Doris Hobday's family are urging people to take up the coronavirus vaccine: 'If you are offered the vaccine, please take it, do not refuse it. Doris didn’t get this choice.'
From Delia Owen’s ‘Where The Crawdads Sing’ to Hilary Mantel’s ‘The Mirror and The Light’, these are the novels Camilla recommends
The museum wants your help in putting together the showcase
We stand on a raised bank on Hickling Broad, clapping hands and stamping feet against the December chill. A blackbird sounds its excitable pre-bedtime “chink, chink” alarm. After a day of mist and drizzle, the winter light is fast draining into dusk. Time to be heading home, you might think. But the day’s defining performance is still to come. First, a dark shape appears, drifting low over the marsh. Our binoculars reveal the signature shallow-V flight profile of a marsh harrier, returning to its communal roost. No sooner have we picked out three more, straining the limits of our vision, than a clarion bugling diverts our gaze to a line of larger birds emerging from the south. Deep wingbeats and outstretched necks identify these as cranes, Hickling’s speciality. Their high, rolling calls bring a brief blast of northern taiga before they, too, drop down into the reeds. Even now, the show isn’t over. With the landscape reduced to silhouette, a murmur rises in the north, quickly swelling in volume, like a distant advancing mob. “Pink-feet,” says Mike. “Look up.” And here they come: a straggling army of pink-footed geese materialising in waves against the last of the light. The thin etch-a-sketch skeins thicken, converging overhead in a milling canopy of birds thousands-strong, their individual voices lost in one overwhelming clamour. We stare up in awe as they pass, then they’re gone. With the sky silent, but our ears still ringing, we turn back towards the car park.
It may be chilly, but you can still have a fun and efficient workout
Here, get to know America's new first family
The soon-to-be First Lady championed an independent New York designer and sustainable fashion as she departed Delaware for Washington
Hottest front-room seats: the best theatre and dance to watch onlineFrom live-streams of new plays to classics from the archive, here are some of the top shows online now or coming soon – this page is updated regularly * Jerusalem, Beckett and Bridget Christie: stage shows to book in 2021
Pyer Moss and Jonathan Cohen were the names chosen for the first inauguration event
But we don't think it will be in stock for long.
Dutch graduate Indy Mellink, 23, has replaced the king, queen and jack with gold, silver and bronze cards
The Vice President-Elect’s values ran through every stitch of her pre-inauguration look
The singer is ready to perform at today's inauguration
Video shows an employee being hurled to the ground
The initiative is from Prince Olof Daniel and Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden.
The bathroom floor is the great multitasker of the home – here are the pros and cons of the most popular styles and materials.
“You couldn’t keep any secrets for five hours in this border town,” writes Graham Greene in the 1938 story ‘Across the Bridge’. The narrator is in an unnamed town on the Mexican side of the US/Mexico border. “There was no interest in the place for anyone; it was just damp and dust and poverty, a kind of shabby replica of the town across the river: both had squares in the same spots; both had the same number of cinemas. One was cleaner than the other, that was all, and more expensive, much more expensive.” There are shoeshines, a stray dog, the comfort of strangers, no good hotels; a car dealer fails to show up. This being Greene there’s a a fugitive millionaire and a couple of agents on his tail. There is languor; there is tension. I read Greene’s story years before I crossed the border from Tijuana into San Diego – by accident, as it happens, because the bullying traffic jostled me and siphoned me over. I did a speedy U-turn and came right back to Mexico. Give me danger and dodginess over a zoo, every time. I was interested in seeing the US, not visiting it. During the next couple of days I’d find vantage points to look across, over the satellite dishes and antennae on the roofs of gimcrack apartment blocks built on the worst side of town, into the land of the free. And then I’d look around me. Compare and contrast. California was once one long territory from the bottom of Baja up to Oregon. The border – a fence, a river, barriers and the machinery of police and customs – cut it in half, as they do the history of the two Americas.
Welcome to Taking Stock, a space where we can take a deep breath and try to figure out what the COVID-19 economy really means for our finances. Every month, personal finance expert Paco de Leon will answer your most difficult, emotionally charged questions about money. This year has forced many of us to reprioritise our finances, and there’s no clear road map for getting through the pandemic yet — but Taking Stock is here to help us figure it out together. This week, we talk about our New Year’s resolutions. How are they going? Have you already slipped up on a few? What can we do to resolve to be better about our New Year’s resolutions? DashDividers_1_500x100 Dear Paco, I’ve been thinking about financial goals I could set and stick to in 2021. But I always seem to give up on mine after a month. Why is that? Do I just have no willpower? Am I being too ambitious? Am I making the wrong kinds of resolutions? Am I not preparing myself to stick to these goals? Is there a good and not-so-good way to set resolutions so that they actually last for the whole year? It’s only January, but I’m already feeling nervous about how long I’ll be able to keep my eyes on the prize. DashDividers_1_500x100 Dear Cautiously Ambitious in 2021, A few years ago, around the start of a new year, I found myself walking around my neighbourhood with a friend of mine. As we were enjoying an uncharacteristically cold day in Los Angeles, coffees in hand, he asked me what my goals were for the year. Achieving our goals can be elusive for many reasons. Goals often require you to change your behaviour, act in the face of your fears, and navigate circumstances outside of your control. So even if you succeed in changing the thing within your control — yourself — you are still subject to outside circumstances, like a pandemic, or whatever the hell the stock market is doing. Realistically, there’s kind of a flaw inherent in setting out to achieve a specific outcome in life. When you don’t arrive at your intended destination, because a lot of things are out of our control — you’ve failed. I realised that the way we typically set goals isn’t the best way to attain meaningful achievement in our lives. So, I responded to my friend: “This year, my goal is to have no goals.” It’s not that I don’t want to achieve things or to self-direct my life — on the contrary. But, what I’ve observed from the successes