Happiness. is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

“Everything we do is about pain prevention. How about working towards causeless happiness?”

“If you need something to make you happy, then you’ve also associated it with being unhappy when you don’t have it.”

Fear is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

“Fear is an illusion. It is the shadow of your beliefs. When one limits their mind to a certain object of belief or a certain desire, this creates a limited identity which is subject to failure. However if the mind remains empty, the shadow of fear can not exist for there is no object for it to follow.”

Self Esteem. is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

“If you have to base your self-esteem on superficial things, you are monumentally fucked.”

Adding a new Quotes section. is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

Sometimes, there are certain things we wish to blog about, but they do not have the length to last. As such, we decided to add a quotes section to help with that. In there, you’ll find original quotes from us. Nothing copied and pasted from gurus and whatnot. Just stuff which we learn along the way, that we wish to share.

You can find them under the categories listed on the right side of this page. Enjoy!

Functional Training – Muscles that Actually Work as Good as they Look is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

When it comes to ‘Functional Training’,  this term means a lot of different things when it comes to different people. In this article, I will like to highlight on some exercises which are done in the weight room on how functional they may truly be.

To some, such training may involve in the usage of unstable surface (foam pads, half-dome stability balls, wobble boards and etc.) to exercise whatever muscles groups that they did not ever know existed.

However, this is not functional training to me

Functional training to me is simply training methodologies that allow you to perform more efficiently in the physical tasks of your daily life or your athletic pursuits with minimum risk of injuries.

To me, there is no point in training muscles that only look good but do not work well at all.

Imagine if one day your girlfriend gets pinned down by her closet of VS lingerie and naughty Halloween costumes. She requires your rescue but all that you have been doing in the gym were endless bouts of bicep curls, crunches and leg extensions. You could not even lift her treasure of sexy clothing up because you are lacking strength in your back, power in your legs and have no stability in your core (which may even result in you getting pinned down with her and getting buried together – not a sexy sight).

Do you walk around like that after your 1 hour worth of bicep curling workout

*Note, I am not saying that you should not do any of the above exercises, but if those are the only exercises that you are capable of doing, good luck on rescuing your girlfriend.

So, how do I train in a more functional manner?

Do not get intimidated by this diagram now. To put it simply, the human body is meant to move in 3 distinct planes of motion (and it’s usually a combination of more than 1 plane of motion).  In order to have a truly functional body, you have got to train all 3 body planes.

“In functional training, it is as critical to train the specific movement as it is to train the muscles involved in the movement. The brain, which controls muscular movement, thinks in terms of whole motions, not individual muscles.” – American Council on Exercise (ACE). Q: What is functional strength training?

Another illustration – Imagine that you are about to punch the guy who tried to get fresh with your girlfriend. Does your brain send signals to tell you flex your bicep, raise your deltoids (shoulder) and then extend your arm fully to land a hit on his face? If it does, your girlfriend would have been stolen by another guy already.

Thus, think about training in movements instead of muscles.

Here’s what you should be doing in the weight room if you have done nothing else but isolation exercises (exercises that only train 1 plane of motion / 1 joint / 1 muscle) -
Compound exercises (exercises that train multi joints / muscle groups / planes of motion) that consist of:
1. Upper Body Horizontal Pushing & Pulling Exercises (Bench Press / Bent Over Rows)
2. Upper Body Vertical Pushing & Pulling Exercises (Overhead Press / Pullups)
3. Hip Dominant Exercises (Deadlifts)
4. Quad Dominant Exercises (Squats)

Remember, if you push, you have to pull. Else, there will be imbalances to the muscles in your body. A good example will be someone who does bench press all the time for bigger chest. No doubt his chest will be bigger, but at the expense of a poor posture that consists of a pair of forward slumped shoulders that makes him more attractive to the female apes.

You want to be the guy in the middle. Not the ape at the front or the snake at the back

Does that mean that I have to give up on doing any isolation exercises ever?
No. Isolation exercises have their time and place in the training regime. Depending on your goals, isolation exercises can help you get to where you want as well. But with that being said, do not build your foundations of training based solely on isolation exercises.

Summary
1. Functional training is simply training methodologies that allow you to perform more efficiently in the physical tasks of your daily life or your athletic pursuits with minimum risk of injuries.

2. Think about training in movements instead of muscles

3. Build your foundations of working out on Compound Exercises

4. Isolation Exercises are not everything

My next article will explore the KING of all exercises for muscle-building and fat loss – The Squat.

Watch this space!

Victor is a guest-writer with YourLoveHealthWealth.com. With his extensive knowledge on eating right and working out proper, he is the go-to guy for your fitness needs.

