Happiness.

What is happiness?

That is a question I have been asking myself quite a lot lately and I did come to the conclusion that happiness indeed means different things to different people. For some people true happiness lies in material things for others it’s things that money can’t buy.

“Happiness is not what you see. Happiness is what you feel, it’s what comes from within. Happiness is a state of mind”.

That is the tagline of my blog and I believe with all my heart that happiness indeed is a state of mind; you can create your own happiness. You can choose to be happy or you can choose not to be happy it is up to you. The reason why I say this is because we can find certain situations in our lives where we definitely have a choice of thinking about it in two different ways; we can either choose to see the positive even in bad situations or we can chose to see the negative.

I know that it isn’t always easy to stay positive and to be perfectly honest I’m definitely not someone who is always positive but I am working on it. However what I’ve learned through experience is that if you have a positive attitude towards certain things it will make your life a lot easier and will automatically make you happier since you pay more attention to the positive aspects of life rather than to the negative.

I’m sure that there will be someone who will point out the fact that there’s people out there who have literally nothing and will ask how I can possibly expect them to be happy? But what I’ve experienced from my trip to Ghana a couple of years ago is that even though some of those people had very little and lived in extreme poverty, they still seemed happy. To me at that time it seemed quite odd as I couldn’t really understand how people could possibly be happy living under those conditions, however as I got older I realized that it  has all to do with contentment and the attitude you have towards life. If you are content with what you have then there’s hardly anything that could ever steal your joy, which by the way doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aim for better things! Aim high and definitely dream big. Ambition will always add to your overall happiness, especially once you’ve achieved your goals.

Another thing that will help you to be happier is to surround yourself with positive people, people that are encouraging and always try to support and bring out the best in you. Forget those negative people who try to bring you down, life is way to short to be wasting time on them.

I personally am very happy at the moment not only because I just turned 21 on Thursday whop! whop! but also because I realized that I’ve got everything I need for now :).

How do you feel about happiness? Tell me about what makes you happy in the comment box below.

Lots of Love

Heidi x

The words we speak carry a lot of weight.

There was a quote I read at the tube station the other day (read my post about quotes at Balham station here) which said:

“Sometimes the smallest things, take up the most room in your heart”

This quote really made me think and I totally agreed with it. Just recently my friend mentioned something I said to her about two years ago, which to me at that time was quite insignificant however to her it carried so much weight that it stuck in her head up until now.  What I said to her was: “Even if you’re trying to lose weight, you’re not going to look skinny because I think you’re just big boned.” Now when I think about it to say that to a person who is trying to lose weight is not really encouraging, especially if it’s a very close friend.

Obviously back then I didn’t think about what I said and along the way I totally forgot about it, but when we had a conversation not too long ago and she mentioned this comment to me I felt really bad. I felt bad because not only was it very insensitive but also because this was something I said to a friend whom I’m supposed to encourage and support.

The fact that it stuck in her head until now only made me realize that indeed words carry a lot of weight. I’m sure everyone has experienced something like this before, where someone has said something to you, which you have taken quite seriously meanwhile the other person didn’t even pay attention to what he or she just said. Sometimes when we say things, we don’t think about it which however doesn’t mean that the other person isn’t thinking about it either. It should be very important to us  to pay attention to what we say to people. We sometimes forget that people are different; how you perceive a situation is perceived totally different by another person.

There is a saying that says: ‘actions speak louder than words’, but sometimes I do wonder if that’s true.

Because words to me are quite loud and they can be very powerful to actually hurt a person.

How do you feel about this? Do you agree or maybe not? Let me know what you think in the comment box below.

Lots of Love

Heidi x

The Tube station that puts a smile on your face.

Would you have ever thought about the tube station as being a place where you can get inspired and motivated? Me either! Well as it turns out you can.

At Balham station where I catch the tube to go to uni or work, are always nice little quotes written down on a notice board every morning. I love seeing those not only do they make me smile but also make me think. Here in London these things are very helpful to read as I can imagine that a lot of people can get quite lost in their daily routine and don’t really look beyond what they are doing. Reading quotes like these in the morning might remind a few people that there is still so much more to life and that it is never too late to get up and do something new or follow a dream.

