Currently, I'm trying to work on myself, improve myself, and live my best life.

I think living your best life is so important because at the end of the day, you are only answering to yourself. For me, it's always about doing things so someone else can be happy or not doing something for the fear of judgement by others. It's something I've been trying to work on since I was a teenager and even though I'm about to turn 22 this year, this is still a work in progress.

What I find to be of most help with regards to achieving this is reading. I'm trying to get myself to commit to reading more self-help and motivational books to broaden my mind and open my heart. Currently I'm reading "the untethered soul: the journey beyond yourself" by Michael A. Singer. When I first started reading this book, I couldn't really relate or connect with it, which was why I put it aside and kind of just forgot about it. But as I was clearing and packing things for the renovation, I picked this up again and it's been more helpful than before. It's teaching me how to disconnect from my thoughts to gain a more wholesome perspective of life - something that I desperately needed to do. 

Apart from living every day fully and living life for myself, there's another thing that I would like to work on this year as well. And that is, to not be affected by negative things around me. Be it something someone does, or work related issues. I'm learning to recognise that these things are beyond my control and the only thing I can do is to work on my mindset and mentality towards these types of things.

I'm the kind of person who wears my heart on my sleeve and more often than not, take things to heart. I've come to realise that, upon entering the workforce and mingling with people much older than me, that things are not 100% smooth-sailing and dealing with obstacles is really just part and parcel of life. I'm always a careful person, and when a curveball is thrown at me it's pretty paralysing because it is unplanned and truth to be told, I'm not confident enough in myself to deal with it. 

But I believe that all the challenges presented in life are here to teach us a lesson and help us grow into better human beings. It's difficult to treat problems this way when they are all that you see and think about, but this is where reading books come in for me. They provide guidance in times when your head is clouded and your mind is literally everywhere but where you need it to be. Besides reading, chanting and praying grounds me and helps me refocus as well. (While typing this I've also noticed that spilling my thoughts out onto a blog entry is doing wonders too.)

Back to the point of living our best life, I think that it is so important to remember that we only have one shot at this current life and it is a silly thing to let it go to waste. Instead of worrying and brooding, do something that stimulatese your mind. It could be reading, writing, painting, talking to someone - anything. I guess, an advice I would give to myself would be to be mindful of my thoughts and not care too much about things beyond my control.

I got this. 

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A little side note, I love how writing brought me calmness and clarity. I started off not knowing what to say but somehow as always, my thoughts spilled out into words and it has now become a reminder to myself to work on all these things that I mentioned. I'm holding myself accountable to this (i.e. living my best life). 

Till the next (hopefully soon) x