Happiness

Happiness, what a big, yet unspecific word, isn’t it?

What does happiness mean? What does it mean for you? That’s what I wondered when I was out for a walk. On a sunny, warm and absolutely beautiful day. I just came back and here I am writing this blog post.

There’s however way more to happiness than a sunny day, at least this is what I think. Because we mustn’t make our happiness dependant on external factors. Instead we really should find happiness within us. External factors, such as a sunny day, can then even intensify our happiness, however a rainy day won’t have any impact on us, as we are happy from the inside out. The same applies to other peoples’ behaviours. When you are happy, no one will be able to get you out of this zone. Sure, it might make you sad or angry at times, nevertheless your inner state of happiness won’t change.

Find happiness within you.

I’ve almost always been what I would have called happy. What I experienced though in the last couple of years and really strongly since Dec ’17 is that there are different levels of happiness. Now, I’m not saying you should generally question your level of happiness, but I noticed for myself that my happiness increased dramatically over that period of time.

In order to write this article, I reflected more intensively and wondered why this is. And the one thing that kept coming back to me was I reconnected with myself.

Reconnect with yourself.

So, maybe your level of happiness is worth a second thought?

Now that I’ve reconnected with myself, I just feel so aligned, so full of energy, so authentic, so me, so Nina! It’s such a beautiful feeling, hard to describe, but it feels like flying, like being a breeze in the wind, light like a feather.

I want to dance and jump (hence the pic!). I smile and people are smiling back at me. I want to hug the entire world. That’s what happiness feels like to me.

For me, being connected with myself means living aligned with my true self. Living according to my values and by my own terms. Being authentic. Being myself.

Live aligned with your true self.

How do I know?

I’ve gone through the process of feeling disconnected with myself. From realising that I want a change in life, over questioning and reflecting the status quo of my life, to defining what I actually want from my life (personally and professionally). It’s still an ongoing process of reflection, trial & error and growth, but I managed to get back to me and to reconnect with myself.

I just know that you can do that, too.

Yes, it might be out of your comfort zone, it might be daunting and a bit of work, but if you’ve only had 1 second reading this, thinking, oh my…, then there’s something inside you that wants to be heard, looked at and changed to the positive. Trust me.

The connection with yourself, your true self and your beautiful soul will lead you on a journey to happiness. It is a journey that starts from inside, it is your inner journey.

Being on your inner journey and reconnecting with yourself will lead you the way to happiness.

Yours, Nina

PS: Please comment below or get in touch with me directly if you want to share your feelings, thoughts and current level of happiness. I cannot imagine anything more beautiful to guide you to your full happiness. Love love love for you.

 

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Bursting knots

I already sensed last year that I’m on a good way to reveal my true self. To get really close to myself, to the person I really want to be, living the life I really want to live.

Now, this of course didn’t come overnight or by coincidence. No. I’ve dedicated a lot of my time to my personal growth. I’ve started working with a spiritually inspired life coach a year ago, I invested more time in Instagram to connect with like-minded people, to learn from them and to pass on my experiences, too. I started this blog. I went to a workshop from one of the top motivation trainers in Germany, Christian Bischoff. I listened to various podcasts about personal development. I read various books. I practiced yoga to strengthen my body and to quieten my mind. I started meditating on a regular basis. I started journalling in my pink notebook more actively again. I implemented a daily gratitude practice. I went to networking events. I arranged meetings with interesting and fascinating people outside of these networking events.

In summary, my personal growth, self-love and creating my vision has been key to me and still is.

Just because I’m writing the above in past tense, does not mean that any of these activities are completed though. No, the contrary is true and I tell you why.

On my way to where I’m now – a much happier, lighter, more positive, more saying yes to life Nina – I’ve been facing quite a few obstacles. Emotional breakdowns, tears, fights (with myself and others), ‘lost’ relationships, frustration, procrastination, sadness, fears, to only name a few. It is not the easiest of all ways to really dig deeper into personal development and spiritual growth. It’s not easy to reflect yourself so intensively, to question existing relationships, to question existing behaviours, to ask yourself what it is you really want, what it is you really need and especially what it is you really want from life and I mean from the bottom of your heart.

What do you really want from life from the bottom of your heart?

The process described above requires you to look at your life first, to be ready to change, to tidy up, to break habits in order to set yourself free, for the life that you want!

I can’t mark the day when my development exactly started, but for me, it’s probably the day when I had my breakthrough in Mexico. And this breakthrough was a feeling. That I want to change something in my life. That I want way more from life than what I had up until then. That I have so much more potential to live the life of my dreams. It was simply a feeling that my story is only just starting. If you are at a similar point in your life, and you are wondering about the feelings you are feeling, I can only tell you to feel them, to let them be there, not to judge them and to just go with the flow.

Flow for me means to follow my heart, to increasingly switch off my head, my mind, my thoughts, which usually want to keep us in our comfort zone, away from risks, away from any potential trouble. Our heart on the contrary leads us the way outside of our comfort zone. But this means risks, unknown circumstances, something new.

Stepping outside of our comfort zone, however, is where the growth is.

You need to be brave enough to step out of your comfort zone and you will only do that, when the pain around the current situation is too big to just hang in there. From my experience, especially in the last 2 years, I can only recommend you to keep going, to believe in what you stand for and to just run with it.

