July 18: Thankful Thursday 🙏

I am thankful, despite all appearances to the contrary, of this whole uprooted expat-SAHM experience.

I used to be wound up so tightly, wearing my type-A + perfectionist personality like a badge of honor. I did not have the capacity to be interested in people, or to be interested in life, for that matter. What’s worse is that I wasn’t even aware of it.

I was always just busy and preoccupied with wowing the bosses at work. Now I notice the small things like, how beautiful fresh morning air smells or how good my eldest is at dancing, or when my baby is getting angry or when my husband does the dishes  ….

And I just feel grateful a lot more often.

I might virtually be kicking, screaming and throwing things all over the place throughout this whole experience, and yet I know without an iota of doubt that I will never – among many other things – take friends for granted again.

I learned how to cook (IK,R?!!), crochet, knit and blog and am ready to welcome new skills into my life. I am now an exerciser. I am taking care of my 1 y.o. without the help of a nanny and, my house is proof of this, I am no longer such a perfectionist 😁

I just know that I have become a better version of myself. And for this, I am thankful ❤

July 17: Wisdom Wednesday

Good morning beautiful people! 🙂

Rise and gift the world with your amazingness! ☀️ ✨

So today I am going to share 7 of my favorite quotes from the book “Someday is Not a Day of the Week” by Sam Horn.

I really love this book, and I enjoyed reading it because it speaks to my current “golden cage” situation. I love that it has a bias for action and that it nudges you to do something that will make your heart beat faster, now.

~ ~ oOo ~ ~

1. The mark of a successful organization (I swapped this for “person”) isn’t whether it has problems, it’s whether it has the same problems it had last year.
2. The question you should be asking isn’t “What are my goals?” but “What would excite me?”.
3. Clutter is simply delayed decisions.
4. Anxiety is a sign you’re confronting the potential of your own development. Do what makes you anxious, not what makes you depressed.
5. When we focus on what we don’t want, that’s what we’re going to get.
6. Instead of allowing that to define and defeat her [or me/you], she did one thing differently to improve the quality of her life.
7. One way to hack fears is to realize they don’t prevent things from going wrong, they prevent things from going right.

~ ~ oOo ~ ~

This book is full of encouragement & motivation on every page but perhaps my favorite line is: “What is one thing you can do this week to improve your situation?“.

So often I focus on the cage and what’s outside that cage to the exclusion of the space within. This book encourages the reader to do something (and there is always something!) that makes your heart sing – this week! I ❤ that there’s a timeframe to it because it forces our brains to focus on an action item that we can do asap.  Often, a small act of improvement is enough to create a ripple-effect of positivity in our lives.

Here’s something that I’d like to leave you guys with, I hope it blesses you as much as it did me 🙂

 

Seize the day!  ❤ ❤

July 15: Mindful Monday

Hey guys! ❤ Happy Monday to y’all!

Listen, I know I had set myself the mini-assignment this week of making crochet earrings. I’m still interested in doing that however, today I woke up feeling I needed to rearrange the way I spend my days.

I spent my entire weekend reading up on vision improvement & it was plain to see (!) that, if I wanted my eyes to get stronger instead of weaker, I needed to lessen the time I spent on crochet and incorporate other activities into my days.

Two that are of particular importance to me right now is exercise (for the body) & exercises for my eyes. For the latter, I need to be outdoors to take time to look into the distance and notice movement & details.

So this is kind of where I’m at this morning 🙂 I just finished my beginner Pilates video for the day – the 3rd of a beginner series – and thinking about how to incorporate outdoors time on a daily basis.

The crochet might have to wait a while but I’m sure I’ll get back to it soon – you’ll be the first to know! 🙂

I’ll see you guys tomorrow.

 

July 13: The Weekly Check-In

A bright & sunny HELLO to you my sexy friends! Today is a great day because I get to review the week and plan the next 🙂 Count my losses but also the wins.

Without further ado:

Stop drinking coffee

This one is definitely a “no-go”. I believe I was only able to stick to the plan for 3 weekdays, beyond that I would slip, especially whenever I’d feel lethargic from my workouts. My conclusion: this isn’t such a big deal to me right now, obviously I love my morning cuppa too much, so I’m going to put my energies elsewhere.

Start Weighing Myself

This is brilliant, I love this idea, I found out I gained 5 kilos from last December, I was really bothered about this but since starting to weigh myself last Monday, I’ve also been conscious about my food intake and managed to lose 1 kilo through some adjustments. Outstanding!

Additional buggers this week:

If there is anything the difficulties & heartaches of being an expat SAHM taught me that would definitely be having little to no tolerance for wallowing in problems. I just cannot indulge in it because I have no one to talk to, so I can’t very well work myself into a state of depression each time, can I? I have developed a very strong bias for action, believing that no matter the circumstances, there is always something you can do to improve your situation.

Vision improvement

I am now reading the book Vision for Life by Dr. Meir Schneider to educate myself some more on this topic.

Exercise Induced Lethargy

It’s mat Pilates exercises for now because my body perhaps is just not ready for anything more strenuous yet. What’s great about it too is that it’s perfect for posture improvement! 🙂

Open item

I managed to visit that gym I was talking about in a previous post. So there’s a check on that finally, even though I am now ambivalent about this after finding out a few more details.

Next week’s challenge

And finally, last but not the least ….

