Ignite your Inspiration.
Content: Blogs, Vlogs, Poems
Insights to Ignite Your Inspiration Towards a Life That Lights You Up!
Party: Ending The Year With a Bang… or a Bell [POEM]
Party! How do you define one? A gathering with good music, great people, dancing, drinks? A warm and loving time with those close to you? A victory dance or a high five after a success? Something more subtle, such as a moment of celebration during the day, or even better, turning each day into a celebration?
Priorities: Who and What Do You Love and Value Most?
A term that we throw around like snowballs, but how aware are you of your priorities? One step further, if you know your priorities, do you consciously create time for them?
Let’s dig into this theme like fresh snow and hopefully have as much fun as a snowball fight would be. Yes. The Christmas spirit has clearly arrived here.
Progress: A Personal Burnout Recovery Process
Progress is a word I never linked to burnout recovery until I ended up with a burnout earlier this year.
Progress was lacking at first, requiring faith. Progress was bumpy afterwards, requiring acceptance. Progress has become clearer as I look back, providing hope.
Pray: Four Years After Finding Faith [POEM]
This month marks the anniversary of an event that took place a year after unexpectedly choosing Christianity. So to celebrate, I wanted to share the story four years later, and perhaps provide a perspective moment for you too, on the life-defining decisions that you may have made in your life.
Play: Getting Into The Habit of Having Fun!
What do you think about when you hear the word “play”?
You may think of children having fun in the sun or sand or in the rain, busy with building blocks or barbie dolls, drawing or dancing. When was the last time you had that childlike, carefree feeling? Which words would you use to describe the way you felt? Joyful, fun, giddy, excited, happy, worry-free, light? That’s what we’re talking about!
Peace: What Is the State of Your Serenity? [+VLOG]
How would you define peace?
When was the last time you experienced a sense of serenity, a piece of peace? Where were you? What did your surroundings look like? Who was there with you or were you alone? What did you hear, smell, see? How did you feel? Let’s take a deep breath and relive that moment of peace. Wouldn’t it be great to have more of those moments in our lives? Let’s have a look at peace.
Presence: Slow Down, Simplify, Breathe…
How often do we prefer the road towards perceived productivity over presence? But when we honestly think about it, are we truly more productive when we arrive at work those few minutes earlier? When we skip our lunch break to get things done? When we talk or type faster?
Of course, we know the answer. It’s just that the pace of society is so easy to get caught up in.
The Power of Positivity
Positivity may not fix our problems, it does provide a different perspective on dealing with them. In addition, it turns out that a positive mindset brings a whole host of benefits: From increased life expectancy to increased creativity, from better immunity to better social skills and relations, from lower levels of stress and pain to a lower risk of mental and even physical disease. The list goes on.
The Practice of Pressing Pause
We simply need to escape our external and internal culture, that is, our mindset, from time to time. Not just on vacation, but on a daily basis. Simply said, we need to sometimes: Press Pause. Because stress, to me, brings the image of having to keep on keeping on. We can interrupt the chain of events that make up most of our days, by taking short moments to stop moving and to. simply. be.
Purpose: What Makes You Get Out of Bed Each Morning?
What does it look like when you live lit up? When you shine and glow from within? How does it make you feel?? This is a hint towards the purpose and priorities that will keep your fire burning. Yes, that inner flame that we all have. It can be lit by a spark of insight or inspiration. We receive an idea and choose to pursue it. Moments of motivation.
Unlocking The Power of Perseverance (+Top 10 Quotes)
If passion is the spark that ignites a flame on the inside, then perseverance is the breath that continues to blow, in order to let that fire grow. Perseverance is an underestimated quality. It’s the grit that brings you to your goal. That whisper on the inside saying: take. just. one. more. step. It’s the award of accomplishment after achieving the purpose you had been pursuing.
Ponderings and Perspectives on Passion
Is passion a feeling you experience on a daily basis? Do you need to blow onto your inner fire from time to time? Is it a distant memory from the past? Or are you still searching your passion (for life)? Regardless where you stand on the scale, I’d love to introduce you to a different perspective on passion which hopefully brings a lot less pressure.