Overcoming Desire and Fear is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

Accept your desires and run at your fears

Now take for instance, the fear of death. You fear death because you still desire to live, yet you fear life, because you fear death. Every day, death is a possibility. Your conscious mind won’t think of death in terms of physically dying, but death in other ways, such as social rejection or failing to achieve your goals. Now see the trend again? Failing to achieve your goals is a fear, and achieving your goals is a desire.

So the trap of the mind is that once you desire something you will run to get it, yet you will be fearful that you may not get it. But if you don’t try and fulfill that desire, then there is the constant nagging, the emotion that makes you feel “But what if I got this, I will be happy.”

It’s all future-oriented; the mind lives off projections of the future and memories of the past.

You can overcome this trap of fear and desire, by understanding how it works. Desire and fear are only IDEAS. Projections, illusions, images, ideas, are all created by your mind. Desire is the idea that you will be better off if you took a certain action, fear is the idea that possible harm may come. The very common ground these two share is that they’re both based on uncertainty. This is because they are only ideas.

Next time you desire something, pay close attention to it. Do you actually WANT the object that you desire, or are you actually seeking to get rid of the suffering that the desire causes? In the moment, you achieve what you desire, and your desire is temporarily satisfied and stopped. In this moment, you feel happy. But is it the object that made you happy, or the liberation from the desire? Fear also, is an illusion. Have you ever feared something for so long, but once you gain a greater understanding of it, you look back and think, “How stupid was I to fear that?” Fear only exists when there is the unknown.

When you go to meet new people, you feel socially anxious because the outcomes of you approaching them are unknown. When you’ve done something “wrong”, and there is the possibility of facing the consequences, you fear because what is going to happen is unknown. So if fear and desire are only thoughts, merely ideas, then why do they have such a great hold on you?

Don’t identify with your desires and fears, just accept them. Know that they are only ideas. Live out your desires without fear, and face your fears without running from them. Desire is attachment and fear is aversion. Attachment and aversion are the basis of desire and fear. But you are only attached to the liberation of desire, therefore desire constantly comes back again and again to direct you towards that liberation once again. Aversion is merely the fear of the unknown.

There is only one simple thing you have to do. It is simply said, but it’ll take courage to apply. Accept your desires and RUN at your fears. Once you’ve done this, the neurotic momentum of desire will cease, and you will see past the illusion of fear.

Rup is a guest writer with YourLoveHealthWealth.com. Having studied psychology for 4 years, and started out with the Sedona Method, he has applied both to spirituality and come up with his own method of practical spirituality that helps people with their emotional problems.

A Glimpse of the Absolute Truth is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

It was Saturday night. I can’t quite recall what I was doing, but it was a mental struggle between whether to study, meditate or exercise. I had the desire to meditate, and I was resisting studying and exercising.

Naturally as the normal person would do, I started meditating. I followed my desire. I was listening to the master, Mooji, speak about meditative enquiry, which is to find out the true self behind the body, mind and the beliefs/ideas/personality/thoughts of the mind. To find that which is aware of the body, mind and mental projections.

I sat there for about 20 minutes focusing on my eye sight; I was trying to see who is looking out from these eyes. Who is the witness of the eye sight, who is conscious of it, who is aware of it. Slowly as I concentrated on this, the sense of me looking for this witness disappeared, and quickly I realised that what’s looking for the witness, is already the witness. In this moment, I was completely centred, realising my true self. The complete consciousness of everything. It felt like empty space, empty yet alive. I cannot locate it. I, as in consciousness, was experiencing myself completely. The mind was completely still and sat aside, while this whole experience was felt in the body.

I started crying tears of joy because it felt so incredibly good, but I was aware of this person crying. The body was crying, the mind is having thoughts about how amazing this experience is, yet I was aware of the body and mind. The realisation came that this entire life, I’ve been thinking that the body and mind was me, but in this experience, it was revealed that these are just ideas that I had about myself. And that the true self is the awareness that is behind the thinker. In this awareness, nothing is real except the awareness that is always there.

With this realisation, my mind understood that its ridiculous thoughts and emotions are insignificant. From this came a shift in the role of the mind. All the way up until that experience, the mind has controlled me. Making me believe that it is important to pursue your desires, made me run from my fears and in the end, suffer. Awareness brings about the understanding that desires and fears are illusory, they don’t actually exist. They are just projections of the mind, because you have allowed your awareness to be covered with strong beliefs that what you are what you think. And as long as your identity is attached to what you think, it can be destroyed.

