In the past two months or so, I spent many late afternoons in the nearby forest. I must admit, that I have never been in this forest that often before, even though I could call myself a very frequent visitor.

After some time, I set myself a mission, and that was to find a new path each day. You would be surprise to see how many different trails I’ve found in this quite small area! The challenge then spread among my family. Each day we went for a walk, we would search for the most hidden and beautiful little paths, not caring about the final destination it lead us to. We just walked. And talked. And laughed. Laughed a lot. That is a new hobby of mine which I adopted during the past few weeks. I strongly encourage you to try it yourself.;)

What made all these walks and runs so magical, was for sure the light - the warmth of the sun rays and the colours of the forest which were a part of nature’s constant change. I loved these walks. And I still do.

That’s why me and my brother decided to create a short film, full of magical seconds spent in the local woods.

MORE ABOUT THAT NEXT TIME

Nature cleared my mind and new ideas arose. Together with my spontaneous photos from the walks, I’m going to share with you some of the thoughts and my personal reflections that came to me in the past few weeks. Everything I wrote is something that really resonated with me and I’ve decided that everything will be written more as a draft - incomplete, half-done, yet ready for you to take something out of it, to think about it in your own personal way, creating your own stories…

JOIN ME - read my MIND!

Let’s get through this small hole… - challenge completed!

Recently ON MY MIND

THE POWER OF WRITING down my THOUGHTS

The first few days of studying from home were feeling pretty much like a very long, stretched, lazy day. Without any goal, with a little motivation and many small things to do. I was feeling frustrated, I was tired of studying for the approaching online exam and had also a very little motivation for any intense physical activity. Not to mention the unnecessary stress that has been put all around us at that time. However, I somehow managed to do mandatory tasks and went out for short walks on a daily basis.

After a week or so, I came across my good old TO DO notebook, which was a little turning point at that time.

*Before I used to write my TO DO list every day, but since there were not many things going on in my life, I thought that I didn’t need it and forgot about it.

From then on I decided to continue with this routine and upgraded it by adding an additional “random thoughts & vision notebook” to my daily writing ritual. That made such a big difference in my life!

I woke up every day with a positive mindset
I was more inspired and creative
I was motivated for the studies
I enjoyed walks in the forest and home workouts
I got enrolled in some online courses
I was more present in the moment

…to name a few…

Furthermore, my mind wasn’t a mess anymore - I could finally get some clear reflections out of my head. Some of them I share bellow.

I adore people around me

To be honest - self isolation left me with no other choice but to spend days with my family members. At first the thought of it seemed quite intimidating to me, because I love spending time on my own. However, I gradually accepted the situation as it was and became more and more content about that. I spent most of my free time together with my family and I liked it! I somehow started to laugh more and made jokes all the time, really considering my acting career (joke?). Throughout the time, a beautiful bond between us was created.

My mom says everyday: “ I’m so grateful for all the bonus time I got to spend with my children (before they move out…).”

“Love is the strongest superpower you can give and receive.”

I messaged with my friends a lot, called them, had some online video meetings and we stayed strongly connected. To me it was nearly the same as if we would meet at school or go for a drink in the city… The energy I got from this kind of socializing was priceless, incredibly powerful and calming. That helped me realising that everything is okay. That I can freely continue with my life, like nothing special is going on… Luckily I was able to realise it pretty soon.

COMMUNITY IS THE KEY

I’ve never liked to read articles about politics, neither any local daily news, and the same was during the past few weeks… However, some news, which came to me by chance, were quite shocking to me. A few times I did a further investigation and the findings were even worse… Yes, I’m talking about the government, politics and national capitalistic system. It quite scares me seeing, what some people do for the money, having in mind that by “these people”, I don’t mean 10 or 100 people, but way more than that.

Moments like these make me more aware of what’s truly important and that is our community.

We should act for the good of the community, not for the nice amount of money. And if we ever need the money, then we can get it from working with and for the community. I think we should all be more aware of that and keep that in mind.

I try to remind myself of this, as often as I can.

a strong URGE for creating more (art)

During the #stayathome period, I got an urgent need to paint - on a big canvas, with my pigments collected from the nature. It was that strong feeling of excitement and passion towards creating something abstract, with the current inspiration. The only problem was that I didn’t have canvas of the right size at home.

This was a signal for me, to switch to something else. The next idea came to me quite naturally, as I walked through the forest and got touched by the magnificent scenery I was surrounded with. Camera became my constant companion and besides photographs, I probably for the first time started recording short video clips of the beautiful moments I saw.

All these walks have filled my mind with fresh ideas and so the process of creating and doing something new actually never stopped. I got an access to the unlimited amount of Coursera’s courses, which I found very interesting and actually very joyful.

Learning about a different topic (not in an old school way) is for me a manner of entertainment and relaxation, to be honest. After each hour of these online classes, I feel a deep satisfaction.

There is so many opportunities to learn new skills, offered by numerous different learning platforms. Since there is so many of them, it is actually becoming a bit overwhelming, when choosing a specific course. I am doing two at the moment and they are both very good…

Investing in your knowledge is never out of trend. ;)

YOU SHOULDN’T try to SPEED UP THE PROCESs

Wanting to hack the time and speed up the process is something I’m guilty of. I realised that quite a long time ago, but I’ve never thought about it as something one could work. I’ve taken it as a fact - “this is how I am and I will live on with that…“

For instance - I recently got enrolled into an eight week course, which was for me a very exciting event. I probably wanted to experience more of that feeling and after a week, I got enrolled into another course.

*not to mention, that this one takes me probably four months of a regular work, to finish

Even thought I was quite busy participating in these two extensive courses, I somehow found myself signing up for another learning platform. They also offered me some free courses, with new topics, and I grabbed this “incredible opportunity” to learn something new.. Then I came across another platform and so on… You get it.

