// good bye 2016 + 8 things you taught me
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Good bye 2016, helloooooh 2017!
But first, let me reflect on what the year 2016 taught me about life.. It's a heavy dose this one. So prepare your self - good idea with some hot tea. But I do believe that there's a lot of wisdom in all of this. 2016 have for me probably been one of the hardest, but that's also often where a lot of the most valuable lessons are learned. Keep reading, take notes, share it with friends, give me a comment and don't forget to drink your tea before it's cold.
You gotta take care, love & change yourself first, before you can care, love & change others + the world. I learned this the hard way. I didn't know how to take care of myself. I barely knew it was necessary, but that came very clear, when I burned out. Ouch.
So I said STOP! I'm gonna take care of me now. Sadly in this world promoting self-love isn't always "accepted". It's like being a rebel. But I've decided that I do this for me and not for them. So I'm gonna be a rebellious REBEL!
I had to change and even say no to some friends and relationships that wasn't good for me. I've taken a lot of HARD choices and had HARD conversations this past year. It is hard. I'm not gonna try to make it something that it isn't, but I owe it to myself and I know my future self will thank my now self for cleaning up the mess that my past self did. Hah, got that?
I'm slowly learning my worth. I'm slowly standing up for myself. I actually deserve that. It's a long and scary process, but it's necessary. I'm doing this for me. I'm doing this for my future, for my dreams, for the little girl watching and my future husband and kids. I want my love to be dependent on Jesus and not my future husband. I want my future kids to have a healthy mummy who can teach them how to love themselves in a world that earn billions on our insecurities and self-hatred. Ugh.God doesn't need to abuse you, to use you. BAM! this was a huuuge game-changer for me!
I did what I thought I had to do to get where I believed God leaded me to. I still believe God leaded me there, but His good will was, is and never will be for me to burn out. God is not an abuser, but unfortunately people can be.
For me it was also a bad mix of people pleasing, fear of man and leaders in my life who didn't listen, understand, cheer on or know me for who I am (people like that should NEVER be a voice in your life!!). I thought I had to do whatever I was told in order for them to "allow" me to go where I felt God leaded me to go. I just "accepted" whatever was thrown at me. Sounds crazy, and I'm a bit shocked when I'm writing this out loud, but I was numbing down my feelings while listening to so many voices who where telling me this and that (and sometimes not even matching), that I didn't hear my own - or worse - didn't hear God's voice. That's a dangerous place to be.
Which leads me to..Sometimes the body says NO. Have you heard about the Maslow-pyramid? If not, google it, if yes.. I can tell you that I had turned it upside down with what I "prioritised" first. That's the recipe for burning out, friends! Learn from my mistakes. Don't go there. It hurts. And it slows down everything in life to slower than the police allows, but that's the consequences of neglecting my own heart for so long.
I have so many things I wanna do. Projects I wanna start, books I wanna read, subjects I wanna study, art I wanna create, places I wanna go, parties I wanna join, people I wanna meet, organisations I wanna help, things I wanna change.. but my body says NO. STOP. REST. NOW. AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN, GIRL. Even though my mind says yaaaay, my body says NOOO!! It's the feeling when you can't hit the snooze button anymore and you gotta face the world, but don't want to x 100. I gotta rest, before I can do, and then I gotta rest again from what I just did - and if I try to skip the resting part.. Oh boy, I'll tell you. I'll suffer for that twice the time (or more) it would've taking me to just REST. I need to learn to accept that, listen to it and.. REST.
One beautiful day.. My body will say a beautiful word; YES. But it's gonna take many more NO's for me to learn how to handle and care for the YES.. (I'll probably make another blogpost about this topic later, tell me if you're interested)
And all this takes time - which leads me to the next thing I learned..TTT - Things Take Time. I feel like I'm re-learning this over and over again every. single. day. Sometimes I wonder if I'll ever learn. Why am I in such a hurry? I mean.. even a baby takes 9 months of preparation before it's ready to hit the world!? A an elephant-baby takes 22!!?! I mean 22!!! That's almost 2 years. Pregnancy Take Time. Life Take Time. I think if I could learn to enjoy the process more than wanting the results, than being in such a hurry isn't even a thing anymore. I also think it's a fear of being old that makes people stress about all the things they HAVE to do and HAVE to achieve before they are 16, 21, 30, 45, 68, 92.. dead?
