Alex's Blog
January 18, 2020Alex's BlogBy: Alex Voss | Contributing AOJ Journalist
You know those moments, those moments where you completely lose yourself. That moment of realization where you don’t actually know who you are anymore. It is in that moment where your heart starts racing from the adrenaline flowing into your system all stemming from the fear. You drown in your own fear as you try to understand what to do next. You end up in your own mind, catching yourself wondering “where do I belong?”.
Losing yourself is not an easy thing to handle. Fortunately, the situation is not as hopelessness as it may feel, you have to lose yourself to find yourself. When we lose ourselves, we go through a lot of depression, fear, anxiety, and isolation. Feeling lost is not an uncommon feeling as we get older. Every individual goes through mental changes and becomes a different version of themself with every passing year, sometimes better, sometimes worse. When someone is feeling lost and does not quite understand themself completely, it is important to ensure a healthy environment. A healthy environment includes the type of people someone is hanging out with and the daily activities that someone partakes in as well. We cannot allow our minds to open up and connect with our heart and soul if we do not provide our mind our minds with a healthy lifestyle.
Part of allowing our mind, heart, and soul to connect is exercising our minds through meditation. Meditation allows us to really engage in our minds and truly allow our full focus on just our minds alone. It can be tough to access our minds spiritually, but that is why meditation is so important, it expands our minds little by little each time. When an individual’s soul, mind, and heart does not all connect as one, their body and mind do not function to itheir fullest physical and mental capacity. Once we truly connect with our minds and understand our minds, we improve and rebuild the relationship with ourselves.
The most important relationship you will ever have is the one with yourself. Loving ourselves is not just about physically taking care of ourselves; it is about respecting ourselves, appreciating ourselves, accepting ourselves, and loving ourselvers. Just like the old saying goes, “you cannot love someone until you first learn to love yourself.” [...]
December 29, 2019Alex's BlogBy: Alex Voss | Contributing AOJ Journalist
There is no such thing as a perfect relationship. There are many challenges couples face throughout their relationships. One of many struggles happens to be electronics. Believe it or not many relationships are based off of social media.
Instead of sitting down and eating together, many couples are too busy posting all over social media, making the world believe their relationship is perfect. In reality, these type of relationships develop a lot of conflict due to the lack of attention and effort put towards the relationship. Each individual person changes throughout their lifetimes. If someone’s partner isn’t putting forth the effort to spend time with them or even have a conversation with them, eventually they won’t even truly know or understand who their partner is as an individual person. Society has made social media a bigger priority than one’s own relationships!
These days we aren’t interested in knowing one another, but rather post all over social media living a fake life. It’s natural to compare one another, but the obsession with looking perfect with the perfect life all over social media has gotten our priorities way out of line. We should be making plans to spend time with another, to understand one another, and to discuss one another’s short term and long term goals. Most relationships these days aren’t lasting very long and part of that is because of the simple fact , we don’t care for our partners the way we should be. How often do we take the time to sit down for dinner every night with our partners to discuss how our weeks are going? Most people don’t even truly know anything about the person they are with. Could you imagine telling someone you barely know that you love them? Well, that’s what is happening to our society. We throw around “I love you” , we blow each other off so that everyone on social media gets more attention than the one person who is supposed to be spending their lives with us. Relationships are based off of loving someone because we don’t want to be alone.
Phones are great for contacting someone when we need to, but phones and social media have become our biggest enemy. When you truly love someone and truly want to spend your life with someone, a phone shouldn’t be getting all of your attention! Loving someone or even just wanting someone means you put in the effort to truly be there for them. No one should be right next to their partner but still feel lonely. We need to start putting more effort into showing we love each other, simple words with no actions means nothing. [...]
December 20, 2019Alex's BlogBy: Alex Voss | Contributing AOJ Journalist
Today’s society has an issue with accepting people for
who they are. Each one of us is our own individual human. Some of us have
similarities but overall we don’t have the exact same minds. Our bodies are all
different as well, none of us have the exact same features.
If we all could just accept our differences there wouldn’t be as much hate in this world. We go each and every day for our entire lives walking around this earth together, why would it make sense to spend that time hating each other? The time we spend on hating each other is time we could instead spend on building each other up and helping create a better society for not only ourselves but for our children as well. We don’t need to like every person we meet but we can respect them instead of tearing them down and making them feel worthless. Worthless is just one of the ways we make each other feel in today’s society, we push people to the brink of suicide and then just keep on going as if it’s nothing. It takes no effort at all to walk past someone with a simple hello but for some reason, in today’s society, we would rather see someone cry for no reason at all other than that we simply don’t agree with the way they express themselves or the simple beliefs they have. Why should we waste time beating each other down like that when we could live much better and happier lives?
Spread the love this holiday season, don’t hate! [...]
