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3 Important Reasons Why You Should Start Writing A Journal NOW

admin — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 06:37:26 +0000

The act of putting thoughts and images that swim around in your head in concrete form (like a diary or journal) has proven benefits for your health, both physical and emotional. We can go as far as to say that journaling can transform your life path, because for many people, that’s true. Do you want to improve your mental health, boost your creativity and become a better person? Then keep reading.

Mental Health & Writing a Journal

If your idea of writing a journal recalls a pre-teen diary that locks with a tiny key, get rid of that notion. While it is often something you use to pour out your feelings and thoughts, just like you talked with your best friend in high school about that awful boy or girl (that you secretly like), it’s more than that. A journal is also about expressing yourself in a way that’s cathartic for your soul and essential for your mind.

Worries, doubts, challenges and problems in your life can make you stressed. Writing a journal helps release all this negative, soul-eating anxiety. What’s more, writing down a problem or challenge is the first step to solving it. Being able to turn an abstract problem into a tangible thing on paper makes it much easier to solve.

Apart from getting rid of stress and making you feel more in control of your life and where it’s going, a journal can boost your self-esteem. Studies have shown that writing a journal helps people deal with emotional events in their life, anything from from truly traumatic experiences to dealing with social anxiety and other types of stress. “Journaling” is a recognized therapy that can help with this.

Self-Confidence and Self-Improvement

A journal can be a place for a word or phrase you jot down at the end of each day that describes something you’re proud of, grateful for, or just happy to have in your life.

Keeping track of all the positive and pleasant things that happen in your life increases your self-confidence and makes you more eager to create and grow as a person. You’ll have the ability to inspire or influence the lives of those around you, especially if you use your newly-practiced writing skill sto share your thoughts on your website or blog.

How Journaling Can Improve Your Creativity & Memory

Keeping a journal on a daily basis can help you develop the habit of writing down those thoughts and facts that matter the most.

The fast-paced lives we lead often leave no time and space for us to pause and really think through or reflect on decisions, people and circumstances.

But a journal will help you really see these thoughts from a new perspective. You’ll find that it’s easier to brainstorm new ideas and solve problems you first saw as enormous. That’s because every time you run them through your head, they seem to grow, right?

Putting one idea down will help you come up with many more. Whether you’re an artist or an entrepreneur, whether you write or draw, a journal can help you harness this creativity and channel it to the right task.

Capture your next big idea or find the solution to a persistent problem through a journal. Whether it’s a data dump – where you pour your thoughts on paper without any intervention or censorship – or a brainstorming session – where no matter how insane or ridiculous, the ideas get written down – a journal can be your go-to tool for unleashing your creativity.

Ultimate Vocabulary guarantees to help you increase your vocabulary knowledge! Learn more words and apply them in your writings.

3 Tips To Engage Readers and Write With Style!

admin — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 05:57:03 +0000

Online reading requires a different kind of focus. We’re easily distracted by ads, chat notifications, and emails, and we have an endless, ever-growing stream of information from around the world that begs for our attention and time.

This makes it hard for you as a writer, blogger, or business owner to attract your audience’s attention and keep them interested and thirsty for more.

This article will help you engage your readers by making some simple changes to your writing style and content.

Scannable Content

Make your readers’ life easier

– or don’t bother writing at all. Nobody’s going to read a 20-line paragraph. Structure your content in a way that’s easy to skim and scan on a smartphone or tablet. People want to be able to choose what to read and what to leave behind, and writing novel-like content is turning them away.

Use bullet points, headlines, and strategic formatting

to make it easier for the reader to navigate and understand your content. Highlight important takeaways and write short paragraphs of 4 sentences or fewer.

Be sure to use numbers.

They give people a reason to read because you’re giving them information they can quantify and readily understand. Consider these two headlines:

Ways you can engage your readers and keep them coming back for more

5 ways you can engage your readers and keep them coming back for more

Do you see how the insertion of the number makes this headline so much more concrete, and the whole article a whole lot more valuable?

