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7 Signs of Diabetes Most People Ignore

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Diabetes mellitus is not a single disorder but a group of metabolic conditions that involve high blood sugar levels or blood glucose over unusually long periods. Approximately 463 million people, or 8.8% of the world’s adults, have type 2 diabetes as of 2019. Detecting signs of diabetes can ensure you don’t face numerous potential complications.

There are three primary kinds of diabetes. The first is type 1 diabetes, when the pancreas loses beta cells and does not produce sufficient insulin for the body’s use. This is an autoimmune condition usually diagnosed in adolescence. The second is type 2 diabetes, which occurs due to lack of exercise and excessive body weight, among other metabolic factors. This kind of diabetes starts with insulin resistance, where the body fails to respond correctly to glucose and insulin. The third type is gestational diabetes, a temporary form during pregnancy.

The hormone insulin is used by the body to take the glucose from food and supply it to cells in the body, where it will be used as energy. When the body fails to do this correctly, multiple complications can occur. This is why diabetes, untreated, can be very dangerous and even lead to death.

In most cases, it’s diabetes type 2 that you’d be most worried about developing throughout your life, as your lifestyle can put you at risk. Regardless of the type, catching symptoms of diabetes early can be life-saving, allowing you to access necessary treatment quickly. Here are seven signs of diabetes many people ignore.

1. Increased Hunger

You recently ate, but you suddenly feel hungry again. You might feel almost as if you haven’t eaten at all. This is one of the signs of diabetes, especially diabetes type 2, that is most dangerous, as listening to your body’s hunger can mean exacerbating your condition even further.

Diabetes makes it difficult to process and digest glucose or blood sugar. Glucose is a vital energy source, and when your body can’t absorb it, you’re left feeling shaky and unsteady. Your pancreas starts ringing alarm bells, indicating to your body that you need to eat for energy now, even when you’ve just eaten.

In this case, you’re likely to crave carbohydrates or sugary foods and drinks, but even eating those things isn’t guaranteed to help. Worse still, the more you give in to those cravings, the shakier you may feel.

signs of diabetes

2. Increased Urination

Diabetes decreases the body’s natural ability to break food into digestible sugars, causing sugar to remain in your bloodstream for prolonged periods. Your body will expel that excess via urination. Your kidneys have to work very hard to get rid of that sugar! Research has even shown links between diabetes and incontinence as a result.

The following are some signs of diabetes relevant to increased urination:

  • Waking up to use the bathroom every night when you never did before, or more than once or twice
  • The sudden increase in urination begins to affect your daily schedule
  • More urinary tract infections or UTIs, even when you take typical precautions to avoid them
  • You’ll notice a sickeningly sweet smell in your urine
  • You’re in a time-consuming cycle of feeling so thirsty you need to drink a lot, then needing to urinate a lot because you drink so much, then feeling thirsty again because of the excessive urination
  • Using the bathroom more than six or seven times a day

3. Constant Fatigue

Fatigue can occur for many different reasons, but when it becomes a chronic, non-stop problem that plagues your everyday life, that may be one of the signs of diabetes you shouldn’t ignore. Research connects fatigue to diabetes patients, which can escalate to depression and generally poor mood.

Diabetes causes your body to be unable to gain energy from glucose, so, naturally, you feel like you don’t have the fuel you need. This can range from being a little sluggish to being entirely unable to function. You’ll likely feel a little weak as if you’re constantly a little hungry.

Untreated diabetes can also kill tissues in the body, preventing thorough, healthy circulation. This makes it difficult for oxygenated blood to travel around the body, so cells need more effort to reach your organs. This further exacerbates your tiredness, making your entire system work overtime.

4. Increased Thirst

Remember how increased urination is one of the signs of diabetes? It’s often tied in with heightened thirst. It’s a clear connection: the more you urinate, the more dehydrated you get and the thirstier you may become.

Thirst also occurs in diabetes because the brain seeks any fluid that can dilute the sugar buildup in your bloodstream. You become thirsty as your body’s way of signaling its needs. This can even lead to dry mouth, which studies link to diabetes.

When quenching this kind of thirst, you must turn to plain, carbonated, or perhaps water infused with lemon or fruit if you need some flavor. Steer clear of drinks like:

  • Soda
  • Chocolate milk
  • Juice
  • Flavored yogurt drinks

You’ll likely crave these drinks if your thirst results from diabetes. But they won’t help you feel better and will exacerbate your thirst and all other symptoms. This is because they flood the bloodstream with even more sugar than your body can’t process!

type 2

5. Tingling or Numbness In Extremities

People with type 2 diabetes that is uncontrolled and untreated may experience worsened blood circulation as a result of their high blood sugar. As one of the more subtle and sneaky signs of diabetes, this symptom may not show in your body for months or even years.

When you have a lot of glucose in your bloodstream, your nerve endings can become damaged, causing neuropathy. This means you’ll begin to feel strange or unusual experiences in your extremities, such as your feet and hands. You may experience:

  • Numbness
  • Tingling
  • Pain
  • Itching
  • Weird sensations

Untreated neuropathy can become more severe, causing wounds that struggle to heal in far extremities and leading to permanent nerve damage.

6. Weight Loss

As a society, we’ve normalized weight loss as an always-positive thing. But it can be one of the more subtle signs of diabetes. Weight loss from this disease can be minor or vast and significant, but any unexpected or unexplained weight loss is worth taking a closer look at.

But why does diabetes, when untreated, cause weight loss? This happens because you:

  • Lose water (not actual “body weight”) and don’t regain it due to frequent urination.
  • Lose unabsorbed nutrients and sugars in your bloodstream every time you urinate, especially when done excessively.
  • Don’t get enough energy from food due to an inability to digest or process sugar, so your body begins burning fat and muscle as a source of energy.