A New Now: How To Continue After a Crisis?
How to move on after parts of our world have been locked down, shut down or slowed down? There is no manual on how to continue after a Covid-19 Pandemic. There's also no certainty that it is truly over. There's no clear vision of what the world will look like moving forward. But then again. Do we really need to know?
Changing One Choice at a Time
Changing behavior or aspects of our lives can seem daunting sometimes, especially if we’ve tried and failed one or many times before. That’s why I want to share with you a way of looking at change that may make it more manageable and achievable, I hope. It's about changing one choice at a time. Let’s start with a reflection moment:
How to Have Fun Working From Home
1. Start Your Day The Right Way If I could share only one advice, it would be this. The way you start your day makes all the difference. This begins with the alarm. Even though you could theoretically sleep longer, I can wholeheartedly recommend setting your alarm at your usual waking time. Perhaps even earlier…? …
Comfort in Corona Times – Continued
Meanwhile, most of us are slowly settling into this currently-new-normal and I hope you are as healthy and happy as possible in these times. Since this situation is still ongoing and some of us are growing increasingly impatient, I wanted to counter some of the collective anxiety by sharing a sequel to my last Corona-Comfort …
Comfort in Corona Times
By now, whether or not the Corona virus is in people’s bodies, it surely is on most of our minds. It has been on my mind too, and so I wanted to share some reflections on finding comfort throughout this ‘corona-crisis’. Of course they all start with a C… 😇 Compassion When entering half empty …
Happy New Year!! (Poem)
Dear You, Just wanted to write you a personal post to wish you the most beautiful beginning of this new decade! Hopefully you are ending the old and starting the new year on a fulfilling, fun and focused note.Below is a reflection poem for the transition into the twenties.May it be your best decade so …
Embracing Emotions: Healing The Deeper Layers
Facing and embracing our emotions, especially the ones that we label as ‘negative’, is not something we’ve been taught how to do. Unfortunately. There are innumerable incredible ways to distract ourselves and keep our attention outside of ourselves. But we have never been taught how to look within and often don’t know where to start. And …
When You Are Tempted To Give Up Or Give In
This is a letter from my heart to yours, for those of you who are in transition times. Those phases in life when you can’t see what’s next, when you’re tempted to give up, even though deep inside you know you shouldn’t. Whether it’s a break-up or a move to a new city or country, …
A Leap of Faith – From Comfort to Christianity
As some of you already know, some months ago, I converted to Christianity. A change I had never, ever, ever expected myself to make in my life. It has taken me some time to share my story, but here we go, below are some milestones along the way that led to this literal leap of faith and change of heart:
The 5 Stages of Creating Change
There are phases in our lives that are quite difficult at the time, but offer powerful potential to change ourselves and our lives for the better...
Ignite Your Inner Fire!
I have a question for you: if you knew you had a fire burning inside of you… what would that look like at this moment? You can even close your eyes as you determine its state: Is it burning bright, peacefully alight, perhaps a flickering flame, or is it even about to burn out? Now …
Getting Back On Track After a Slack [Vlog]
The new is ready to unfold, deep dreams that can come true surrender what you were once toldto believe and receive what’s due. Sometimes in life there are moments when you know it’s time to draw a line in the sand. You may have outgrown behaviors, patterns, situations or even friendships…. and it’s often …
Free to Be Me [Poem]
“Freedom is the message here. No longer being held back by fear” Nicky de Koning This paragraph belongs to a poem I recently wrote and will share below. About living life free as we’re meant to be. So often, we adapt to external expectations and situations and may lose ourselves in the process. In those …
Learning the Languages of Love [Blog]+[Vlog]
Author and counselor Gary Chapman states that we all have a primary love language, in other words, a way in which love is best received. When someone expresses their love to us this way, our love tank get filled and love blossoms between the two of you. When both individuals speak different love languages though, it can create many miscommunications and difficulties in relationships.