Tuesday, May 3, 2016

{life reflections}

 . . . . . . . . . . 
{life reflections}
 Sporadic thoughts and rambles. A glimpse into my mind and world. 
Entries that I might jot down in my Happy Diary; the release of thoughts to flow uninhibited. Reflections from the soul. 
Reflections of life.  

I hope to leave you inspired. 
If you want to share your own reflections of the week please leave a link to your "life reflections" entry in the comments for all to find and see.
. . . . . . . . . .

Loving the Current Version of Yourself

Hi Lovelies! 
Whoa! Another random post from me! ;) 
I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting lately. On a day such as today I was struck with an overwhelming sense of self and reflection that began with a Facebook post but that I’ve decided to share here as well—as I know most of you are missing posts. 
So, here is my little self-reflection today… 


Firstly, this photo is what started the flow of thoughts. This photo was my first Spring back in my home of Nelson, BC. I cannot believe this was already five years ago! Time flies! 

After this I started looking through an album of old photos from that year and the next few following it. Why? Because I look so damn happy in that photo and it had me thinking about my journey in this life. Shuffling trough those memories back in Nelson I feel very grateful for my journey. 
My life has always been a turbulent one, things have never "settled"; there is always something rocking the foundation on a very deep level, chipping away at depression and anxiety. BUT, when I moved back to Nelson I began a more conscious path of self-growth on the positive side. This is a path most of you are well-aware of as it began this very blog and all the advice and reflections I had to share because of it. Now, I’ve admitted in my last post that I may have gone a little overboard with the whole PMA (positive mental attitude) at first; I realized a year later that it could only last so long for me. But it was part of my journey, part of who I became, and now I've learned to embrace all sides of myself; both the dark and the light. Balance?? I'm a highly emotional person: my highs are over the wall, my lows have me down in the dirt; and they can switch as quickly as the swinging of a pendulum. But I'm more grounded as a person not denying either side of those. 
My Dark fuels my creativity and art. My Light fuels my relationships and life. 
My point? I have none. I just felt an overwhelming sense of accomplishment and satisfaction looking back at the last 5 years of my life (has it really been 5 years?!). This has been a while coming, in all honesty, as I felt a certain bitterness and resentment at the fact I was no longer this super duper happy woman all the time like I was in my PMA year. So, let me tell you: It's a nice place to be loving what I was but loving who I am more now, without bitterness or resent or longing for a different version of me. 
I’m sharing, as I like to do, because these moments of self-reflection are still easy for me to write and share in my busy life. When they come around, I still like to share my thoughts on life. 
I hope that you, too, are doing lots of self-reflection and that, no matter where you are at right now, you can see a light in the tunnel. The tunnel has no end, not at the moment, perhaps never, it is a journey through our ever-evolving souls and there is always room for growth. I hope you find balance, and that you learn to embrace every part of yourself without resent or longing. And if you haven’t found that place yet, don’t worry. The journey isn’t over yet! 

Okay, rambling reflection over! ;) 

Much Love, 
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Tuesday, January 19, 2016

{The Fine Print of Life; and an Open Letter to my Readers}

I have not written a new entry in a year. If it isn’t too obvious, this lovely little blog is on stand-by; perhaps forever, perhaps for a few months, perhaps for a few years. All I know is that, at this crossroads in my life I am far far too busy to keep up with it.
Still, I felt I owed my loyal and/or curious readers an update and explanation before I say farewell for now (also note that I wrote most of this half a year ago, but life kept me too busy to post it until now).

Am I still Happy? Yes. Am I happy All the time? No. I felt the need to write this entry for a number of reasons, but one is that while ReLove Plan.et has always been about being light and fluffy and optimistic and positive, I feel it has left out the “Fine Print” as I have come to like calling it.
So, today, I am going to share some overall points, thoughts, ideas, and ramblings of recent Life Reflections—but particularly regarding the work that I have done here on the blog.

First, I have to start by saying that I am overly grateful and blessed to know that I have helped others through this project. It is a feeling that I cannot put into words and leaves me overwhelmed with the warm fuzzies inside. This blog has served a purpose, and it shall remain here for others to enjoy and happen across at their own leisure—even if there will be no new content.

Alright.
The Fine Print.