I’ve had is that achievement often requires an approach where you don’t focus on an outcome with a finish line. Instead, it’s about the process that’s committed to. So rather than having a goal to save £8,000, it’s committing to save 20 percent of every inflow — indefinitely. Our goals need to be less about arriving at a destination and more about the journey. Sounds corny, but a study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Attitudes and Social Cognition showed that people who viewed their goals as “completing a journey” as opposed to “arriving at a destination” were more likely to maintain good behaviours. And ultimately, that’s what we’re trying to do: maintain good behaviours, consistently, over time. I’ve failed at achieving plenty of financial goals. There were years where I didn’t save as much as I’d have liked, and times that I’ve grossly overestimated how quickly I thought I could get out of credit card debt. I’ve rigidly clung to underpaying jobs because I had an end destination in my mind, and I was terrified of letting go of that goal. But when I started to focus on the journey, I became flexible with the outcome and, in my experience, I ended up achieving more than I would have imagined. If you’re thinking of how to fine-tune your 2021 financial resolutions for long-term success, here are some ways to reframe your goal-setting. Figure out what you really desire (or really fear) What is it that you really want? And, how does money help you fulfil that? Let yourself connect with your desires. For some, looking at your desires might not resonate as much as looking closely at your fears. What are you most afraid of? What does that mean in terms of money and financial goals? Being aligned with your desires and fears is a fundamental part of achievement; otherwise, you’ll be fighting against your will whether you’re conscious of it or not. Too much change all at once is hard to do Focus on one goal first. What sets great apart from good is the ability to focus on one thing at a time. With one goal, you can get your footing, build a track record, and once the new system is a habit that requires little to no effort, it’s much easier to find the next set of goals you’d like to reach for. Connect with your why If you have already discovered the reason why your goal is important — excellent. If not, get to the root of why reaching a goal is important to you. What will it mean to accomplish this goal? What will it feel like? What are the things you can do to stay connected to your why? Deconstruct your goal Break down your single goal into a set of behaviours that would precede actually attaining this goal. For example, if my goal is to save a year’s worth of expenses, the things that need to happen include saving a part of every paycheque and any other inflow of money, whether that’s tax refunds, bonuses, or gifts. Create a system for the new behaviors I can systemise the behaviour I need to achieve my goal by first choosing how much I can reasonably save with each paycheque — let’s say that’s around 25 percent. Then, I’ll set it up so that the savings are automatically deposited from my paycheque. This kind of systemisation, where it’s done automatically, is helpful for obvious reasons. You only have to set it up once. Alternately, since my actual pay varies with my business income, I’ve had to set up a system where I manually make these transfers on the 10th and 25th of every month. I’ve had to train myself to create the habit. But once this system became a habit, over time, I realised that I was on my way to reach my goal, and even saved much more than I thought I could. When the system fails, find where it broke down If I’ve tried to implement my system for saving more money, but I still feel too far away from reaching a certain milestone, I may need to take a closer look at the system. Do I need to increase my savings percentage? Do I need to earn more? Or maybe both? If I need to earn more, how can I systematically approach that problem? In this context, not achieving your goal doesn’t have to feel like a personal failure. We can simply examine why the system is or isn’t functioning. If it isn’t functioning, that’s a useful sign that something needs to be reexamined. Use a system to minimise potential failure Most of my greatest successes have come from systematically minimising the ways I could potentially fail. Instead of relying on willpower, I assume I won’t have any and I try to solve for that shortcoming. Having separate accounts for spending and saving, for example, is a way to protect you from yourself. So is keeping your emergency fund at a bank that’s different from the bank you have your checking account with. Run the process consistently Having a healthy set of teeth isn’t the result of brushing your teeth thoroughly once, or even a few times. Consistency over an entire lifetime is what’s required to make progress. Especially since our habits are one of the few things we can control. If you can create a good habit, you may find that the progress you’re able to sustain is much more fulfilling than simply reaching a goal. In The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi makes Daniel apply wax on and off a car, over and over again. The goal wasn’t to get the car shining. The goal was to have the movement become so ingrained that it would be a habit. Find accountability buddies Having even one person hold you accountable can help you stick to your new habits. According to the American Society of Training and Development (ASTD), you have a 65 percent of attaining a goal if you have someone holding you accountable. However, you can bump that up to 95 percent if you have an accountability buddy you have periodic check-ins with. You can try finding a friend who is also looking for accountability; you can join an accountability group; you can hire a virtual assistant that you report to. Accountability works really well for me; it’s easy for me to feel accountable to my audience, because I have to practice what I preach. Focus on your circle of control, let go of things outside of it There will always be financial shocks and economic downturns. We have to recognise where we have agency in our lives and focus on moving the needle where we can. For everything else, it’s a constant practice of letting go. I hope this helps you reframe how you set goals in your life, and I hope that you can fall in love with the journey — because truly, that’s all there ever is. Your financial friend, Paco Do you have a question or dilemma you’d like to see answered as part of Taking Stock? Submit it here or send us an email at moneyquestions@refinery29.com. Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?Coronavirus Has Hit Young Women's Finances HardestMy Shopping Addiction Landed Me 25k In Debt7 Fun Challenges To Help You Save Big £££ In 2021
*Don't worry, it's not all bad
'A lot of u really misinterpreted this tweet and I guess that’s on me.'
Yahoo Style