That’s the power of numbers. People want to know in advance what’s in it for them and giving them numbers gives them this reassurance. They know they’ll easily find tips they can quickly and easily use.

A great tip for ensuring your content is scannable and user-friendly is to re-read only your highlighted content, headlines and subheadings, text in bold or italics, and anything else you’ve drawn attention to through special formatting.

If it gives you the gist of the whole article, then you’ve done a great job!

Write With Style. Take a different road.

Engaging a reader is about offering something new. Something they’ve never heard or thought of before. It might be hard depending on your subject matter or business niche, but it’s nonetheless possible.

Use a metaphor to speak for a well-covered topic and don’t be afraid to contradict ideas and trends everybody else seems to agree with. Take the road less traveled and speak from a place of confidence.

As long as you back your claims with facts and arguments, there’s nothing to be afraid of. Your readers will be exhilarated to read something fresh, something daring!

Set the Right Tone and Have The Best Emotional Involvement

If you’re the blog author for a multinational company, too-casual language is a big no-no. It sounds unprofessional and makes your company seem unreliable.

On the other hand, if you’re a food blogger and your writing is filled with scientific jargon or too much historical information, this will distance you instead of bringing you closer to your audience. To engage your readers you need to speak their language.

Tone is the personality of your writing. It’s how you sound in your readers’ minds and how they picture you. Decide whether it is going to be defined by its humor and wittiness, its astuteness, or its neutrality.

Implement these three tips and you will have more people reading through your content!

Ultimate Vocabulary guarantees to help you increase your vocabulary knowledge! Learn more words and apply them in your writings.

The Wolf Gamer, Baden Ronie, Expounded “geek speak” and More In An Exclusive Interview

admin — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 07:54:59 +0000

Baden Ronie

“Write what you’re passionate about” is advice frequently given to wouldbe bloggers and online entrepreneurs (along with “don’t forget to check your spelling before hitting the [Publish] key”). Someone who’s turned his passion into blogging is Baden Ronie, who runs the popular site Wolf’s Gaming Blog. We asked Baden about writing and blogging in a recent interview.

UV: You started your blog out of your passion for gaming and a desire to share information on the topic. After more than five years of writing about gaming, do you find that you’re still as enthusiastic about your blogging?

Generally yes. Now that I play more games than ever I do find myself getting burnt out from time to time, so these days if I’m not actively in the process of reviewing a game I tend not to play anything at all and instead spend my time catching up on movies, reading or chatting with friends.

As for the blogging, it’s largely the same answer. There are those days when you get up and feel like you’re banging your head off a brick wall because views haven’t gone up much over the past month or because nobody seems to be commenting, but then there are days when you get to play a cool game you may have never known about or when you get a pile of comments thanking you for the review that make it feel pretty awesome. There are so many other sites out there that becoming successful is pretty unlikely. Most of the time, though, I feel that so long as even a few people are reading what I write, I’ll keep doing it. Luckily, though, there seems to be a lot of really awesome people who come and check out my site. Yup, I’m pretty damn lucky.

UV: What do you do to make sure you’re always coming up with new and interesting ways to present information, when you’re talking about similar games, or upgrades to older versions?

I don’t sit down and plan out reviews or how to change up the way I describe certain things. At the end of the day there are so many similarities between mechanics in games that after a while you run out of ways to talk about them. Still, while I’m writing I do attempt to vary the way I approach talking about something. Quite honestly one of the ways I do this is by reading a lot of other reviews. By checking out the style other writers use and how they tackle talking about certain mechanics it provides a little inspiration.

