Category: Lifestyle (Page 2 of 2)

Getting Back On The Road After A Road Accident

2009 Pontiac G8 GT X09PN_G8008

After you have been injured in an accident, it can be difficult to get reengaged and back onto the road. It’s ironic, but people who are careful and considerate drivers tend to struggle the most. If they were driving at the time of the crash, they will inevitably ask themselves over and over again if there was something they could have done to prevent it, especially if others were hurt.
Then, there are the natural effects of injury. When you have been hurt in a violent accident, you become more sensitive to risk. For some, this is a much-needed reality check. For others, it can be a paralysing fear that prevents them from doing what they need to in order to navigate their lives, as they must, in a car.

Road accidents cause psychological trauma

An Australian study looked at psychological disorders related to road accidents, using data from the mid-1990s. The study found that 5.7 percent of people who had been involved in road accidents developed clinically defined Acute Anxiety Disorder, 6.6 percent acquired a specific phobia of driving and 13.1 percent were diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. It seems safe to assume that untreated and sub-clinical cases are even more widespread. In fact, speaking to people who have been involved in road accidents will reveal the truth. There are almost always psychological consequences, but they are most often dealt with privately.

Give yourself time to recover

If you have been injured in a road accident, then give yourself time to heal both physically and mentally. It will be easier to get back to normal once you’ve recovered from injuries or adjusted to any permanent changes in your body. Do your physical therapy exercises. Stay as active as you can. When you do go back to work, take it easy on yourself for a while. Concentrate on getting well.

Beat the fear

When you get back behind the wheel, do whatever you need to in order to feel safer, and whatever you need to in order to understand and accept the real risk involved in driving. People often avoid thinking about the dangers they know are associated with driving, but accident victims are very aware of those risks. Accept them and do what you can to minimise them. Perhaps lessons in defensive driving would help. Many road accident victims who were previously aggressive drivers find that switching to a more conservative style makes them feel safer.

Young drivers and road accidents

There’s a reason for the high cost of young drivers insurance. Young people do not have enough driving experience to adequately gauge and mitigate the risks associated with being on the road. They have watched chase scenes and races on television, they are not used to picking up and responding to cues from other drivers, and they do not have a clear idea of how serious the consequences of their actions can be. If you’re a young driver and you have been involved in an accident, then you can find yourself moving from an overly carefree attitude to paralysing fear. You will have to find a middle road, and it may take some work, including a large dose of self-awareness.

Finally, if the trauma from a car accident is affecting your ability to drive, to focus or to live happily, then seek psychological treatment. Flashbacks, fear of driving, anxiety and even depression are common in road accident survivors, and medical professionals can help.

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How to Design the Perfect ManCave

In the modern world, manhood has largely been relegated to the outdoors and a few sports arenas. However, in a house that has been man-built and maintained, there needs to be a space for unbridled masculinity. The following is how to build the perfect manly refuge amidst the nooks, the obsessive color coordination and the bay windows of modern life.

Step 1: Understand the Area

There’s a certain amount of space you can use, and that’s what you’ve got for the time being. Trying to get a space to be something it’s not is like lying about your heritage — it’s embarrassing and it won’t help you with anything. When you reconcile with the space you’ve got, clean it out and take a good look at what you have to work with. This is your new canvas, and you are its artist.

Step 2: Decide What Your Theme is Going to Be

The great thing about a space that’s all for you is that it can be whatever you want it to be. If you love cars, it can be your personal auto shop. If you’re big into woodworking, it’s all about the saws and sanders.

The number of possible themes is as limitless as are your potential interests. No matter what your hobbies may be, these will create and populate your cave’s theme. The better defined your theme is in your mind, the better you will be able to make it work in real life.

Step 3: Color the Place, but in a Manly Way

Color coordination isn’t solely a lady’s domain. As great as it is to kick back in a testosterone-infused paradise of relaxed social etiquette, the place doesn’t have to look like a sloppy mess. Your mancave can actually look very refined and visually powerful by keeping your color scheme tight and controlled.

This tightness and control can be a relaxing element that shows off your confidence. Naturally, your color scheme doesn’t have to come from the Martha Stewart catalog. Your colors can be road-cone orange, jet black and chrome, just so long as it suits you.

Step 4: Keep the Light Reasonable

The use of light can wash out a space or make it just bright enough to be useful for what you want to do therein. To start with, keep natural light controlled. You can use Roman blinds from the TheShadeStore.com to stay in control of outdoor light interference, and from there you can choose how much artificial light you want to use. Using long fluorescent lights down the center and sides of the ceiling usually provides plenty of illumination for just about anything.

Step 5: Manage the Space

Once you have the space mapped out, properly lit and equipped with a theme, you need to make sure that everything you want to do in there is actually possible. Will a pool table, full woodshop, auto shop and Olympic gym fit into a 10-foot square space? Quite possibly not. Know your limits and make sure everything fits with room to move around.