Here are some of the quotes I took pictures of  from the last couple of days.

  

  

 My favorite is the one which says:

“You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”

Which one did you like ? Tell me what you think in the comment box below.

Lots of Love

Heidi x

Would you …

Hi Guys,

So my last post was about friendship and the rather disappointing side of it,  which strangely got me thinking about a totally different topic which however has also to do with friendship. I was wondering  if whether or not you would tell your friend if he or she has a smelly breath or smells bad in general?

It might seem like a silly question to some people but it actually can be quite awkward to raise such a topic as you don’t really want to hurt your friend’s  feelings however at the same time you don’t want to be a bad friend by not telling him or her. I’m quite curious  about what you think so feel free to fill in my pole below, it only takes about a minute :D.

Lots of Love

Heidi x

People grow apart.

Remember when you were younger and used to say that you and your friends are going to be friends forever? You promised that you will always be there for each other and that no matter what that you will always have each other’s back.

You called each other ‘best friends’, which by the way reminds me of my friend who doesn’t like the term ‘best friend’ as she says that it in a way excludes your other friends and makes it seem like they aren’t as important as the person who you call your best friend. I guess I see where she is coming from and I myself have become very careful with this term and don’t really call anyone my best friend anymore. The reason for this is because I don’t really believe in best friends, since there will come a time where you realize that the person or the people you have once called your best friends or friends in general don’t mean the same thing to you as they once did. I guess the reason for this is because people change and grow apart, which in my opinion is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s not a bad thing because it’s just natural that as you grow up you develop different interests and start to think differently and start to realise that you just don’t have anything in common anymore.

How you realize that you and your friends have grown apart is that  eventually conversation becomes less and less and in a way seems forced. You find it hard to find a topic to talk about and usually end up just asking each other how you are. At some point you might event stop talking to each other without any particular reason. It can be very frustrating as you certainly never expected to feel so distant from a person to whom you once felt so close to. But at the same time you realise that there will be people you meet in your life who are just not meant to stay. And that’s okay I guess.

How do you feel about friends? Share Your thoughts on what you think about friendship in the comment box below.

Lots of Love

Heidi x

The Invisible Stopwatch.

The following post is a piece written by my very good friend Andrea Bellometti, who is a writer, actress as well as a fashion student. She never fails to make me laugh, inspire and encourage me and for those reasons I consider her to be a true friend. Her style of writing is just so beautiful, which is why I asked her to write a piece for my blog so that I can share it with everyone else. I hope you’ll like it.

Andrea Bellometti

 Guest post by Andrea Bellometti

For my very good friend Heidi, the one who got me out of my usual student comatose state in bed today to write this and one of the few friends that make me feel blessed to have around. Whom I met in an unfortunate circumstance and at a weird point in my life, having being freshly fired from my first ever job I was lucky enough to find another one straight away coincidently right next door to the one I just got fired from. Awkward is just imbedded into my everyday life but my favorite word is serendipity, meaning finding something good unexpectedly and although life creates oceans between people, I hope that we will continue to keep swimming for each other and that we will never surrender to the dilution of ourselves for society or what life brings in general. At the very least I hope we will remember a time in which we felt completely infinite.

 

The world is a cruel, scary and unjust place and I only hope that one day someone stumbles upon my work and relates to the things I write and most importantly views the world a little differently like I do, come to find out that money is just a method of immeasurable self-destruction and sometimes your real friends only come in single digit numbers but that’s okay because it only means you have to buy less presents for Christmas and birthdays. Hopefully one by one the world and the people in it won’t seem so vacuous.

– Andrea Bellometti

The Invisible Stopwatch. 

‘And every time he wakes up to look at her he’s overcome with the fear that the light he turns on in her eyes will one day burn out. The notion of everything we invest in so tenderly has an expiry date. And he couldn’t for the life of him remember how it was like before he met her, and that scared him more than anything, the inevitable.’

It’s a rare practice to really meet someone for the first time and not completely judge him or her on the basis of a few common superficial things; I think our own insecurities intertwine with the ‘first impression’. The subconscious telling us to fear the worst, human inferiority. What if this person is smarter than me? Funnier than me? God forbid better looking? The desperate scramble to find something incriminating to mask hidden insecurities about ones own self-worth.  There is almost something super natural in the way a group of girls or women get together.