In fact reading in general helps. It’s amazing how much you learn without even realising it. The way different writers piece their sentences together can vary so much. It’s amazing how versatile the English language can be. Perhaps one day I’ll actually be able to write well enough that people will recognize it as English, rather than the mess it is now

UV: Gamers, like other online groups, often have a jargon that only insiders will understand. Some of those words (like “noob”) eventually make it into standard English usage, but other words and phrases are confusing to nongamers who might be looking for information. How do you handle the difference between “geek speak” and everyday English vocabulary?

I think the bigger question is where exactly do you draw the line between “geek speak” and normal English? Is describing a game as being a coverbased shooter too geeky for most people, or not? These days “geek speak” is almost is a part of the everday English vocabulary, so I don’t actually avoid using it very much. Indeed, l tend to assume that most of my readers are already entrenched within the culture of gaming and understand terms such as “noob.” If I attempted to avoid all “geek speak” then almost every review would increase massively in length because I’d have to describe a lot of basic stuff, such as what a coverbased shooter is. Having said that I try not to pepper my articles with incomprehensible gibberish. Provided a term like “noob”, for example, is presented in the right context I think even the uninitiated can generally understand its meaning, at least enough to accept it and carry on reading. Really it comes down to the fact that if I simplified everything I was saying and attempted to explain each individual element of a game or word then reviews would be messy. It comes down to attempting to concisely describe things while also describing the mechanic, theme etc. as a larger picture.

On the other hand I also review board games, and in those I tend to be a lot more mindful about using terminology that my regular readers may not be familiar with. Whereas with videogames I’m writing to an audience that already known their stuff, with the boardgames I’m hoping some of those videogame fans might read some of the boardgame stuff and check them out, so I actually take the time to stop and quickly explain what a workerplacement game is. How long I’ll keep doing that, though, is hard to say.

I guess when you get right down to it I’m probably not the most accomodating when it comes to people who have don’t have at least a passing knowledge of videogames

UV: In many ways media are seamless, with movies morphing into video games (or vice versa) which leads to online fanfic and blogs like yours. What’s your vision for the future when it comes to gaming and participation in communities devoted to gaming (virtual and IRL)?

Now that is a complex question. Obviously at the moment we have virtual reality entering the picture, having suddenly become a technology that anyone can acquire and have in their living room, provided they can afford the hefty price. At the same time the adoption rate hasn’t been fast, although we can probably safely assume that the high cost of something like the Oculus has a lot to do with that. The headset itself is expensive, as is the computer upgrade most people would need to run it. Until VR becomes much cheaper I don’t see it becoming too common, and thus at least for the forseeable future I don’t think gaming will change too much from what it is right now. Perhaps what is more important in the gaming landscape right now is that consoles are going to start getting hardware upgrades, moving them away from what consoles once were and closer to the PC market.

As for the other topic Esports seems to be growing and growing, and with it Youtube. Video reviews from people like AngryJoe let people connect more with the reviewer, and through that subtantial followings are built. Written media, on the other hand, is struggling, which is bad news for me since I’m not pretty enough for Youtube! Sadly, though, we’re still seeing plenty of hostility within the gaming community, which the media loves to focus on.

Honestly, I can’t even begin to guess what the future holds for gaming. I’d love to see VR become more affordable, and for the media to grow bored of using videogames as a scapegoat for bar parenting or acts of extreme violence. But more than that I’d like to see larger companies back down from their various anticonsumer policies.While we get treated to many amazing games, we’re also treated pretty poorly by the likes of EA and Ubisoft. Awful preorder bonuses tha tare designedto boost preorder numbers with no real benefit to the customer, games being released in buggy states or with poor performance, and questionable microtransactions. These are just some of the problems that need to be solved.

UV: Ernest Cline’s book “Ready Player One” has been turned into a movie that looks as if it may be as popular as the book. Do you have any plans for writing a book, a movie script, or anything like that?

