Finding Your Inner Sparkle: How to find your passion & get inspired!

Embrace Boredom 

Contrary to popular belief, boredom can be a catalyst for creativity. Allow yourself to be bored without distractions—put away your phone, turn off the TV, and let your mind wander. It's during these moments of idleness that your brain starts to make unexpected connections, leading to fresh ideas and perspectives.

Change Your Environment 

Sometimes, all you need to jumpstart your creativity is a change of scenery. Take a walk in nature, visit a local art gallery, or simply rearrange your workspace. By exposing yourself to new stimuli, you'll stimulate your brain and invite fresh ideas to flow.

Embrace Failure

Fear of failure can stifle creativity. Embrace the idea that failure is an essential part of the creative process. Give yourself permission to make mistakes and learn from them. Remember, even the most celebrated artists and inventors faced setbacks along the way. Embracing failure as a stepping stone to success will free you from self-imposed limitations and open up new avenues of exploration. 

Collaborate and Brainstorm

Creativity thrives in a collaborative environment. Seek out like-minded individuals or join a creative community where you can bounce ideas off one another. Engaging in brainstorming sessions can spark inspiration and push your creativity to new heights. Remember, two heads are often better than one!

I now I would like you to introduce you to one of my lovely friends called Vera Schröder! She always had the dream to paint and is now making her dream a reality as she got inspired by nature. And I'm very proud of her for doing that!! (If you read this Vera, hi haha) 

A bit more about her! At first she made a lot of realistic paintings, mostly animals, flowers and landscapes, but later on she decided to make abstract art. Abstract art is an expression of feelings, which gives her freedom. Nothing is right or wrong, she just follows her intuition. The art she makes is based on what inspires her, she uses the colors or textures and follows her feelings.

 

Vera works with lots of layers of paint and uses extensive color palettes. Her paintings are made with acrylics on large linen canvases. Vera Schröder creates mostly art series. All canvases in a series are based on a theme. They are all unique and different, but all connected with the theme through color, size and material. Her art is powerful, elegant, pure, energetic and dynamic.

Thanks for reading today's blog post! Don't forget to take a look at her website! It's called veraschroder.com. Have a lovely day!! 😌

My Goals for 2024!

Hello everyone! I hope you had a lovely Christmas and a good start of the new year! I can still remember years ago thinking 2024 sounds already so far into the future aha.. and now it's suddenly here! It's been a while since I have written something on my little corner on the internet here and now that I have a few days of holiday left, I thought why not write something here. Today I would love to share with you my goals for 2024, because I love making goals and having a vision in mind of things I want to accomplish in the future. I'll also write down a few tips on how to achieve them if you find it a bit difficult, so no worries. It really is all about getting the most out of yourself and learning something new. When goals are going to feel like it's something you have to do and they feel like work, it probably will not work anymore. That's usually the case for me! 🙈 So, most importantly, goals shouldn't feel like an obligation. With that in mind, let's get right to it! 

My Top 4 Goals for 2024: 

1. More walks on the beach. I love going for long walks in nature. Can be anything from the forest, to the dunes or the beach. Especially on days when there's no wind you can just hear the waves crash on the sand and it really has a calming and meditative effect. I usually go quite often with a friend who often visits Noordwijk and shares my passion for this (Sanne if you're reading this hi haha!😌). And of course my boyfriend Bjorn is also a lovely +1 for a walk! 🥰
2. Do 10 min daily stretches for splits. For years I've been wanting to do the splits but just haven't had the patience for it to be honest.. But this year I'm going to make it happen. I feel like what's important is that even though you skip a day, it's okay and just continue the next day with your goal if it requires something daily. What matters is that you do something, and eventually you'll create a habit. So even if it starts with 10 min each weekend, you'll slowly get to the daily habit of it if that's your goal, so don't be too hard on yourself. Now that I'm writing this here, in a few months I'll have to provide proof of my progress with a blog post about it. 😉
3. Start sewing clothes as a new hobby. My mother when she was younger used to sew clothes for barbies and pillows and clothes for me. I would love to buy a sewing machine and start to design and experiment with different fabrics. Think I'll start small because I have no experience and have never done it, by making tiny fabrics and clothes for dolls or barbies and from there maybe t-shirts or bigger clothes with more fabric.
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5. Setting boundaries. Setting boundaries isn't always easy and I feel like it's really the foundation of ourselves. If you don't set boundaries, people will walk all over you and at any point in life, no matter how young or old you are, you're still learning and adapting. It's something I want to work on and think it's a beautiful thing to realise: 'this is my boundary and no further.' It can be anything from saying yes to too many work related assignments etc. Say no on time and explain why and people will most often have understanding for it. Be assertive. If you want something ask. If you don't want something, let people know and explain. Easier said than done of course but.. In the end, not setting clear boundaries will lead to not only disappointing others in the long run, but also disappointing yourself! 
   
6. Do something each month I fear. So I really believe that in order to grow you should sometimes step outside of your comfort zone and do things you normally wouldn't necessarily do. So this month I'll have to do a debate for my study. It's part of an oral exam and it's something completely out of my comfort zone. I see it as something challenging but also something that can help me grow because of my fear for it. 

How to Achieve your Goals? 

"If the plan doesn't work, change the plan, not the goal."

This is my favorite quote! I've had many times that I had a goal in mind but, and I was doubting whether this is not a goal or thing for me to accomplish. But.. I learned with time and realised more and more that sometimes it's better to change the way you're aiming to achieve your goal, instead of quitting your goal all together. Think of new strategies and ways you can incorporate and doing a bit of self-reflection why you think it's currently not working. Does it have to do with your lifestyle? Is it too much? Or too little and not pushing yourself enough? 

Also, working on your mindset can maybe really help you with achieving something. I learned that thinking not like your glass is half empty but instead is half full with lead to a more positive outcome and will really help with achieving something. You'll stay motivated longer! Keep in mind that also the journey towards your goal is just as important as the end goal reaching it itself. In life, sometimes we tend to go from achievement to achievement, and that's okay of course. However, life is more than just reaching goals. It's also about enjoying the journey you're on towards reaching it, and realising that you're improving every single day is beautiful in itself. Because that work is done by no one else but YOU!:)   

Should I plan? It's a question that I asked myself and the answer is, it depends I would say. If you're someone who works better by having made a schedule, then definitely go for it. If you goal is to be able to do 50 squats without break by the end of this month, than you can write and make a schedule that gradually increases how many squats you'll do and how often. If you're someone who works better having no schedule and have more flexibility, than you can write down very flexible ranges of how many squats you aim to do this week and the week after etc. 

Set the timeframe you have for your goal and make it realistic. In the end, choose something that's doable and that you can gradually ease into. And don't forget to reward yourself. Depending on how long you have to achieve your goal, reward yourself with something small. 

And I'm reaching the end of this blog post! Thank you very much for reading. I really appreciate your time and hope to see you next time for another blog post. Have a lovely evening!! xx Isabel