The balls of life

Hitting walls and falling right down the ditch. Curve balls, and all other kinds of hard nasty balls are coming at you at all directions and you just can’t avoid them. Splashing up all over your face, and knocking you the fuck out. That’s what balls can do. They’re not as innocent as they look, my friends.

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The “the road to success” picture that shows a line full of twists, turns, and knots is a picture that I think most of us are familiar with. The same picture should be applied to the road of life. Potatoooe, potato, if it’s basically the same thing I’m not sure, but you get what I’m coming at.

Life throws balls at us all the time. I guess even life gets bored sometimes, and needs to knock us out with some hard balls once in a while to stay entertained. Yea man, life can sure be a little bitch sometimes.  The choices we make, the people we meet all takes us towards different paths. Sometimes we’re in sync with our lines and roads. We are on top of the world, with all this vibrant energy, knowing we are walking the right road with the wind in our hair and the sun on our face. But, even California experiences rainy days, and so will your life. A rainy day here and there is natural, but sometimes the rain just keeps pouring, and all of a sudden we have thunder and lightning, and snow storms, and a frikkin ice age all around us. Nothing makes sense anymore, and our joyful road has turned into a long, dark, bumpy, shit of an experience, and if we don’t watch ourselves it might takes us straight down a cliff.

“We need to die a little to learn how to live”. We do. Hurting is an essential part of life, but hurt becomes dangerous when we never stop to reflect on the pain, and let it take over our lives.

Comfort – Comfort is one of the greatest killers of all time. Okay, a knife and a gun are pretty extreme as well, but when it comes to self destruction, comfort definitely is on top of the list. The feeling of being can a lot of times be because of comfort. We can feel fear to make a new move, or to  change our job, or do something completely out of our comfort zone. “Life happens at the end of our comfort zone”. We hear this all the time, but yet it can be so hard to make the leap and create a new reality. Start small by doing activities that you’ve always wanted to do, but are afraid not to. Go sing karaoke, go skydiving, prepare a speech, put on a full blown dance show in the middle of the street, cut off all your hair. Do something crazy you’ve always wanted to do (nothing illegal though! Young homies, don’t get it twisted!!).

When you start to do small things to challenges yourself it can be easier to change the bigger things about your life.

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Not pleasing yourself – If you don’t love something, leave it, don’t stick around because of the hype everyone else has over it. Don’t believe illusions. Sometime people will tell you that you need to be doing certain things because it’s what they feel is the best for them. From your perspective, and for your life it might not be at all anything like what you’re supposed to be doing. Nobody can tell you what’s right and wrong for you, better than yourself.

Shake up your routine – Sometimes it doesn’t need to be big major life decisions that are bringing us down. It can be the simple fact of feeling that you’re stuck in a boring routine. Honestly, most of us will feel like this at some parts (or plenty of parts) of our lives. You can change this simply by shaking up your routine like a deluxe milkshake with extra extra errthaang!!! Have a spontaneous dinner party in the middle of the week, change the route you take to work, try a new café to get your morning coffee. Shaking things up will make you see new things, meet new people, and just have completely new experiences and interactions in a small, yet very effective way.

Stop hearing what you want to hear – We tend to lean on our friends and family for support when it comes to talking about what we feel, and the things we are going through. This is great! But it isn’t great when the people you choose to talk to tell you exactly what you want to hear, opposed to the things you need to hear. Don’t put your problems in the hands of “word pleasers”. You need people who will give you the straight up, raw advice. It might sting to hear things you don’t want to hear, especially in a time of weakness, but it’s necessary if you want to pull yourself out of the dumpster.

Write that shit down – Journaling is always such a magic way to figure shit out. By writing down everything you’re going through it will be easier to figure out what you need to do, to get on the right path. Maybe you’re realizing that you have to switch the direction completely! When you know what to do, it is so much easier to take the action needed.

Life, this crazy thing we just happened to end up in is a mysterious place. We have no idea what the fuck it really is, and somehow we are forced to figure it out. Life can be hard and it can smack us across the face plenty of times, and boy, it sure does! But it’s because of these smacks we can appreciate how truly beautiful it is to be alive. YOU are alive on this earth right now. Dude, that’s freaking amazing! You will never be alive on this earth in the shape or form you are now, who knows if you’ll ever be alive on this earth ever again!? The beauty of you and your life is a unique little thing that won’t ever happen again. So despite balls in your face, you have to live your best life, being the greatest you there will ever be! Make life proud, and grab it back by its balls!

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Feed your light bulb

You’re a smart ass, and you know it. But sometimes, even the smartest of asses can have brain fog, feel tired, and not be as sharp as they normally are. You know what I’m talking about, right?

It’s important and really helpful to be on your A-game all the time, or at least as often as possible. What you eat plays a huge role in your brain function, of course. Your gut and brain are really good friends, and they connect with each other on a deeper level. Our “second mini brain” is basically our gut, hence our “gut feeling”. Food plays a huge role in everything. Okay, food might not be the lead actor of the newest Marvel movie, but he is definitely the lead role in our bodies.

