When I decided that the foundation for everything that I was going to do from now on would be writing I wanted to become clear about all that inspired me. I had an old pin board that was sat doing nothing so I decided to be creative and make an inspiration board with my personal why sat in the centre.

My personal way is to

“trust in the connection with your true self so that others feel understood, seen, heard and loved unconditionally.”

For me, trusting in the connection with yourself means that you understand everything about yourself, your hurts, your reactions, how you interact with others, your fears, your worries and anxieties. It’s about knowing what brings you joy, what your dreams are, that you honour yourself and all that you are and that you are able to live a life that is true to your authentic self. Have you ever giving yourself the space and time to allow yourself to get to know you properly, to truly understand and connect to yourself and if not, do you truly understand why? For example what is behind the “I haven’t got the time” thought.

It was through embarking on a personal development journey that I truly started to understand myself. For a long time I had felt that there was more to me than what I was allowing to happen. In some ways I felt trapped and caged and I needed to understand why I felt that way. It was through books, courses and interactions with others that I started to learn more about myself, what inspired me, what hurt me and what brought me joy. I started to write again, something which I had left behind in my teenage years but was something that very much an integral part of me. It was almost like I was starting to remember me again. Up until this point I had always been very academic and even though I enjoyed the academia, there was something that was missing. I had a yearning to be creative that I was ignoring and it was making me unhappy. I had put myself in a square box and was stifling myself. So I gave in, stopped doing what I thought I should be doing and let myself be creative. I started to explore jewellery making, for a while I enjoyed this, going to craft fairs. I set up Facebook pages and blogged about it. I realised how much I loved learning about and working with colour. The pieces I made were always full of flowers and in my mind represented my garden and the seasons. I loved the process of constructing a bracelet over a number of days and and photographing them. I know longer do this now or if I do it’s not very often but what is important is knowing what I learned along the way didn’t get left behind. It’s no mistake that the Facebook pages/groups or Instagram accounts I have are full of flowers, colour, nature and beautiful words that connect together. It was never about changing who I was it was more about bringing what was hidden and buried inside of myself to the fore. I was allowing myself to hear and see myself which led to the process of loving myself more and doing so unconditionally too.

The thing is, is that at times I felt that focusing on myself and what I wanted to do was incredibly self-centred, but actually what resulted from that was that as I started to understand myself better I started to understand those around me more too. I saw their hurts, their frustrations and worries and this made me a more compassionate and patient human being. I started to learn from others and our humanness became my inspiration, as did the world around me and all that is in it. I have learnt so much from all seasons, gardening, moon cycles, being part of groups and yoga. I’ve learnt about what living from the heart looks like, I have learnt about what living from the head looks like and I see a better world when I have my head and heart working in unison. I’ve learnt from travelling and from all those that I’ve met along the way. Inspiration is all around us we just have to be open to it.

All my love

Andrea

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