We are programmed to believe that you can only fall in love once, the idea that we are defined by the hands of time and that everything must fall in a certain order in our lives, ‘true love’ and soul mates only occurs once and if we miss it, its gone forever.

It’s not true, different people make you feel different things and if your lucky enough to find someone who makes you view the world a little differently, that is a rare and beautiful thing and to be around a free spirit is a blessing for it makes you feel at peace with yourself and that is the kind of love that counts for something.

Life is a constant race to complete something in a certain time frame and some of us don’t even know where we are running to or the purpose of the race that we just stop running all together and allow the opportunity to succeed or be happy run right past us. It is much easier to give up than to have to face rejection, failure and bitter disappointment but understand that nothing is permanent and I think that is what terrifies most of us, to be shaken out of bliss only to be left with nothing but a memory. But to start again is one of life’s recurring rituals and there is no running from it.

We should value what we have in the present moment and time instead of worrying about what we lack, if you can see past anything aesthetically you have already won the race.

If you want to read more about Andrea and her beautiful words, visit her blog: ditchthecoolkids.tumblr.com

Lots of Love,

Heidi x

Late Night Vibes #1

Once in a while I will post a couple of songs I like to listen to at night, which help me to think and just relax. I don’t know what it is but there’s just something about listening to music late at night.

So here are the songs of this week, let me know what you think of them.

1. Jesse Boykins III: AMOROUS

 

 

2. Candice Chenade: WEAK

 

3. Jhené Aiko: THE WORST

More than just skin deep.

Today’s post is about a very sensitive issue within the black community which is skin complexion. I know that the readers of my blog are from very different ethnic backgrounds other than black but this is something that has been on my heart for quite a while now and I feel like I need to share my feelings about a sensitive issue like this.

I think my sensitivity to the issue about skin complexion developed once I heard someone saying to me:

“You’re very beautiful for a black girl”.

Now for most people that might seem like a very nice and sweet compliment and I’m sure that the person who said it to me definitely didn’t say it to be rude but it did make me think deeper about what that actually means. I mean if someone says that I’m pretty for a black girl and that usually referred to me being a dark skinned girl, does it mean that dark skinned girls are usually ugly but I could be seen as an exception?  I mean I don’t go around and say oh you’re very pretty for a White girl or Chinese girl or whatever.

Why should it matter what the colour of your skin is or where you’re from? In my opinion if you’re pretty you’re pretty. Skin complexion shouldn’t affect someone’s perception of beauty. After all isn’t beauty so much more than just your appearance? It’s everything about you that makes you beautiful. Your personality and just the way you portray yourself.

Well I guess if we see it in that light, that beauty is everything about you then I believe I shouldn’t be surprised that black girls are usually seen as less beautiful than other females. There is and has always been a stereotype about black women, that we are feisty, loud and rude and the media seems to only reinforce this view; black women are usually portrayed in the same light over and over again. In a way it seems like you’re skin colour rubs off on your personality and that people therefore already have their prejudices about who you are supposed to be according to your appearance.

I know that we do see black women in the media who more or less represent a positive image such as Rihanna, Ciara or Beyoncé just to mention a view, of course there’s the actresses as well . However the black celebrities that seem to be the most successful only represent one type of black and that is usually which is closest to the western notion of beauty; having light skin, light eyes, and long straight hair. Don’t get me wrong these women are all absolutely beautiful and are just as equal black as I am, since we come in all shades and shapes however I ask myself where the women are who represent my shade of black? In the past you did get the odd model such as Naomi Campbell who more or less represented the darker shades of black skin as well as models such as Alek Wek and Ajak Deng, however the latter two usually being referred to as ugly pretty (not sure what that means though).

I’m not saying that it is the media’s fault that black girls are seen as less beautiful than others since this issue has far deeper cultural and historical implications. However since the media is such a big part of our lives these days I do believe that it has its fair share of circulating such ideas.

