The Impressive Benefits Of Working With A Professional Stylist

Hair is a person's crowning glory. When your hair looks amazing, you feel amazing and other people are guaranteed to take note. Although you might have a fairly comfortable hair care routine, it is important to treat yourself to the services of a professional stylist from time to time. Following are several reasons why.

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Hair Stylist Tips For Beautiful Locks

Luscious and damage free tresses deliver a beautiful appeal and prove easy to maintain, but achieving the desired look at home is not that simple. Professional salons utilize various products and techniques to produce a glamorous look to leave you with soft, smooth and silky results. Hair stylist tips can help you receive quality solutions and improve the condition of those locks.

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To Anyone Who Thinks They're Falling Behind

You don't need more motivation. You don't need to be inspired to action. You don't need to read any more lists and posts about how you're not doing enough.

We act as if we can read enough articles and enough little Pinterest quotes and suddenly the little switch in our brain will put us into action. But, honestly, here's the thing that nobody really talks about when it comes to success and motivation and willpower and goals and productivity and all those little buzzwords that have come into popularity: You are as you are until you're not. You change when you want to change. You put your ideas into action in the timing that is best. That's just how it happens.

And what I think we all need more than anything is this: permission to be wherever the fuck we are when we're there.

You're not a robot. You can't just conjure up motivation when you don't have it. Sometimes you're going through something. Sometimes life has happened. Life! Remember life? Yeah, it teaches you things and sometimes makes you go the long way around for your biggest lessons. You don't get to control everything. You can wake up at 5 a.m. every day until you're tired and broken, but if the words or the painting or the ideas don't want to come to fruition, they won't. You can show up every day to your best intentions, but if it's not the time, it's just not the fucking time. You need to give yourself permission to be a human being.

Sometimes the novel is not ready to be written because you haven't met the inspiration for your main character yet. Sometimes you need two more years of life experience before you can make your masterpiece into something that will feel real and true and raw to other people. Sometimes you're not falling in love because whatever you need to know about yourself is only knowable through solitude. Sometimes you haven't met your next collaborator. Sometimes your sadness encircles you because, one day, it will be the opus upon which you build your life.

We all know this: Our experience cannot always be manipulated. Yet, we don't act as though we know this truth. We try so hard to manipulate and control our lives, to make creativity into a game to win, to shortcut success because others say they have, to process emotions and uncertainty as if these are linear journeys.

To Anyone Who Thinks They're Falling Behind

You don't get to game the system of your life. You just don't. You don't get to control every outcome and aspect as a way to never give in to the uncertainty and unpredictability of something that's beyond what you understand. It's the basis of presence to show up as you are in this moment and let that be enough.

Yet, we don't act in a way that supports this lifestyle. We fill every minute with productivity tools and read 30-point lists on how to better drive out natural, human impulse. We often forget that we are as we are until we're not. We are the same until we're changed. We can move that a bit further by putting into place healthy habits and to show up to our lives in a way that fosters growth, but we can't game timing. Timing is the one thing that we often forget to surrender to.

Things are dark until they're not. Most of our unhappiness stems from the belief that our lives should be different than they are. We believe we have control—and our self-loathing and self-hatred comes from this idea that we should be able to change our circumstances, that we should be richer or hotter or better or happier. While self-responsibility is empowering, it can often lead to this resentment and bitterness that none of us need to be holding within us. We have to put in our best efforts and then give ourselves permission to let whatever happens happen—and to not feel so directly and vulnerably tied to outcomes. Opportunities often don't show up in the way we think they will.

You don't need more motivation or inspiration to create the life you want. You need less shame around the idea that you're not doing your best. You need to stop listening to people who are in vastly different life circumstances and life stages than you tell you that you're just not doing or being enough. You need to let timing do what it needs to do. You need to see lessons where you see barriers. You need to understand that what's right now becomes inspiration later. You need to see that wherever you are now is what becomes your identity later.

Sometimes we're not yet the people we need to be in order to contain the desires we have. Sometimes we have to let ourselves evolve into the place where we can allow what we want to transpire.

Let's just say that whatever you want, you want it enough. So much so that you're making yourself miserable in order to achieve it. What about chilling out? Maybe your motivation isn't the problem, but that you keep pushing a boulder up a mountain that only grows in size the more you push.

There's a magic beyond us that works in ways we can't understand. We can't game it. We can't 10-point list it. We can't control it. We have to just let it be, to take a fucking step back for a moment, stop beating ourselves up into oblivion, and to let the cogs turn as they will. One day, this moment will make sense. Trust that.

Give yourself permission to trust that.

