Excuses – We Have to Stop Making Them

Sometimes in life we forget who we are, what we dream, and what we are capable of. Sometimes we find ourselves settling into the norm. Personally, I’ve never been much of a fan of the ‘norm’, while it has some things right it also has some things I find to be a bit bogus. I think the norm lost sight of a few things quite some times ago.

My way of standing outside the norm lies in my dreams to make a positive difference in the world, and I swear to you I will make it happen. Volunteering in Vietnam was the best experience of my life so far and there is no way I’m stopping there. Just yesterday I was looking at the posibility of going volunteering overseas right now, before university begins again, but I thought to myself “I don’t have enough time between now and then, its too late to volunteer for the summer now.”

Then I saw this wonderful post from a man I have much respect for.

Day (355) – They Ain’t Givin It.

It reminded me that there really are no rules, there are no real reasons why I cannot do something, and if I want to do something, I should go and make it happen. We have to just stop making excuses for ourselves. Sometimes I lack a bit of follow-through, but things like this remind me exactly what I am capable of, and I am thankful for that.

Psychological Barriers – It’s All in Your Head

We all have them, those little beliefs about ourselves and our lives that interfere with us and the way we do things, the way we feel. They stop us from trying new things, breaking bad habits and forming new ones. Beliefs like “I can’t get through the day without Chocolate.” Sound healthy? I promise you, you can absolutely get through the day without chocolate. All you’ve done is create a psychological barrier that is causing you to change your behaviour when chocolate is unavailable. It’s unlikely that the chocolate itself is doing it, it’s that you’ve created a mental dependence on it so if you want to stop eating chocolate daily, you have to fix your ideas about chocolate.

by ~DarkAlaria69 on deviantArt

These silly little psychological barriers we create are everywhere, and they’re everywhere because they’re within our minds. We have trapped ourselves in our own ideas. Everyone has done it at some point in their life and I am absolutely included in that. For example, I’ve recently started going to the gym and I very much favour bikes over treadmills and cross trainers. Why? Because I have an “I don’t like running” belief. Why don’t I like running? Well, I found it boring in the past, so by continuing to use this silly belief I am hindering myself from working out a larger variety of muscles by sticking to the bike.

Similarly, I find myself feeling very lonely at home, but when I look at my life at university the social life wasn’t massively different. The difference between University and Home is that I perceive myself as having much more friends at university, so I feel less lonely, whereas at home I percieve myself as only having 2 friends – who both have jobs and busy lives – and therefore I feel a lot more lonely. But let me be clear – while I have a good number of friends at University, I don’t actually see them very often. I would see them in classes if we happened to enrol in the same, or pass them by on the street and say a quick “Hello”, but I’m quite introverted and don’t seek them out very often, I’m usually quite content to keep to myself. As you can see, I created a psychological barrier of “I have no friends at home” that is preventing me from being as happy as I can be.

So, how many of our thoughts are actually legitimate? How many of them are true? How often have we created lies that bring naught but our own misery? Far, far too often. We are limiting ourselves with foolish beliefs that really don’t hold much truth at all, what’s the point in that! We have to stop fooling ourselves, and when we do our lives will seem that much brighter – I’m sure of it.

Has the Rain in Your Life Got You Down?

by ~k-lia on deviantArt

Good morning, glorious being.

I hope you slept well. I hope today is bright for you, regardless of the weather. As my university club once told me, there is no bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.

Life is about perception. You can look out a window, see rain and think to yourself “UGH, It’s RAINING.” Or, you can look out the window and think “Look, it’s raining.” Why does rain have to be a bad thing, people? It waters your plants and makes them grow, it is the source of much drinking water and without rain we would not be here. Without rain our food crops would fail. So why is rain so bad? There is no reason you can’t do you groceries or go for a walk in the rain, that’s what we invented raincoats for! You may not be out flying a kite, but isn’t that a good excuse to bond with your family playing board games that haven’t been dusted off for years. Or to cuddle up with your partner and have some sort of profound discussion on the topic of your interest.