Unexplained weight loss of this type can be hard to see in type 2 diabetes. This is because most people at risk for type 2 diabetes are overweight, so small or reasonable weight changes feel like a good thing, not one of the more dangerous signs of diabetes. If you ever find yourself losing weight unexpectedly without making any lifestyle changes, you should speak to a doctor. You can even lose weight while eating more due to increased hunger from diabetes!

7. Blurry Vision

Too much glucose in the blood can cause damage to the eyes’ blood vessels, leading to blurrier vision. Those who wear glasses may have trouble noticing this, as it’s one of the lesser-known signs of diabetes. The blurriness may occur only sometimes, affecting both or just one eye. It’s a cause for concern if your vision suddenly sharply worsens or causes strange, unusual distortions.

Blood sugar elevation can also cause the eye’s fluid to shift and move, changing your lens shape and causing short-sightedness or far-sightedness. The fluid that pulls away from tissues goes to the body to dilute the blood, hoping to reduce glucose concentration. Glucose might also build up in the eyes, making vision challenging to focus.

In severe cases, when left untreated, diabetes can eventually lead to severe permanent eye damage, even causing vision loss and blindness. However, when caught and treated early, you can avoid these problems, and your vision will return to normal within two months of blood sugar stabilization.

signs of diabetes

Final Thoughts On Some Signs Of Diabetes That Many People Ignore

Diabetes can come with a laundry list of potential complications that make matters worse for you and your life. That’s why recognizing the common signs of diabetes is so important, especially ones that often go ignored. When you notice causes for concern, you can seek a diagnosis, medical help, and early treatment to help you get diabetes under manageable control.

All untreated diabetes, regardless of type, can worsen your risk of stroke, foot problems, eye disease, heart disease, neuropathy, kidney disease, and much more. Depending on the type you have, you may receive insulin to use. Type 2 diabetes, once detected, typically requires that you make appropriate lifestyle changes to reduce the severity of its symptoms.

Anyone can develop diabetes, but some factors may increase your risk of developing type 2. Sedentary lifestyles, unhealthy diets, obesity, PCOS, a history of other diseases, and age can increase your risk of the disease. If you have family members with the disorder, you’re likely more at risk, too.

If you notice any signs of diabetes, it’s a good idea to get that checked by your doctor. Your blood sugar levels and urine will reveal your health. You may also have prediabetes, which means your body is experiencing unusual fluctuations of blood glucose and insulin, which means you could develop diabetes in the future. Regardless, awareness and early testing are critical.

Editorial note 08/24/2023: Added missing links to research.

7 Behaviors Serial Cheaters Display Before Revealing Themselves

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Serial cheaters regularly practice infidelity with all their partners. They may be addicted to the thrill, enjoy the validation of being able to “pull” multiple people, or be unable to control their wandering eyes and the temptation of cheating.

People like this often get pretty good at hiding their awful actions, but they share some everyday activities that mean you can spot them if you know what to look for. Serial cheaters display these seven behaviors before revealing themselves intentionally, accidentally, or due to complacency.

1. Serial Cheaters Are Secretive Around Devices

There’s nothing wrong with wanting privacy and having boundaries about that privacy. But there’s a significant difference between reasonable privacy and excessive secrecy. A few warning signs of extreme secrecy are:

  • Hiding phones, laptops, and other devices so a partner won’t even see them.
  • Saving specific contacts under cryptic nicknames or fake names.
  • Visibly hiding device screens whenever a partner is passing nearby them.
  • Sleeping with devices completely protected by holding them, putting them under pillows, or locking them away.
  • Refusing allows a partner to touch, see, or pick up a device.
  • Lying about calls, messages, and other forms of communication received on devices.
  • Bringing their devices everywhere they go, never leaving them alone for a second.

Do note that there’s a line here to draw. Some people may be uncomfortable with anyone (their partner or anyone else) seeing what they’re doing on any device. There could be many good reasons why someone has higher privacy needs than others. And some serial cheaters are good at appearing secretive, so you let your guard down, so this isn’t always an accurate sign.

Simply put, your unique relationship determines where the boundaries are. Communication and firm boundaries are essential in establishing what is and isn’t acceptable. A serial cheater will find ways to break boundaries and get around established “rules” in their relationship.

serial cheaters

2. They Blame Their Exes For Everything

It’s always a red flag when someone says all their exes were 100% of the problem in their past relationships. It shows a lack of ability to reflect and see the common denominator – themselves! They also thrive in toxic relationships that give them an “excuse” to be unfaithful.

Serial cheaters tend to have a long string of exes, as infidelity is one of the most common reported causes for a relationship’s end. They will likely find a way to blame their former partners for:

  • Having “trust issues” that made them “crazy,” forcing the cheater to end the relationship
  • Being overly controlling of them by instating boundaries that counter infidelity
  • Being easy to play or being too naïve or gullible, meaning they deserved, to some degree, what happened to them
  • Attraction to “toxic” partners like the cheater, thereby setting themselves up to get cheated on

Of course, all of those things are not true. In reality, cheaters need to deflect responsibility and blame for their actions onto their exes. If not caught in the act, they’ll call their former partners crazy. If caught, they’ll deflect to reduce the negative implications on their character – or remove some responsibility.

3. Serial Cheaters Don’t Seem Ashamed Of Their Past Infidelity

Many people say, “once a cheater, always a cheater,” and there’s a good reason. Anyone who has cheated once is much more likely to do it again. That’s because of the well-studied effects of cognitive dissonance. To reduce the emotional impact of knowing they cheated, serial cheaters will trivialize and minimize the consequences and effects of that infidelity. This means they’re likely to do it again, as they now see it as a less harmful event.

