What are ten things you are grateful that have happened to you?

Sometimes I’m having a bad day, a bad week or even a bad month. When I feel horrible I try to remind my self that bad times are passing and good times will come. I also try to remind my self that even though not every day is beautiful, there is something beautiful in every day. Opening my eyes to these things and write them down, makes easier to notice and appreciate them. Gratefulness to all the wonderful and beautiful things in life is a skill that will significantly improve your general life quality. Here is a list of 10 things I am truly grateful for:

 

1. I am grateful that I have a loving and caring family
2. I am grateful that I was born and raised in this safe and wealthy country
3. I am grateful that there are people who show that they care about others
4. I am grateful that I was introduced to scouting
5. I am grateful that I have so many opportunities of what to do with my life
6. I am grateful that there’s always a reason to smile and be happy
7. I am grateful that information is incredibly available when searching
8. I am grateful that most people I talk to all seem to have good intentions
9. I am grateful that skills can be built no matter your background
10. I am grateful that in most cases failure is just a stepping stone to success

What are you grateful for? Share it in the comments!

What is your favourite attribute about yourself?

My favorite attribute is probably my authenticity. I am honest, I’m unique and I’m simply being myself. Once in my life, I’ve been called pretentious, but that was on top of a horrific misunderstanding. Otherwise, I’m often complimented for daring to be different and to show my individuality. I must say I like to be me and “I wouldn’t wanna be anybody else” just like Selena Gomez sings. I could never become what somebody else is. They have their unique set of skills and characteristics and I have mine. My goal is to be the best version of my self!

You don’t need to compare yourself to anybody else. You’ll never be like them and that’s perfectly fine. Keep yourself busy with being you, cause that is exactly who you were meant to be. Maybe you can use this quote as a little motivational reminder;

The only person you should try to be better than is the person you were yesterday!

This is a perfectly balanced goal for anyone. It is challenging but realistic. It has a time deadline and I believe many will find it attractive like myself. Now you just need to make it a little more specific and make sure it’s measurable.

Have a lovely day and don’t forget to be yourself!

What is the nicest thing someone has ever said to you?

Even though I love to be complimented on looks and intelligence there’s a certain kind of compliment that goes straight to my heart. That is to be told I’m valuable and make a positive difference in someone’s life. When I mentor and my mentee says: “Thank you, your help is very appreciated and I understand the subjects so much more now”, I get really happy. When they tell me that they like the subject now when they use to hate it I smile from ear to ear. I love to help people when they are ready and open for help. There’s no greater joy in my life than when I can make a positive difference for someone else by doing something I enjoy and share skills I’ve gathered in my own life. I would love to do more of that in the future. This is also the reason I’ve decided to make a change in my study career. I’m shifting from something I potentially could be good at to something I am surely gonna enjoy doing! I hope that it pays off on the satisfaction and happiness account later in life.

 

What compliment do most people give you? Do you agree?

Depending on what I do I get rather different compliments. When I mentor I am often told I’m smart and talented. I care a lot about motivating my mentees and build their self-esteem. I find that this focus builds a strong positive relation, which is on of the most important fundamentals for learning and personal growth. I hope and believe the compliment is based on my extensive knowledge within the subjects and my abitlities to communicate them to my mentee on a level they can relate to.

When it comes to conversation in relation building and generel social contects the compliments have a different character. Here they are more targeted my personality rather than my abilities. People often say I am unusually reflective and straight forward.

Maybe I am odd, but I am not comfortable getting compliments on my personality from strangers. I almost find it a little offensive when someone who doesn’t know me at all, tell me I am kind-hearted or have a beautiful soul. I mean, how do they know? They don’t! Those are wonderful and much appreciated words when they come from friends, relatives and other close relations. I truly hope they interpret me that way and I think there is a lot of truth to it. I could improve my loving-kindness practise to become more accepting and understanding.

What do you want people to remember about you?

This is a difficult question to me. Being remembered as unique, authentic and loving would be amazing. Ideally they would think I was helpful and cared a lot about the people around me. However the biggest achievement I could get in this world is to feel truly inspirational. When people will look at me and think “Wauw, she is awesome, I want to be more like her!” then I will for sure know I have done something right. No one should ever wish to be exactly like me, because I want everyone to be unique. At this point in time I also know for sure I would not want anyone to be like me. This would put them through too many tough emotions and moments of critically low self-esteem and I don’t want that for anyone. In the future I want to become a person with healthy habits, a strong social circle and an admirable, likable character. This is also how I would like people to remember me.

What are five things you love about yourself?

I found this pin on Pinterest and it made want to write again. It is a list of 25 questions about self-developement and acceptance, which is exactly what I need right now to move on and get back on track. Since I have not posted in more than a year I think today is about time! The first question, which I will answer today is:

What are five things you love about yourself?

1: I’m honest! This has always been my number one quality. I don’t lie to people. And I hate when others lie to me. I sometime dodge questions or tell people, that I am not willing share information with them, but I am not one to just tell a lie.

2: I’m authentic! Usually I’m not busy or caught up being a certain way simply because most are like that. When it comes to expectations though I tilt both ways. The way people pursue my character and abilities mean a lot to me and I do give in to expectations a little too often. I do what I like, not in a rebel way, but in a self-aware way. I never do something only because others tell me so. If I follow their advise or their orders it is because I see the reason or trust them to bring me closer to a result that I want.