Blueberries – These guys are an army of antioxidants. Small, but deadly, in a good way. Blueberries, together with other berries are one of the most healthy things you can stuff your face with. Filled with antioxidants, vitamin C, vitamin K, and fiber. Eat them daily! Slam dunk some on your morning granola, oatmeal, or straight up in your mouth.

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Walnuts – With a shape similar to our brains, it’s a no brainer that walnuts are good for our thinker. They are an amazing source of plant based omega-3, vitamin E, fiber, and the healthy monounsaturated fats. Our brain loves this!!

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Greens – Greens are just great for everything. They always top the lists of everything health related. They’re like the Drake, or Beyonce. Whatever they do, it’s just going to be good. Kale, spinach, collard greens, swiss chard, grass. Okay, maybe not grass, that was a dry, stereotypical vegan joke. But, all our leafy greens contains a lot of vitamin A and K, plus a ton of fiber. They also slow down the process of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

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Avocado – Our brain is basically a little fat boll, and it needs the good fats to thrive! Avocados are another magical little fatty for our brain. Containing the helahty monounsaturated fats, it protects us against strokes, and with vitamin E and K it keeps our skin glowing. You can’t go wrong with avocados. Ever.

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Beets – Not Beats by Dre, but the red, always staining your clothes kind of beets. These guys are one of the most healthy vegetables you can eat! They clean our blood form toxins, and increase the blood flow to our brains, which aids in mental stimulation. Beets are our brains hype man, and a pretty damn successful one.

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Chocolate – Yass, bitch, yaaaasss!!! You are reading right! Chocolate is an amazing little antioxidant, which our brain obviously loves. But, just the dark kind. The chocolate made with only cacao beans, and cacao butter. No added milk fat, or sugars, or all that other crap. The darker you go, the better. Black guys are going, “oh hell yeah” right now (and so you should, because you guys are pretty gorgeous).

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Turmeric – Another bad bitch. Turmeric heels everything. Know as one of the most ancient natural medicine, and still is, this magic root will slow down the aging of the brain, and keep your skin young and glowy. Turmeric contains curcumin, which is an antioxidant with amazing anti-inflammatory properties. Eat it together with black pepper for maximal absorption.

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Green Tea – Another great antioxidant in liquid form. It slows down the aging of both your brain, and your body. And yes, matcha is definitely a green tea, and an extra powerful one for that matter.

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Our brain pretty much thrives on antioxidants and good, healthy fats. The more wholesome foods we eat in general, the more healthy our body will be, and in turn, our brains as well. In the end it is all connected. A healthy body, is a healthy mind.

Wow – man

The scripture says that Eve was the one who ate the apple, but who tricked her into it? The snake, aka Adam, the man, who couldn’t resist the beauty of Eve. With a grace like her, Adam was too afraid to pursue, so he had to trick Eve into eating the apple, making her give up the juice. Which, she by the way was very much aware of. She just really enjoyed seeing poor, thirsty Adam work for it, and she also really craved that apple.

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Artist: Sandra Chang-Adair

They say size doesn’t matter, and when it comes to women, that for sure is a fact. When we look at men and woman, everything always have to be so black and white. Strong – weak, big – small, right – wrong. For some reason the woman tends to get categorized into all the “smaller” words, which translates into not being viewed as equal, or as worthy. When did this shit happen!? Just because we’re cute and tiny, doesn’t make us less bad ass.

When we look back on evolution, we have always talked about how men were the providers and hunters, while the women gathered plants and took care of the kids. This is not quite accurate. Women were hustling out there on the battle ground, just as hard as men, while being pregnant!! Like hello?! If that ain’t a bad ass move, I don’t know what is. To just have men being the hunters didn’t cut it. Everyone in the community were equal, and everyone had to help out with all the tasks. All or nothing. Literally. They wouldn’t survive otherwise.

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Whatever happened in between these times and now, is uncertain. But one thing is for sure, women are powerful as fuck, and men are terrified of us. What we hold is the power of life. We grow life inside us, we are able to multitask and think in ways men aren’t. Mentally and physically strong, we are packed into these beautiful power packages. We are the human shaped super foods. Ancient Egypt had the right idea about women. The Amazon warriors had the right idea about women. Every woman out there has an Amazon warrior, and a Cleopatra within them.

Society is slowly (frickin finally!!!) starting to make changes for women’s equality, and it’s a lucky time for us to be alive right now. The fight is still long, but we are half way there, and we have realized that our voices are not supposed to get shut up or ignored. In the honor of International Women’s Day we salute and celebrate every damn woman out there! Honor how frickin gorgeous you are, how smart, funny, powerful, strong, magnificent, beautiful, unique, the list can go on forever…. Never forget that just because someone might be bigger than you, doesn’t give them the power over you. They might have muscles, but we do have our brains, our beauty, and our innate survival instinct.

Wow-men. That’s what women are. We are the wow to the ordinary men. No hard feelings, we still love you men out there, but without us there wouldn’t be that much wow going on.

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March 8 might be the calendars day to acknowledge woman, but every day is our day. We are a crucial part of making the world go around. Never forget, or let anyone diminish the beauty and power you hold.