This is why cheaters often don’t feel that ashamed of the infidelity they perpetrated in the past. They’ll talk about these events and say they won’t do them again, simultaneously speaking as if they are proud of their cheating. They may even sound bored or unmoved by their actions. Or they might get angry that it’s brought up since it’s something so trivial to them. This is how you know someone is a serial cheater who hasn’t changed their ways!

Of course, this is not to say that people can’t learn, grow, and change. But there’s an important note here: they must have changed, not just gotten sneakier. They also might overcome surface-level issues but not the underlying roots behind their infidelity.

A cheater takes a lot of effort to manage and correct the behaviors that led to the initial disloyalty. A past cheater who will not cheat again could be uncomfortable or ashamed of their past betrayals with past relationships. A serial cheater will lack that shame because they’re pushing it down with cognitive dissonance.

4. They Lie By Omission

Serial cheaters find all sorts of ways to avoid both being discovered and taking responsibility. This means that instead of directly lying – something that is a negative, malicious behavior and is easier to detect – they’ll leave things out and hide things instead. This action means a serial cheater might:

  • “Forget” to mention potentially incriminating things, such as someone messaging them flirtatiously. They insist that it meant nothing if caught, hence their forgetfulness. This allows them to blame their partner for being overly suspicious.
  • Choose not to tell their partners about things in their life, such as the parties they go to or the people they hang around. If caught, they may talk about their privacy or accuse a partner of being controlling.
  • A cheating partner might stop talking about their everyday lives so they can leave out stories about their day that involve the people they’re cheating with. If asked to speak more about their life, they may complain about being smothered or pretend not to remember their day.

Lying by omission gives serial cheaters plausible deniability for potentially suspicious activity. It’s easy to gaslight a partner when you haven’t been caught doing anything wrong, and serial cheaters are experts at using this as a manipulation technique.

cheating

5. Serial Cheaters Accuse You Of Cheating

A serial cheater often accuses their partner of cheating out of nowhere, sometimes based on nonexistent threats. Research shows that unfaithful partners are more suspicious of the loyalty of their partners. This shows itself in ways like this:

  • They cheat when going out, so they don’t want their partners to go out.
  • They’ll hide things constantly, so they always think their partner hides something from them.
  • Their roaming eyes are aware of attractive people’s wealth, so they’re more insecure with their partners.
  • They notice their partner being checked out by others because their attention is often on other people.
  • They would cheat on people in their lives, so they’re suspicious of the people in their partner’s life and try to cut their partner off from their support system.
  • They’ll happily hook up with anyone who flirts with them, so they hate when someone flirts with their partner.
  • Their lifestyle is so entangled with cheating that they can’t imagine a life that doesn’t involve it.

In other words, projection is strong with serial cheaters. The way that they think has thoroughly polluted their perspective on the world. They believe their partners could and would do the same things they do. This makes them irrational, excessively jealous, and easily angered.

6. They Shower You With Sudden Bursts Of Affection

Serial cheaters are cheating – and they’re doing it often. They may cool their infidelity down now and then, but they eventually end up drawn back into their old ways. That’s why they’re called “serial” cheaters, after all.

A serial cheater will often feel somewhat guilty for their behavior. Even with how much they trivialize or minimize it, some of them know that it is wrong. To assuage their guilt and shift feelings of the responsibility away from themselves, they’ll try to “make up” for their cheating without their partner realizing what they’re doing.

Serial cheaters may also do this to divert suspicion away from them. They hope their excessively loving behavior will charm their partner, so they get lost in the affection and don’t think about potential infidelity.

This is often why a cheater buys their partner expensive or grand gifts after cheating. It’s a way to overcome their own conflicted emotions. These forms of affection will often be substantial and over-the-top compared to their usual shows of affection.

7. They Overshare When Cheating

This seems like a counterintuitive trait in a serial cheater. After all, wouldn’t they want to be secretive, not overly open? There’s a reason for this, though – and it’s called selective oversharing. It’s a practice used by many people who have something to hide, including kids with overbearing parents and criminals taken in for police questioning.

What is selective oversharing? Simply put, it’s the act of sharing a lot to an extreme extent to paint a picture of honesty and openness. Selective oversharers will:

  • Go into extreme detail about various events that they’re describing
  • Choose to talk about embarrassing or potentially shameful things about themselves
  • Overpower conversations when they’re able to gain a reputation for being a chatterbox
  • Share uncomfortably private or secret facts or thoughts about themselves or their lives

When someone is talking about things like this, it’s hard to view them as deceptive or unfaithful because they seem to have nothing to hide. But, in reality, they’re doing this to distract their partners by focusing on unimportant and non-incriminating events. Meanwhile, they’re hiding many other things and keeping them quiet as their partner is lulled into a false sense of security.

serial cheaters

Final Thoughts On Some Behaviors Serial Cheaters Display Before Revealing Themselves

Serial cheaters are good at covering their tracks but are also often complacent due to how normalized their infidelity is to them. That’s why you can sometimes catch a serial cheater based on their behaviors. While one of these behaviors may not be a definite sign of infidelity, a partner who shows many of these behaviors is likely to be a serial cheater.

5 Signs You’re Not Ready for a Serious Relationship

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One thing that unites people is the need to be loved and cherished in a serious relationship. Most people strive to find someone they can spend their whole life with. We desire commitment so much that we write poems and books about it. And, no matter how badly we get hurt, the hope of finding it keeps us going. Love and relationships are something that we idealize so much.

Often, we can’t differentiate between what’s plausible and what’s fantasy. Not to mention that relationships and intimacy are taboo subjects when they shouldn’t be. While poets and artists can talk freely about commitment, society can’t have a healthy conversation about it. Parents sometimes feel ashamed to talk about how a serious relationship should look. Or they even think that talking about it would make their kids rush into something when that wouldn’t be the case. For some reason, we cherish love, but we also cherish abstinence, which makes people unable to talk about relationships.