I’ve thought about writing a book or comic/graphic novel a lot over the last few years. I’ve always got characters, scenes and plot outlines floating around my head. But my problem is that I’m terrible at creating all the smaller things that need to happen along the way. In my mind I know the big things that occur at the beginning, middle and end, but get utterly lost when it comes to joining it all up to create a booklength tale. For this reason I think that if I really want to get into writing some stories I’d start with fanfiction. By choosing to write about characters and worlds I already know I could focus entirely on learning how to structure a story and join all the major plot points up.

My fear is that I’ll write a book and by some strange miracle people will enjoy it, but I’ll be completely unable to write another one. Maybe I’ll just have one book or comic in me. Or maybe I’m the next George R.R. Martin! But y’know, with less death and depression. Actually, scratch that, if I could be even a fraction as good as great, late Terry Pratchett I would be one very, very happy person.

Studysuccessful.com Creator, Stefan Knapen, Recommends Efficient Study Habits for Academic Success

admin — Thu, 12 May 2016 12:00:44 +0000

College and university life can provide many challenges for students, and it’s always good to have someone around who can give students the hints and effective tips that help them get the most out of their study time and their school years. In fact, the advice that Stefan Knapen provides at his website StudySuccessful.com can be applied to many situations and to people of all ages. After all, learning starts immediately and is a never-ending process! Check out Stefan’s site for answers to your questions about study habits, personal development, modern technology, and more.

7SR: You moved quickly through your university years and are now attending medical school in your early 20s. You must be incredibly busy! How do you fit everything into your schedule?

Haha, yeah things are going pretty fast. Well, what I did in my first couple of years was focussing on setting up a system. What kind of schedule should I use, how much work can I take on, and experimenting with different studying techniques. Probably one of the most interesting concepts I learned was the ‘Parkinson’s Law’, which teaches us that work expands with the amount of time you give it. So by taking up a lot of work, you won’t have a lot of time left to give to it. This results in the need to be highly effective in that work.

Take preparing a presentation for example. I could work hours on creating the perfect powerpoint, preparing all the jokes and practicing the presentation a couple of times beforehand. Now, as I simply did not have that time I needed to find the input which yields the highest results. So I focus on the story, I focus on the core principle. The powerpoint lay-out is not a priority at that point. This is also why starting the night before usually works out ‘fine’ (although it is for stress-reasons definitely not recommended!)

7SR: Here at 7 Speed Reading we encourage students to learn to speed read so that they can get through their research and study projects more quickly. Is this something that you’ve found to be helpful?

In med school I have to read a lot. In keeping up my blog I have to read probably even more. So learning the principles of speed reading helped me definitely. I don’t recommend to always speed read, but if it is a low-density text and there are only a couple of principles to get out of it, speed read your way through it and memorise the concepts later.

7SR: You wrote a free guide on how to build a personal website. Why is it important for people to have an online presence?

First of all: in this day and age it’s really simple. If you don’t own your own domain name somebody else will soon enough.

Second: Anybody who will ever have something to do with you will Google you. Being aware of your online presence and working on it as well can give you easily the ownership of the top 5 results in Google. Now, what do you want your future employer to find when he Googles you. Your own personal website, where your CV is clearly outlined and links to your portfolio? Or that picture where your roommate throws beer over you at that frat party on Facebook?

The free guide is a simple step-by-step instruction on how to create your own personal website. Check it out at StudySuccessful: http://studysuccessful.com/blog-as-student/

7SR: Good study habits are important for success in school, and can be applied even in a person’s later professional life. What are some of the study habits you encourage people to develop?

The best study habit would probably be finding out how you work as a person. Do you learn the most from lectures or from books? Do you like to read text or look at pictures? Do you study better in the morning or in the evening? In your first years these are core concepts to figure out. Find out where you are good at and use that.

7SR: What are three things you would recommend to someone who is starting their first year at university?

Again. Find out how you work. What is your way to do things. Together with that: also find out how social aspects of the University life fit into that, because they have to fit in there. This is the best time to meet new people, to make new connections. Use that. Say yes, become busy and find out how you can flourish!