….. I’m very excited about next week’s challenge because, with the success of this, I am 100% certain that with you to hold me accountable, I will be able to complete yet another thing I’ve been procrastinating on ~

~~ drum roll please!!!

~~~~ making crochet earrings!!!

(Yaaaaay!)

I’ve allotted an entire week for this, so there should be no excuses, I shall have at least 3 pairs of earrings by next Saturday. End of story. 😀

See you on Monday beautiful people. Have a wonderful weekend up ahead! ❤

July 11: A Scatterbrained Day

Yesterday was such a scatterbrained day for me I preferred not to blog until my thoughts settled down. Do you ever have days like this when you just can’t seem to quiet down your thoughts? What finally worked to still the chatter was to lose myself in my headphones again, blasting loud dance music into my eardrums 🙂

I was bothered by a few things that really annoyed me: my deteriorating vision, my 11 lbs weight gain since December, and the fact that I really feel terrible 2 to 3 days after I do my cardio/weights exercises.

Okay fine, these changes come with middle-age (I am 44 y.o.). But I can’t let that label stop me from turning into a majestic swan. (Or a phoenix. I relate better to fire 🔥).

But seriously, this is what I know so far:

~  Contrary to mainstream knowledge our vision can improve instead of continue to deteriorate. I found this out accidentally when on vacation last December. I did some research afterwards and am truthfully happy to know that healing your eyesight is a possibility. I just need to look into this some more and decide what to do with this information.

~ I lost a hefty amount of weight last year on Keto & IF. But then it backfired. I was experiencing mid-cycle bleeding that was getting worse by the month, itchy skin rashes, and really bad insomnia. These symptoms disappeared right after I was no longer consistent with the protocol.

~  I really do not like the 2 to 3 days that come right after my cardio/weight exercises. I feel lethargic & down in the dumps. I’ve experienced this a few times already to conclude that, as far as movement and exercise go, I need to rethink my strategy.

Oh well, you win some you lose some. I guess it’s just one of those days when things are just a little less sexy. But that’s okay. The sun will come out tomorrow. It always does 🙂

I wish you all a sexy day and I’ll “see” you tomorrow.

 

July 10: Chillax 😎

Good day my friends!

I wasn’t able to get back to you on yesterday’s quest because I was feeling down in the dumps. I thought it was a stroke of ennui again but then I realized, albeit towards the end of the day, that I was just feeling the effects of a new workout video I did on Monday. That plus I slept way past usual bedtime on Monday evening after having discovered a very funny person on Instagram and gobbling up his feed with gusto 😁

Alright then, it’s time for some pictures as promised. My assignment yesterday was to finish a crochet top I was working on. I was really procrastinating on it and couldn’t get a move on until I had you to hold me accountable.

So this was where I started yesterday morning:

And by the end of the day I managed to do a photo shoot for the IG 😊

front

back

I really feel good at how this top has turned out. I crocheted it out of emerald green silk thread that I had in my stash but never really knew what to do with. The drape is absolutely gorgeous by the way, and it just feels so luxurious on the skin ❤

I added the 3 buttons to help me distinguish the back from the front more than anything 😂 Those too I had sitting aimlessly in my stash.

So anyways, this assignment and how you guys have sorta egged me on to the finish line has definitely hatched an idea in my noggin’. But I’m going to share it with you towards the end of this week yet because it’s for next week and it’s a bit of a departure from the original format of this challenge.

Stay tuned for that!

Meanwhile my challenge for today is just to chill, do nothing, kick back on the sofa & contemplate the beautiful sunny Indonesian weather ☀️ ☀️ ☀️

It’s my husband’s birthday today and, although later there’s gonna be dinner & we’ve booked a weekend at a resort 2 weekends from now to celebrate,  I still feel it deserves a day of relaxation & to just sit still in a space of grateful appreciation 😊

So there you go, that’s my update for today. Tomorrow’s assignment is to close off another ‘unfinished business’, an online course this time.

I’ll see you guys then ❤

July 8: Stop/Start Something

Good morning awesome friends! 🌞

It’s a brand new week and I’m excited to continue with my mini-assignments [of the ordinary kind]. I’ve been feeling more purposeful since I started this challenge and I love how blogging about it turns it into a lesson of sorts. The real goal here is to be blogging again, and this self-designed challenge is definitely helping me with that 📌

Today’s assignment is to start & stop something. Ideally it should be something permanent, perhaps a habit change, if not at least something I can do for a certain period of time.

I have chosen to:

Stop drinking coffee ☕️

This is a huge one for me as my morning cuppa is so ingrained into what makes my mornings magical. I look forward to it, I love the warm sensation, and without it my mornings just aren’t the same 💔 (Because yes, I tried this challenge a few times in the past already).

The reason why I’m “picking on” this wonderful elixir (again) is twofold. One is that I suspect it upsets my stomach, and therefor could be undermining my weight management efforts. And two is because it really does tinker with my energy levels throughout the day & even into the night.

This week I will observe what the absence of coffee does and we’ll see what happens next. (I don’t want to promise anything because my love for it is overwhelming 😆😆).

Start weighing myself daily ⏲

Just something small that I can use as a reminder to focus on my weight management efforts.

⏲ ☕️ ⏲ ☕️

So! Although I already did these two for today, I realize that the best time to report on this assignment will be on Saturday yet. So I’ll see you guys then.

Tomorrow’s assignment is to (finally) finish my emerald green crochet crop top. I’ll have pictures for you so I’d love it if you checked back in 🙂