But that’s not the only issue. Besides the lack of discussion on this topic, many other factors must be considered. People who have gone through a lot of trauma are often not ready for commitment. If you have recently gone through a big breakup, it’s probably not wise to start searching for a new partner. There are a lot of things that everyone needs to learn about relationships and how to approach them healthily. So, here are five signs that can tell you that you’re not ready for a serious relationship.

5 Signs You’re Not Ready for a Serious Relationship

serious relationship

1. You Still Haven’t Moved on From a Commitment to Your Ex

Often, we try our hardest to find a partner after a rough experience with love. A big breakup will make most people desperate to feel love and affection from someone new. That’s why the concept of rebounds is so popular. But in a time of inner turmoil, a serious relationship is the last thing you can achieve. For some people, fooling around is a way to cope with a breakup.

That’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself. It might be good for you or make you feel even worse. But trying to create something serious when you’re not over your ex will never work, making you feel worse. There are many ways to know that you still haven’t moved on from your ex.

For one, you still haven’t let go of the hope that you might reconcile. You might still be holding on to a false perception of your ex, fantasizing about what you could be. Maybe you haven’t allowed yourself to grieve yet, or you didn’t give yourself the closure you needed. All these signs show you that starting a relationship with someone new is not a good idea.

2. You Don’t Know How to Compromise

One of the building blocks of any serious relationship is the ability to make compromises. Most immature relationships are selfish. In these relationships, people only look out for themselves without considering how their partner feels. Unfortunately, that’s the model that most people get. That’s the only way they have been shown a relationship can work. In our society, people do not value the need to make compromises.

Instead, it’s seen as something terrible. It’s seen as a way to let others take advantage of you. But that’s not the case. In every relationship, there needs to be a balance. You need to learn how to make compromises that benefit the relationship without hurting you as an individual. Before you look for a new partner, ask yourself how willing you are to compromise for someone else. How much would you give to mend something or ensure it never breaks?

If you think you wouldn’t be able to do something to make someone else happy, then you’re not ready for a serious relationship. You must remember that compromise doesn’t always mean you’ll reach the best solution. But it means you can communicate and try to reach an agreement that works for both of you.

3. You Are Scared of Commitment

serious relationship

Many people are sure they can commit to one person and one person alone for the rest of their lives. But no matter how much we tell ourselves, that’s not always the case. Commitment is scary, and most of the time, people are not learning how to do it right. People are inherently curious, and they feel the need to explore. Having many casual relationships until you figure out what you like is nothing to be ashamed of.

But all this can only happen if you acknowledge that you need more time before learning what commitment means. And, before learning that, there’s no way you’ll be able to have a healthy, serious relationship. Commitment can mean something different for everyone. But people are taught that it can only mean being with one person for your whole life. That’s an archaic view that doesn’t suit everyone, yet we impose it on people.

But we see that more people are becoming interested in things like open relationships. That’s a type of relationship that can be just as committed as a monogamous couple. As long as there’s communication between partners, every issue can be solved. If you feel you can’t do that, you must learn about the issue’s root. That might be emotional trauma you’ve experienced in past relationships. Whatever it is, trying to heal will bring you one step closer to being able to commit.

4. You Don’t Love Yourself Enough for Commitment

Many people try to compensate for the fact that they don’t love themselves by looking for love in other places. The attention someone else could give them will make them feel good, at least for a little while. But, if you don’t love yourself, no amount of love from others will fix that. And you won’t be able to give back the love your partner deserves. You won’t be ready for a serious relationship if you are not at peace with yourself.

Someone who doesn’t love themselves has a lot of emotional baggage. It’s not fair to put all that on someone else. And, even if your new partner wants to take that burden, it’s unhealthy for either of you. What you need to do before entering a new relationship is to work on yourself. And, remember that self-love is a practice. There’s no way to flip a switch and suddenly change how you see yourself.

But you can work on bettering who you are. It’s vital to work on your insecurities or any past trauma that you might have. Sometimes, that means having your support system help you. Talking to friends and family about what burdens you can be the best first step towards self-love. But a therapist can also guide you in your journey. Even if you feel lost and don’t know where to start, you need to remember there’s no shame in asking for help.

5. You Just Don’t Want to Be in a Serious Relationship

This might seem an apparent reason, but people aren’t always the best at understanding what they want. Being in a relationship is seen as a requirement for a happy life. You are probably at a point where people in your life pressure you to find someone and settle down. Your parents might ask you, “when are you going to give me a grandchild?”.

No matter how innocent they seem, questions like these can be very damaging. Little comments like these make us feel like we must be in a relationship. Otherwise, we feel like failures. There’s too much focus on having a relationship and too little on building a healthy partnership. Not to mention that there are still a lot of sexist perceptions surrounding relationships.

It seems like a person in a toxic relationship is valued more by society than a happy single person. But if you aren’t ready for a relationship, your heart and instincts will tell you that. All you need to do is listen to them. And understand that just because you are single doesn’t mean you are alone. Being single can be a great time to work on yourself and follow your dreams. Focus on your career, travel the world, and do whatever you want.

Cherish your independence and use it to your advantage for as long as necessary. And, when you’ve achieved what you want to achieve as an individual, you might want to start looking for love. But even then, you still might want to be alone. Some people are just happier that way. When and if you’ll want a relationship, you’ll know.

commitment

Final Thoughts on Signs You’re Not Ready for a Serious Relationship

Being in a serious, loving relationship is potentially the most fulfilling thing you could achieve in your life. Of course, not all people want a relationship, or maybe they don’t want a conventional one. That doesn’t change the fact that some people want a relationship but are not ready. But many signs show you that a relationship shouldn’t be your priority.

That doesn’t mean you will never be able to have a serious relationship. It means you should work on yourself more to learn how to nurture a serious partnership. A serious relationship can never be built because you are trying to fill a void. If you still haven’t moved on from your ex or are dealing with personal problems, it’s not the time to start a relationship. Maybe you are dealing with commitment issues or don’t know how to compromise.

