5 Things Hiking Can Teach You About Relationships

Hiking can be an intensive physical activity. You would have to walk on terrains consisting of either sand or slippery rocks for several hours. Not just that, there will be instances where you’d have to climb up or down in high altitudes and you must do your best to remain steady and maintain your endurance. However, once you reach the destination, the sacrifices are definitely worth it.

For those who are in a relationship, there are a lot of important lessons that can be learned on a hiking adventure. As for those who are dating someone, going on a hiking trip with that person can help you assess if the relationship would go well or not. This can serve as a level of compatibility. Aside from that, here are some of the basic things that hiking can teach you about relationships.

1. Think Before You Speak

For most couples, they slowly drift apart after being together for several years. This can be the cause of several factors, such as being busy with work or having to focus on other priorities in life. Hiking is a way to reconnect with your partner.

This can help you pay more attention to each other’s words and actions that trigger adverse reactions. Some words can make a person feel disappointed, and you should be sensitive enough and refrain from pushing these buttons. Hiking together would give you ample time to talk about this and improve yourself for the better.

2. Never Assume

Assuming your partner did something would never be a good move. That means there’s a lack of trust and communication between the two of you. This can lead to unwanted anger and even aggression. Going on a hike would help you realize that it’s wrong to assume because this wouldn’t do any good. Instead, communication is the key.

3. No One Is Perfect

This can be very difficult to admit, but being in a relationship, you must learn to accept that you or your partner is not perfect. Figuratively speaking, it’s possible for you to hurt him as much as he can hurt you. Perhaps, before going on a hiking trip, you’re the type of person who shifts the blame and never wanted to admit your mistakes. You always have a long list of excuses why you did something.

“Hiking could bring out the raw, true self. You’ll be wearing the same clothes every day, live with dirt and bugs, and you’d rarely see what you look like– this would definitely draw a sense of realization in your mind. This can help you realize that you probably always wanted to play the victim, the blame game,” says James at HikingBros.com.

Basically, hiking can teach the value of accepting your self-imperfection and cherish your relationship even more.

4. You Will Be Together– Whether It’s Heaven or Hell

You and your partner are a team. Being in a relationship means you should be willing to do everything together. When you’re on a hike, there will be accidents, and you cannot leave your partner out there. You have to stay and take care of him because no one else would.

In return, your partner should also do the same for you, and if needed, both of you should also be willing to sacrifice. That’s the thing about being a team and being in a relationship; you’ll celebrate together, and you’ll try to enlighten one another in case someone is already feeling hopeless.

5. Compromise and Self Improvement Are Important

Some would think that compromise life in the woods isn’t as difficult as having to make real-world decisions, but we beg to disagree. Think about the dirt, the stomach grumbles, and tired hikers; compromise may not be as easy as it may sound.

There would be situations where you have to decide– would you hike seven more miles to make it to the nearest town so you can have fast food? Should you hike four miles off the trail  just to catch the perfect sunrise at 4 am? These are just some of the things that you have to decide together, and whatever the result may be, you have to accept it instead of blaming the other person.

Lastly, going on a hike would teach you everything you need to know about life, and what of that is, you have to be willing to improve if you want to maintain a happy and long lasting relationship.

6 Ways Traveling with Your SO Is the Ultimate Relationship Challenge

Nothing puts a relationship to the test like traveling together. 

Going on a trip, especially overseas, means you will be spending most of the time together and inevitably learn more about each other. 

If the relationship survives the journey, then you can live together. 

If it doesn’t, it may not necessarily be as a result of traveling together, but personal differences.

Traveling together will make your relationship stronger through the following ways:

1. Improved sexual relationship

Traveling together means you have more time together and fewer worries to think about. You spend the whole day together, and the whole night as well. 

There is no need to worry about limited time, as would be the case when your lover comes over. 

As such, you can take your time to learn about each other, what turns them on and what doesn’t. 

You also have enough time to talk things over so as to break the ice and get over the initial tension. 

In addition, there is always time to make up for any shortcomings that may crop up. 

These are the factors that combine to create a satisfying sexual relationship for traveling couples.

2. Brings out the best and the worst

When traveling together, you and your better half’s strengths and weaknesses will be laid bare. 

This is especially the case for long travels, where you encounter different situations that may force out both the best and the worst in both of you. 

You may discover that your partner likes to have some time to themselves, possibly to catch with family and friends on social media. 

You will have to learn to respect their personal space. Your former lover may call to ask about something and your partner may not take it kindly. 

Since you are together, and it will be so for the next few days, you have to learn to handle such issues; hence, your relationship becomes stronger than before.

3. Helps develop friendship and love

Nothing makes a relationship stronger than becoming friends. 

Going on a long trip with your significant other gives both of you the opportunity to do things and think together. 

In fact, you become a single entity and many times, you have to make decisions together. 

You may have to play a game or two on your smartphones while on a six-hour flight to the Bahamas. 

