Posted on August 4, 2021
As I’m reading about center-focused exposure feature of my camera I can’t help but make a connection with real life. Center focused metering setting is just what it sounds like – a camera chooses the center of an image to calculate exposure, or light, that will be reflected in the entire photograph. Do we do something similar in our personal life? Do we “calculate”, judge, and project our life based on what’s in the immediate center of it, oftentimes blind to the entire picture? Perhaps because it’s simply outside our focus range? Another metering setting is called Matrix. With Matrix a camera takes the entire frame into consideration when calculating light. Can we project life in a similar way, seeing the entire picture that fills our frame of life and not just its center? Can we go even farther and see beyond the limits of framing? All 360 degrees?
Category: Life Reflections, Photography Tagged: Inspiration, life, Photography, reflection, worldview
Posted on March 29, 2021
Sipping coffee in the semi darkness of pre-dawn with dim lights illuminating the quiet room. It’s only me, my thoughts, and my journal. I can hear every sound, even my breath. It’s foggy and wet outside, but it doesn’t feel morose, it feels beautiful to me, if beautiful was a feeling. There is time to think, and not to think. There is time to be inspired, to create, and to inspire.
I will not obsess anymore with people that are not real. My phone addiction is dying a slow but painful death. The only people real to me are the ones whose voices I hear or whose faces I see. I’ll notice things around me again, all the little things. Things that are not inside my phone.
A phone is a thing. It’s not alive. It does not breath. Stop breathing your life into it.
Category: Inspiration, Life Reflections Tagged: addiction, cellphone, cellphone addiction, Inspiration, life, phone addiction, real, reality, social media addiction, what's real?
Posted on March 24, 2021
I used to dream of a life different than the one I was living and I was trying so hard to stay happy even though it felt like I was slowly dying inside. I knew I was on the wrong path, fluttering and struggling to get off it.
Think of floating on a raft on an angry river. You want to get out onto the shore to rest and think in which direction you should go next, but the river is thrashing you and you sort of let go of the oars at this point and just holding on for dear life. What do you think the river is? Life? Circumstances? Wrong. The river is your mind. It screams different things at you, all at the same time, until you give up and just float because you don’t know anymore what the right thing is. I remember thinking I want to get out of this, I want to come out onto the shore and rest. Why didn’t I? I was too scared. I didn’t know what was on the shore! It might turn out to be a beautiful and peaceful place or it might turn out to be a nightmare, a terrifying new place full of monsters. That’s the fear of the unknown. We all experience it, right? When no matter how uncomfortable the present situation is it’s at least familiar and we don’t have to risk encountering horrific new situations that will make our life miserable. But what will happen if we always only do the comfortable things? We’ll never grow, right? Because, as Brianna Wiest said, growth is painful. It’s painful to grow. When you grow, your old skin sheds and breaks and burns to ashes. But new and young skin is revealed underneath it. A beautiful new you. It’s a process. Most of the time, I mean it, most of the time, it’s not the life that’s scary, but what’s in our imaginations. Your worst fear will probably never come true. When you make a change, at first you may freak out and suffer a bit, or even a lot, but then you look around in the darkness that you feared so much and realize there is no one there but you. No one to come and get you. Your mind scared you witless in order to protect you, because an ego believes that it protects us, but if you trust your soul, your intuition, you’ll see there is not much that you need to be protected from. As Deepak Chopra said “You are safe.” I am not saying to be reckless, although lately I find that to be okay too, but I am saying don’t let your fears control your life. Trust your gut feeling – that’s your intuition. When your mind drives you crazy and pushes you in never ending circles of overthinking, get out of your mind. Go for a walk, meditate, exercise, do anything that will get you out of your head. Meditation helps to develop your connection with your intuition and to better hear it. To better hear your inner voice. Start thinking less and feeling more. Start listening to your inner voice, your true feelings.
What is it that you really want? When you get excited thinking about something, that’s a cue. Why do you think you can’t have that? Write down all your reasons and then read it to yourself. Are they real reasons or are they mostly fears? The ones that appear to be real reasons for not following your heart – can you do something to eliminate them? What steps can you take in order to clear your own path? Understanding yourself is the most important step. Understanding what it is that prevents you from living out the life you desire. Understanding that a big portion of the excuses is just fear. And then analyzing the real reasons and making a plan. Make a step by step plan of what you need to do to clear your path to freedom.
Follow your true desires. Start small and grow big. You can.
Thanks for reading my blog and for following. If you’re not following it please hit a Follow button to know when I publish a new post, it comes out every week.
Yours,
Natasha Pea
Category: Inspiration, Life Reflections Tagged: desires, fear, how to get out, Inspiration, life, live without fear, self help
Posted on March 10, 2021
Did you ever look at someone’s photos on instagram and felt jealous of the life they’re living? Or met a real person who seemed so satisfied with themselves that you just wanted to breath the same air as them? I certainly have. I met several different people in my life who helped me change into who I am today. When I first met them I admired them so much I thought I wanted to be like them, do the things they were doing and achieving the successes they were achieving. They had something I wanted that I didn’t have. But were those things their hobbies, their experiences, or their achievements that I wanted so bad? Did I lack a Master’s degree that would make me as passionate about my job as they were? Did I need to try the same hobbies they had to have the same level of excitement in my life? Or did I want to travel every week to a new destination to have an interesting life?