This piece was originally published on Medium and was republished with the author's permission. Jamie Varon is a writer based in Los Angeles. To connect with her, follow her on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.



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14 Things You're Probably Doing Wrong on Your Run

The Best Way to Break a Bad Habit

Even the most virtuous person has a bad habit (or two) they'd like to break. Whether it's picking at your skin, grabbing something sweet after every meal, or spending way too much time on Instagram, pick a habit, any habit, and let's get down to the science of breaking it.

What's a Habit, Exactly?

A habit is something that a person does often in a regular and repeated way, according to Merriam-Webster, though what constitutes a "bad" versus "good" one is subjective. It's important to recognize that habits are really a learning mechanism for your mind, says Wendy Wood, Ph.D, a professor of psychology and business at the University of South California who studies habits and behavior. When an action makes us feel good, our brain forms a shorthand connection so when we're in a similar context or situation in the future, the response that’s been rewarded automatically comes to mind.

Because habits are all about context, the environment leading up to the behavior turns into what psychologists call "cues" or "triggers." These cues send a signal that says, "Hey, this is the same situation—let's do the same thing and feel good again." You have a zit, you pick at it. You finish lunch, you want something sweet. You're bored in line? You check Instagram.

The problem? Willpower (to not do the bad thing) pales in comparison to the sway these cues hold, Wood says. Ideally, you'd remove yourself from the triggers that set it off. But old habits die hard, so the key is to form a new good habit to keep yourself from repeating the bad one, says Ali Mattu, Ph.D, an instructor of medical psychology at Columbia University's Clinic for Anxiety and Related Disorders. And if you can't actually remove yourself from the situation, it can help to create roadblocks to keep yourself from the mindless go-to—turn your phone on airplane mode to avoid scrolling or call a friend instead of reaching for the candy dish on the desk.

Breaking (the) Bad

Out with the old, in with the new. How do you create a replacement habit? First, keep it simple. The more steps you have to complete before a reward, the harder a habit is to learn. M&MS to mouth: yum, learned. That's why your replacement habit should be easy and make you feel as good as the original did—otherwise you could backslide, Wood says.

And most importantly, it should be accessible, so you can turn to it whenever the urge for the original pops up, Mattu says (although that's usually the end of the day, when our willpower is scientifically proven to be weakest).

In other words, if you're trying to avoid snacking as soon as you get home, don't make yourself finish a Sudoku—call a friend instead. Unless, that is, Sudoku gives you the same emotional calm as diving into the snack cabinet, the end goal for these replacement habits, Mattu says.

The good news: Forming a new habit can happen in as few as 18 days, Wood says, although the time frame depends on how many steps the behavior is, how good the reward feels, and how much discipline someone has.

Here are three other quick tips for kicking a habit:

1. Change things up.

Altering your environment can be immensely helpful while you're in the process of creating a new habit, Wood says, even if it's just moving the chips to the back of the cupboard.

2. Take your time.

Give yourself a realistic time line for cutting back on the bad habit, Mattu says. Go two days without skin picking, give yourself a day off, and try three days next time.

3. Tell a friend.

It may sound corny to share your #goals with friends and family who can amp you up about getting there, but Mattu says the added feelings of congratulations and validation can be a powerful force to keep you on track.

And if you backslide into the bad habit? It happens. Embrace it, look at the situation, figure out what triggered you back into your old ways, and make a note to learn from it in the future, Mattu says. Remember: Rather than beat yourself up when you're already down, it's all about moving forward.

The Takeaway

Our brain forms habits for the not-small task of keeping us alive and learning new things, and while it's tough, breaking a bad one is doable. Context cues play a major role, so forming a new habit is the best method to change your ways—keep it simple and aim to please (yourself), and the bad habit will eventually fade away.



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27 Uncommon Ways To Lose Belly Fat Faster

Today I am sharing with you some uncommon fat burning tricks. Apply them and you can get faster results and enjoy your journey to a healthy life.

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The States Where People Get the Most (and Least) Sleep

New York may be the city that never sleeps, but at the state level, Hawaiians get the least amount of shut-eye. (South Dakotans sleep the most for those keeping track at home.) This data comes from a recent CDC report, which found one in three Americans isn’t getting the recommended seven hours of sleep per night. In Hawaii, it’s nearly one in two.

The data looks at the percentage of people in each state that clock seven hours of zzzs, so we don’t know how many hours of shut-eye Californians or Floridians get on average. To see where your state falls in the rankings, check out the graphic below—the darker, the more sleep. And click the button below to see the listing from one to 50.

The United States of Sleep Photo: Dom Smith/STAT


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