Cross-posted on the 7 Speed Reading blog.

What This 12-Year-Old Girl Says About Age Will Amaze You

admin — Tue, 03 May 2016 12:00:31 +0000

One Word A Day – Start Improving Your Vocabulary Now!

admin — Sat, 16 Apr 2016 12:00:28 +0000

You don’t need an expensive tutor or a five-year plan in order to improve your vocabulary. All you need is the determination to learn just one word a day.

One word a day doesn’t sound like much, does it? If you’re wondering how this works, read on!

Read

Today more than ever, your access to quality online content is super easy, super instant. You can read on your tablet or your smartphone on the way to work, you can read a print book in the park, and you can read at home while taking a bath or listen to an audio book while you’re cooking.

In other words, there are no excuses here when it comes to finding the time to read. So grab a book (or download one, whichever is your thing) and delve right into a story.

Even if you read just a few pages, you will probably stumble upon a new word or phrase. Look it up and try to use it that day or the next day. This way you will be able to recall and use your new vocabulary again when the circumstances call for it.

Dictionaries are your new best friend

I’m not talking about the bulky dictionaries that seem to weigh as much as a car. I’m talking about an app you can download on your smartphone or tablet so that you have an offline dictionary at your disposal at any given time.

Whether at school, college, or work, the world’s knowledge will be literally at your fingertips. When you come across a word you don’t know, tap the app, learn what the word means and how to use it, and go back to your life. It doesn’t get easier than this!

Subscribe to a word a day service

To help you stick to your a word a day pledge, do the most sensible thing possible: subscribe to a service that provides exactly that. Most online dictionaries offer this feature, usually in the form of a daily email. Here are a few you should give a try:

Dictionary.com: Word of The Day

Merriam-Webster Dictionary: Word of The Day

WordSmith.Org: Word A Day

Don’t wait any longer. Start improving your vocabulary today!

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This Student’s 7-Minute Video Highlights A Country’s 700-Year History

admin — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 12:00:40 +0000

Social Media, Interaction and A Lot More Knowledge From What’s Next Blog Author BL Ochman

admin — Sat, 19 Mar 2016 12:00:43 +0000

BL Ochman

Internationally-known internet marketer, blogger, and consultant B.L. Ochman has the ability to help clients move their business into the online marketplace – and then to make a success of that online business. Not only that, she’s created some online best-sellers herself! In a recent interview, she talked about a few of her favorite projects.

UV: You have helped worldwide companies like IBM and Budget Car Rental develop and succeed in their social media campaigns. Are the problems that huge multinationals face the same as those that a 20-year-old hopeful web entrepreneur would have to deal with too?

No not really.

Large multinational companies have huge marketing budgets compared to 20-year-old hopefuls. The goals are the same because they want to protect their reputation and have engagements with their clients. But, the way that a big company has to go about it is different because they are generally so siloed. So, my work to IBM, and so on, has been to interrupt those siloed to get people to talk to each other.

For example, when I went to a very large publishing company, I found that there were different people handling different PR in different divisions who have never met. They were essentially working on the same projects with different budgets & tools. Once they were introduced to each other, they were able to pool their resources and learn from each other this resulted to an ongoing open communication.

In a big company, I always start from the bottom-up. Learning what everybody’s level of understanding is of social media and marketing in regard to their jobs and responsibilities helps me formulate recommendations for changes. I love with working with entrepreneurs because they’re more likely to be open-minded and willing to experiment.

Getting everything done in bigger companies is really challenging. If you work with small companies or you work with entrepreneurs, you can get things moving quickly.

UV: Part of public relations is knowing how to make a quick and successful connection with each client so that you’re communicating with them directly (or at least give them the impression that you are) and that means knowing the right words to use. What new vocabulary skills do online entrepreneurs need to develop to really get the most out of social media?

They need the willingness to put in some time. Communication is a must in social media since it is the new customer relationship marketing. But there’s no magic quick way to establish traction and interaction in social media.