Sometimes, the inability to build something stems from your insecurities. If you don’t love yourself, you won’t be able to love another person the way they deserve to be loved. Lastly, you might not want a relationship, and that’s alright. In the end, do whatever makes you happy, but don’t rush into something just for the sake of it.

4 Ways to Be More Accountable

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Anyone who tried to achieve something has likely felt a terrible slump somewhere down the road. As the initial motivation burns away, you find yourself needing incredible willpower to want to continue working on these goals and fighting your way past challenges. Holding yourself accountable becomes more and more complex the longer you find yourself without inspiration–accountability matters!

This is why it’s essential to maintain personal responsibility for your goals and tasks in life. Without that accountability, it’s easy to give up, lose discipline, or do sub-par work that leaves you unsatisfied and discouraged to work further. It’s how many dreams, and goals die out long before they’ve even truly begun!

It’s often difficult to stick to goals and tasks. The negative stigma against occasional failure has made us feel almost ashamed of needing help to maintain personal responsibility. But you don’t need to feel embarrassed about utilizing intelligent methods to keep yourself going! Here are four ways to be more accountable.

1.      Set Micro-Goals

Goals don’t have to be big, lofty things. In a vast majority of cases, it’s wisest to break your big, long-term goals down into smaller goals. These goals are like stepping stones slowly leading you where you want to go.

Smaller goals are less intimidating and are often more actionable, as they’re specific and easier to think of how to work toward. Instead of thinking that you’ll achieve a big goal one day, you’ll have goals in front of you that you can fulfill shortly. Many people set annual, five-year, and ten-year goals, but you can add more, such as yearly or monthly goals.

accountable

When making goals of any size, make sure you’re following the research-backed SMART strategy:

·         Specific

The more specific a goal, the better it is to hold yourself accountable. For example, if you say, “I want to read more books this month,” you’re opening up a lot of wiggle room for excuses. You might read just one extra book, or you might end up struggling to fit books into your schedule at all. A better, more specific goal is “I want to read three books this month. I will set aside two hours each Saturday and Sunday to dedicate to reading.” This means you know three books are a must-do, and you have an excellent way to make that happen.

·         Measurable

Abstract goals sound nice in concept, but they’re terrible at holding you accountable. To ensure that you’re meeting your goals, you have to be able to measure them in some way. Saying “I want to be more grateful” doesn’t give you any way to measure that gratitude, leaving it open to interpretation. A better goal is “I will keep a daily gratitude journal where I list three things I’m grateful for each night. I will also say ‘thank you to at least ten people daily.”

·         Achievable

It’s great to have big dreams, but they must be authentic if you want to be more accountable. Goals should challenge you, but they shouldn’t be impossible, and they shouldn’t end with you burning out to make it there barely. Unachievable goals will only discourage you, potentially causing you to abandon your journey.

·         Relevant

Smaller goals should be a lead-up to your bigger goals. That means they have to be relevant to them. As you set goals, ask yourself how your smaller goals are helping you to move towards the bigger ones. If it’s helpful, you may want to make a mission statement that defines your overall goals first, so you have a guide to stick to as you make plans.

·         Time-Bound

A goal that has no deadline is one that never has to be fulfilled. That’s why accountability requires something time-sensitive. All plans should have a time-bound space, by which point you should have achieved that goal. It’s okay to adjust your deadlines based on new information and knowledge, but for the most part, you can keep yourself accountable by setting and making deadlines.

2.      Change Your Environment

Many long-term goals that require accountability are difficult to maintain if your environment remains entirely the same as it did before. Even those with high levels of self-control and discipline can hold themselves accountable more effectively when they make changes to their environments, say studies.

There’s no shame in needing to alter the things you interact with to meet your goals. Most people you think are more disciplined are better at managing their environments. Minimizing your contact with something that tends to derail you can be a big game-changer. For example, you might:

  • Stop spending time with people who enable unwanted or derailing habits
  • Put your phone in a different room so you don’t procrastinate by checking it, or leave it at home when you can
  • Reduce the number of snacks in your house if you’re trying to stop unnecessary snacking
  • Create specific spaces dedicated to focusing on your goals, such as setting up a small office only for that use, going to a library or cafe when you work on that goal, or rearranging your furniture. Hence, you have a neat desk environment.
  • Look up various studies on things in an environment that spur productivity, such as plants or proximity to a window, and adapt your environment to those features.

Some people might say that it’s “weak” to need to remove these things to stop yourself from giving in to lethargy or stagnation. But the fact is that the less time and energy you have to spend fighting temptation and impulses, the more quickly you can hold yourself accountable and stay accountable.

Over time, you can make slow, steady adjustments to your environment that allow you to stick to your goals even in the presence of temptation. But, for now, start small!

accountability

3.      Have An Accountability Partner

There’s no shame in needing a little help in staying accountable. That’s why many successful people are surrounded by those who hold them accountable and keep them on task.

Studies have shown that having a partner who holds you accountable in some way is immensely beneficial to success. This is even better when you and your accountability partner are mutually helping each other to stay responsible, creating friendly competition and empathic support.

Don’t have a specific accountability partner? There are many different ways to have external forces that hold you accountable, such as:

·         Announce What You’re Doing On Social Media

Social media isn’t always a good thing regarding goals and staying accountable, as it’s easy to get lost in unhealthy social comparisons and external factors. But when harnessed correctly, it can be a good tool for accountability. First, announce what you plan to do on social media. Then, commit to posting your progress and updates on your journey toward these goals. You can be more motivated to meet goals when spurred on by the knowledge that others are watching you.