{The Fine Print.}


Positivity is great, but it’s not perfect.
Thinking Positive is a lovely concept, a magical idea, a wondrous notion. But it isn’t perfect. Not by a long shot. And I’ll tell you why.
Positivity can help, but you can’t be positive ALL the time. If you are, then you’re really just burying a lot of other perfectly natural human emotions, errors, reactions, and general energy-flow. Feeling negative about something is a pretty natural reaction. Feeling sad, angry, or any other “negative” feeling has it’s place. It’s better to feel those feelings than to just think positive and magic it away (again, i.e. burying the problem).
The problem with a Positive Mental Attitude is that it can catch up with you. I mean, how long can you expect to keep up something like that? I don’t want to say PMA is pretending. But it kind of, sort of is. We smack a smile on our faces and pretend everything is happy go-lucky, with the intention to fake-it-’til-you-make-it. All very lovely sounding in idea, not so great in practice. The problem is that it catches up to you. All those negative feelings you’ve been denying yourself end up surfacing ten-fold.
And that’s not to say that PMA doesn’t work at the time, it certainly can. For me, it worked rather beautifully for a long period of time. I genuinely felt happy. I fuelled that happiness with PMA every single damn day. I was on top of the world. But… it caught up to me. As I said, how long do you really think you can keep that up for? When I crashed, I crashed hard—as I generally tend to do. And that’s not to say that I didn’t still bounce back up again—also as I generally tend to do. But PMA is simply not a long-term concept for most people, and there comes a time when we have to accept all parts of ourselves. There is a balance to our emotions and feelings as I’m discovering for myself. There is a place for everything.


The Dark Side of Ourselves.  
Over the last year I’ve come to realize something very important about myself: I have a dark side. But not just me. We all have a dark side. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It is human nature to have raw, natural, human emotions. We are meant to experience them, not simply sprinkle magic fairy dust with a big wide smile to make it all go away. We are meant to feel those parts of ourselves. We are meant to Accept those parts of ourselves.
I’ve read some amazing quotes and parts from books lately. The ones I was able to dig back up are posted below.








My point is, that negative emotions aren’t bad, and we can’t think positive all the time. That’s not to say we can’t feel positive after feeling something negative; I certainly don’t encourage you to dwell in a negative headspace forever, that is dangerous and bad for your well-being. Balance. Balance is the key to everything now isn’t it?
Feeling angry? Then blast that metal music and throw some fists in the air. Happy music simply won’t do in a moment like that. Feel the emotion—allow yourself to experience it and allow it to tell you what you need to know—then you’ll be much better equipped to release it once you’re done with it.
Art is my healing form. If I’m feeling upset about something—whether it be a melancholic feeling, or an angry feeling (or a mix of both)—I start drawing. I start drawing while listening to some pretty angry, aggressive music. This is where a darker art collection of mine has begun to surface and a new side project (which I eventually plan on piecing together into an art book). And I feel much better after I’ve done them. Clearing out the negative feelings through constructive action is far better than just using PMA. Through this process I am able to actually experience the negative feeling and allow to tell me something I hadn’t realized, or teach me something new about myself or about life.
It’s a form of constant healing, permanent yin and yang. And life is simply not quite complete without it in some ways.


Life isn’t always rainbows and unicorns. But it can be pretty dandy.
I don’t want to say that Life is Easy. A lot of the articles I have written pertain to being positive, to always seeing the bright side, to just think happy happy and it will cure everything. Obviously, everything I have ever written is much more complex and I dive quite deep into many ideas and concepts to help you live a happy life. But, life isn’t rainbows and unicorns ALL the time. And that’s okay. Similarly, the article I wrote about “It’s Okay to Not Be Okay” makes this point well. But what I want to add again to this, is that life isn’t always easy. If you want life to be amazing, you better believe you’re going to have to work hard at it.
Maybe you’re one of those lucky people where happiness comes quite easily. I envy you—and I am also very happy for you. But, maybe you’re like me: maybe life is difficult; maybe to get a smile on your face it takes a lot of tugging and forcing. If you are one of those people, that’s okay. It doesn’t mean we can’t be happy, it just means we may have to work a little harder at it. It may mean we have downward swings more often than we’re happy with. It’s still okay. Because there’s always another day. There’s always another way to look at life, to learn something new, and to keep trying. There are also happy days—and these days are causes for huge moments of gratitude; don’t forget the gratitude! Gratitude=more things to be grateful for.
The thing is, if you’re a Highly Sensitive Person (like I am, and like a lot of people are) then you’re going to feel Everything on a much deeper level. Your highs will be the happiest highs; and your lows will be absolute misery. Such is the gift and the curse of feeling so deeply. But do remember that it is a gift.