Life is about perception and life will always seem like it’s getting in the way if you let it. There is a solution to every problem and life was made to be embraced, not endured. Every one of us encounters troubles, but it isn’t about the troubles, it’s about what you do with them. You can scream and cry and sulk when someone bothers you – if you want to – but do you really want to? Or you can respond calmly and happily and save you both the heartache. When you choose, as I have chosen, to be less sensitive and more agreeable, you will find it serves you well. Choosing not to fight and not to struggle makes every situation easier. When you encounter a long line at the supermarket has your anger and frustration ever helped move it faster? I very much doubt it. All you achieved is making your own mood worse. When I am faced with such a long line, I just calmly wait in it. It’s much more pleasant, I promise you. The ability to be calm (or at least neutral) is a choice well within your reach.

So why are you bothered by the rain? After all, it’s just rain. Use your experiences to help you grow, just as the rain helped you grow tall with the food and water it provided.

So tell me. Is the rain at your house the gods urinating all over your plans, or is it just feeding the Earth’s inhabitants? Change your perception, change your life. It really is that simple – as long as you choose to make it simple.

Make a Change – Overnight!

by `gilad on deviantArt

Many people will tell you that change doesn’t happen overnight, but why is that? Why can’t change happen overnight? My answer is that it can.

There is absolutely no reason why you can’t make a change overnight. In fact, there is no reason you can’t make a change right now, in this very moment! Changing your mindset can begin right now, and while some things require a bit more work – like that back pain you’ve had for years – you can still make a change right now by choosing to do something about it and making an appointment with an Osteopath. If you want to change something, change it! Don’t drag it out and make it take years, never knowing if you’ll achieve it all – do it now.

Right now!

Procrastination gets you nowhere. Honestly, what’s the reason for stalling? We are all guilty of it, but the time for change is now, right? So make a change. There’s no reason it can’t happen overnight.

Find Your Passion – Where is it hiding?

by ~el-ruben on deviantArt

Passion. It seems to be this mysterious fleeting thing that has settled very snugly into whatever corner it found to hide in. This morning as I laid in bed I was thinking about passion. More specifically, my own passions. I remember browsing the internet when I was younger and trying to find a desirable career path for myself, and one consistent theme was this – Follow your Passion. My Passion? But, what are my Passions? How do I know what I’m passionate about? Am I just a Passionless person? While the advice was always “Follow your Passion”, good advice though it was, they didn’t tell me how to find it. Time passed and I remained passion-less, but eventually a time came where I did find it, and it was a choice I will never, ever, regret.

“Steph, what is this Passion?” Well, kind reader, I discovered it right under my own nose, I suppose. My Passion is in helping people. Seems simple, right? So how did I not notice? Well trivial everyday help isn’t exactly what I’m talking about in this instance, I found I was passionate about Helping make – what I felt to be – a genuinely positive difference in the world. Now, that sounds a lot more complicated, but I don’t really think that it is. Let me explain.

Some of the boys from the Baby Orphanage in Tam Ky where we spent most of our time.

My journey to Passion-discovery started with the opportunity to go with my school on a trek in Nepal. When I asked my mother, the answer was no. It was too late notice, too expensive, too far away. I was discouraged, but not so discouraged that I didn’t search the internet. I looked here and there at different volunteer organisations and narrowed them down by those who would take teenagers and then by cost of trip. My mother is a bit of a pessimist sometimes (as many mothers are) and discouraged me from doing this, but for once in my life I decided to fight her pessimism, and though she remained skeptical, I was setting up to follow through. Volunteering through these companies is not a cheap thing to do, and because of our family situation mum told me “If you want to go, you have to pay for it all yourself.” It was expensive, I won’t lie, but wow do they get you started. I went on the GVN Vietnam Youth Tour, and it really was the best decision I’ve yet to make.

“Well, yeah Steph, but how do I find mine?” Well keep listening because here it comes! If you want to find your own passions, you have to go out there and try things. And while trying out a new class in your town is great, I am challenging you to go and do something completely wild, something completely different from your life experiences so far. Go and live the life of someone else, and tell me how it feels. If you never change anything and you never take any risks, then you will never find that the most fantastic things are waiting just around the corner. And you can’t deny that you’ve always wanted to travel the world to at least one other country, well here is a lovely page giving you a brief idea of how much you can achieve, and there are tons of other pages like this out there, just waiting for you to look at them!