I know that you need to have a sense of maturity and confidence if you don’t want this issue to affect you but it is quite hard. I remember being unhappy with the colour of my skin and used to envy girls who were light skinned as they seemed to be more beautiful and got more attention from guys. At some point I even tried bleaching creams, but that was a long time ago and I would never and I repeat never try it again as I know that there’s nothing wrong with the way I look or what colour my skin is. I actually feel quite ashamed for feeling ashamed of the way I looked.

I just hope that in the future there will be a society where this issue won’t be an issue anymore and where girls like me don’t have to be seen as being pretty for a black girl, but to be seen as being pretty for being pretty, full stop.

Right now I’m just very happy about the success of Kenyan actress Lupita Nyong’o who played Patsey in 12 Years A Slave.

Ever since her appearance in that film she has been featured on almost all of the major fashion and lifestyle magazines around the world. What I love about her is not only her acting skills but also what she represents in general, from the colour of her skin to her natural kinky short hair. She proves that there’s no need to conform to the western notion of beauty and shows that black women as dark as ebony are just as beautiful as anyone else. I can’t wait to see more of her as well as more women like her so that young black girls can have someone they can relate and look up to.

How do you feel about this issue? Do you agree with me or am I being to sensitive about it? Share your thoughts in the comment box below.

Lots of Love,

Heidi x

 

Life is like …

By Dreamer

Just listening to the mixtape of a really good friend of mine (Jaimz) and the CD had this quote written on it, so I thought I just had to share it. I totally agree with this quote by Albert Einstein. Life is very hard sometimes and we do get discouraged through a lot of stressful and painful experiences in our lives, but like Einstein perfectly put it  to keep our balance we definitely need to keep moving. Don’t let anybody nor any disappointment ever hold you back from what you really want in life, because life is way too short to be held back from our true happiness and anything that our heart desires.

Lots of Love,

Heidi x

Know Who You Are.

If someone would ask you to describe yourself in a sentence, would you be able to do it?

I’m not only talking about describing yourself as in saying what your name is: “hi my name is Heidi”, or where you’re from: “and I’m from Hamburg, Germany”. I’m also talking about describing your characteristics as in what makes you … you. What are your beliefs, your values, your passions?

What inspired me to write this post was that recently I have been asked quite often to talk about myself and what makes me, me and I noticed that I have quite a hard time doing so. I realised that knowing who I am is not something that I should take for granted and some people within their whole lifetime never get to understand who they are as a person. I always thought that I knew exactly who I am but I soon realized that it really isn’t that simple. I think the idea of the self is quite complex and self-awareness is something that only a few completely understand.

However, I do believe that getting to know yourself is in a way the same process as getting to know another person. When you want to get to know a person better you try to spend time with them, listen to what they say and how they react in certain situations. Well the same idea in my opinion could be applied to yourself. How will you ever know who you are if you are not trying to analyse yourself and pay attention to what you say and how you behave in certain situations? Also you will get a much better idea of yourself if you spend some quality time just being by yourself.

When you are by yourself maybe you can write down a list like this:

1. What do I like/don’t like?
2. What are my beliefs?
3. What are my values?
4. What am I passionate about?
5. Who are my heros?
6. What is my biggest fear?                   

In one class at my uni we did a similar task and it really helped me discover a few things about myself of which I was previously quite unaware of or let’s say didn’t really pay much attention to. It really helped me to think deeply about myself and what I as an individual stand for and who I want to be as a person.

I personally believe that knowing who you are is very important as it helps you to grow as a person and will definitely help you to understand where you need to go in life. Not knowing who you are is quite a sad thing and people will definitely notice if you try to be someone that you are clearly not. Trying to be someone that you are not gives the impression of you being a lost identity and no one wants to be seen as lost right?

What I am trying to put forward with this post is this: If you know who you are just be yourself, that’s the best you can do. If you don’t know who you are then I would definitely advise you to spend some quality time on your own, to get to know yourself better.Also if you find yourself in social situations take a moment to analyse how you relate to people and how you behave in certain scenarios. Trust me it will be such a revelation.

Lots of Love,

Heidi x

Oh yes and here’s something to listen to. I know the song is about love and breaking up with somebody and may not relate to this post directly, but the chorus is quite catchy:

‘Me myself and I
That’s all I got in the end
That’s what I found out
And it ain’t no need to cry
I took a vow that from now on
I’m gonna be my own best friend’

– Beyoncé