The first thing that I have to explain to every business I work with, is that social media is not advertising and not a broadcast medium. Everyone should be willing to create actual relationships by having conversations. I use the 12-to-1 rule: twelve times you help other people, provide information that is useful for them and one time you promote yourself.

I teach people it is more than telling people what you want to tell them. You have to tell people things that they will want to share. What companies and individuals share are quite different from each other. And I strongly advise my clients not to include press releases in their blogs or social media posts. When did anyone ever share a press release in social media – unless they were making fun of it.

“Don’t forget you have a day job.” I believe Cisco was the first company to include that statement in their social media policy. If you go rogue on social media, there are consequences for that. The thing that every company needs, both large and small, is training on how to use social media.

One client said they don’t care whether it’s bots that are following them on Twitter as long as they get big numbers. What is the point of that? I told them that I would rather have engagement with 100 real people than a thousand who are spammers and bots. I zap the bots and spammers every day in my Twitter account and in the ones I run for clients.

UV: What’s the story behind the name of your website “What’s Next Blog”?

I had a print newsletter called “What’s Next”, it was a $350 a year subscription public relations newsletter with thousands of subscribers. But, as soon as I saw the internet (which was around 1995), I was so seduced by it and that I moved my newsletter online. I started blogging in 2002.

That absolute minute that I could have a blog on WordPress, I started What’s Next Blog. In my experience, the more you give, the more you get back. I don’t worry about giving away with information because information does not mean anything until it is shared.

Also, I just love to write. What’s Next Blog is just my way of sharing the information I know to my readers and subscribers. Research and writing is fun for me.

UV: Another website you started, Pawfun.com is for pet lovers, so you probably have pets of your own. What motivated you to create this website?

I actually have a dog and a cat, and I adore them both. Pawfun is more of a hobby.

I started Pawfun.com 8 years ago and the idea originally was to help people create t-shirts with pictures of their pet. However, once you own a t-shirt with your pet’s photo, when will you buy another? So, it wasn’t really a sustainable business. People can use the interface to make e-cards with pictures of their pets and send them.

UV: Finally, we have to ask the logical question: What’s next?

In addition to adding video to your marketing mix, it is definitely paying attention to the new Google AboutMeProfile. Google for some reason has named your profile “AboutMe” even though there is a long-term website called “About Me”. I wrote a blog post explaining it http://www.whatsnextblog.com/what-you-must-know-about-google-about-me-profile/

So now, it is Google About Me and that is where your real Google profile is going to reside. That profile is going to be part of every Google platform that you use, whether it be Youtube, Google Play or any Google platform. Whatever platform you use, that bio will go with you. That bio also will have an impact on your search optimization. That is definitely what’s next, along with Snapchat, Vine and Facebook livestreaming.

Everything that Google do is an experiment. Therefore, we should always keep an eye with their updates.

B.L. Ochman is a uniquely experienced digital pioneer who has been helping blue chip brands incorporate social media into their marketing strategy since 1996. She blogs at What’s Next Blog, co-hosts and produces the award-winning Beyond Social Media Show podcast and contributes to AdAge DigitalNext. On Twitter, she’s @whatsnext.

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Why Are Wikipedia Pages At Number 1 In Google Search Results?

admin — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 12:00:35 +0000

Elizabeth Farquhar

Wikipedia is “a vast site with millions of pages and thousands of editors offering unique vital content on multitudes of subject matters,” the SEO specialists at UK-based Intelligent Positioning admitted back in 2012, but that didn’t stop them from questioning exactly why Wikipedia pages pop up in the #1 position most of the time when people use search engines like Google.

The team of SEO consultants and researchers used a list of one thousand randomly-generated nouns, and then used each one as a separate search term. (While they did test other search engines, the focus was primarily on Google.) They tabulated the results and found that just under 56% of searches put the Wikipedia entry for that term at the top of the list, and a link to at least one Wikipedia article was on Google’s Page 1 listing in 99% of the searches.