By being stubborn and doing something I felt an inner need to do, I discovered my passion. Sure, I was only in Vietnam for two weeks, but every day there was such a fantastic experience that there was no way I wanted it to end. It’s a fantastic feeling when you look forward to getting up in the morning and knowing you are making a difference.

I’m not saying your passions will be the same as mine, but I will tell you that I think Volunteering is something Every Single Person should do at LEAST once in their life. It’s an experience like no other.

Now go out there, try new things, and find your passion! It could be waiting just around the corner.

What is your passion? Let me know what it is and how you found it!

Eating Healthy is a Habit

Once upon a time, just a single year ago, I was living at home with my family. I love them to pieces, but we could hardly have been considered healthy eaters. My sister is fussy and I am a Vegetarian so a family that hates cooking ends up eating very repetitive and not very colourful meals. Oven baked french fries were frequently featured on the plate, perhaps a little too frequently. Now don’t get me wrong, we aren’t about to be seen on The Biggest Loser, but our diet was less than optimal.

by ~SChallisx on deviantArt

Now, we’ve all seen the news and the research about how sugar and highly processed carbohydrates can be highly addictive and bad for our health, so I don’t need to fill you in there. But do we actually do anything about it? No. We look at the news, we worry about the problem briefly, then we continue on as if we had never heard it. This is an age of ignorance in a world of information, and I was part of it. I figured, I’m not the main cook in the house so I can’t do anything about it – I don’t even know how to cook! Wrong! This is the worst approach I could have taken. Don’t know how to cook? Learn. Not the main cook in the house? Take over some of the work. It was only when preparing for university that I learnt to cook, and I am so very glad I did.

Moving out and having to live on my own for university was a very different experience to living at home. Having to do everything for myself meant I made all of my own choices about what to do, when to do it, and what I was going to eat. My apartment had no oven, so those snap-frozen ready-in-a-box oven baked options were out and my diet got healthier. I lost a fair bit of weight in those first few weeks of university because a) I walked everywhere, and b) my food was healthier. I can hear you – “Yeah, yeah, diet and exercise, I’ve heard it all before” but hold on a sec and look at it from my point of view. As a frugal penny-pincher I absolutely refused to catch a bus to anywhere I could easily walk, and living in the CBD meant I didn’t have a car (not that I can drive anyway). So over the entire year I think I caught the bus about 4 times excluding trips to the airport. Think about it, every time you get in the car, every time you get on a bus, it costs you money. What does it cost you to walk? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Sure, it might take a little longer but in a city of traffic you can just about beat the traffic on foot anyway.

As for food, most people say to me “But fruit and vegetables are so expensive,” well trust me when I say that they really aren’t. Big chain supermarkets put large markups on everything, so think twice and go to that Asian supermarket around the corner, or your weekend Farmer’s market. Leave the chain stores and you will find the same food for half the price. That’s your grocery bill cut down by a significant chunk. For me, the cash aspect was a really big motivator, but my health is important to me too and as the year went on I started to discover these cheaper supermarkets around town and I stumbled on something called a Raw Diet. Essentially, the entire diet (or as much as you can manage) is composed of Raw Food. This is a diet that keeps you young and healthy because by leaving the food raw, none of the enzymes are destroyed and you get the full benefit of the foods.

by ~crzee4art on deviantArt

So I gave it a go, and that meant giving up the biscuits I so love to eat. It wasn’t until I started trying to cut them out that I realised how attached to them I really was, I always had a few (or more than a few..) late at night after dinner and sometimes during the day as well, so giving them up was really hard. I thought I was a woman of strong will, but I was not quite as strong as I thought. Now, you can’t take something away without replacing it, habits don’t just go away – they get replaced. I was replacing my biscuits with fruit. I’m not gonna lie, it was pretty tedious for awhile as I longed for the crunch of my beloved biscuits, but after awhile it got easier and now I’m not bothered if I don’t have them at all. Sugar is an addictive substance, and I think it had its claws in me without me even realising. It took me a few weeks to completely get over the yearning for biscuits but I got there, and it was worth it. You have to really commit to making a change, sometimes you will falter, sometimes you will fail, but that doesn’t mean you should give up – it means you are human, so get back on the horse and keep going, you WILL get there.

