Tag Archives: reflecting

A Heart A Day #13

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Day 13, it’s day 13! And to tell you the truth, I’m a wee bit proud of myself. I’m prone to lose focus quickly. This results in me not finishing things, ideas, the dishes – just some examples ;-)

But my hearts keep calling me – ideas for new ones keep popping up. Every day I look forward to creating a new heart for myself and whoever is reading these blogs. And I find that focussing on the subject (self)compassion, makes more compassionate; I almost automatically become more aware, ask myself questions, question my behavior. In the running-up to A Heart A Day, I’d collected so many reasons not to start, telling myself I’d fail, wouldn’t be able to create something beautiful, wouldn’t finish it, etc. The typical daily prayer. But after months of brewing, contemplating and creating some hearts I told myself I would start anyway, give it time and be kind to myself no matter what the outcome. And time is of the essence here: allowing yourself time to try your hand at new things, allowing yourself time to practise self-compassion. Most things don’t change overnight, you know! That’s how I always hope it will be, but reality proves different. So I’ve given myself time this time ’round and – as if by magic – I’v been posting a heart a day now for 13 days without complaining or thinking of quitting.

So yeah, today’s heart. It is a bit see-through, difficult to spot, as so is practise – in the beginning you might not notice results or change. Same for compassion. It needs practise. Warm-hearted practise. I’ve a fairly compassionate character, but I wanna up my standard especially on the self-compassion side of things. That needs repetition. And a lot of love! The hearts help me focus on my goals. Every day. And awaken my thoughts on compassion. Every day. Slowly. And that’s perfectly fine.

Take your time.

With love,
Tess

P.S: can you spot the second heart in the picture below?

13 (1)

[I love love and I love hearts! But oh, this world needs more visible love. So let’s change that, step by step. Away with pessimism. Away with hate. Let’s fill this world with love. And hearts! To show compassion towards each other, towards the planet, towards ourselves. It proves to be difficult for so many of us. But instead of judging it’s more meaningful to show love, to respond with love, to act out of love. Say it with hearts.
So I’m sharing A Heart A Day. Every day I will draw, stitch, paint or otherwise create a heart and post it on this blog. Will you help me make love and hearts spread like a contagious but healthy disease?]

A year in a jar

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Every year I’m surprised. All news channels look back on the year and it turns out I’ve forgotten at least 95% of it. Largely. Besides the feeling of surprise, it makes me feel a little ignorant, too.

However, these news channels all show why my brain banished most of those news items, as most are terrible tragedies and other depressing facts. But it’s not only these facts that I seem to have forgotten. Also the good things that happened, the beautiful moments that popped up along the road I travelled during that year – blurry memories as well… That saddens me a bit as it occurs to me that remembering such things could give a nice positive boost at the start of the new year!

So this year I started my 2014-in-a-jar. I found the idea somewhere on the internet and immediately decided that was going to be the trick for me.

It’s easy as one-two-three. You can make it yourself. Use an old jam jar. Or a weck jar. Maybe you’re more the box-type. Shoe-boxes may do, too! There are no rules.

My year in a weck jar
You can make your own too
Or maybe this is more your style?
These I made for friends

 

If you feel totally lost at only the thought of that jar, here are some guidelines. Just to help.

A few guide lines...

This is how it works…

 

My weck jar has really helped me become more aware of interesting moments and beautiful happenings. It absolutely is a good way to stand still and see what you have. To realise it’s not all that black and negative. And to be thankful for it.

Tomorrow I will open my weck jar and carefully read the collected moments. I will use them to write a short review on my 2014. Then the jar will be ready for 2015.

And so will I.