What all of them had in common that I wanted and didn’t have turned out to be not the external things but what was way beneath it. Passion for life. Interest and excitement about the life they were living. No matter what each of them was doing they seemed confident, excited, and determined. They were living their lives with intention. They knew what they wanted and they were doing exactly that. I wanted to be like that – confident, excited about my life, intentional, and passionate. I wanted to have an interesting life. I wanted to really feel like I had an interesting life, not simply for others to think that; it’s easy to fool people. I wanted to be as excited about my own self as those people were about themselves. And isn’t this the bottom of most of our desires that are disguised by material things or by someone else’s seemingly amazing experiences? In the end, it seems, what we deeply want is to like ourselves and the life we live…
So the first step for me was to ask myself what it is that I really want. Not running after other people’s experiences and achievements and thinking that if I’ll get it I will feel the way they do. First of all we don’t know how they really feel. Second of all, it may simply not be the case. The catch here is to figure out what it is that makes you excited about your own life and then simply go ahead and do it. It sounds simple, but it really is because it doesn’t have to be anything grand immediately. Start small. And then it will grow like a snowball. The more you follow your true desires, I realized, the more of a second nature and the easier it becomes. We are creatures of a habit. Think of one small thing right now that you’d really like to do that will make you feel exited and proud. And then go out there and do it without excuses or overthinking.
Thanks for reading my blog,
Natasha Pea.
Category: Inspiration, Life Reflections Tagged: envy, excitement, hobbies, Inspiration, jealousy, life, passion, social media
Posted on February 11, 2021
I thought this is an appropriate follow up to my previous blog where I admittedly blame my parents for everything that is wrong with me. I realize just how easily I slip into a blame mode the minute I feel uncomfortable or scared. Is it how I escape from dealing with a real situation? Surely I still think it is important to work through our issues and to learn to let go. But it’s been liberating to realize that my parents are no longer responsible for me and there is nothing they can do to fix the damage. Casting blame is the route I take to avoid facing my fears. I am so terrified of facing them that I throw an emotional tantrum instead. I really am terrified of pretty much everything in life. I don’t appear to be but there is always this inherent fear of life, of future.
The only way to deal with existential fear I think is to stand up and look it in the face. The fear itself is a petrifying, paralyzing emotion, not what’s behind it. It’s like running through a maze, never stopping, fearing that there is evil right behind us, following our footsteps, but if we do stop and turn around there is nothing there, and it’s silent. And is the maze actually beautiful and peaceful? Was the omen of death just an animagus? Sirius?:)
Category: Inspiration, Life Reflections Tagged: childhood, emotions, existential fear, fear, Inspiration, life, self improvement
Posted on December 4, 2020
I realized that I always held a sort of idea of what I should become and what my life should become, and thinking that if I just learn a little bit more, look a little bit better, accomplish something, and then BAM! I’m there, and now I can just be happy for the rest of my life and not worry about it anymore. I think I was wrong all along – there is no destination. An ideal version of me is only a projection, a postponement of being happy and being accountable for my present version of me. The truth is I will never be 100% happy with myself. I am not perfect and never will be. While it is good to plan for yourself and to develop, I found it is very unreliable to plan too far ahead and a waste of energy that can be utilized here and now. There is no ideal version of myself that will make me happy for the rest of my life, because that ideal image is not a fixed one, it keeps changing as I evolve. When we keep running ahead of ourselves and try to control our future and how we will feel in the future, we don’t live fully in the present. Being fully present and moving one step at a time to a happier version of me is something I can do right now and feel the results. Not smarter, or more beautiful, or more athletic, but a happier version, and that can be anything. What is a happier version of you right now?
Category: Inspiration, Life Reflections Tagged: future, happiness, ideal, ideal image, Inspiration, planning, self development, who am I
Posted on November 23, 2020
The biggest challenge for me always was to get out of my head and be present. It sounds like a very obvious thing that anyone who’s not mental would be able to do. But if I struggle with it half the time, does that mean I am delusional? My own answer to that is yes. I fantasize and imagine and daydream a lot. As a kid that was considered a bad thing but I thought they were just assholes, making me feel bad about myself. And they were. But now I come to realize that if I want to have the life I want I need to face the life I have. To learn to be present is hard. First you need to ask yourself: Why do I live in my head so much? Is my fantasy better than real life? Then a more difficult question is: What is wrong with my life? That can take a while. To admit that something bothers you is hard. To admit that your life is a bunch of bullshit is hard. But that’s a very extremist way of thinking, and harsh, and untrue. Anyone’s life is multidimensional. When you get out of your head you stop focusing on the bad things. For me the first step was to recognize that each moment is spontaneous. Each moment can become whatever you make of it. There is no grand plan. You can turn the corner or go straight at any given moment. For example right now, you can make a cup of coffee, or go outside, or listen to music, or go for a jug, right? That freedom is always there, with few exceptions. To stop escaping is both simple and hard. The simple part of it is that you can snap out of it and just look around the room. The hard part of it is to stay there. What’s the trick? To find something that interests you. If you’re bored you’ll keep slipping out of it. To redirect life to make it interesting is the ultimate goal. To stop waiting for the perfect future. Because there is no future. As awful as it sounds, it’s not awful at all. Future is just a projection. There is no past either, because it’s only a memory. What we have is only NOW.
This feels like I rambled a lot, but I hope there is some sense in it.
Yours,
Natasha Pea
Category: Inspiration, Life Reflections Tagged: escapism, Inspiration, issues, life, meditation, mood, personal development, psychology, reflections, struggle
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