The team had no argument when using words related to major scientific concepts, historical events, or geographical features resulted in top-ranked Wikipedia pages, because those pages were generally full of useful, relevant information. However, they state that “there are ultimately flaws in Google’s offering of Wikipedia content” when a word like “Air” generates a list with Wikipedia’s disambiguation page at the #2 spot. They argue that pages like this should not be ranked so highly by Google, because they’re only clusters of links designed to lead users to the information they’re actually looking for on another page entirely.

On the other hand, you could also argue that a disambiguation page is actually a better way to find information. Instead of scrolling through a list that might go over two pages on a search engine display, and might be ranked in a fairly random order, users get a concise, organized list that helps them quickly find the precise reference they need. In other words, the disambiguation page is just like an index to an encyclopedia – and that’s exactly what Wikipedia is.

Yes, search engine marketing is a huge business (over $24 billion in the United States alone this year so far) and anyone can pay to bump their web page up in the rankings, but not everyone can afford to spend that kind of money year after year. It’s better to build a good, solid website that your customers will return to over and over, and set up an informative Wikipedia page on your company that will direct people to your website and to information about your products. For example, eReflect’s Wikipedia page gives you links to recent reviews of the company’s award-winning software.

Once you know how to use Wikipedia to benefit you and your business, you’ll appreciate the fact that Wikipedia pages consistently rank at number 1 in Google search results.

Follow Ultimate Vocabulary on Facebook, Twitter and Googe+ for more tips and advice.

Check out eReflect’s Profile on Wikipedia, Youtube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Crunchbase and Training Industry as well!

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Everything You Need To Know About March Is Here

admin — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 12:00:03 +0000

March took its name from the Roman god Mars, the God of War, and it’s the third month in the Gregorian calendar year observed throughout the world. But that’s not all there is to it. Let’s see what else is worth knowing about March.

At one point, March was the first month of the year

March was named after the god Mars and it has 31 days. It wasn’t always the third month in the calendar year, though.

In fact, March used to be the first month of the year, due to the Vernal Equinox that takes place around March 20th every year, which was considered the official start of Spring. Many cultures still celebrate the New Year in March, including several regional Hinduist cultures in India, Nepal and those observing Sikhism.

March symbolism and special days

The March birth flowers are the daffodil and violet, while one of its birthstones, bloodstone, stands for courage.

Little-known facts about March

Another name for March in Old English was “Hlyda’’ which means ‘loud’ or ‘roaring’ – presumably as a way of describing this month’s winds and stormy, volatile weather.

March is American Red Cross Month. During this month-long observance the organization raises awareness on the practices and activities of the Red Cross, inviting people to get to know its mission and to become part of the organization as a way of helping others through donations of funds and blood, volunteering, and other forms of support to communities in need across the United States.

If you’re born in March then you are either a Pisces (February 19 to March 20) or an Aries (March 21 to April 19).

In Britain, the New Year was celebrated on March 25th until the 18th century. It wasn’t until 1752 when the British started to celebrate the New Year according to the Gregorian Calendar, that is, on January 1st.

Sayings

If someone calls you ‘’mad as a March hare” they’re referring to some wild, uncontrollable behavior of yours that resembles that of male hares during the mating season in March.

Another proverb that marks the significance of March as a passing from winter to spring is “March comes in a like a lion and goes out like a lamb”.

“March winds and April showers bring forth May flowers,” is another proverb in the English language tightly associated with the weather of the season and how March is the onset of spring, awakening, and growth. This proverb is quite often used in its condensed form:

“April showers bring May flowers.”

March is a colorful month that carries the excitement for spring and summer. Its humble show-offs of flowers blooming and trees waking up, gives rise to an attitude full of optimism and momentum for many people.

Is there any special event you’re planning to celebrate this March? Share it with us!