That’s the story of my life. I would always find one additional activity, to fill up my schedule to the maximum extent. This never really works out and often ends by me quitting most of the things and starting all over again, trying something different. And I would get a glimpse of each of these activities, but I would never become an expert (not even close to that) in any of these fields.

That is something I realised each time I searched for a student job: reading about all the requirements that companies had for the applicants, I rarely saw myself as a suitable candidate. Usually I would either end up not applying for the job or was my application ignored by the employers. Sometimes I would get invited for the interview, changed my mind and then canceled the invitation, because I would found out that a certain job wasn’t what I wanted.

I don’t think that the way I live and “function” is wrong, but finding a balance between building a strong expertise in a certain field and acquiring a wide range of different skills is for sure a better idea than constantly being all around the place.

Now I try to focus on one (well maybe two - for the beginning) task at the time and I’m more engaged into managing each of them.

I do need a wide range of different activities in my life in order to be happy, but by limiting this number, I make myself a big favour. That is for sure.

I invest more into activities I love and I allow myself to fail. I give myself more than one try - as many as I need in order to reach the state, when I’m content with the result and the whole process. And for me that’s life changing.

I’m still scared sometimes about my life passing away without me learning all I want to know and experiencing it to its full extent. Living life to the fullest probably doesn’t mean filling it up with tons of different activities, but maybe rather taking care of it - enjoying every moment. I try to be present, focusing on that one thing I do in this very second.

I think of it like a balanced diet: diversity in food is good. But even the most diverse and beneficial food can cause serious health issues, when eaten in excessive amounts. Just like filling your life with tons of different activities - each of them is great, but from my experience, I don’t recommend pursuing all of them at the same time.

KEEPing THE MOMENTUM & the two DAY RULE

One of the things that recently came to my mind, probably after listening to my favourite podcast, was the power of consistency. That’s something I’ve noticed over the time. It’s about the moment when you don’t feel like doing something (that is not vitally important), but deep inside you know that, let’s say your physical health would benefit from it. And that’s when I used to brightly say to myself: “Oh, I feel that something in my mind is telling me that I shouldn’t do it now. I should listen to myself, take care of myself. I will do it later, when I will feel like doing it.”

And the reality - this “later” came either a few days later, never, or the next day if I was in a very good mood.

After some time I’ve trained myself to recognize the trick, which my brain likes to play with me; I’m able to find this little motivation to START and then the magic happens… After ten or so minutes of doing it, I get soaked into the activity, the task gets done and most importantly - I feel at peace.

There are some days when I find a ton of excuses which I can’t overcome. In that case I use a Two Day rule - I skip a practice for one day, but I try not to skip it the day after. The main point is not to skip two days of a habit in a row. Otherwise I end up forgetting about it for a week, maybe a month...

This includes working out, school projects, writing blog posts, making TO DO list, eating healthy, cleaning… It refers to everything in my life.

DON’T TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED

I was very passionate about discovering these little hacks that helped me lower the rate of procrastination.

It all ended in one day. And that was when I got awfully sick (virus-free), like I wasn’t in years. I could barely walk around the apartment and that was basically the only thing I did, besides eating and laying in my bed for whole three days. That happened right after I had planned all the exciting activities for the upcoming days.

There was a fire, very close to my neighbourhood.

In these moments I realised, how truly grateful I can be for the every second of my life, when I feel good.

It goes the same for the weather and my family and all the little things in my life that all brought together make my life. I take them for granted too often .

“The more grateful you are, the more you will receive to be grateful for.”

BE CONTENT WITH ALL THAT YOU ARE IN THIS MOMENT

The only way how you can receive what you want, is by loving the environment you are living in in this very moment. That’s what I’ve read in a book, which you might have already read as well, probably years before me…

After returning home from my internship in Iceland (posts), which was a surreal experience for me, I started to criticise most of the things in my life. This mindset didn’t serve me anything good and thinking about my surroundings in a positive way seemed to me quite funny and impossible. I wanted to travel, see the world and staying at home was very far away from this!

But that has changed. And I like where I am at this moment, which makes me happy. I believe that with these thoughts, good things will come to my life. Let the law of attraction surprise me!

THE REDISCOVERED PASSION

For the past two months or so, we cooked lunch at home throughout the whole week. Before this was never the case.

Each day there was another family member responsible for the meal preparation. At first I perceived cooking for the whole family (with different tastes) as a burden, but I shortly realized, that I actually love preparing food and experimenting with limitless taste combinations. Every time I cook or bake, I give all my attention to the food, my body calms down and my mind enjoys its freedom.

I was the one who always served a vegetarian menu and was more than happy, when even the biggest meat eaters in the family were satisfied or even amazed by the taste of food.

Food, which I often prepared in the oven, was wholesome, rich in taste, easy to make and good for my body. I felt great after these meals. And the food didn’t make me tired. A total opposite of what I’m used to eat at our faculty’s canteen.

I’ll share some recipes soon.

BROADEN YOUR HORIZONS

That’s something I’m doing from a very young age, but there are still so many more dimensions that wait to be discovered. Something I try to incorporate into my daily thoughts, is questioning the information my sensory system receives from the outer and inner world. With questions come answers and with them more questions…and so the pleasant journey of learning begins…

This is my first post in English - I truly hope that you’ve gotten my messages and that something resonated with you, made a little shift in your mind or that you’ve calmed down by looking at the greenery between the text. :D

I’ve enjoyed the journey of creating it and I look forward to sharing with you my current mini projects. The idea is to publish something new every other week (consistency…).

Let’s see where it takes me.

and

Until next time !

Sending you ❤ and peace,

10 Thoughts From The Past Weeks