Month: January 2019

“All of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than others.”

Last week I got to see one of the most AMAZING people in the world perform on stage-Cher. She was amazing, sassy and everything you could ever expect… at 72 years old… 72! She was dancing, singing, skipping… I don’t care how much money you have or how many surgeries you have had, none of that would help a 72 year old Keep their energy level so high for the entire show!

I stumbled upon the quote for this post… and it reminded me that we really do forget how much of our lives we can control, how often we get down and beat ourselves up.

Hate and fear are two powerful forces of darkness, Hate for situations that you find yourself in, hate for your body, hate for others,fear of persecution, fear of letting others down… fear of standing out and being disliked. Fear for standing up for what you believe in. Hating someone else doesn’t make you a better person, hating someone for what they believe in doesn’t make you right or make them wrong, vocalizing your hate doesn’t make you any stronger or a bigger person.

Hate and fear are not only external factors that play with your emotions but also internal factors that we do to ourselves…i for one know that fear of letting people down makes me worry and stress so much, I hate things about my appearance… and I let these negative feelings control my day. But really… by doing this I am just creating a negative opinion of myself that I am turning into… negative breeding negative, I find myself thinking more negative thoughts on the days that I feel down… but am I just “inventing” myself.

Every day when you get up, remember you are lucky to be alive, you have air in your lungs and blood in your veins. For every cliche saying, they have some truth behind them. You never know what day could be your last, you never know when you could lose someone you love. Love is a wonderful feeling to share, Love makes the world turn… If we all loved a bit more, we would all probably be in a better place.

I love the fact I laugh a lot, I love my family and friends… I love that I noticed my first few wrinkles at thirty years old and they are from smiling and laughing so much. I love that so far 2019 is proving to be filled with adventures and I love that I started this blog.

If we spend more time thinking positive things that we love about ourselves maybe that’s who we will create, maybe we will push the hate in this messed up world to one side… and show that Love really can win. But it takes all of us doing that. Stopping the negative… stopping beating ourselves up and start loving yourself. No matter your age, have the imagination you had when you were a child and be the adult you wanted to grow into.

Cher is 72 years old… at 72 I hope that I can look back at my life and say “wow, that was one hell of a ride, let’s see where the next mountain leads”

The 3 F words

Now I know what some people will think when they hear the “F word”… but thats not what I want to talk about. I am talking about “Food, Faith and Forgiveness”

This last weekend I had the great honor of accompanying a friend to a Thai Buddhist Temple where on Sundays they host a Market. The Wat Mongkolratanaram Buddhist Temple is located in Tampa, about an hour away from me, this was my first trip to a Thai Buddhist temple.

The Sunday market is an amazing experience filled with tastes and smells that can only be described as mind blowing. From khao tom mat (a delicious sticky rice and wanna dessert wrapped in a banana leaf) to the aroma of the curries and pad Thai station. The flavors were enough to transport my taste buds the nine thousand odd miles to Thailand. Every. Single. Thing. I ate was incredible. I was happy dancing my way through all the food. Sadly some things I ate before I could take a photo…oops.

Between the multiple trips to buy food, we visited the temple, that brings me to the second “F word”… Faith.

The feeling of being in such a sacred location is truly humbling, I am very open minded with faith, I will never judge someone based on what they believe and who or what they worship. There are 4200 religions across the globe… THAT IS CRAZY. But true faith is so powerful, it helps people deal with their lives, gives them hope and leads them to bettering themselves. How is that a bad thing?… now of course there are extremists, but that is not what I am here to talk about. In my eyes everyone deserves respect and everyone, no matter your background can learn so much from one anothers faiths and beliefs.

Love and kindness is pretty universal. Sadly we missed hearing the monks chanting (thats on the list for the next trip), but I witnessed multiple people entering the temple to pray. There was a grandmother who was teaching her grandson (who was maybe 3 years old) how to pray. He was absorbing every word she was saying and copying her every move, it was clear he idolized her.

During our time in the temple there was a guest speaker who was giving a general overview of the Thai Buddhist religion, he was very focused on Forgiveness, and how practicing forgiveness is better for your mental health, it prevents you from holding onto negative energy and any ill will you could feel towards someone else.

Which if you really think about it, we all do this, when someone upsets us or wrongs us… we hold onto it, we don’t forgive and forget we focus on it and that can really bring us down. It was something I had never thought about. How many times did I find myself in a bad mood because of someone else actions and behavior? how often did I let this have a knock on effect this have for the rest of my day?

Forgivness shouldn’t only be something we do for others… but it should be something we practice on ourselves, we should forgive ourselves for our past…forgive ourselves for the negative things that have happened and move on. We are not the same person we were back then, every moment teaches us something… any mistakes we make should be forgiven.