Take for example, someone insults you and calls you ugly. Your mind feels offended because they obscured and played with the image/thoughts that you carry about yourself in your mind. In that moment, you feel angry and upset that this person insulted you; however, this is an illusion that leads to suffering, which is also an illusion. The fact remains that the person insulted your body’s appearance, but in essence, they’re actually insulting the idea that they carry of you in their mind. Suffering is meaningless. Emotions are also meaningless; they’re just the flavour that is added to the consciousness. And once you understand that emotions are only flavouring, they will not control you. Even right now, you’re feeling a desire, some kind of emotion or thought. Do this for just a minute, close your eyes and look at the emotion or thought.

Are you aware of it?

Do you feel it?

Who’s the person feeling/thinking it?

Now, can you see the person who’s feeling/thinking it? And the final question, who is aware of the feeler/thinker?

Now, whenever I wake up, there is no fear to face my day. I feel excited, because I know that even the worst case – death, cannot touch what I really am.

Rup is a guest writer with YourLoveHealthWealth.com. Having studied psychology for 4 years, and started out with the Sedona Method, he has applied both to spirituality and come up with his own method of practical spirituality that helps people with their emotional problems.

How to get rid of our suffering (‘overcoming social anxiety’ as an example) is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

Just a couple of hours ago, a friend of mine came to me for some advice. She had to deal with a relationship issue, and found her suffering unbearable. She then asked me if there was a way to get rid of the horrible feeling she’s experiencing. To the best of my ability, I talked about how she could accept her present situation and let things go. Unfortunately, she found it difficult to put my advice into action. That’s very normal actually, but it inspired me to write this post so that I can explain things better, and hopefully, help those who are suffering.

(For convenience’ sake, I am going to use ‘overcoming social anxiety’ as the prime example in this article. Do understand though, that whatever I talk about works across the board for every horrible feeling you’re suffering from.)

Why we suffer

First things first, people suffer because they resist. If you have an issue with overcoming social anxiety, it’s because you are resisting what might happen to you in social situations. For example, I might have a fear of being embarrassed in public, so I become resistant to any situation in which I might possibly stand out in a crowd. Likewise, if you are angry with someone for something they have done, it’s because you are resisting what they are doing.

If being resistant results in suffering, then all we need to do is accept things for what it is. But it’s a lot easier said than done. Simply because accepting is a process that many of us are not familiar with, and also because holding on has become like a default mechanism. The best example I can give to how accepting feels like is this:

Imagine you’ve had a really long day at work, and when you got home, all you wanted to do was just rest in front of the TV and do nothing. In that very moment that you’ve landed your ass on the couch, you dropped all the stress from the day at work, and let everything be as you enjoy the rest you’re getting.

That’s exactly what accepting feels like. Unfortunately, we have to be very willing to accept, which is where all the trouble begins for all of us. Based on my personal experience, we are unwilling to accept only because of fear. What that fear is, depends on what you are unwilling to accept. If you have issues with overcoming social anxiety, that fear might be something as ridiculous as a fear of being physically harmed.

You might think to yourself though – “But I do accept my situation. So why do I still feel horrible?”

My answer to this is that you haven’t sincerely accepted. Accepting is all about being sincere and that sincerity comes from the heart, not the mind. Accepting in your mind is merely a mental acknowledgment. And when it comes to the mind, it is never as powerful as the heart. You can theorise all you want in your head, but when the emotion hits you, the mind goes to hell.

How to accept

Thus, accepting is all about a deep and sincere willingness to let things be the way it is. Sometimes, it involves us letting go of whatever feelings we might have about a certain issue, in order to be able to accept it. Sometimes, it takes a willingness to just give up and surrender to our suffering. In our example of overcoming social anxiety, accepting sincerely that the anxiety is there and that you don’t want to change it is precisely what will make it go away.

It may sound counter-intuitive, and it often is. Many a time, I have had friends telling me, “How can I accept it when I am not happy about it? I don’t want to be happy about it!”

The truth is, if you don’t accept it, it will always be there. What people don’t see is that, if the situation is not going to change regardless of whether you accept it or not, you might as well accept it so that the journey towards changing it becomes easier. What people also don’t see is that, there is an underlying fear of things never changing, because once you accept your situation, there is a likelihood that you are not going to change it. Which makes sense. But instead of focusing on whether your situation might change, why not focus on the additional option that you are given? In this case, the option is the choice to decide for yourself whether you want to change your situation or not.

If that’s hard to believe, then I say try it out for yourself. Don’t take my word for it. Think of a particular situation that you are feeling bad about, be it fear or anger or whatever emotion you are experiencing. Accept it sincerely. See if the feeling actually goes away; I have the confidence that the eventual result will smack your disbelief in its face.