You will watch TV together in the evenings despite your different favorite channels. 

In essence, you become friends in addition to being lovers. When you introduce friendship into your relationship, it only becomes stronger.

4. Sharing money and expenses is caring

Another way traveling makes your relationship stronger is by pushing the two of you together, and keeping you as such for as long as possible. 

Consequently, you become more of a team than separate individuals. You start sharing your resources, including money. 

There are tools like Honestly Now to help you find bank locations and details and you don’t even need to worry about carrying cash. 

The lady wants some ice cream but doesn’t have enough cash on her; the man needs some shaving cream but all he has in his possession is a credit card. 

These and other situations will require that you share the cash available. 

The more you share money, the more you feel part and parcel of each other and hence, the relationship grows stronger.

5. Enhances your communication skills

It may sound strange, but technology has created a conundrum: It is easier to communicate through devices than face-to-face. 

People spend too much of their time glued to screens – whether a mobile device or TV – that they have almost lost that human touch. 

Traveling together means you are in close contact with each other, making those high-end communication gadgets almost useless. 

It is time to throw away your phones and look into each other’s eyes. 

You will learn to communicate better with your better half and this will make your relationship stronger. Remember, no relationship can flourish without effective communication.

6. Common shared experiences

Your relationship needs a short in the arm via new shared experiences. 

Nothing can be more effective in strengthening your relationship than going out and having adventures together. 

If you travel to a foreign country where people don’t speak your language, you help each other learn that language. 

You may also try out new cuisines together, go to new places and meet and solve challenges as a team.

Such common shared experiences serve to cement ties and make the relationship stronger. If the relationship survives the trip – some don’t – you can take it to the next level because you are fit for each other.

Why I Quit Smoking and Started Vaping?

Smoking has experienced a sharp decline in popularity over the last few decades. This has mainly been due to the changing values of our society, our acceptance of a more health-conscious way of life among other factors.

The declining popularity of cigarettes forced manufactures and innovators to look for alternatives to the fast falling cigarettes.

Vaping is a relatively new concept in the market, and so it is understood that not many smokers know its benefits or why it is better than smoking. All you need is just a 510 thread battery.

To give you an idea of the benefits of vaping, the following outlines the five major reasons why I quit smoking and started vaping.

1. It does not leave you with any bad smell

Regardless of how long you use it, vaping does not leave any ominous odors behind. This is because, instead of exhaling tobacco smoke, you exhale clean scented vapor. The smell from an e-cig vapor is almost non-existent. Some electronic cigarettes produce vapors that smell like cotton candy or even pop tarts.

Traditional cigarettes, on the other hand, will leave you with an unpleasant smell. The odor from the smoke can cling to almost everything it comes into contact with such as clothes, hair, the inside of a car, etc. Smokers tend not to notice such odors because they are immersed in the most of the time. However, with time, this clinging odor will become worse and even offensive to non-smokers.

The main reason why cigarettes smell so badly is because you burn other chemicals and tar, along with the tobacco when you smoke. It is these extra ingredients that make the odor cling onto surfaces.

Regardless of the brand, vaping definitely smells a lot better than smoking.

2. It is a lot cheaper than smoking

The price of a pack of cigarettes keeps rising with each day. A few years ago, a pack of good quality cigarettes only cost about $2, however, today that price has risen to about $7 or $12 depending on your preferred brand. It is not about the cost as well, vaping is popular and it’s a fashion today.

This means that a person who smokes a pack a day will spend about $300 every month on cigarettes alone, without including any other items such as lighters, ash trays, etc.

E-cigarettes, however, are a lot cheaper. While the initial cost of a starter kit may be high, the month to month cost of vaping is much lower than in smoking. The cost of vaping is also lower than smoking because e-cigarettes are not currently under any of the kind of taxes associated with traditional cigarettes.

Just as any new concept that enters the market, the cost of vaping will continue to drop as the technology continues to develop and become more conventional you can find vapes available that are well below regular industry rates.

3. It is a lot safer than smoking

Since smoking involves naked flames and smoldering ends, it poses a serious fire hazard to the smoker. In the US alone, cigarettes are the leading cause of all fire-related fatalities in the home. All around the world, fires started by lit cigarettes make up about 10% of all fire-related fatalities. These grim statistics further compound the disadvantage of smoking.

Vaping does not involve any open flames, lit matchsticks or smoldering cigarette ends. So there is no possibility of causing any burns to yourself, your furniture, your clothes, or your house.

4. It does not spread any second-hand smoke

Smoking affects the health of those around you significantly. Statistics from around the world show that more than 600,000 deaths every year are caused by second-hand smoke.

Due to the nature of e-cigarettes, vaping does not spread any kind of second-hand health hazard. The vapor released during vaping does not contain any of the poisonous chemicals found in cigarettes.

