The Countdown

This is my last week at home.

Soon I will be off on another adventure and on my way home to the love of my life. Needless to say, the act of leaving home is full of emotions. I will miss my family. I’ll miss quiet moments at my favorite beach spots and being able to walk barefoot all year round. But soon I’ll be seeing my best friend, then wearing jackets and scarves, learning a new language and way of life, and most importantly cuddling with the man that makes my heart sing.

I’ll be a little quiet on this blog in the next coming weeks, but I have ideas that are brewing and a heart full of wanderlust close to exploding.

(Image is of my bedroom at home which I will soon be leaving behind)

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How To Create A Positivity Journal

I am a journal addict.
I have a journal for every reason you could imagine— lists, notes, diary entries, story ideas, and so on. I love to take notes and keep memories alive on the page. I also like to use the written word to help me focus, motivate myself, and inspire myself to reach my goals.

One of my favorite journal projects is my positivity journal.
I use this journal to write down my goals, dreams, affirmations, self-love reminders, and other positivity prompts that help me stay focused, motivated, and feeling good.
If I ever find myself discouraged about reaching my goals, I like to pull it out and reflect on how far I’ve come and reaffirm the positive things in my life.
I think there is something about seeing your dreams and accomplishments on the page that helps to keep it all in perspective.

Here is the layout of my personal positivity journal.

MANIFESTATION

Self: What are some things that you want to accomplish in regards to yourself? This is all about ways that you would like to improve yourself as a person, or to focus on who you want to be.
My example: “I will love myself”

Health: I am personally a rather unhealthy person, both physically and mentally. Sometimes dealing with my health can feel too overwhelming. So I set goals and intentions for where I want to be in my health journey.
My example: “I will reach a healthy place with my body and body image”

Family: My family is very dysfunctional, but also very important to me, so I set intentions for how I will handle the family dynamic and how I can bring positivity to it.
My example: “I will make my family proud”

Relationships: By this I mean all of the relationships in my life— romantic, platonic, work related; any and all relationships that I have with others.
My example: “I will accept that some days I cannot give as much to this relationship, and remember that there are days when I can give more”

Career: These are career goals that I am truly focused on achieving through hard work and dedication— but I don’t think some manifestation would hurt.
My example: “I will have my writing published and positively acknowledged”

GRATITUDE

Moments from the past year that made me feel thankful: Most of these for me revolved around little magical things that happened unexpectedly that made me smile.
My example: “A good friend came back into my life when I really needed some support”

Little kindnesses: These are little things that the people around me did to brighten my life. Being thankful has a lot of sources, but I find that when you are surrounded by the right people, there is so much to be thankful for.
My example: “When my friend gave me a hand-made gift”

Successes: I’m the sort of person who finds it easier to focus on my faults and losses than my successes. That is why I have a section in my positivity journal for this, though it falls between gratitude and self love.
My example: “ I went on a trip to Europe and really grew into myself”

SELF LOVE & HAPPINESS

Reasons to love yourself: Sometimes I need a reminder that I’m not some terrible human being.
My example: “You always do the best that you can in life”

Good things that you’ve done for others recently: This may seem a little self centered, but sometimes it is good to remind yourself of the effect that you have on others.
My example: “Gave a book to a fellow poetry lover”

Things that make you happy: I like to look at this list when I’m feeling down and even that makes me feel a little happier.
My example: “Books, the ocean, leaning new things, seeing someone reading a book that I love, deep discussions, remembering my dreams after I’ve woken up…” (and many others)

Things that you should do more to make you happy: This sort of ties in with the prompt before it, but focuses more on the actions of happiness. What specifically can you actively do to promote more happiness and positivity in your own life?
My example: “Go to the ocean, visit farmer’s markets, try new foods, believe people when they compliment me…”

Things you should do less to improve your happiness: I often have a tendency to do things that I don’t really want to do but either feel obligated to do or can’t help but to do… and who has got time for those sorts of things?
My example: “Putting myself down”

Acts of self love and self improvement that you’ve accomplished recently: This is a big one for me because I tend to just put self love on the back burner.
My example: “Going to therapy regularly”

POSITIVITY

Philosophies to remember in times of distress: These include thoughts or quotes and reminders that the world isn’t a terrible place (all the time).
My example: “Every time that you put something good out into the world there is just a little less room for the bad”

Notes and reminders: These are random thoughts and notes to keep me feeling positive.
My example: A note from a friend who was thanking me for buying her a book for our book club

There is no one way to make a positivity journal.
I actually plan to expand mine for this new year, so if you have any ideas for how to improve and expand a positivity journal, drop them in the comments!