Final words

Be aware though, that this process can be lengthy. It really depends on what we’re talking about here. As with our example, if you are overcoming social anxiety, it will be useful to note that your social anxiety can be a multitude of reasons. It can range from a fear of social embarrassment, to a fear of having people dislike you, to a fear of being physically harmed. All these takes time to deal with, and more often than not, the speed of it depends on your willingness to let things go.

For the inexperienced, a common problem that they face when it comes to accepting, is that they tend to be doing it in their head, instead of in their hearts. A good way of knowing if you are doing things right is to be aware of how your body feels after that. If it feels light, like a burden’s been lifted off, you know you’re on the right path. Also, my advice is to find a quiet and personal moment before you start. This might be necessary for you if you are working on more deep-seated issues. In my experiences, I have had moments when I broke down, and you might prefer to be alone when that happens.

All that being said, the process is definitely not easy. But personally, I reckon that the feeling of being free from the shackles of a particular problem is well-worth the trouble. I hope it’s the same for you.

3 Simple tips for eating your way to your dream, lean body is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

Hi. I’m here to share with you guys 3 simple tips that I have personally used in my journey to sculpture the body that I want. It is simple, you may have heard of it countless times, but it worked well for me and that’s why I’m sharing it with you.

1. Consume food within the first hour of waking

The only meal you shouldn't skip

Between 8 to 10 hours might have passed between your dinner and breakfast. Thus, if you skip your breakfast, you are likely to eat a lot more for your next meal to compensate for all the hunger that you have put your body through.

For most people, being hungry decreases your concentration, working capability and affects your mood. I know for sure that when I am a hungry man, I am an unhappy man who will be thinking about food until I get it.

Skipping breakfast does not promote weight loss. Your body works in a very brilliant way to ensure your survival. When your body is low on energy (fuel from food), your body reduces its rate of metabolism (simply put – a process whereby fuel are burnt for the body to function) to ensure that the remaining energy gets utilized efficiently, prioritizing critical body functions such as construction of body cells, digestion and etc, before burning body fat. Generally, people with a lower rate of metabolism are usually the ones with a tendency toward obesity.

Eat your breakfast today.

2. Eat every 2-4 hours that you are awake for

When it's time to eat, it's time to eat!

According to Dr. John M. Berardi, Ph.D., “frequent eating (of well-chosen, properly sized meals) stimulates the metabolism, balances blood sugar, and helps maintain your lean mass while giving your body a reason to burn off your extra fat mass.” (Precision Nutrition Diet Guide)

5 meals is a rule of thumb that I like to follow. I’ll like to think of it as you are eating to prevent hunger, instead of eating to satisfy your hunger. It can be 5 full meals, or 3 full meals and 2 snack meals, or whatever combinations that meet your goals.

3. Eliminate drinks containing calories

You can't go wrong with this

The drinks which are ‘safe’ to drink are water, tea and coffee with no sugar or milk added, and diet sodas. Everything else is a pretty much no-no if you are looking to shed some fat. You may be surprised that I included diet soda in the list, because from a health’s standpoint, it is not healthy; however, during my days of strict dieting, diet soda helped me to kill my cravings for sweet drinks and food (especially for the meals after training). Do note that it is consumed only occasionally.

There it is; 3 simple tips for eating your way to your dream, lean body. Have any tips to share that works well for you? Post your comments and let me know.

Victor is a guest-writer with YourLoveHealthWealth.com. With his extensive knowledge on eating right and working out proper, he is the go-to guy for your fitness needs.

Updates: Asian dating online, brand name, and more. is a post from: YourLoveHealthWealth.com

In case you didn’t know, we’ve been working hard behind the scenes for the past 2 months. For a start, we finally put up our main page – http://yourlovehealthwealth.com – as we look to officially kick off our link-building.

If you’ve been visiting, you’ll notice that the blog design has been revamped too. Val and I have big ambitions, so we’re working on providing as much value as we can to our visitors. The blog is a good starting point for those who want to know what exactly we’re all about.

We also launched our first project, ‘Asian Dating Online‘. This project is placed under the Love category, and we’re working on 2 other similar products for the next 2 months. For the Wealth category, we’ve brought in a personal project of mine, ‘Niche Blueprint 2.0‘, which is an affiliate deal with the creators of Niche Blueprint (NB). They are very well-known in the Internet Marketing industry, and as a customer of the original NB, this is a must-buy!

In the fitness area, we’ve brought in 2 close friends of ours, one a martial artist, and the other an up-and-coming fitness instructor. They will be launching their site soon, so expect news on that end. That being said, our intention is to build a brand-name with YourLoveHealthWealth.com. If you want to strive for excellence, I must say you’ve come to the right place then.