Year-end Wrap-Up: Top 20 motivational posters

I’m a sucker for motivational posters. I have a whole folder of them on my phone, my Facebook feed is filled with inspirational messages, and I follow a bunch of inspirational tweeps on Twitter. Needless to say, I’ve found tons and tons of inspirational and fun posters over the year, and made a few myself. Here are my 20 absolute favorites.

Enjoy!

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So, which one resonated with you the most?

If you like inspirational posters, do follow my I believe…board on Pinterest!

I wish someone told me…

I wish someone told me…
That the sun and moon wouldn’t really rise with his smile
That life isn’t really a dream that you dream with the one you love
That just believing I could wouldn’t help me to fly
That a hero doesn’t always lie in me, there is a coward lurking in there too…

This post is dedicated to those incurable romantics, who believe the songs and the movies and the books…who believe that what is sung and shown and written is literal…and are heartbroken when they realize that it isn’t.

Come on! How can you think that love would be so all-consuming that it would seem like a utopian dream from which you’d never wake up, or that just a smile from the person you love would light up your life, never mind their words and their actions? If it really was like that, life would be so exhausting! You wouldn’t be able to get anything done, because you’d just be melting into the other person. Not to mention that you would lose your identity – lose YOU. And seriously, that isn’t healthy. A relationship requires hard work. There are nasty fights and heartbreaks along the way. If you’re going to breakdown at the first sign of disagreement you’re going to be a mess!

Replace that narrative with this empowering thought:

Can you really be so naive as to believe that just thinking is going to attract what you want into your life? Really now! The Secret may be great and all, but it’s very simplistic. Thoughts turn into things, sure, but it’s not magic. A lot of hard work goes on behind the scenes. You cannot just think yourself into a new job, for instance. You need to create or update your CV, send it out to multiple people, attend interviews, and only then might you find yourself with a job. And given the economy in most parts of the world, that isn’t even guaranteed! What thoughts do is help you focus on what you want, and give you the necessary inspiration to put in the hard work required to “attract” it into your life.

Replace that narrative with this empowering piece of advice, given to me by my teacher at school:

Do you believe that you will eventually find the hero within you? That you can always rise to every challenge thrown at you? That you can face anything and everything that comes your way? Listen to the lyrics carefully – all of them. To those lovely lyrics, I’d like to add this: It takes a great deal of courage… and before you can find the hero within you, you have to confront the coward lurking in you. Your fears and anxieties. You need to calm that coward down and reason with it. At times, you just have to downright ignore it. That is hard. Very hard. To listen to the fears and insecurities and go ahead anyway. Not everyone can do it all of the time and in all circumstances. And that’s OK, too. Instead, learn your limitations. Work on what you can, accept what you cannot, and take your decisions accordingly.

Replace the thought of always wanting to be the hero and beating yourself up when you aren’t with this little gem:

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

The prompt brought to mind my role as agony aunt with a friend who believes everything you tell her – literally – including these things I’ve listed above! If this helps you or someone you know, if you agree with the thoughts I’ve shared here, please feel free to share this post with your friends.

Now, it’s your turn. What do you wish someone had told you?

This is non-negotiable

1. My personal well-being: I’ve realized that when I am mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually well, I am in the best position to live my life to the fullest. This includes being my own best friend and loving myself unconditionally, even when I stumble and fall; replacing my inner critic with positive and encouraging self-talk; eating healthy and exercising, even if all I can manage is a 20 minute walk; time to connect with a higher power; and to meditate.

2. My self-respect: There may be times in my life when a friend or loved one walks all over my sense of self, damaging my self-respect under their hob-nailed boots. I’ve learnt it the hard way to never, ever, no matter what the circumstances, let anyone walk all over me or treat me like a doormat. My self-respect is the most important thing. Period.

3. A home that feels like me: Note, I didn’t say a magazine-perfect home. With all the amazing home interiors I see on Pinterest, in magazines and on blogs, it’s easy to look around my pad and hate everything about it. But when I stop and analyze, I realize that I love each object in my house – it all has a history, a story. It’s warm and welcoming and lived-in, which really isn’t something I can say for a lot of those picture perfect “white houses” I see online. If I’m able to keep my home clutter free for long periods of time, more power to me! I am open to change, to better my surrounding, but I refuse to give in to internet envy.

