Hey lovely witches, Yule is almost upon us so here are just a few things about Yule that I would consider useful for everyone
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Also known as Solstice Night, or the longest night of the year, the sun’s “rebirth” was celebrated with much joy. On this night, our ancestors celebrated the rebirth of the Oak King, the Sun King, the Giver of Life that warmed the frozen Earth. From this day forward, the days would become longer.
Symbols of Yule:
Yule log, or small Yule log with 3 candles, evergreen boughs or wreaths, holly, mistletoe hung in doorways, gold pillar candles, baskets of clove studded fruit, a simmering pot of wassail, poinsettias, christmas cactus.
Cookies and caraway cakes soaked in cider, fruits, nuts, pork dishes, turkey, eggnog, ginger tea, spiced cider, wassail, or lamb’s wool (ale, sugar, nutmeg, roasted apples).
Incense of Yule:
Pine, cedar, bayberry, cinnamon.
Colors of Yule:
Red, green, gold, white, silver, yellow, orange.
Stones of Yule:
Rubies, bloodstones, garnets, emeralds, diamonds.
Activities of Yule:
Caroling, burning the Yule log, decorating the Yule tree, exchanging of presents, kissing under the mistletoe
Best spells during Yule:
Peace, harmony, love, and increased happiness.
Deities of Yule:
Goddesses-Brighid, Isis, Demeter, Gaea, Diana, The Great Mother. Gods-Apollo, Ra, Odin, Lugh, The Oak King, The Horned One, The Green Man, The Divine Child, Mabon.
Try to wake up earlier every day. Like 5 - 10 min earlier than the day before. Until you wake up any time before 8am or so…
If you struggle with waking up & snooze button is you bff:
Put your alarm clock as far away from the bed as possible.
Drink a glass of water right after you wake up.
Pour another glass of water on yourself right after you wake up.
Prepare some coffee the night before, leave it by your bedside, drink it after you wake up.
Have your blinds/curtains open, so that it’s bright after you wake up.
Try to go to bed 5-10 min earlier than the night before.
Track how many hours of sleep you’re getting. Aim to get at least 7h per day or 49h per week.
Increase your sleeping hours incrementally. Aim to get at least 1h of sleep more than the previous week. For example, if this week you slept for 41hrs, aim to get an extra hour of sleep next week, so it’s 42h.Once you get enough hours of sleep and wake up early-ish.
Try to keep your sleeping schedule consistent. It is really important to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Even if it’s weekend. Or even if that means, you getting less than 7hrs of sleep that day. I’d say waking up at the same time everyday is the most important step, which will help you the most with fixing your sleeping schedule.
START EATING HEALTHY (1-2 months)
This step really depends from person to person, but firstly I suggest you take some blood tests to see if you have any deficiencies, etc. Especially, if you struggle with cravings.
Try intermittent fasting, if you struggle with binge eating or overeating. As it will help you to learn to listen to your body better: when it’s hungry, when it’s full, etc. It’s really simple, there are many methods of Intermittent fasting, but I’d suggest 16/8 for the beginners. (Google it for more info)
DRINK ALL THE WATER. Again, if you’re not drinking enough water, try to level up your water game incrementally. Download some water tracking app on your phone to help you. Drinking water will make you more energetic, increase your metabolism, and decrease you appetite (among many more benefits).
Track what you eating. I would really suggest tracking your meals for around a month. Because, most of the time people have no idea that what they’re eating is unhealthy. Again, download an app to your phone for that.
Make your own meals once in a while. Not only this will save you money, but it’ll help you to see what’s really going into your body.
Eat less meat and more veggies/fruits. Go to your local market and buy some veggies/fruits, you have never tried before. I’m sure you’ll find your new favs. Eat/buy less meat. Not only it’s good for the environment, but it is good for you, too. Get a veggie burger instead of the beef one, etc.
Cut dairy. Find your new favourite milk substitute. Advice: Oat milk is really good with the tea and oatmeal/porridge; hazelnut milk is amazing on it’s own; cashew milk goes well with cereals.
Define your goals. Do you want to lose weight, do you want to get stronger, gain weight, be able to climb stairs without losing breath, run 5k?
Remember - you’re half-way through. Being physically fit has a lot to do with what you put into your body. So, if you fulfilled the previous step of eating healthy - you are half way through!
Make a plan. A Reasonable plan. Be honest with yourself.
Start small. Like, 5 min exercise in the morning. Or doing 10 sit ups per day. Don’t do anything overwhelming, like running 5k everyday if you haven’t run for the past 5 years.
Make sure that you kinda like what you’re doing. If you absolutely hate running - don’t do it. Hate doing sit ups in the morning? Try some yoga instead.
Explore until you find what you like. You don’t have to go to gym to get fit, especially if you hate it. Find a type of exercise, which you actually like. Maybe it’s dancing or hiking, taking your dog for a walk. Sign up for several trial lessons of various sport clubs. Ditch ‘em if you have them until you find something that you love. Stick with that.
Do the small changes in your everyday life. Stairs>Escalator, Walk>Drive, Do some squats while brushing your teeth, switch from regular desk to standing desk, etc… Find ways to incorporate being active into your everyday life
Track your effort instead of your progress. You cannot really control your progress that much (especially if your goal was to lose weight). However, you can always control your effort. So track it instead. This will leave you more motivated. As you will be able to see that you can do more and more everyday. Whereas, if you tracked your progress, you may not always get the result you hoped for, which might demotivate you and make you upset, wanting to quit.
