yourself.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
17. We are made of Love and made to Love.
“We are born of love; Love is our mother. “
“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
“Through Love all that is bitter will be sweet, Through Love all that is copper will be gold, Through Love all dregs will become wine, through Love all pain will turn to medicine.”
“I have no companion but Love, no beginning, no end, no dawn. The Soul calls from within me: ‘You, ignorant of the way of Love, set Me free.’ “
“That which is false troubles the heart, but truth brings joyous tranquillity.”
18. Your Soul is not of this world, your body is.
“All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”
“When I die, I shall soar with angels, and when I die to the angels, what I shall become you cannot imagine.”
19. At the Soul level, we are all ONE.
“All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity. The sun’s light looks a little different on this wall than it does on that wall, and a lot different on this other one, but it’s still one light.”
“What shall I say, O Muslims, I know not myself, I am neither a Christian, nor a Jew, nor a Zoroastrian, nor a Muslim.”
“I am neither of the East nor of the West, no boundaries exist within my breast.”
20. Your Soul is more precious than anything.
“You know the value of every article of merchandise, but if you don’t know the value of your own soul, it’s all foolishness.”
21. Choose your life partner wisely.
“Take someone who doesn’t keep score, who’s not looking to be richer, or afraid of losing, who has not the slightest interest even in his own personality: he’s free.”
22. Real love transcends the material plane and no matter if your bodies are apart, your souls will forever be connected.
“Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.”
23. Raise your words, not your voice.
“Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.”
24. Silence is the language of God.
“Silence is the language of God, all else is poor translation.”
“Words are a pretext. It is the inner bond that draws one person to another, not words.”
“In Silence there is eloquence. Stop weaving and see how the pattern improves.”
25. Just to be alive is not enough.
“You think you are alive because you breathe air? Shame on you, that you are alive in such a limited way. Don’t be without Love, so you won’t feel dead. Die in Love and stay alive forever.”
What is your favorite quote from Rumi? Let us know in the comments.
In Mandy Len Catron’s Modern Love essay, “To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This,” she refers to a study by the psychologist Arthur Aron who studied whether love and intimacy between two strangers can be accelerated when they ask each other a specific series of personal questions.
The questions are designed to create mutual vulnerability, and this then fosters closeness between the two individuals.
“One key pattern associated with the development of a close relationship among peers is sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure,” the study said.
Allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another person can be the hurdle to overcome to begin falling in love, and these sets of questions make it happen through conversation.
The final task to cause them to fall in love is eye gazing; staring into each other’s eyes for four minutes — “Four really goes somewhere,” Catron said.
These 36 questions from the study are broken up into three sets, with each following set intended to be deeper than the previous one.
Asking all 36 of the questions below encourages someone to fall in love:
Set I
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a “perfect” day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
Img: Pixabay
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
Set II
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner’s advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
Love transcends genders, but there can be subtle differences in the ways men and women show their affection for each other. Public displays of affection are more comfortable for some than others, but usually this is a telltale sign that he is in love with you.
Here are 8 things men do only with the women they love:
1. He will listen to you
When a man is passionate and serious about someone he loves, he devotes his full focus and concentration to them. Everything they say will be important to him, and he will constantly be seeking for ways to show his love and affection through listening.
However, listening doesn’t always imply understanding. A man who deeply loves you will not only listen, but he will spend time in reflection to fully understand where you are coming from. He may even keep a set of notes on his phone to write down the important needs or hopes you’ve shared with him, so that he can review them and remember to work on what is important to you.
2. He will share his needs and debate ideas with you
Relationships always have two people finding a balance of each other’s needs through communication, and when a man truly loves you he will openly communicate his needs and ideas to you so that he can be happy with the one he loves. When someone does not express their needs, it can sometimes mean that they have either given up on getting what they want or they are too shy to do so, both of which will lead to unhealthy relationship habits in the future.
When a man discusses his passionate ideas with you, you know he values your opinion and takes you seriously as a life partner. He wants some input from the person he loves, and hopes that the two of you will grow together.
3. He will make sacrifices for your happiness
This could be one of the biggest signs that a man truly prioritizes having you in his life. It shows that he has placed you as more valuable than many of his other plans or activities, and he is willing to do what it takes to make the relationship work.
If he agrees to change his plans to meet your needs rather than doing what he prefers, then be sure that this man truly loves you. This should be within reason, and he should still keep a healthy balance to meet his own needs, but making sacrifices for the relationship is a true sign of love.
4. He will defend your love for each other
A man who is in love with you will defend from anything that would threaten the idea that the two of you belong together. Whether it’s from someone else giving their opinion, from you, or from a family member, when others speak of your relationship, he sticks to how good it is and remains positive.
He feels lucky to have you, and he does not want to lose you. It’s important to him that the people surrounding you both value you, and take care of you as well, so he will not allow people within your circle to speak unfairly about you or to judge you. He understands that true love is not only being there through the good times, but through the hard times as well.
When in love, your man values your achievements and accomplishments as being as valuable as his own. When you win, he wins, and his happiness extends to everything you do.
There is no competition between you two. He desires to see you succeed in everything your heart desires and is open about showing how proud of you he is.
6. He will find you beautiful even on days when you don’t feel beautiful
Regardless of how self-conscious or insecure you may be feeling on a particular day, his image of you being his beautiful queen never changes. Whether it’s a bad hair day, pimples, wrinkles… anything, he will maintain the fact that he finds you wonderfully beautiful and attractive.
When he says you are beautiful, he means it, and it is not based solely on superficial or outward appearances. He has found beauty, not only in your physical body, but in your personality and in who you really are deep within, and nothing about a small way you look on a certain day is going to change the love he feels for you.
7. He will care about your family and friends as much as you do
He will understand how much you love your family and friends and he will value them because he knows how important they are to you. His desire is to see you happy, and knowing that you love your family, he will make their happiness a priority as well.
He is kind to them and willing to help them whenever possible. His love for you makes him very dependable for your loved ones.
Img: Pixabay
8. He won’t be afraid to be vulnerable in front of you
While cultures have mistakenly taught men that strength and hardened hearts are what define the masculine, he stays true to love and his heart and is able to open, soften, and to be vulnerable around you.
Whether it’s crying during a beautiful movie, or simply sharing his own sensitivities and deep feelings openly with you, he desires a compassionate intimacy with you and knows that love is both open and kind.
His love for you is stronger than any feelings of being shy or embarrassed, and he trusts you enough to share his deepest feelings and needs with you.
Do you agree with this list? Let us know in the comments.
Wishing you Love and Blessings this wonderful week.