·         Find A Mentor

A mentor can set you on the right track, give you actionable advice, and speak from a place of experience. Seek someone who has been where you are before and has achieved the goal that you want to achieve, and ask them to mentor you. This gives you a little boost in your efforts while keeping you encouraged. Mentors can also naturally make you want to make them proud, further motivating them!

·         Seek Feedback

Make it a habit to find feedback from those around you. Ask people for opinions and advice and listen carefully and closely to what they say. Not all feedback will be accurate or usable, but collecting different ideas will broaden your perspective and open you up to essential critiques. Now that you have this feedback, you can use it to improve. Then, you can check back in with those who gave you the feedback later to ask if you’ve improved or for other criticism!

4.      Take Breaks And Reward Yourself

Accountability isn’t all about tedious, serious tasks and focusing solely on responsibilities. It’s also about being able to celebrate the successes that you have. Taking breaks gets a bit of a bad reputation in today’s hustle culture, but the fact is that you’re doing yourself a disservice by not resting when you may need to.

As counterintuitive as it sounds, you must take breaks to ensure that you stay accountable. This is for the following reasons:

·         You Need To Reset

Studies show that staying focused on one task can cause your performance and productivity to drop. You need to actively choose to deactivate your goals and reactivate them to ensure refreshed focus on your path. Without that reset, the human brain begins to struggle to stay concentrated.

·         You Regain Energy

Working non-stop gets tiring quickly, and you’ll feel drained and burned out. Giving yourself the chance to rest allows you to recuperate that lost energy. Trying to chug on through tasks while you’re exhausted isn’t going to lead anywhere productive, so take that break.

·         You’ll Be More Motivated

When nothing notable comes from meeting small goals, it’s easy to feel like everything is worthless. If your only reward from achieving a goal is that you now must move on to the next, you’ll burn out pretty quickly. Knowing that a nice break and good reward await you at the end of your small goals is crucial to staying inspired.

·         You’ll Have Time For Health

Accountability means nothing if it harms your health and prevents you from progressing. You have to be healthy to continue working toward your goals. Taking a break allows you to focus on healthy habits that keep your body and mind sharp and decisive.

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Final Thoughts On Some Effective Ways To Be More Accountable

Accountability is a valuable trait but must be carefully built over time. The more you practice ways that keep you accountable, the better your self-discipline, responsibility, and self-control will become.

How Daily Routines Can Hurt Creativity

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Have you ever been in a rut? Do you feel unsatisfied with your routines? If you answered “yes,” it probably means your daily schedule doesn’t allow for even an ounce of creative or spontaneous thoughts in your mind. Why do routines lead to monotony? Can you get out of the rut? Read on to discover three ways routines can kill all creativity and spontaneity.

What Are Creativity And Spontaneity?

According to research, creativity can be defined as “the hallmark of human cognition” and is considered the driving force behind human innovation. Along those same lines, spontaneity is often explained as “the quality of being natural rather than planned.”

Different people experience creative and spontaneous thoughts differently, but in a neurological sense, these thoughts appear because of a “general cognitive mechanism of adaptive prediction.” Studies show that this allows people to deal with problems more effectively by predicting the immediate future based on life experience rather than being reactionary.  In a more straightforward sense, the human mind should turn to creativity when dealing with uncertain situations.

Society has formed such that time is of the essence. The stress and pressure of it all make people fall into routines to juggle their responsibilities. As researchers stated, the creative person is integral to the creative process. Such a person cannot flourish in today’s context if tied down by a routine.

So, what exactly are these routines and ruts?

What Are Daily Routines?

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Daily routines are a form of habitual responses, a process in which different contexts prompt automatic action. Research shows that an impulsive process regulates habitual responses. Thus a minimal cognitive effort is used to elicit routine behaviors. This logic explains why people tend to lean on routines; they are easy, expectable, stress-free, and require little to no effort cognitively.

Daily routines usually lower stress by removing the need to take deliberate action in response to certain situations. In theory, there’s no need to think about what to eat when you can decide that you have steak with asparagus for lunch every Monday.

This sounds great; less stress, more order, more time to think about other things. But following the same routine can make someone move aimlessly through life, and before you know it, you are stuck in a rut, and your dreams are slipping away. No matter the context, routines can gradually become ruts, studies show. Habits that were once comforting – stable relationships, job security, workout schedules, meal plans – can lead to boredom and unconscious anxiety in time.

We established what daily routines are and how they can lead to ruts. But what are the three ways in which daily routines limit creativity and spontaneity?

Three Ways Daily Routines Stifle Creativity And Spontaneity (And How To Avoid This)

1.    Rewire The Brain

How is the brain wired?

Harvard Medical School has conducted research showing that people get stuck in ruts due to the brain’s habitual electrical patterns. The brain will apply rules based on past events to deal with the current context in new situations. A specially wired part of the brain recognizes patterns – the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC). The DLPFC finds old rules and applies them to new conditions. This part of the brain, coupled with strict routines, makes people lean on old ways to solve new problems, thus inhibiting creativity and spontaneity.

Why Do Routines Maintain The Rut?

Daily routines over-stimulate the DLPFC and create automatic responses that disallow the brain to develop new solutions for new problems.

Imagine you have to arrange numbers in a certain way following a pattern. Once you solve tens of these problems, the brain becomes accustomed to the routine. Therefore, if the brain has to solve a problem with a different pattern, it will struggle to find the new pattern.

The same can be said about our day-to-day life. If you are used to going to the gym on weekends, your brain might struggle to convince itself that you should take a vacation instead; that’s because your brain’s notion of what to do on weekends has been altered to be synonymous with working out.  That’s how you find yourself unable to come up with creative and spontaneous things to do.

How To Start Rewiring The Brain? (“Unfocus” Your Brain)

According to Srini Pillay MD, “unfocusing” your brain means taking time in the day for activities that don’t stimulate the brain. This doesn’t mean becoming distracted but rather doing daily things that don’t require focus, like taking a walk, daydreaming, doodling, or taking a 90-minute nap.