I Cannot Help You. (Sort of)
Although I am gracious that I have so many lovely individuals turning to me for help and advice, put simply: I cannot help you. In the past, I have tried to reply to as many messages as possible, but I simply cannot keep up (just as I cannot keep up with new content for the blog). I am also a terrible procrastinator, so, honestly, I am sorry, but replying to individual messages tend to get swept under the river of other works and projects and jumble of my life. In the end, they sadly do not take priority. Why? Firstly, I am not a professional, and, as I have tried to repeatedly urge my readers to do throughout this blog, please seek help when and if you need it (and even if you don’t need it)—it will do you wonders! Secondly, my life is very busy. Very busy. I am an ambitious person and currently all my time and energy is going towards drawing and writing, working towards being a successful Artist and Writer. This is done mostly in my spare time, between orders from my three etsy shops (and markets) and having to get a part-time job to survive. Whatever time is left over, I try to put towards a currently-fairly-lacking social life.
Any help that I have left over is also spent on friends and family, in open discussions. Which is another point I’m getting to. Any advice, any writings here, really, are meant to be interpreted to your own individualistic needs. Everyone is different. I cannot emphasize this enough. Everyone’s needs are different, everyone’s coping methods are different, everyone’s interpretations are different. That is the beauty of being your own person and living your own unique life. I encourage you to take these ideas, to bend them, to shape them, to expand them, to explore them, to discuss them, and to keep keep growing. Always.

So, I cannot help you. Sort of. As previously mentioned: the content of this blog will forever be here for you to use to your liking—and I might add that there really is a lot of content here! All the help I have to offer, really, can be found in the hours upon hours of blog content still available right here. And it’s not because I don’t care about your problems, it’s just that, as I said, I only have so much time and answering every message takes more time than you think.

Thank You!
I shall end by saying, thank you for all your support and love and readership. I hope you revisit the content on this blog whenever you feel you need a boost or if you’re missing new content. All these lessons are worth revisiting—even I find them helpful and interesting, and I’m the one that wrote the articles!

If you’d like to keep up with me I still post to the ReLove Plan.et Facebook page. I’m on Instagram. And you can also check out my art pages.
I will also share a new post soon on how you can keep up with my life for those interested—another of those side-projects I was mentioning. ;)

https://www.facebook.com/ReLovePlanet/
https://www.facebook.com/biancaloranart
(Personal) https://www.instagram.com/reloveplanet/
(Art) https://www.instagram.com/biancaloran/

So, with that…  I love you all, and to all, a good night (or day)!


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Thursday, January 29, 2015

♥ Valentines Love, Goodies and Shopping! ♥


Love is in the air!

Valentine’s Day always comes with a mix of emotions for many of us. Either we love Valentine’s Day and all the lovey-dovey magic icky-smoochiness that comes along with the territory; or we tend to feel miserable and enter the world of the anti-Valentine’s parade. 
Regardless of your initial feelings and reactions, I have long said that Valentine’s Day should be a day to focus on Self-Love and Self-Worth, regardless of whether you get to spend it with someone you love or if you are spending it with friends, or alone with your lovely self. Love is Love is Love. And Love is a wonderful thing. I’m always one to focus on the positive side of things, so focus on love in all its glorious forms! 
Now that I’ve gotten full-steam into my artistic side again, I have to admit there is also a dark romanticism I’m inclined towards as well. ;)

Well, I thought—regardless of how we feel about the actual day—that I would do a blog post. Some of it is some shameless self-promotion (okay, a large chunk is some shameless self-promotion), and the other part of this post is to sprinkle a little fuzzy warmth to your own lovey day—including links at the end to previously helpful blog and video blog posts. 

So! First up, hearts, love, and cute suggestions for this Valentine’s Day for yourself or a loved one (from my art to your heart ^_^) 

ReLove Plan.et Goodies:
Get 15% Off (etsy store only) until the 14th with Coupon Code: VALENTINES

Necklaces:


Adorable Cards: 



Pouches:

Kits + Other Fun Items:





Valentine’s Art Collection
I have released the first of my new Valentine’s (influenced) Art Collection as well—keep your eyes peeled for more on the way. 


You can find my artwork:


Blog Posts to Survive and Thrive this Valentine’s Day! xoxo



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If you found this article to be helpful, please consider a small donation or visit the shop. Thank you for your love and support.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

☺ 2014 in Review - My “Jar of Happiness”☺

. . . . . . . . . . 
{New Year Inspirational Kick-Off!}
 Continuing the trend from last year’s “New Year Kick-Off!” 
Keep your own life bustling with gratitude and awesomeness.
New Year Positive Power! Huzzah!
. . . . . . . . . .



This was such a rewarding practice last year, so there was no way I wasn’t doing this again for 2014… Just like the year before, emptying my “Jar of Happiness” has been incredibly heart-warming; bustling with forgotten (and deeply remembered) moments. Reading through my little moments was a lovely reminder of all the memories, laughs, smiles, and accomplishments cherished throughout 2014—including moments through the first several months I’d forgotten about—shining a little light on the undertone of emotional turbulence going on at the time.  
As the year before, this practice fills me with hope and joy, and a positive outlook heading into 2015. Life truly is beautiful and we all have so much to be thankful for. Truly truly. 
I highly encourage you to create your own “Happiness Jar” (if you haven’t already). It is a Must for positivity and encouragement at the end of the year. I promise you will love it! I’ve already started my third year doing this wonderful little jar. 