5. It keeps your social and professional life healthy and manageable

Over time, smoking has been seen as an increasingly antisocial habit. This is for a number of reasons such as the smell, its health implications to the smoker and those around them, health care costs, etc.

Vaping gives you all the benefits of smoking without any of its social disadvantages. The non-offensive odor of the e-cig allows you to enjoy the product while maintaining complete control over your social life.

Smoking can also negatively affect other areas of a person’s life such as their dating life; because non-smokers find it difficult to be with smokers, and career; some employers view smokers as a liability.

4 Reasons Why Kayaking Is A Sport For Everyone

There are hundreds of reasons water bodies are rated among the most frantic places on the planet, but none of them comes close to Kayaking. Kayaking introduces your body to a new workout platform that allows you to exercise almost every part of your body without even knowing. Believe it or not, that’s why you will rarely come across unfit kayaking fanatics.

Unlike any other normal fitness programs such as weight training, jogging, and more kayaking allows you to do a variety of the whole body exercises perfectly and safely without the need of a spotter or a fitness trainer around. It is also fun, engaging and the best part, adventurous.

According to several findings, kayaking has proven to be quite beneficial to health as well as the overall well-being. To understand what this means, here are the four reasons why Kayaking is a great sport for you or any other person you know of. 

1. Improves Your Physique

When Kayaking, you do a lot more to your body than just trying to reach your destination. The activity requires not only endurance of your muscles, but also your strength and integrity. When paddling, several muscles are put to work. Such muscles include the muscles around the joint of your shoulders, rhomboids, abdominals, obliques as well as other parts of your body. 

Activities involved in paddling a craft are closely related to several weight training exercises such as bench press, torso rotation, shoulder exercises and more. But unlike the typical gym classes, kayaking workouts are more effective simply because, they don’t give you time to rest. Before you know it, you’ll have paddled for hours to reach your location without a feeling that you've done anything. Read some kayak reviews to suit your needs at Fishing Kayaks Guide, pack your gear and hit the water.

2. Effective for Healthy Living

One of the reasons normal fitness routines don’t work for many is the fact that they are quite demanding and the worst, they take a lot of time to show you the results. With a kayaking, you’ll love every moment you take paddling your craft and before you know it; you’ll have achieved up to 10x what you could have gotten from weight training or normal evening jogs. 

It has become clear that you can burn up to 300 calories in a 30-minute kayaking experience. Now, assume you are doing it five times or 3 times a week. You’ll burn close to 1000 calories without stressing yourself. This is quite high compared to what you’ll lose in a regular 30-minute weight training class or evening jog. What makes achieving this even easier is that fact that kayaking is enjoyable, unlike any other workout. 

3. Keeps you happy: Vital for healthy living

There are several benefits of being happy and maintaining a positive mind most of the times. Being happy and positive all the time whether at your workplace or at home, is known to improve your overall health in many ways that include, protecting your heart and strengthening your immune system. It is also known to improve your performance at workplace, keeping your family and most importantly, building long term healthy relationships with co-workers and friends. 

Unfortunately, surviving today’s ever-busy world features a lot of stressful activities. The good new is, you can stay positive and be happy most of the time by engaging in an amusing activity and nothing does this well than kayaking. Apart from working out your body, allowing you to enjoy a tranquil sea environment filled with happy kayakers, kayaking will make the moment you spend in the sea memorable. 

4. Kayaking enhances your endurance performance 

Most of the times athletes are forced to engage longer and lonelier hours to outdoor or treadmill jogging, weight training, rope jumping and many other exercises so as to put themselves in a winning position. Unfortunately, it is only a few determined ones that often benefit from it simply because it is boring. With kayaking, you don’t need to attend aerobic classes, jog for hours or carry heavy barbells to improve your endurance performance. 

What you need is to find your craft, choose a perfect paddle and join the big ever-happy family of kayakers at the sea. Unlike any other endurance workout routine, kayaking is fun, meaning that you can do it for more hours without realizing that you are working out. To make it more effective, you can join or organize a long distance kayaking race which unlike jogging, is fun but works faster to improve your cardio. Besides, it is quite vigorous compared to any other workout.

The bottom line

Let’s face it: Workouts can be quite demanding and boring especially if you are a beginner. You have to carry heavy weights and engage in several sweaty activities only to give up in the middle not because you don’t need it but because they aren’t motivating. 

In fact, most of the times, they are discouraging especially if you have to do it among pros. Kayaking is a different story. The moment you get into the sea, you’ll have hundreds of reasons to continue paddling even if you are exhausted. It allows you to explore the furthest horizons of the sea with a group of happy competitors who will do anything to get before you. It is one of the most amazing sports where exhaustion is rarely an issue simply because of the fun in it. 

Also, it burns more calories than many other sports, allows you to exercise almost all the muscles in your body and the best part, doesn’t allow you to stop anytime sooner. But you don’t have to take any word for it. Try it anytime and see how much you can achieve within a limited time.

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