Sending good vibes out to you all!

Image is of a page out of my positivity journal, accompanied by my 2019 motivation journal and Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way Every Day: A Year of Creative Living”.

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Creating a Postitive Life~ Thoughts From a Former Pessimist

If you talked to the right person, they may say that I am a notorious cynic, others may just say pessimist. I like the term realist. (There’s not really a wrong answer here.)

I also have a bit of an issue with depression, and anxiety, and a few other things that make it a little bit harder for me to see the good in things than the average person. I let that dictate not just my moods but my entire outlook on life and myself for a long time. I felt trapped, unworthy, and uninteresting. I figured that I was living the life I deserved, because I didn’t believe that I deserved much at all.

When I look back at myself six months ago, it’s not difficult to see why I felt that way, but now being back in a similar place in life— outwardly— I’m amazed by how far away I am from that state of mind.

What changed? How did I manage to go from being a life-long, self-declared realist ( ie: pessimist) to at least making my best effort to embrace each day? Of course it took a lot of effort, but there are some methods, tools, and people that have propelled me into changing my lifestyle and outlook on life. Here are a few of them:

Invest In Yourself

This was the biggest one for me. Between planning obsessively for the future, trying to make it from paycheck to paycheck, and rocketing between being way too busy to vastly not busy enough, I realized that I was not investing any time, money, or energy in things that I really wanted for me. When I say “invest”, I mean that I needed to make more of an effort to put myself forward. Yes, it’s important to work, show up for your friends, and buy your toilet paper, but it can be a little too easy to fall into the hole of doing that, and just that.

For me, investing in myself meant asking myself what I actually want in life and how I plan to get it. It meant having to turn down some invitations to social events (introvert here— I need massive quantities of recharge time), not grasping onto my job (which I did love by the way) for the sake of a sense of security, and making a very active effort to make time for myself (in my case, alone time to create and think in peace and silence). Of course I should mention that it also took a four month trip abroad for me to allow myself the mental space to accept a few things— you’re capable, you’re worthy, and look at you, you’re actually sort of interesting!

Spend (Quiet) Time Alone

Okay, so I may be biased here and this also sort of rides off of commandment one up there, but seriously, I think some time spent alone is one of the most healing, productive things that a human being can do. Just sitting with your thoughts can be a wonderful thing, or if you’re like me, it can go very wrong and send you into overthinking, “the world is crumbling around me and nothing means anything anyway” territory. This is where I find things like reading, studying, and especially meditation so wonderfully useful.

I love reading in my silent moments because I feel that I am always growing from it. Especially as someone interested in writing, I find even my deep dives into fictional worlds a useful and enlightening experience as it inspires my own work. No matter who you are or what your interests may be, there is a book out there for you. Or if you are a very hands on person, crafting, gardening, or building something can be therapeutic, especially because at the end of the day you will have a visual representation of the time that you spent with yourself.

Find Your Spirituality

Let me preface this with the fact that I am very actively non-religious. I simply cannot find it within myself to believe in anything enough to adhere to a set of rules or laws that dictate my beliefs. That being said, I do think that it’s super important to get in touch with yourself. Not so much who you are to the world, but who you really are, to you. There’s no science exact enough to truly pinpoint that effervescent element that is you. Personality, temperament, nature vs nurture— these things play significant roles, but cannot explain away some of the finer-tuned pieces of who we really are and what makes us that way. That is why I think it is important to try to get in touch with whatever that really is. I consider this a form of spirituality. To me, spirituality essentially means a search for something bigger than ourselves and/or something within ourselves. I do not think this is mandatory to produce a more positive outlook on life, but I do think that it really helps, and it did help me.

As far as spiritual practices, meditation is suggested by everyone as a useful tool for centering yourself and creating peace, and that’s because it’s true! I think what may turn many people away from meditation is the idea that they need to completely empty their mind. As a very introspective person with about 73 mental tabs open at a time, at all hours of every day, I understand why this would seem daunting, and it is the exact reason why I did not try meditation sooner. But the truth is, unless you are trying to reach Nirvana or are pursuing a very narrow or intentional spiritual path, meditation doesn’t have to be so serious. For example, I meditate for about five to ten minutes a day, wherever I am, whenever I can find that moment of peace and silence. (In my household five minutes is seriously pushing it sometimes.) When I meditate I know I cannot completely silence the “monkey brain”, it is simply outside of my nature, and spirituality should be the very essence of your nature. That is why I focus on certain images, particularly the elements. As I feel very in touch with the cardinal elements— wind, water, fire, and earth— I focus on images from my own mental archives. Of course you need to be careful not to let this become a rumination session, so maybe stay clear of memories and people or situations and focus on things “outside” of your own day to day life.

