Podcasts, Cooking and Blogging

Recently I have been noticing I am low on energy. I follow a healthy diet and exercise regularly. I realized that the days I feel I have most energy are those where I am constantly busy and doing things. I love those days. If more activities are what I need, that is no problem, I have many things I want to try out! In order to do these I will have to make space by spending less time doing things that do not contribute to my personal development. One of the main ones is mindless facebook and instagram surfing.

Another one is napping. I have been napping less lately and I feel a lot better on days I don’t nap. Half the time I realize I don’t need it and instead I make time to do something more productive.

Planning things ahead of time also really helps, such as writing down all the activities I want to do at the start of the week to not forget any and plan them into my day. (Realized I haven’t done that for this week so just finished doing that right now)…

Podcasts

I realized I spend a lot of time traveling. I realize this because I am getting sick of my music. This is because I am constantly repeating the same music as I permanently walk around with headphones plugged into my ears during these tram/bus/train journeys.

I love listening to podcasts. I find them inspiring and full of fresh and new information. I love how you can choose the topic depending on what you are in the mood to hear and chances are there will be a wide array of stations to choose from. Hmm what if I listened to less music and replaced that with podcasts? I also go for a 45 minute walk everyday, so what better way to spend these walks than listening to one or two podcasts?

I stumbled upon Kirsty Bartholomew’s ‘Untrapped Life’ podcast and have discovered very interesting individuals through her. One of them is another podcaster called Chris Cerrone (a recently started podcaster that, so far, has had great success) and he said before he had the idea to start his own podcasting channel, he was jobless and surrounded himself with inspiring podcasts daily to motivate him to continue job searching and seeking the job of his dreams. I want to follow this example and surround myself with podcasts in the subjects I am interested in to not lose motivation. Furthermore, I also learnt a bit about his past and how he willingly embraced many different jobs in many different subjects which I feel is my situation at the moment. It makes me feel relieved that I do not have a set direction and that it is okay J. I am okay with being a bit all over the place with my job experience as long as I am living each and every experience to the maximum and learning from them.

I wrote down some podcast interest areas I have listened to so far: entrepreneurship, inspiration, motivation, positive energy, spirituality, meditation, yoga, fitness & nutrition, art, self-help, sustainability, etc.

Cooking

I love trying out new things. I am not an amazing cook but I am an extremely experimental one and I love trying new things even though half the time they end up a disaster. Other times, though, I discover delicious new recipes :)

I have been eating too much chocolate lately. So, the other day, a friend told me about the vegan diet he is pursuing and how well it’s going for him. He also told me he makes his own chocolate. It is pretty easy to guess what comes next. Yes I want to start making my own chocolate. So far I found very simple recipes that don’t require an abnormal amount of ingredients and I want to try one of them out this week! One particular one includes just raw cocoa powder, coconut oil and honey to sweeten it. So simple! It can’t possibly be so good if it is that simple… I think I will buy almond milk to make it a bit creamier but I will definitely be trying out that recipe this week and posting it on the blog.

Blogging and Reflecting

I am doing many new activities lately and meeting a lot of interesting people. WHY AM I NOT BLOGGING ABOUT IT MORE?! The hardest thing for me is always starting, but once I start I go on for pages. The other day I had to proctor an examination which was three hours long. I forgot to take a book. Since it was a literature exam, though, there was plenty of pens and paper for the students. Who needs a book when you have pen and paper? I hesitated between drawing designs, sketching the kids or writing. Finally I just started writing my thoughts. I tried to meditate and observe what happened around me but obviously thoughts kept creeping up so I wrote down my stream of thoughts. That led me to write about what I was grateful for in that moment. That led me to deeply reflect  about an event I attended a few days before where I realized that, due to the ego and my natural thought process I subconsciously put myself down which ended making me a bit upset. I reflected on the tiny thoughts I remember fleeting through my mind and I tracked down how one led to the next, which led to the next and how it eventually made me feel worse about a trait I should actually be feeling very proud of. If I have time I will read through those pages and blog about it.

Anyways the idea is to blog at least once a week. I think that a great place to start is by reflecting on the podcasts I listen to and what I can get out of them for myself.

So there it is! My three activities. What are yours? Is there anything you have been wanting to do for a while but felt you never really had time for it? Now is the time!