Surround yourself with people who inspire you

This phrase is one I've seen around a lot recently and, while I agree that it is important, I don't think it's as simple as it seems. I do have people in my life who inspire me but I also feel like i see most of the people in my life as peers who aren't really inspirational. To me, this isn't ideal and I've spent a lot of time recently wishing I could find more people to be my friends who truly inspire me but not knowing how to change it. I was just feeling a bit stuck, hoping for things to improve in the future but not really doing anything to help myself.

Today I suddenly thought, I don't have to change the people around me, I only have to change the way I look at the people around me. The people around me may not all be the type who are classically and consciously inspirational, but there are definitely inspirational things about them. The amazing way the playleader at volunteering is able to calm down the children when they need it, the way my boyfriend is loyal and loving towards everyone, the way that my friends are what they are without apologizing and the way that the children I volunteer with can be cheered up immediately by the smallest thing. These are all inspiring qualities, things that I look up to and aspire to achieve. I just need to have the mindset that lets me see these qualities.

So from now on I'm going to make a conscious effort to notice these qualities in the people I'm around every day. People are inspirational in their nature, you just have to choose to see it in them. Maybe, by choosing to see this, you are able to not only be happier in your own life but also attract more of the people who you want to surround yourself with. See the beauty and more beauty will find you one day.

My journey to loving myself

A while a go I decided to start making a conscious effort to love and know myself better. I was on a mission to be the source of my own happiness and become my own best friend. I wanted to accept myself fully and unconditionally. A bit after that I realized that I do need other people in order to be happiest, I can't do it all on my own. I found that I needed love from other people in my life in order to really be able to start loving myself. It was good for me to realize this, I still wanted to accept and love myself more, I just found that I needed other people. Instead of embarking on a one woman solo journey I knew that I needed to bring people along on the journey with me.

I'm still very much on the journey to loving and accepting myself and I think it'll be a lifelong journey. But I know that the journey is, and will always be, the most important part of any change within and around myself. I've also come to realize that the decision I made to go on this journey was a huge step in the right direction. Before I made the conscious decision I was unconsciously on the journey. I believe that everyone is at some point on the path to acceptance and love of themselves, whether they know it or not, it's human nature.

I think that consciously saying "I want to improve my opinion of myself" shows that you have got to a place where they are aware of what you want your happiness to be. What I thought was the first step on the journey of loving myself may have been the most important step but I don't think it was the first. I think before then I was trying to change myself in order for acceptance but now I'm trying to accept myself without changing anything other than my mindset.

“The thing that is really hard, and really amazing, is giving up on being perfect and beginning the work of becoming yourself.”

—	Anna Quindlen

Home

"Is it possible that home can be a person, rather than a place?"
When I first saw this question my immediate answer was "yes". For me, home isn't a place: it's a very specific person, at one point it was a very specific group of people and at one point it was a place, it still is to an extent. This question made me really think about the reality of home and what the word really means. I think that everyone is in search of a home, maybe finding a home is really all anyone's true goal is. I also think that everyone has a different perception of what home is, it's a universal thing with millions of definitions.

I think that home is probably more of a feeling than a place, the feeling you get when something just feels completely and utterly right. Home is a unique state, something that is different to different people and something that changes throughout a person's lifetime. That's kind of beautiful really: how we can constantly find new homes find new places to belong throughout your life.
Right now my home is literally where my heart is, it's with the person I love the most. However, I also call the house and town that I grew up in my home, probably because I have never lived anywhere else. There is also an element of home in me when I'm doing the work that I love with the children who never fail to impact my life in such a huge way. I have one true home home but many other places that I feel at home.

I figure that all the different homes you accumulate over a life time make you exactly who you are in the end. Homes become embedded into you they shape you into the person you are more than anything else.

Please Listen: a poem

When I ask you to listen to me
and you start giving me advice,
you have not done what I asked.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you begin to tell me why
I shouldn’t feel that way,
you are trampling on my feelings.

When I ask you to listen to me
and you feel you have to do something
to solve my problem,
you have failed me,
strange as that may seem.

Listen! All I ask is that you listen.
Don’t talk or do – just hear me.

Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get
you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham
in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself; I am not helpless.
Maybe discouraged and faltering,
but not helpless.

When you do something for me that I can
and need to do for myself,
you contribute to my fear and
inadequacy.

But when you accept as a simple fact
that I feel what I feel,
no matter how irrational,
then I can stop trying to convince
you and get about this business
of understanding what’s behind
this irrational feeling.

And when that’s clear, the answers are
obvious and I don’t need advice.
Irrational feelings make sense when
we understand what’s behind them.

Perhaps that’s why prayer works, sometimes,
for some people – because God is mute,
and he doesn’t give advice or try
to fix things.
God just listens and lets you work
it out for yourself.

So please listen, and just hear me.
And if you want to talk, wait a minute
for your turn – and I will listen to you

-Unknown

I found this poem in Chicken Soup of the Teenage Soul, it's actually taught me a lot. I realized that I try to fix people's problems too much when they probably just want to be heard and understood, so I'm going to try and listen more than fix. I think a lot of people could learn from this poem too, it has a great message and that's why I'm sharing it!

Thoughts on saying goodbye to loved ones

In a way, goodbyes have been prominent in my life at the moment. With a combination of people I love and will miss going on holiday and the goodbyes that I know are just around the corner next year when I'm off to Uni, I've been thinking (and worrying) about them a lot. Saying goodbye to someone you love dearly is always horrible, even if it's only for a week or so it can be heart breaking. They're never permanent, I know the person/people I'm saying goodbye to will always be in my life in some way yet I still let myself be very affected by goodbyes.

However, I'm not sure that this is really a bad quality to have. It shows that I care a lot about people and that I have wonderful love in my life. I know that I would much rather care about and get emotional when I have to say goodbye to those I love than not have that love in my life. It's a blessing to have people who I love so much that saying goodbye hurts.

As well as this, I've noticed that, when you have to say goodbye to the people you love the most, you end up telling them how much they mean to you. Goodbyes are a good opportunity to truly let people know just how much they really do mean to you and express your love in the best way you know how. Goodbyes help you to say things that you might need to say to your loved ones.

Also, after the goodbyes are over and once you get to the hellos again it is the best feeling in the world. Seeing your loved one after an absence helps you to realize how much you love them, it's good for your relationships. It really is true that absence makes the heart grow fonder.

Goodbyes are hard but maybe, at least sometimes, they're for the best.

I've lost that feeling of belonging on the internet

Lately I've just been feeling like I don't fit. There is literally one person in the world who I feel like I fit with and that is absolutely the best feeling in the world but within everything else I just don't feel like I fit anywhere else. It sucks. People I used to talk to all the time in the StarKid community have better friends now, ones who are available all the time and who are just better than me. I miss the times when I had my groups that I belonged to and I felt right with, I just don't feel that anymore. Life got in the way. I hate that I feel like this, I wish I could have kept how things were last summer and kept the feeling of closeness I had with so many people. I wish I could find that again, so badly, but I don't know how. I've tried, but I can't. The feeling of belonging is amazing, I know it well, but not as well as I did once. Things have changed, some for the absolute best but some for what feels like the worse. I just want to feel that sense of belonging I had all the time last summer.