September 30, 2019Alex's BlogBy: Alex Voss | Contributing AOJ Journalist
Today’s world is filled with so much hate. Instead of caring for one another, we seem to worry more about disrespecting one another . Destroying one another is not how we should be living our lives. Part of living is being grateful towards everything you have , especially your own beating heart. We should be showing our appreciation for being alive by doing something good for the world. We are all human and there’s no point in putting each other down when we all bleed the same color at the end of the day. Many of us destroy the peace in our mind by worrying more about disrespecting others throughout life. It is understandable to go through life, not liking every person you meet, but the important thing is to respect each other , hating on each other doesn’t exactly do any good for others , let alone ourselves. If each and every one of us could do the simple task of respecting each other , maybe we could acquire more peace in the world. The key to a happy life is to fill this world with kindness , respect and acceptance of one another. Learning to live life this way can help fill your life with peace. [...]
August 26, 2019Alex's BlogBeing a mother can be one of the most rewarding experiences you will face in your lifetime. There are so many wonderful experiences when it comes to being a mother, although, there can be many challenges involved with motherhood as well.
Out of the many hardships we face with motherhood, the emotional effect it has on us is the hardest part of it all. Out of all the great things a mother will do for her child, the fear of failing as a mother always lingers in the back of her mind. Society has set the standards on what being a good mother means. We think that the only way to be a good mother is by giving our children more than what they need. The reality is, a mother who works each and every day to ensure her children are happy and healthy is a good mother. Living in a huge house with lots of money does not make a mother a good parent. Working on creating a beautiful life for her children, as well as giving her children an endless amount of love and support, is what creates a good mother. No mother is perfect, but that doesn’t mean a mother is failing just because she isn’t perfect. [...]
March 6, 2019Alex's BlogSometimes we all get a little sad and that leads us to listen to sad music. A lot of people listen to music that relates to their feelings. However, that may not always be the best thing to do. For instance, many people don’t realize that listening to sad music when they’re feeling down actually causes their depressed mood to worsen.
The same phenomenon occurs with happy music. If someone is in a good mood they usually listen to happy music, increasing their good mood. In a more complex scenario, if a happy person listens to sad music it tends to change their mood around and they become sad; when an upset person listens to happy music their mood tends to switch around to a happier mood. It’s important for people to take note of the affects music has on their moods because, whether they realize it or not, music has a huge impact on people’s moods. [...]
February 18, 2019Alex's BlogMany people , at some point in their lives , hangout with people who become bad influences. When people surround themselves with bad people it often leads to bad choices. For example when someone hangs out with people who are doing drugs the chance of that person being influenced to start doing drugs increases. This type of behavior can ruin a persons life. These are the type of people to steer clear of. When someone surrounds themselves with good people this often leads to good choices. For example when someone hangs out with people who are responsible and do good things for other people the chances of that person being influenced to make these positive choices are increased. This type of behavior can create a good life for someone. These people are who someone should surround themselves with. You can either choose to surround yourself with bad influential people or good influential people, the choice is yours. [...]
February 14, 2019Alex's BlogThere are many people who suffer from verbal abuse everyday. Many of these people don’t know they are being abused because they are not being physically abused. Verbal abuse is more serious than most people realize. For example, the abuser will call the victim worthless, pathetic and many other names, and the victim doesn’t realize they are being abused because the name calling causes the victim to begin to focus on the things they believe makes themselves worthless or pathetic. This technique brings down the victims self-worth making it easier for the abuser to manipulate them. Manipulation is another technique used in verbal abuse. An example of how this is done is by moving the victim away from friends and family. This causes the victim to feel as though the abuser is all they have. By doing this, the abuser is able to make the victim rely on them for survival. This gives the abuser the opportunity to receive power over their victim. For example, the victim will be under the abusers control , if the victim does anything to make the abuser angry, the abuser then has the ability to take everything away from the victim, and everything the victim has can only supplied by the abuser. This causes the victim to feel helpless, as they do not have anywhere else to go or any way of contacting anyone for help. Verbal abuse in all keeps the victim from leaving the toxic relationship. [...]
February 10, 2019Alex's BlogI think kids should be able to have pets, as long as they are being held responsible for taking care of them. Having a pet is more than just fun and games. Having pets can help teach kids responsibility at a young age. However, the parents shouldn’t be the ones taking care of the pets. Rather, the parents should be helping the kids learn to take care of the pets themselves. One of the many ways this teaches kids responsibility is by teaching them not to be selfish. For example, kids have to put aside their fun activities to make sure their pet is taken care of. This teaches them to prioritize responsibilities over fun activities when their older. Another way this teaches them responsibility is by encouraging empathy and compassion. These traits are encouraged by the emotional connection created between the child and their pet, along with the care the child provides for their pet. This prepares the child to contribute to society by providing them the ability to care for others. These are just a few of the many ways giving a child a pet teaches them responsibility. [...]