Let go of the negative and treat yourself with the Love, kindness and respect… find joy in every day and spread that to everyone you interact with.

Control what you can control.

Somedays really suck…like the days when you freezer water line has been leaking under your hardwood floor.

Two days ago I woke up to a squelching kitchen floor… and immediately my mind went into over drive… and it’s been that way since. I am exhausted, I am drained I am beaten down. Sometimes in life it seems that there is one giant turd after another being piled on top of us and you know what… it’s exhausting.

That is how I have felt recently… no matter how many little good things seem to happen then some poop comes flying. Today I woke up at 8am… and laid in bed covering my head in my pillows pretending the outside world doesn’t exist… all that mattered was in that bed with me. Everything outside of it was irrelevant.

I know this is no way to live, because it’s not living it’s just surviving and surviving isn’t what I want to do, I want to explore and be excited for what the day brings. But today… was not that day. I wasted too many hours just laying there wallowing away in self pity when I really do have great things going on in my life.

Why do we let one bad thing bring us down? Why does one giant (stinky) turd have to mess up how we feel? For some of us it is a struggle to get moving some days…. most days you just want to sit in a blanket fort and never leave. But there are great things out side of the fort… that’s what I am trying to focus on.

A wise soul reminds me daily to control what you can control. I can’t change the past, I can’t change what happened but I can control how I handle what happens next. I can try and choose how I handle my emotions and I can try and force myself out from my fort. You have to take each day one day at a time. But the good things in life should always see you trough. The clique find the light in the dark and walk towards it.

Today that light is minimal… but come hell or high water I am crawling my way towards it.

Home.

That four letter word has so many meanings tied to it. Is it a physical house? A town? A country? Or just that feeling of knowing you are where you are supposed to be… knowing that you are loved and supported for being you.

People often wish to go back home… but what does that really mean? Can you ever really go back? Or are you trying to go back to that feeling of “home”, the memories of “home”.

For me personally home is where I feel loved, safe and valued. My family is spread across the world but home is the word I use to describe where I live but also where my parents live…. I have never actually spent a night in the house with them but because that is where they live that is my home.

I know for some, Home is just a memory… something they can’t touch anymore but those memories still count, that smell of fresh baked bread, your mums perfume or that smell of engine dirt that your dad’s jacket smelt like, no matter how often it was washed. I have had many houses that we lived in that I considered home, but really home shouldn’t be attached to a physical building, it should be something you can carry with you, because what ever your age is, what ever you have been through… you still need that feeling of coming home.

If you can close your eyes and imagine a family dinner, cooking in the kitchen with loved ones or just movie nights with friends on the sofa… that feeling is home.

Home is where you matter, where your voice matters and where you are welcome with a hug. Home doesn’t have to be something tied to blood relatives, home is what you make it. Never forget that.

What makes you the most happy?

Hows that for a title… now I can’t claim I thought of that one on my own, the inspiration for this post comes from my favorite book of 2018 “Not afraid of the fall” by Kyle James. 

If you are looking for a book to feed the wanderlust, I highly recommend it. Ash and Kyle take a life changing trip together through 38 cities in 15 countries. READ IT.

Anyway, Kyle mentions that wouldn’t asking “What makes you the most happy?” it be a better ice breaker instead of “What do you do?”. It really made me think… what in life makes me the most happy? its most definitely a thought provoking question and if you really want to catch someone off guard I highly recommend asking it.

When I think about what makes me the most happy of course the list includes my partner, family, friends and my adorable pup. Diving deeper into it I realized that food takes a major part in what makes me happy… not just any food but exciting, tasty, adventurous food. Food from different cultures all over the world…the kind of flavors that hit our tongue and you can’t help but let out a small “mmmm”. There is so much passion in that moment, that first bite of something new, its truly electric.

Another thing that makes me happy would be taking photos, of everything…everywhere. I have over 30 thousand photos on my phone at the current moment. most of which are not of anything special but when I look at them to thin them out… I remember the exact moment I took the image and can’t bring myself to delete it. Photos really capture a moment that will never happen again, that exact millisecond of time where every element is perfect (or not even perfect). Every photo tells a story, I know its cliche to say every photo is worth a thousand words but sometimes there is that photo that leaves you speechless with out a word to describe it…both are mind blowing in their own ways. If the photo makes you smile or brings you to tears, there is so much emotion you can convey with a single photo.

In an ideal world I would travel the world with my parter and pup taking photos and eating EVERY kind of food that is out there. Visiting every corner of the globe and seeing the world through my own eyes…Thats the dream right there.

Wouldn’t the world be a wonderful place if we all could do what made us happy… So thats my question for the day “What makes you the most happy?”