Although I decided the Raw Diet wasn’t the one for me, it did help me develop much healthier habits. Foods I used to enjoy I now find somewhat repulsing when I consider the lack of actually nutritional content, and this is truly something I am happy about. I’m back home again with my family, and while my sister’s eating habits may never change and the average menu in the house also didn’t change while I was away, I did. I looked at the average food in our house and decided to change it. I went to the farmer’s market, bought some excellent vegetables for fantastic prices (Tomatoes for 1.50 a kilo?! I think so!), and started cooking some of our dinner meals. My meals are healthy, colourful, and delicious, and you can imagine how pleased my mum was to get quality food without cooking. Healthy food doesn’t have to be boring, you know.

I love eating healthy, and you will too.There is a light at the end of the tunnel, just keep going!

Sleep like a Pro

by ~Jay-Cougar-Prints on deviantArt

I’ve always considered sleeping a skill. That is, a skill I didn’t have. Well over the past week or so I have been trying to change that and if you’re like me then maybe you should too.

For years of my life I have felt like I need to sleep for as much as 10 hours to be sufficiently awake and in good spirits, so for years I’ve woken up to alarms after those 9-10 hours sleep, pressed snooze a few times, and eventually rolled out of bed unhappily. At the end of each day though, I was suddenly less tired and actually falling asleep would take me about an hour. I had well and truly messed up my ability to sleep when actually, I had it all along.

One early morning I woke with no apparent reason for waking. No bathroom desperation, no nagging hunger, not even my noisy roommate! So I asked myself, Why am I awake, then? Surely I couldn’t have finished sleeping – not after so many years of feeling sleep deprived! But what can I say, I’m a curious critter, so I got up and made the decision to get up when I woke up in the morning.

Getting up when you first wake up can be hard in the beginning as your half-asleep self may not remember what you were striving towards, but don’t give up! You only need that little bit of consciousness to remember it, and much of the time you will – so GET UP! When I wake up now, I check the time, and as long as it isn’t 2am I will get up. Sometimes it is hard, you’re still lying in your warm and cosy bed and your eyes tempt you to close them again, so I put something to do next to me for these times. For days when the house is just too cold to draw me out of bed I at least have something to engage my brain and wake me up.

Getting up requires some self-discipline and some motivation, but I tell you it is worth it. No longer do I sleep for 10 hours, no longer do I press snooze buttons – In fact, No longer do I use my alarm! (Though one does exist for emergency oversleep, I’m usually awake an hour or so before it goes off) I just wake, and it only takes me 7-8 hours to wake naturally and is enough sleep for my whole day. When we interupt our sleep with alarms we could be trying to jolt ourselves out of deep sleep. I’m sure you have experienced days where getting out of bed was much easier than normal, and days where it was much, much harder. Those easy days were probably due to compatibility with your natural sleep cycle, that is, you were in the most shallow part of sleep anyway. Likewise when it was tremendously hard and made the rest of your day like hell on Earth, you were very likely in deep sleep. By completely skipping your need for an alarm all together you are only going to wake up in the shallow phase. That means a happier, more alert, healthier you.

Is your house Noisy? Perhaps get some earplugs so that pesky cat/child/neighbour doesn’t wake you up with their antics. I’m sharing a room with my sister for summer and had a noisy roommate in my apartment at uni too so I have some earplugs that work like a charm, and surprisingly don’t dig into my ears either! If you’re curious, these are what I am using. My Dad used to do shift work and when you sleep during the day with two teenage girls in the house, earplugs are a must! These ones were in the house unopened so I took them for my own use and they are great.

Try it. Get out of bed in the morning! I’ve been getting out of bed consistently for at least a week now and I am absolutely going to continue. Give it a go, what’s the worst that can happen?