These activities are ways to turn off the DLPFC, thus enhancing creativity and spontaneity. They relax the mental constraints of daily routines and help you break through some habits.

Remember the example about arranging numbers following a specific pattern? Studies have shown that turning off the DLPFC allows people to solve problems using a new pattern, unlike those who keep their DLPFC on. That can apply to your daily life; a simple walk in the park can help you break away from some habits, allowing your creativity to flow.

2.    Routines Are Fundamentally Opposed To New Experiences and Spontaneity

The Dichotomy Between Routines And New Experiences

As we discussed, daily routines are contingent on order, knowing exactly what to do and when to do it. Therefore, to create a routine, you trade off the liberty to enjoy completely new experiences. Sure, you might change the gym you go to, but you probably won’t hike the Himalayas if that wasn’t already part of your routine.
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Why Does The Lack Of New Experiences Kill Creativity And Spontaneity?

This can be mainly attributed to the need for new perspectives in life to be creative. Thus, by having a routine, people tend to remain enclosed in the same spaces and activities; the things they experience don’t differ from one day to another.

Most people break routines when they decide to go on vacation once a year. But that doesn’t allow the brain enough time and exposure to take in the new ideas offered by a different culture. Going on frequent weekend getaways can help your creativity much more.

Routines don’t allow you to meet new people and be in contact with new ideologies and principles. If no one ever told you that you could tackle a project differently and are stuck believing that the world is only black and white, how will you ever be creative in pursuing that project?

So, how can we change this in our daily lives?

Using New Experiences To Boost Creativity and Spontaneity

Research conducted by UCL states that shifting perspectives, like living abroad and considering different cultures and ideas, can help improve creativity and spontaneity by showing the brain that solutions other than the ones it already knew from routine experiences exist.

Aaron Heller explains that people feel happier when they depart from routines and take on new things in life because the brain is stimulated in an entirely new way. The pool of responses to specific problems in life widens, allowing the individual to pursue more courses of action, think more creatively and be more spontaneous.

Considering this research, the solution to getting out of the rut is simple. Make a conscious effort to go to a different restaurant than you were used to. Go on more trips. Try a new hobby. Read another genre of books. Even if you don’t like some of the new activities you try, the long-term benefits of boosting your creativity and spontaneity are worth it.

3.    Routines Take Up All Your Free Time

Why Do Daily Habits Occupy All Your Free Time?

Routines need to be reliable to stay intact. If your routine doesn’t encompass all the time you have in a day and doesn’t schedule an activity for each part of your day (eating, working, relaxing, sleeping, and so on), it can’t even be called a daily routine; it’s at best a habit. Your daily routine needs to be all-encompassing because having a lot of unscheduled time in your day can make you stray from the routine; you might even stop following it altogether. When following a routine, your brain freaks out if it has gaps of free time between activities and tends to fill that time with useless activities.

Why Are Creativity And Spontaneity Contingent On Time?

For many people, being in a time crunch means relying on what they know best: habits and routine ways of tackling life. By taking up all your free time, routines disallow you the liberty to try something new. If your routine allows you two hours of leisure time, you won’t be comfortable trying a new sport. Not liking it means you just lost two precious hours of your life. Research shows this is even true in the workplace; time constraints are coupled with lower levels of creativity and spontaneity.

How To Make Time?

As discussed previously, the best way to make the time you need is to slot more relaxing activities in your day and switch up your old routine from time to time. Instead of scheduling every second of the day, organize only the vital parts and approach other activities more liberally. Instead of forcing yourself to go to the gym every Monday, decide that you should go three times a week and choose the exact time on the spot. This approach will allow you the necessary time to pursue your creative and spontaneous side.
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Final Thoughts On How Daily Routines Stifle Creativity And Spontaneity

In this day and age, routines are everywhere. More and more people need stability in life, so they turn to daily routines. Many of these people end up falling into ruts, either because of neurological reasons or because they don’t have the time to experience new things and let their creativity and spontaneity flow. If you are in a rut, don’t feel ashamed or stuck. Instead, focus on small things, like taking a walk from time to time or scheduling less of your daily activities. Even if the change is small, it can have an enormous positive impact on your life! You might even find yourself trying something insane, like cliff diving!

3 Effective Ways To Avoid Drama In Life

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Are you constantly juggling different conflicts? Do you feel your life is a giant web of gossip and miscommunication? Do you tiptoe around your friends and family members to avoid drama?

Is your answer to all these questions yes? Then you probably have a life filled with unnecessary drama. Thankfully, your life doesn’t always have to feel like a Broadway production. There are effective ways to weather the storm and reach a calm life.

Why Should You Avoid Drama In Your Life?

We all know someone who “loves drama” because it makes life interesting (or so they say). But you know very well that drama is just a big red flag and not a positive thing.

Drama can be any conflict, from lying to cheating to even worse deeds. Not only that, but it usually circles pointless things, like who hooked up with who.
avoid drama

What Causes Dramatic Outcomes?

According to writer Tara Meyer-Robson, most drama is created by people who feel life is a little too boring and need to spice it up. These people tend to know everything about everyone and freely share someone else’s secrets. They thrive on miscommunication and gossip and always jump at the chance to create an even bigger mess by spreading lies or interfering.

But this is just drama stemming from external sources. In reality, if there’s drama in your life, chances are you are just as much at fault as anyone else. After all, you can’t blame all your issues on externalities. You might be complicit in the drama by being a lousy communicator or a bad listener. Perhaps you also engage in gossip too much. Drama can also flourish when there are unresolved conflicts, there aren’t clear boundaries set in your relationships, or you have problematic interactions with the people in your life.