Make a List of Easy to Accomplish Goals, Daily

I am a sucker for list making. I have lists of lists to make, it’s practically an illness. That aside, I do believe that setting easy goals for yourself daily really does help build a sense of accomplishment. And the feeling of manually crossing them off a list creates a little bump in those feel good hormones (unless I’m just super weird, in which case ignore this). This also helps for when you begin to feel like you are not moving forward in life. You can look back at your lists and have visual proof that you are making progress, even if you can’t see the effects of it in your day to day life (yet!)

Try to Find One Good Thing in Each Day

This one used to be very, very hard for me. I simply could not see anything positive in my daily life. I hated everything around me, found everything ugly, and saw no good reason to get out of bed. Of course, some of this was depression, but some of it was just a result of a narrow life view. The cure for me was finding myself somewhere where everything really was beautiful and inspiring (looking at you Italy), but also seeing my wonder through the eyes of dear friends who could share in the small, beautiful moments. So even if you can’t take a trip out of your hometown, maybe go somewhere you haven’t before, or spend time with someone who sees things differently from you. It may help to crack that third eye open just a little bit and let some extra light in.

Surround Yourself with Inspiring People

As an introvert, this was very difficult for me as well, but I am happy to say that I have a few wonderful friends who constantly inspire and uplift me in ways I often feel I don’t even deserve (yeah, I’m still working on that one). Being around— even if it’s only digitally— people who share your interests, passions, and a drive for self improvement and learning is some of the best soul medicine that I can imagine. I am so thankful for those people in my life. If making friends isn’t really an option, there are loads of people online who make it their living to inspire and uplift others. It may sound silly, but even a few minutes of listening to a motivational speaker each day can completely change your point of view. Between the depths of YouTube, podcasts, and self help/motivational books and their audiobook counterparts, you are sure to find some words to brighten your day.

I hope that you find some of these insights useful.
I am so new to living in a positive state of mind that I almost feel silly writing this, but if it can give someone the motivation that they need to open up to a more positive lifestyle, then I am beyond pleased! If you have any other ideas for how to create a positive life feel free to comment them below!

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Welcome, New Year: Staying Inspired and Motivated

One of my favorite parts of each year is the end. No matter how wonderful or terrible the year has been, I am always pulled into the allure of a new page, a blank slate, or a fresh start. I understand that time is a construct and that the year is a wheel that keeps on turning over and over, but there is something undeniably exciting for me about making new year’s resolutions and challenging myself to make little changes in my life. Maybe it’s just because it gives me an excuse to be optimistic— I’m the sort of person who often needs one— or because I feel that there is something magical about so many people across the world coming together in some small way through the act of trying to manifest change, even if they are little personal ones.

2018 was a wonderful year for me. I changed my lifestyle, checked things off my bucket list, and yes, achieved some of my resolutions for the year. I also got inspired for the coming year, and had an opportunity to reflect on my year and actually see how much I grew.

While this blog has been largely travel based, I also want to produce content that inspires others in little ways, and encourages them to be creative and stay motivated. I thought I would share some of my ideas for building resolutions and motivation for the new year.

Here are some of the lists and projects that I use and ways that I try to stay motivated for the coming year:

Reflect

What am I grateful for?
What were the best moments from this year?
What were the worst moments— and how did I grow from them?
What did I learn this year?
How did I change for the better?
List of favorites— favorite film, book, podcast, etc., from the year (I like to be able to look back on these later— it kind of helps put the year in perspective)

Maybe some of these will blend into each other, depending on your year, but I always find some reason to add another sub-list (because I just really like making lists).

Goal Setting and Future Planning

Resolutions: These are of course things that I attempt to incorporate or remove from my life.
I think the important thing about making resolutions is making them feasible.

For example, I want to become vegan, but I know that cutting out all animal products at once will only turn me off to the idea and make me hungry— so I plan to begin by eating more plant based meals, becoming vegetarian, and eventually building up a knowledge and stash of resources over the course of the year to help me comfortably reach my goal.

Start and Stop Lists: This ties into what the majority of resolution lists will have, but can be used more specifically for habits and lifestyle choices. I also like to make a “Continue” list to help encourage myself to continue good behaviors, even when my new habits may clutter my mind space.

For example, I want to start making time to write every single day, and stop biting my nails.