4. Allowing myself to dream big and DO big: There are no limits to imagination. I’ve found that it’s very important to allow myself to imagine a live that fills me with joy, and then go out and work towards achieving all that my heart desires! I may win some and lose some, but I know what I’m working towards and why. When something no longer resonates with me, I drop it, instead of living up to someone else’s idea of perfection. Since I am a procrastinator, I keep reminding myself that the only thing standing between my dreams and reality is action.

So, what’s non-negotiable for you? I’d love to hear from you in the comments!

How I rediscovered the zest for life

Since a while now, I’ve known that not everything was right with me. Somewhere along the way life dragged me down. I lost myself. Lost my zest for life. My days became practical, mechanical. The only thing I looked forward to was the weekend – Saturday, when I would meet up with friends and we’d go out about town and Sunday, when me and the husband would do things together. The rest of the time, I was on automatic pilot.

All that changed this week.

A fun interaction with a very close friend on Facebook turned into a more serious talk. She told me she had started avoiding meeting me because I had become too “practical”, had lost the magic that was me.

That one comment forced me to think – something that I had avoided doing even though I knew that things weren’t right. We inbox-ed one another furiously, and as she asked me questions that forced me to think, it made me want to cry – for all the time I had lost, for all that I wouldn’t acknowledge even to myself, for losing the magic.

She’s one friend with whom I can be 100% myself. She’s my mirror. So when she tells me something, I stop to listen and think. And I knew she was right.

We went out that night, and she turned the spotlight on me. Asking about my life (going on), what I feel (nothing much), how I feel about life (that it’s happening on auto-pilot).

Then she made me do something. She made me tell her 10 things I was grateful for and why. And as I spoke about my blessings, I felt a shift inside me. Slowly, the ice around my heart began to crack. As the night wore on and the conversation flowed, the crack spread and eventually began to chip off.

I feel much more positive already. More cheerful. More hopeful. And it was all due to that exercise, which I’ve been doing everyday since.

Try it.

I am grateful for ______ because ______. (x 10)

Nothing is too trivial to list out. If you think it is, imagine your life without it. Awesome perspective, eh?

Bonus tip: make a list of everything you love – and I mean everything. People, places, food, restaurants, movies, books, activities, plants, flowers, animals…you get the drift. Any time you feel negative (sad, angry, irritated) think of this list. It will lift you up immediately!

Here’s to a wonderful life!

What are you grateful for? If you’ve already experienced the power of gratitude, tell us about it in the comments!

How to introspect

Introspection (Photo credit: gurdonark)

There are times when we over-think things. Like introspection, or self reflection. I know I’m guilty of it. I’ve spent hours reading up on the right way to introspect. Wondering what questions to ask myself. If I was even asking the right questions.

Then, one day, I decided to just stop thinking about this whole thing. I was tired of trawling through websites and looking at lists of questions to ask myself. Some as inane as: “What are your favorite things (books, movies, stores, etc.)? Why ?”

So I just put the whole introspection thingajammy behind me and concentrated on doing different things. Things I’ve been putting off since a while.  Like reorganizing my craft room. And then suddenly, one day, I just….introspected. No muss. No fuss.

And I realized there is one and only one thing that was holding me back and making me overanalyze this whole introspection thing: fear.

I was afraid of what I would find. The person I would come face to face with in the mirror. Once I let my guard down, I found that it wasn’t so hard after all. And the person I saw wasn’t all that much of an ogre. She was normal, with her strong points and weak, successes and failures, areas of confidence and insecurities.

So, if you’re having trouble getting in touch with you, ask yourself: What are you afraid of finding? Chances are, you’re blowing your fears out of proportion.

I’m going to let you in on another secret: it isn’t even necessary for you to answer that question. Just acknowledge that you’re afraid and leave it at that. And one day, when you’re least expecting it, you’ll rediscover yourself.

Here’s to you!