Thomas Henricks, Ph.D., explains that drama results from people trying to uphold an idealized version of themselves before others. Like in a stage performance, people’s behaviors are performances. Indeed, they strive to impress others and convince them that they are a certain way. They even use “props”: their house looks a certain way, they choose certain clothes, look and smell a certain way, and so on. This leads to a society where lies are at the forefront of every conversation and every interaction. Inevitably, this leads to people burying themselves so deep in the drama that they no longer know how to get out.

Drama is not just a minor inconvenience, though. It can have severe impacts on your mental and physical health. Drama leads to much stress, which is linked with worse health. A prolonged state of stress (like the continuous stress one might feel when in a dramatic situation) leads to overexposure to cortisol and other stress hormones, which can disrupt almost all body processes. This increases the risk of anxiety, depression, headaches, muscle tension and pain, heart problems, high blood pressure, sleep problems, and even weight gain. Not only that, but drama interferes with your relationships with family and friends.

3 Effective Ways To Avoid Drama

So, how can you avoid these issues and live a stress-free and drama-free life?

1.      Avoid Drama by Assessing Your Life And Relationships

Do they know I’m the one who spread that rumor about them? How can I hide this lie from my family? These types of questions never leave your mind if your life is filled with drama.

Certain situations you face can make you feel threatened in a life filled with stress and issues. Not being completely honest with the people you love and always being afraid of what secrets of yours might surface are all scary situations.

The best way to deal with them is to assess your life. Do a self-appraisal of what makes you scared and why. Try to process everything until you reach the root of the problem. Maybe it’s the fact that you lied to your closest friend. Perhaps you are being manipulated by someone who can blackmail you. Whatever the reason might be, try to confront it.

Make a list of unresolved issues that stress you out and try to find a solution. If it’s something small like a white lie, then come clean. If it’s something more severe, like gaslighting, manipulation, or blackmail, try to take the legal route or go to a certified counselor to get yourself out of that toxic situation.

Assessing situations is a step, but it’s not enough. It has to be coupled with assessing your relationships. You must understand who you surround yourself with and how that affects you. According to Abigail Brenner, M.D., the neediest people spreading gossip are also the people who will bring unavoidable drama to your life. They are also the people who will drain you emotionally. Their presence leaves you stressed, anxious, and unsatisfied from a social point of view.

To minimize drama, look for the people who are easy to be around, who are not demanding, and who are positive and keep them around. Try to distance yourself from others.

The more toxic situations and people you can eliminate from your life, the less drama you will face and the less stressed you will feel.
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2.    Set Boundaries In Place to Avoid Drama

You usually face daily drama because people have no idea when they step on your toes. If you don’t decide where and why the limits are, people will never know if they got on your nerves, pushed you too far, or hurt you. And that goes both ways.

Boundaries are basic guidelines people create to establish how others should behave around them. They protect your rights in a relationship.

Not having rules in a relationship can lead to resentment and bottled-up feelings between the parties involved. Bitterness can make even your best friends and family bitter and prone to gossip and lack of communication.

Melissa Coats, a licensed professional counselor, describes boundaries as the rules to ensure a relationship doesn’t become unsafe. She states that boundaries bring us closer and are necessary for every relationship.

Boundaries can be of different types (physical, sexual, intellectual, emotional, and financial) and are unique to the individual (based on one’s beliefs and values). To set them in place, you must understand your values and beliefs, what triggers you, and what you are uncomfortable with. After you construct a set of rules, please share them with those you interact with often.

Not every relationship in your life will have the same set of rules. They might differ depending on whether the relationship is with a friend or family member, how close you are, and so on. Boundaries must be somewhat flexible, but not in the sense that you sacrifice them. If someone doesn’t respect your boundaries, you might want to consider cutting them out of your life. You must learn to say no and stop trying to please others, even at the cost of your well-being, if you want to respect those boundaries you put in place.

By understanding your limits and protecting your rights, you can ensure that you will feel more comfortable with the people you surround yourself with, thus increasing trust and decreasing the risk of people stirring up problems, gossiping, lying, or otherwise creating drama in your life.

3.    Learn To Communicate to Avoid Drama

Have you ever given your friend the silent treatment over something, only to discover that you misunderstood what they were trying to tell you a few days later? More often than not, drama is not created intentionally but rather a by-product of people’s lack of communication skills.

To ensure proper communication, you must learn to listen and observe before jumping in with your opinions (especially if the conversation is reactive or emotional). When people are upset, they speak not from the brain’s logical, pre-frontal cortex but from the amygdala, where they feel fight-or-flight feelings.

Show concern and understanding when trying to solve a problem. Ask how they think instead of trying to explain yourself or comfort them. Your attentiveness will calm them down to avoid drama.

Psychologists also suggest avoiding the “toxic triangle” (when one person hears something about another person through a third party) because it can lead to someone believing lies about another person and tailoring their interactions according to those lies. Instead, learn to communicate. Try to avoid gossip. If you can’t, double-check the story with the person the buzz is about.

You must prepare to nip the drama in the bud whenever the inevitable misunderstandings happen. You have to learn to be the bigger person and open a conversation about what’s bothering you, instead of trying to ignore the issue and becoming increasingly more frustrated with it, to the point where the built-up feelings explode and become severe enough your relationship gets seriously hurt. Built-up resentment always leads to drama, gossip, lies, and the potential damage to interpersonal relationships.

Learning to communicate will be the decisive factor in whether your life is filled with drama.
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Final Thoughts On How To Avoid Drama in Life

Drama can seem exciting, and it can fill you with adrenaline. That’s why most people seem to love it. But it can have long-lasting impacts on your health and relationships.

To avoid it and enjoy a peaceful life, you must be ready to understand and assess why your life is prone to drama, who your friends are and how you interact with them. Pragmatically, you have to set boundaries and learn to communicate. Once you take these three steps, you will find your days much calmer.

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