Continuing with tradition, I decided it would be fun to compile my list of particular highlights of my year. Before beginning this list, I have to say it is quite obvious to me (and probably any of my followers) that the biggest highlight this year was finding the love of my life and making this huge life change. So, apologies if some are a bit sappy, but I would prefer you to be encouraged by love, rather than respond with envy or jealousy or anything negative—if I had lived my life that way I certainly wouldn’t be where I am today, so remember you choose your outlook; the more gratitude you have, the more you welcome it into your life.  

Alright, getting to the highlights of my year…


2014 Gratitude Highlights!

Personal Highlights:

  • Potlucks + Tea Dates with fun friends, both close and new. I had the fortune of being able to socialize with some wonderful people during the beginning of the year. 
  • As always, tea dates, tea dates, tea dates. ;)   
  • Meeting one of my best friends’ baby for the first time, and getting to see her more this year after she’d been away. 
  • Connecting with some amazing women and having some amazing discussions; getting in touch with feminine energy, reconnecting with my personal “Fire” and finding myself again.  
  • Completing the David Suzuki 30x30 Challenge again this year. And taking part in the #100HappyDays, doing “The Magic” again, and other New Years fun.  
  • Reconnecting with old friends—thank you Skype! 
  • Tool Concert!
  • Lots of Family time—always great!  
  • I feel at this point I have to give my ex-husband a thanks at least for trying in our relationship at the beginning of the year, even if it took me six months to finally realize it was over for me in January. The effort was appreciated and he was very supportive during everything.

  • Getting my Moon Cycle Tattoo!
  • Healing lots of broken relationships this year, makes me feel incredibly fortunate and grateful.  
  • Getting to see my Grandma and Auntie who I hadn’t seen in several years. 
  • There was this sunny day in May that stood out to me where I got to have tea dates with my brother, with Tam (before we were dating), had dinner with one of my best friends, and had girl time with two of my best friends after that, and finished the night with another visit with Tam.  
  • Skate park day in Kaslo; hoola-hoops and drinks at the park. 
  • Costume parties!
  • The night me and Tam confessed our feelings and things changed forever.
  • Finally doing what I needed for myself, finding myself, and having the courage to make such a huge life change—yes I feel very proud for all of this ;)
  • First date with Tam; fireworks, champagne, and perfectness
  • Vancouver Trip that started my new relationship and getting to visit one of my best friends. :) 
  • Drinking at the park with Tam and Talia—probably my two favouritest people in the whole world!  
  • Doing Hot Yoga for the first time—wow did it kick my butt! 



















  • Beach days!
  • Dyeing my hair pink ;) 
  • The night Talia randomly came for a visit. :) 
  • Moving day! One of my besties lending me her car so I could pack, and Tam helping me pack his Delica full and helping me move into my new place. 
  • Tam making me a bed frame ^_^
  • Getting Lyla back after moving into my own place. ^_^ 
  • Shambhala! 
  • The entire Coastal and San Francisco trip adventure! 
  • Halloween the day we got back from our coastal adventure + the hangover day afterwards with cuddles, comfort food, and movies. 
  • Watching “Adventure Time”, “Spirit Science”, and a few other great shows with Tam. 
  • All the ridiculously sweet things Tam did for me this year—the list is ridiculously long
  • The night Tam came home from Utah after two weeks being apart—and getting to Skype with him while he was away. 
  • The most perfect birthday ever and being absolutely spoiled by the most amazing boyfriend in the world.
  • The amazing hikes I got to do this year! 
  • Snowy walks!
  • Finally having a perfect Christmas, with both mine and Tam’s families. ^_^
  • Ending the year with a kiss with Tam at midnight ;) 
  • Having the courage, in general, to follow my heart and make my dreams come true. 

ReLove Plan.et Accomplishments:

  • Republic of V carrying ReLove Plan.et gear! 
  • All the focus and work that went into my Artwork this year and starting my personal art page. 
  • Finally posting artwork for my book series “Everwake” 
  • Summer Markets!
  • All the positive and inspiring words from my amazing readers and viewers! xo  
  • Doing my “New Year Kick-off” here on the ReLove Plan.et blog—it was fun! :) 
  • The series of blog posts during my “New Life Chapter”—I was rather fond of that series, and got some great feedback :) 
  • At least a few Video Blogs! ;)  
  • Redbubble shop growing! 

I hope you all had an amazing year and start your own Jar Full of Happiness and take lots of photos to capture memories and moments :) 

So much love and wishing you all the best in 2015! xo


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