Stretch your mind

I’ve been home a few days now and so far I’m loving it. Today I met one of my Mum’s friends – the obnoxiously loud one who has everything to say – and you know, I really like him. While it’s hard to get a word in edgewise, he is very educated and has a lot of knowledge. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a person with a lot of knowledge. He talked about everything from Linguistics (because he was so excited that I studied it and was trying to impart his knowledge of it onto me), to politics, economics and religion. People who stretch your mind are the best kind of people, so don’t resist them! You don’t have to agree or believe everything but take something and ponder on it, it will make you that little bit wiser. He has inspired my curiosity and reminded me of the importance of reading books, so I think I’ll go to the library tomorrow.

Good night, Kind readers. Stretch your mind and your world will grow.

Improve your relationships

If your life seems to be full of problems and problematic people, if your life seems to be full of harshness and unkindness then the time for reflection is upon you. The time has come that you sit down and review yourself, your life and the people in it.

Sometimes we can’t see what’s right in front of us simply because we are too close to it. Step back, sit down and open your eyes, try to see the world from a calm and un chaotic perspective, and try to see it from the eyes of your problem sources. If people are rude to you, perhaps you should review your behaviour towards them. Are you rude also? Or perhaps you aren’t directly rude but are stand-offish in posture and tone. Maybe you never even realised. One of my current missions is to stop saying and thinking mean things about other people. It’s not nice to them, and it’s not nice for you either. I find that being mean about others makes me feel more negative about myself. I pride myself on my ability to emapthise and connect with people, on my kindness and warmth so finding myself doing the opposite effects my self-respect. Likewise, people don’t often have much respect for people who come off as unkind.

I’ve met a lot of people in my life who have been cruel out of defence. When they felt as if someone might be judging them, they immediately said something unkind to them. It’s unfortunate, really, because after doing it for awhile people generally do make judgements about your character that reflect negatively on you. If people are rude to you and you’d like it to stop, try being nice. Try genuinely being kind to them and thinking of them in terms of their positive attributes, and if it doesn’t change anything, just try asking them about it and trying to understand their feelings. Some relationships can’t be mended – both people have to be on board and sometimes the hurt is too deep – but it’s worth a go. Improving the relationships in your life will make both of you happier and more at ease. Sometimes though, you meet someone who drains you of your spirit and energy and has no interest in improving things, these are the people that I’ve found should just be cut out of your lift altogether. Perhaps that sounds mean but it has served me well to cut out people who stress and drain me and I think it would help you too.

Sometimes we just have to get rid of things we can’t change. Be it a job, a house or a relationship improving or removing the stresses of your life will benefit not only you, but everyone you should happen to interact with on a daily basis. Improve or remove, a happier you is a happier world.

Creating Change – A Brand New Morning

Good morning world.

Regardless of your present time zone or which day, month or year it is as you are reading this, regardless of how long, hard or cruel your day has been, I still want you to consider this moment morning. Although morning is indeed considered to occur between the sun rising above the horizon and lasting until it is directly overhead at noon, even the dictionary agrees that morning is also “the first or early period of anything; beginning: the morning of life. ” Dictionary.com, I applaud your choice of example as this is just what I am getting at. It doesn’t matter what time it is or what you’ve been through, this moment is the beginning of the rest of your life. This moment is the only one you can do anything to change, it’s the only one you can act upon.

If you haven’t spoken to your family for a year but miss them dearly, the time is now, and if you’ve been intending to clean your house out but are daunting the task, the time is now. No one will do it for you. No one can change your life but you, and I promise you, there is no time like the present. Stop making excuses. Stop being afraid. Great things are never accomplished without some degree of risk. No, your family may not welcome you back with open arms, and no, cleaning your house out will not be a particularly fun task, but you can’t rekindle a relationship with no contact and you can’t sweep the past under a rug. You might have to do some things you don’t want to do. You might have to talk about why your parents hate your partner (and do try to be understanding, even if you may not agree) – you may even find they just want a simple apology – but you can’t fix what you won’t face.  And yes, when you clean out your home you may be reminded of painful memories, or you may have to clean up those vegetables that have been growing life at the back of your fridge for years.

If you’ve been wanting to change your life, what are you waiting for? No one can stop you from trying – except you. Choose to smile, choose to enroll in that class you’ve been looking at, choose to donate or throw out anything you don’t use, choose to do the volunteer work you’ve been intending to do for years. If you want something to happen, make it happen. It’s as simple as that.

The time for change is now, so what are you waiting for?