I think one of the keys is just accepting that the time is out of my control. Control is an illusion anyway, duh. But that's another story.Sometimes I have to say NO to people in order to say YES to myself. This is overlapping my first point a bit, but I've learned that I sometimes have to put boundaries and change some relationships in order to say YES to me. I've been a door mat for too long. Accepting to much bullshit from to many people. Being the person who always "understands" and who everyone is "comfortable" around. But I don't wanna be the person who always "understands" if that means being dumped again for other "cooler" friends or lazy people. I don't wanna be the person people feel "comfortable" around if that means people think they ca treat you as they like - and it ain't pretty. So I've cut out some people in my life. Some people don't understand that or get offended by it, but that's really out of my hands. I can't control how people react neither respond, that's their responsibility aaaand not my problem anymore! Bye.
Sadly, people don't always live authentic. I learned this the hard way too, more than once - unfortunately. Just because a person have a lot of "followers"(not only talking about social media here) and people who praise and adore them, doesn't always make what they say more reliable. I've met enough people who preach and teach stuff that I later found out didn't exactly line up with their life. And yes, we are all people, nobody's perfect and bla bla, that's true - I know, but there is also a saying that says you can't lead people places where you haven't been yourself. And pretending to be more "perfect" than reality isn't only lying to people, it's also very disrespectful and the opposite of authentic.
I can't preach this enough: be careful who you listen too. I read an advice once that said: "Be careful taking advice from people who don't have to deal with the result." It's easy to give good advice and telling people what to do, but what if you where in the same position. Would you actually do what you preach?
You probably heard this statement before: "Action speaks louder than words" Oh boy oh boy, If I waited to see people's actions before I believed their words.. I would've saved myself so much confusion, frustration, disappointment and hurt. Trust is something that's built. And I've given some people so much trust, that I believed their voice more than my own, which have been hurting me way too much for it to be okay.
That being said.. It's something I think we can all be better at - especially in this "picture-perfect-social-media-world" we live in.Learning to love my body through the Body Positivity-movement. I'm gonna start with this quote by Kate Winslet - which I think says it all.
“As a child, I never heard on woman say to me, ‘I love my body’. Not my mother, my elder sister, my best friend. Not one woman has ever said, ‘I am so proud of my body.’ So I make sure to say it to my daughter, because a positive physical outlook has to start at an early age.”
As girls (mostly) we've grown up in a world that teaches us to hate ourselves and especially our bodies and then try to make money out of us by selling us all these "magic cures" disguised in expensive creams, diet-pills, get fit-magazines, make-up, "new" power food, protein-powder, "body-goals" or clothes that shapes our body closer to "the perfect body". What is "the perfect body" anyway?! And who decides what that should or shouldn't look like?! Are we gonna let others define if we are beautiful? Or are we gonna let God define what beauty is? Am I gonna let that guy decide if I'm attractive or not? No, I shouldn't. But have I done that? Yes, sadly, yes! He ain't worth it. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Apparently, something was wrong with his eye.. or beholder, cause I'm gorgeous! ;) His loss, not mine. Anyway! It's so much easier said than done. Absolutely, but it's something I wanna be more intentional about. Learning to let go of the pressure to "appear" and "look" perfect. What is perfect anyway? Because no one are, but so many of us are still trying to "act" like we're perfect. No one wakes up in the morning like the people in the commercials and no one dresses like the fashion bloggers every day. They too are humans. They too have days where they wear their comfy (ugly)pants (or no pants?!), mascara from yesterday + greasy hair and bad breath. Actually, that's me right now. Hah, except from the ugly pants, mine are pretty black leggings. Just FYI.To say "you are very beautiful" in polish. + other nice compliments that make polish people smile. Awww. Most of the things I've mentioned have been rather upsetting, deep and a pretty serious, so I thought I would put in some lighter and brighter things 2016 taught me.
Oh, I almost forgot! If you're polish and reading this.. This is for you: Jestes bardzo piekna!
I know I wrote "8 things you TAUGHT me", but really it's more like the year when the processes began, because these things are probably things I'm gonna learn more and more about each day - and I wouldn't have it any other way.
What are some of the things 2016 have taught you? Let me know in the comments or on my Instagram. I'd love hearing from you and learning from your lessons and wisdom learned.
// xx Line TM