A piece of “quoteart” that I made recently to remind myself to be strong in my beliefs and values

3: I care! When I become friends with someone or take on a project I deeply care that it turns out good and that I put my fair share of effort in to making it as succesful as possible. I’m not one to do things halfheartedly. I’d rather turn down a project or friendship offer too much, than to only do it halfway with a disappointing result. People around me mean a lot to me and my wellbeing. I want then be happy and I want to help them, to be happy. However I only offer this help, when I actually feel like I am in a spot where I provide what they need to feel better.

4: I’m creative! I get told this a lot. Even though I think I they often mean artistic, I still think there’s a truth to it. I make up unique projects or give projects a unique twist when working on them. I find new or untraditional solutions to problems when I meet them. I find gifts for people, which have never seen their wish lists, but are still loved and appreciated.

5: I’m curious! This is a human thing I know, but maybe it is more about how I express it. I ask more questions than most the people I know. This is because I want to understand, I want to know and I want to explore the subjects and the people I have before me. Conversations with people are most interesting when asking good questions. Most people are extroverts and they like to talk about themselves. And the introverts usually like to talk too when they get to talk about a subject that is important to them. Curiosity is not only about conversation though. It is about gaining information from all possible sources like reading, observing, analyzing, testing and experimenting. I like to do either of these things and when I do it is a sign that I am feeling good.

This was my answer to the question: “What are five things you love about yourself?”
Please let me know what you think about this post and share your own answers with me!

See you again tomorrow for another answer from the list!

A handwritten letter

Word by word this letter bring bang and endless stream of memories. I write it 3 years ago while I lived in Oxfordshire and worked as a volunteer. It reflects the transformation I went through from being lonely and afraid to being happy and confident. I miss those days.

Since those sentences flowed from my mind to the paper a lot of things have happened and I’ve had many important lifelessons. I learned that I could do almost anything if believed in it. I figured how to be independent from my parents. I woke curiosity for trye things I did not previously belived I would ever have an interest for. I think it was the best year of my life so far and I would not change it for anything. All the challenges, conflicts and temporary pains were all worth the freedom, joy and growth I experienced those 12 months. It was incredible.

I’m not sure if it means more to me to read it now or for my family to read it bacck then. But I do know that its a shame that handwritten letters is a dying art. All the love and soul put into them, can never really be captured in the digital form. I hope the art of handwriting will never die.

Homegrown food

Have you ever grown your own edible plants? I can assure you it is a surprisingly satisfying feeling when you can harvest your own herbs or vegetables and eat them within a few minutes. Basic botanics and gardening is skills abyone should have. This an important lifelesson as well including the health benefits if eating those greens. I can list many other good reasons to grow your own food, including the sustainability of it if you do it right. To me its a challenge and a project of creativity and DIY. I first needed to problemsolve for the lack of a good pot and a good location for the plants ro grow at all. First I tried the garden, but without much long since ai was to lazy to water them all the way down there. So after a few other attempts of finding better alternatives I found this basin in the shed and decided to try. Due to the south facing window tmthere the back stairs is a great place to grow these plants. Now they are doing great and I am planning to expand the “garden”. Try it out for yourself.

Developement

As anyone who follows my blog here I’m increasingly interested in personal developement in all its shapes and forms. I constantly think about it and I frequently blog about it (when I blog).  You can read all of my posts on the subject on the page right here: Personal development

In order to grow and challenge oneself, inspiration is always needed. On a bad day this inspiration can be extremely hard to find. Personally it helps me with word prompts. My mum has these so-called “Angle cards” with positive and inspiring words. For one of my personal projects I decided to make a digital edition of those in a “Word generator” that gives you a random word from a chosen list. I recently blogged about it and you can read that post here: Playing with programming. I think it’s tremendously important to allow positivity in to your life and these words can help you do so.

Now I’ve taken the next step: Sharing it! I added a new background with a lovely sunset/sunrise picture and that’s basically it. Try for yourself in the Online edition and let me know which word you got. unfortunately the save button does not work in the online edition, but otherwise it works exactly as intended. What are your thoughts on this idea?

 

This must be sustainable living!

We must protect the earth we are living on, because we need it! Human beings are trashing this lovely blue planet and that is such a shame. My studies at university seemed to igbite the passion for sustainability within me. But being raised in this wealthy country with all the luxury of modern technology and common western practices, turning sustainable seemed like a huge revolution was needed. Instead I decided to take smaller steps like cutting back meat consumption and growing own edible plants was my beginning. I already did rarely drive by car, sorted my trash and was decent at limiting food waste.

Even though I know we all love comfort and I know humans are sceptical of change I believe that the concept of sustainability should be universal very soonand spread to alk sectors. We should all be considerable and use our incredible amount of knowledge to live in homes like this: https://youtu.be/5voBFW1fQPs

I find these earth ships incredibly inspiring and feel like those are the future! The building of such a home has used so much technology wich is for the most part built on fairly simple science. It makes it seem silly that it isn’t more common. Especially when considering the low maintenance costs in both time, money and effort for those things. Some of the installations, like the ventilationsystem and sewage, is so low tech, simple and efficient that I barely understand the rareness of them. We can all learn some important lessons from the creaters an inhabitants of these earth ships. They have some honorable values I believe!

Anyways I strongly encourage you to check out the video and the subject of earth ships in general! I hope that one day I can live in a home which is equally sustainable! Watching the videos also make me want to try and build one myself. What do you think about this? How do you implement sustainability in your life?