Building your mancave is an exciting creative endeavor. Just make sure you don’t trip up on a tiny detail.

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3 Tips to Crush Your First Date with a Woman

Let’s be frank: not every man is going to be able to crush his first date with a woman. There are just some guys out there who don’t have anything going on that gets a woman interested. Fortunately, there are a lot fewer of those guys than you might suspect, and a lot of guys really could crush it if they just understood what makes a woman tingle.

Don’t Be Superficial, But Pay Attention to Your Demeanor

man and woman hugging near beach

According to Dr Gordon Patzer, author of Looks: Why They Matter More Than You Ever Imagined, women assess some basic physical things about you instantly upon meeting you, and they re-assess these things at the beginning of each date.

• Your stature (height, weight, and proportion of the two)

• Your hygiene (you don’t have to be Queer Eye, but you absolutely must be clean)

• Your smile (smile early and smile often)

• Your self-comfort (the more relaxed and humble you can be without being self-deprecating, the better you come off)

Anything you can do to improve these four elements will immediately put you further into the driver’s seat.

Make an Earnest Attempt to Engage at a Deeper Level

Women are, without a doubt, much more involved on a deeper level than your average man is — and if you want to hit a first date out of the park, you’re going to have to show her that you’re just as involved and in-depth as she is. That means:

Be confident. This is often misinterpreted as “alpha male”-ness or “dominance”, but the truth is much simpler: a man that isn’t confident isn’t going to impress a girl, end of story. You don’t have to be macho or tough — a quiet competence is more attractive than a ‘bad boy’ attitude. Just stick to what you know without intimidating her.

Be just a little classy. Too much class comes off as snooty and arrogant, but just a touch of class — being deliberately chivalrous (opening doors, pulling out chairs) goes a long way toward separating yourself from the unwashed masses. You can also show off a bit of class with physical goods. Showing up in a unique car, for example, can be a huge statement (even if you have to pick one up at a used car dealership; she doesn’t have to know it was only $450 after your trade-in!)

Don’t Take Yourself Too Seriously

This is easily the number one date-killer. Show her that you can be funny by making light fun of yourself. If you do something awkward or clumsy, laugh it off. If she proves you wrong on something, be gracious and make it into a joke. Being able to accept that something went imperfectly with a sense of humor and a wave of the hand is absolutely key to crushing that first date — because something will go wrong. How you handle it is key.

Most men don’t realize how many of these “tinglers” are completely within their control. Figure out how to incorporate them into your personality, and you can crush almost any first date you go on.

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Culture of Drinking

The culture of drinking permeates our society
The media and peers pressure to alleviate sobriety
Messages converge and conflict to create confusion:
designed by purveyors and marketers to create the illusion
That alcohol is the key to enhance life’s experiences
That beer, wine or drink is a must in all circumstances
To celebrate, commiserate or punctuate each time
a social gathering is planned, a well-stocked bar is prime
Raise your glass, give a toast, down a shot, it’s expected
Not interested? All protests and excuses are rejected
because drinkers can’t handle it, they get uncomfortable and nervous
When there’s a holdout, they relentlessly press him into service
to fill his glass with something stronger than water or carbonation
so they don’t have to face the mirror for succumbing to their own temptation
Instead they hide behind the false camaraderie
created by a bottle instead of shared history

For many who believe the hype, it follows them back home
so pervasively throughout the media is the image shown
they start by drinking with others — pretty soon they drink alone
even those who have it buried deep within their genes
who’ve had blackouts, loss of speech and a host of other things
fool themselves into believing that the disease can’t touch them
even as they ignore the pain and grief that others will condemn
But for the few who’ve battled and been scarred
every day is a constant struggle against the bombard
of images, words and pressure
trying to make them something lesser
than what they’re striving so hard to become
to sail above rather than to stay numb
one day at a time, that is their prayer
for salvation from the demons that stare
trying to seduce them into falling from grace,
laboring constantly and tirelessly to erase
the ebb, flow and pull of addiction pulsing through their veins
or the sight of a loved one trying to throw off those chains

Jody L. Barilla
© 3/15/09

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We

Not easy to retrain your brain from “we” to “I”
After a lifetime of eating the whole pie
Already come from different planets, Venus and Mars
Then sprinkle these pronouns among the stars
It is a concept that transcends the grammatical
And operates to append the compatible
To learn to factor two not one in the equation
And include another in the conversation
Creating a dialogue
Translating the monologue
To share an equality of vision
And walk together on the same mission
Transforming the drum beat of two separate hearts
Into the base heat of souls refusing to be torn apart
The path will be rocky with hidden pits and cracks
But “we” can offer the support that “I” otherwise lacks
11/18/10

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