A Year From Now: This is a rather popular exercise and I love doing it. You make a list (and sometimes a doodle) of yourself in this moment (the beginning of the new year), and then make a companion list of where you want to be in life in one year’s time.

For example, right now I live in Hawaii, and by the end of the year I want to be living in Europe.

Timelines: These can be rather daunting for some and encouraging for others. Sometimes it is nice to have a visual and specific timeline of the things that you want to accomplish in the coming year.

For example, I want to leave Hawaii by the end of February, I want to have (self) published something by June, and so on.

Creating Accountability: Most times if you keep your goals completely to yourself it can be easy to give up on them. If you can have a support system— friends, family, or even make a session with yourself once a week or each month— that can help you focus on your goals and keep track of how far you’ve come, you may find it easier to keep on top of things. (I am part of a group message dedicated to such a thing.)

Vision Boards: I love making vision boards! It’s a great way to use images and words to help manifest the things that you want in a way that is creative and hands-on. If you’re not crafty, Pinterest is great for making vision boards, so that you can keep all of your ideas and goals in one virtual space. (You can also make them private if you don’t want the internet world to get in on your personal goals.)

Those are a few of my ideas for staying motivated and inspired through the new year and beyond. I wish you all a happy new year, and may it be filled with creativity, inspiration, and maybe even some travel!

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Resfeber

Many lives have been changed with a plane ticket.

Most of us find ourselves spending hours scanning various sites, trying to find the best deals, celebrating when we do, and cursing ourselves for not booking sooner when we lose them again. Some of us look for years, checking now and again, telling ourselves that one day it won’t just be looking.

When that time comes there is that inevitable moment when we are hovering over our device, ready to click the button that will begin the process of taking us away. Sometimes we are excited, other times resigned, but always on our way to something new, somewhere beautifully, magically, not here.

With a click of a button, there is no going back. The emotions come flooding in— there is the thrill of going to a new place, the relief of running to or from something, or even the thoughts such as “Oh God, what have I done?! I hate flying!”. (This last one is me.)

Airports are strange and inspiring places. They have undoubtedly seen many more broken hearts and reunited smiles than most of us could imagine. They are so unshakably human, most often complete with rude TSA agents, overpriced soggy sandwiches, and not enough charger ports to accommodate the milling crowds. Despite these things, airports are magical; the last frontier before your life changes, the last place you see before you defy all the laws of gravity and humanity and become airborne.

 

I will admit it, I hate flying. I hate being crammed into a flying tin can— the mechanics of which I simply cannot understand— with hundreds of strangers, being flown through the skies by someone I’ve never met, with little to no hope of escape if things go terribly wrong.

There is almost nothing I hate as much as getting onto an airplane, but none of that matters when we land. None of the sleepless hours, leg cramps, panic attacks, and turbulent minutes mean a thing the moment I catch sight of some new shore spread out before me and I realize that I made it, that I am living my dreams.

I think that everyone, no matter what their dreams are, have the same feelings that I do when the plane is filling with people and I hear the hatch door close. We all experience that same lurching in our gut when the turbulence hits and we are convinced that we are not going to make it. The thing is, if I didn’t get on the plane, I would always be stuck where I am. I wouldn’t grow, I wouldn’t experience new things, and ultimately I wouldn’t be happy.

Yes, I would be elated to get off of the plane, and I would be much more comfortable driving home in my car with four wheels on the ground. But when I got home to the life that just couldn’t fill me, I wouldn’t be happy. I would still be empty. And more than that I would know that I allowed fear and my desire for comfort to steal something very precious from me. And I would have to ask myself, “Was it worth it?”

For me, the answer is always no. As many times as I complain about the flight as the fated hour nears, and as many nightmares and panic attacks as I have in the days leading up to boarding, I have never let them stop me from getting on that plane.

If I can pass along one piece of advice, let it be this:

Don’t let fear and comfort stop you from doing what it is that will fulfill you.

I can’t say that all your dreams will come true and everything will work out just as you expect it to— if it did I would already be a best-selling author living in a villa of my own on the Italian seaside— but it’s a start. You owe yourself that.

I can’t exactly say that I’m a success story—so honestly,who am I to be handing out this advice?—but what I can say is that I am writing this from a beautiful B&B in Italy, with a view of the sea and a mug of tea. So this might not be a best-selling novel, and I might not own the B&B, but I’m here, and I’m happy.

 

As little as I am certain of at this point in my life, I am sure of this: I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t gotten on the plane.

To those reading, I hope that something in this spoke to you, and I hope you get on the plane.

 

Love, Ari

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