It will be all worth it, trust me! Here’s why I’m so convinced about this. Because now, all the seeds that I have been sowing in the last years, are starting to come into fruition. All the time and effort I’ve invested into my personal development and my projects, are now starting to pay off. Knots are bursting. This year 2018 is my year. I just know it and I already felt it coming on 31st December 2017, when I felt so content and happy that I wanted to hug the entire world.

Knots are bursting.

When my knots started bursting from the inside out, like limiting beliefs, restrictions I’ve imposed on myself and a lack of self-confidence in certain areas of my life, eventually things started happening for me. Things shifted. Opportunities arose out of ‘nowhere’, but these opportunities did not come from nowhere. They came from me, my efforts, and my sowing. They were the universe’s way to say Thank You for my consistent sowing.

Keep sowing consistently.

Of course, I had fall outs too, where I lacked motivation, where I was tired, where I couldn’t get out of bed, where I forgot why I’m actually doing this, when I thought why on earth am I on this way, why is this so hard, why do I do this. And yet again: I would always do it again.

Why? To set free. To live my dream life on the highest energy level imaginable, spreading love and positivity into this world.

Here’s to love.

Yours, Nina

 

 

Perception

Do you love what you do?

In order to explore this question in more detail, I went to a workshop hosted by Do Work You Love. The workshop was about visualising my dream job as part of my dream life as well as planning the first action steps to achieve this goal.  This process was supported by a big poster named Canvas, comprising information and knowledge from different areas, such as personal development, business development, coaching and psychology.

The canvas looks at different areas in your life, such as

• Who do you want to be in the future? How do you want to live?
• Which role does the job play in your life?
• How does the job need to be in order to achieve self-realisation and to use your skills and strengths accordingly?
• What are your immediate next steps in order to get closer to your dream job and dream life?

After an introduction of all 8 participants, we teamed up in pairs of 2 to become sparring partners or dream life buddies for the next 6 weeks in order to support each other, but also to challenge each other on our visualisations. We worked on the Canvas for 2.5 hours by talking about our dreams and by asking each other questions. When the workshop was about to end, we did a final round to talk about our experiences during and after the workshop. When it was my turn to talk, I said something like “Well, my topics seem to repeat themselves, and I don’t seem to make much progress. I feel like I’ve been working on the same stuff for a while now.” When I shared this with my workshop buddies, they clarified – against my own perception – that I actually made progress and that topics didn’t repeat themselves, but that I developed them and moved them into a new dimension (e.g. more frequent, bigger etc.). The workshop organiser listed the ‘projects’ I had already started and that I was currently working on. It was only then that I realised how much I had already achieved in 2017, but that I didn’t give myself enough credit for it. I didn’t acknowledge my achievements sufficiently. Just to give you a few examples: I currently do my yoga teacher training, I hold yoga classes on a regular basis for friends and friends of friends, I have launched my blog, I have established an Instagram account called ninaspinknotes and only recently I have set up a fan page on Facebook for the same account. I read books about yoga and personal development, I listen to podcasts and I network with people to seek and give inspiration.

Hence, how can I say that I’m not making any progress? I’ve learned the following from this workshop and the feedback, thank you!!!

There may be a discrepancy between self-perception and perception of others.

Acknowledge yourself, your progress and your achievements.

After this workshop, I decided I wanted to go a step further concerning self-perception versus perception of others. I wanted to understand how I’m perceived by other people, and to reflect on what I like or dislike about the results, to understand discrepancies between self-perception and perception of others and to confirm my strengths whilst working on my perceived weaknesses. So, I used a questionnaire from the workshop and sent it to friends, family and acquaintances. It holds questions about associations with me, about emotions felt, which colour/animal or furniture I could be and what I could do more or less of. I gave people about 1 week time to get back to me and up until now I have received 20 responses.

The feedback was lovely, interesting and touching. Luckily, there was a good match on my strengths and potential for improvement, which means I am pretty well aware and have a good self-perception, yay. However, I also received a few comments that I wanted and needed to understand in a bit more detail, so I can make sense of it. A few comments to work on in the future, as they repeat themselves. And some comments to simply take note of.

Obviously I am me, with all my experiences, emotions, feelings, character and personality, and it’s not like I will become a new person based on the feedback received, but I think it’s essential to reflect on ourselves in order to grow, to improve. Hence, my path of self-reflection included being brave by asking others for their honest and direct feedback, but at the same time to trust my intuition. . This means that I can make use of my strengths even more, just by having moved them more into my conscious mind, and to be more aware of my ‘weaknesses’ or things to do less. At the end of the day, it’s like Anais Nin says:

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Everybody sees the world through their own filter, and very often we are mirrored by other people. For example, if we dislike something about another person or we get annoyed about someone’s behaviour, we most likely hold this characteristic within us, too. Or it could be something we’d like to have, hence the annoyance about someone else having it or living it. If criticism gets to us, then we should probably think about the reasons why, because it is very likely it has got to do with us. If that is the case, we can and should solve this limiting belief for us first, as otherwise we will always doubt our capabilities. Once we have solved these limiting beliefs within us though, we are free, we feel good and we can simply enjoy…life!

Yours, Nina