5 Things of Blossoming April

We are half done with the spring – and I just realized that I haven’t shared my 5 things for ages. Isn’t it great to have such a feature when you have desire to post but don’t have idea or the will to work hard on something sophisticated? Today I am kind of foggy, so this is an perfect excuse to skip my usual long texts (I love writing the long texts, maybe you noticed 😉 And I hope, there are people who care to read them to their end :)).

A funny story about my fogginess today. I had an appointment with my Mexican friend today and I got up a bit earlier than usually and battled the cold wind outside, almost running to the place with music in my ears. Only to discover that he was not there. And as I thought if this is Latino style and was close to calling him, I scrolled through our texting – and found out that appointment is tomorrow. I just had to laugh and eat my brunch alone there 🙂 Hope, that tomorrow he will be there (otherwise the regular customers at Evita cafe will consider me a crazy lady).

Back to our main show – 5 things which make me smile this April. It looks like the main motive is blooming and blossoming 🙂

1. I am a lover of botanical gardens. And how lucky I am that I can walk to the one – especially in the spring when the signs of new life appear almost every day! Even when it didn’t look like spring in the city, in the garden the first bush of rhododendron was already in bloom.  It means that the winter is officially over (even if it still feels like it) and the nature is waking up from its dream.

that first rhododendron bush

5 Things – About Inspiration

I continue to share my 5 things, and today I want to share the things that inspire me. These are not the things that have the fetish status and the power to kindle my inspiration any time, but rather the small details of my life which – when I start collecting them – have the ability to sparkle joy and excitement inside of me. And it feels like they make the small holes through which the flood of inspiration breaks through and takes me in its flow, like the water finds little holes in the dam and then smashes it, flowing freely.

My previous post was about our use of social media, but I haven’t mentioned the positive sides of them (and the post was not critical towards the social media, rather how we use them). My favorite one, Instagram, is an inspiration for me, because it sends me on the search for beauty in my nearest surroundings, which I started to consider boring and not so pretty. But the new interest for detail gives me a fresh eye, and I end up with finding a lot of tiny wonders. Right now I love the function “stories” because as I make my first snaps, I get a feeling of a treasure hunt- and after short time I have to stop myself because there are funny and pretty little things everywhere 🙂 So all of the pictures below I made for IG and “Stories”, and collecting them is such a fun way to be mindful and grateful for the beauty around me.

1. On our trip to the Southern France I decided to collect everything yellow. We were driving through the region of Occitanie, and I decided that the famous shop L’Occitane  is from these places – and as its color is yellow, so must this region be. You can guess what happened after that. I was noticing yellow things everywhere. Isn’t it weird how you start noticing whatever you make your mind up for? So if we decide to collect the positive vibes – surely we will notice them everywhere, right? So let’s do that! And let this yellow postcard be a reminder of that.

 

City bikes, spring flowers and French breakfast in Montpellier. Yellow boat in the port of Marseille

What do the social media do to us – and what do we do with it?

If I were 18 now I would have ADHD or concentration problems. I would switch between studying and checking my Snapchat every 15 minutes. I would have distorted image of real life. I would believe that the people on Facebook and Instagram have a lot of fun in their real life, and I don’t. I would have distorted image of myself. Well, it was already distorted, so maybe, it would not be that worse)). But my self-esteem would suffer since I would compare myself not to the glossy images on TV, but to “real” images of beauty bloggers of Youtube and those Instagram divas with styled brows, big lips and sexy limbs which they are not shy to show.

Yes, I am talking about the social media and how it changes our ways. I don’t want to make an apocalyptic analysis here, and I don’t want to draw a totally negative picture –  I am just really curious about how did happen that we got addicted to sharing, and what does it do to us? I imagined how that would have shaped me when I was growing, and to be honest, I am happy that I grew up in the pre-Internet era. But today’s youth seem to cope with it somehow, and I wonder how they do it. I also wonder how people manage to keep balance in the time when it is so easy to get absorbed into all those distractions. The smartphone is called “A cigarette of modern age” – I find this metaphor aptly as I see the mobile glued to the hand of everyone like a cig was in the movies of 60s. So how do the people cope with this new addiction?

Google picture

 

What is success for you?

“This is my mind, and I want it to work for me, not against me”, my friend said. “Let other people say to me negative things, I can ignore them. But why should I say those negative things to myself?”

We have our thinking habits, and my habit is to focus on the negative. To see my past as a disadvantage, to look into future and catastrophize, and interpret the present events in a negative light. But all the habits are an object of change, if you want. It takes time and effort, but it is possible to change the thinking patterns just as it is possible to change lifestyle habits like eating and exercising. This is a period of my life that can be named “change”. I have always been interested in self-development and growth, but it seems like right now this process is even more intense than usually. There are many tools and ideas that inspire me to change and I hope to share some of them here on the blog. And today I want to share some thoughts about success.

It is OK to be on pause

Last summer I joined a yoga retreat. Which has been my dream for the couple of years. At last, here I was, in a tiny village in the heart of Croatian island of Hvar. On the first night of retreat, after a dinner and a welcome circle, we were doing the guided meditation. Lying on the stone floor of the terrace, under the stars blinking through the terrace roof, listening to the sounds of the village, so unusual for us, city people. A dog barking in the distance, someone playing football, mosquito buzzing. Listening to the voice of Russelle, our yoga teacher. Guiding our breath and our focus. “Pay attention to this pause between breaths. Something has ended, new hasn’t started yet. It is called Standba”( not sure about the spelling, to me it sounded like “stand by”. Which makes a good sense).

This is when the light bulb went on in my head. THIS IS THE PERIOD IN MY LIFE THAT I AM GOING THROUGH NOW! Something has ended. New hasn’t started yet. Nothing is happening. So don’t rush it.

the beach  on Hvar island, the location of our retreat