BEAT DEPRESSION
Do the previous 3 steps and you’re half way through.
See a therapist/doctor. Depression is an illness, requiring medical treatment. So, get it. Remember: there is absolutely no fucking shame in having a mental illness.
Get some extra support. Talk to your friends or family. Or maybe someone on the internet.
Write it out. If you don’t want to talk - write down your thoughts. It can be just as helpful. It’ll help you to understand yourself better, see problems in your thinking, etc.
Distract yourself from yourself. Get someone/something to take care of, so that you can, for a moment, stop thinking about yourself and focus on something else. E.g, get a plant, or a dog, or a fish.
Self-care day. Dedicate at least one day per week for self-care. Take yourself out, either to a museum or some fancy cafe, do some stuff you like, whatever your hobbies are, do some physical self care: bath, face mask, manicure, etc., listen to some nice music, watch a film…..
STOP PROCRASTINATION
Celebrate your victories instead of mourning over your loses.So the only thing you’ve done today was write one sentence for your 20 page essay? Amazing! Buy yourself a candy for that!! I mean, you could’ve done nothing, but you didn’t - you wrote that one sentence and that’s worth celebrating.
Do it for only 2 minutes. If there’s an important thing you’ve been putting off for a while, tell yourself that you will only spend 2 minutes on doing it. If after 2 minutes you don’t want to do it anymore, great, stop it. However, after 2min. you actually might want to do more. No pressure either way.
Track your productivity. Track how much time you’ve been productive that day. Try to increase that time by a little bit every day.
Always forgive yourself. So, it’s been a week and you’ve done nothing? Don’t sweat it. Let it go. Blaming yourself will bring you absolutely nothing. Nothing good will come out of your negativity on yourself. So stop it. Forgive yourself and start again. And again, if you need to. Never stop trying. Always pick yourself after you fall. Beating procrastination and increasing your discipline is a skill. And all skills can be build on. There is nothing in you stopping you from changing. Remember that.
LEARN HOW TO DO TAXES (1h - 1 day)
Go to google.com.
Type in: “How to do taxes *the name of the country you’re living in*”
Read the results.
GET MENTALLY STRONG ENOUGH TO MAKE PHONE CALLS
Remember that just as with beating procrastination, making phone calls is a skill. And, again, skills can be learnt.
Get a new SIM card.
Top it up.
Dial some random numbers and pretend to be a salesman, selling whatever you like.. E.g., trying to sell broadband, cable tv, trying to get people to donate for some charity… Or whatever really… Me and some friends used to pretend we’re selling kittens or wood logs. Alternatively, you can pretend that you dialed a wrong person and talk about whatever, e.g. “Hey, Jess!! You wont believe what I saw today!! *start telling a made-up story*…”
If you get uncomfortable - just drop the call. No consequences whatsoever.
Repeat until you build up your game and your phone-call anxiety starts to diminish.
SLAY THOSE BITCHES Congratulations, now you’re ready to take over the world! Got get ‘em!!
YO SIGNAL BOOST
Hey just correcting the healthy eating part a tad….
YOU DON’T HAVE TO CUT OUT MEAT AND DAIRY
“Better for the environment” arguments aside (because we all know how thorny those can get and how the veg and fruit industries can be really damaging not only to the environment but their human workers), meat has a lot of nutrients you need. If you just randomly cut it out without replacing those nutrients, then that can lead to deficiencies. A really basic example everyone knows about is iron. One of the most commons sources of iron is red meat. You cut that out and don’t replace that source or iron with something else, and your body is suddenly lacking something it needs.
Same with dairy. What’s in milk? Calcium, among other good stuff. You cut that out without replacing it and welcome to mouth ulcer city, next stop, scurvy town.
(Ok, if you cut down on dairy you won’t immediately get scurvy, but you see what I mean.)
Meat and dairy aren’t bad for you. In fact, they contain things you need. So if you cut them out, that’s fine, but you should replace them with stuff that gives you similar nutrients. Do you know what you should cut out though?
FAT AND SUGAR
Again, not entirely. I have friends who swore never to eat either and wow. That just lead to a bunch of other problems. But in general, most healthier diets advise you to cut down on your fat and sugar intake. And be mindful that fruit is high in sugar (fructose) and milk in lactose.
So like, if you want to eat more fruit to get more vitamins (yum!), maybe have that instead of a desert. Also, if you’re preparing a nice chicken dish, maybe cut off the fat, and consider a healthy way of cooking it, eg: oven roasted or basically anything aside from deep frying.
This is just basic stuff. I’m not an expert by any means. But I just really wanted to point out the flaws in OP’s argument. Meat and milk aren’t inherently bad. What you really need to be wary of is fat and sugar. Those are the elements in your diet that should be consumed less than anything else, as they can lead to cholesterol, weight gain, insulin problems, etc. That’s not to say we don’t need a bit of fat and sugar from time to time. We do! They’re good for energy.
Tl;dr eating healthily isn’t a one-answer-fits-all problem. Look at what your lifestyle is like and what you need to fuel that (eg: sedentary lifestyles should cut down on fat, while highly active people need that energy). Research. Eat lots of new things. But don’t cut out elements willy-nilly. And here’s the kicker – always be mindful of where your health advice is coming from. There are lots of people with agendas out there. And deciding to completely change your diet for ethical reasons is great! But always double check the apparent health benefits with multiple sources.
