I realized that I have been traveling for over a month now. I left The Netherlands 33 days ago. In this time, I have been to Berlin, Madrid, Granada, Ronda, Tarifa and - since yesterday - Sevilla.
Yesterday, while leaving Tarifa, it started raining for the umptieth time. I have been in Spain for over 3 weeks now and it has rained almost every day. I realized though, that rain hardly influences my mood these days. Something that has been very different. I am born and raised in The Netherlands, a place famous for its amount of rainy days per year. That doesn't mean that it hasn't any effect on me. It definitely has. The past two weeks or so, I picked up meditation and mindfulness practices again and it seems to have some effect on me. I feel way more at ease and I don't stress out over things that used to stress me out all the time.
For now, before I head out to the center of Sevilla, where I haven't been since March 2009, I will leave you with a couple of lessons that I've learnt over the last couple of weeks:
- Accept the things that you can't change (like the weather)
- Enjoy and appreciate the small things
- Practice gratitude
- Try to spend more time doing less/ nothing
- Slow down. Time goes fast enough already
- Accept people for who they are. Don't try to change them
- Be in the now as much as possible and enjoy the ride/ the process
- Be kind to yourself
- Be kind to others. Try to treat them like you would treat yourself
- Keep Smiling :>)
I know, this aren't necessarily lessons that I've learnt these weeks but I can promise you that you will feel better if you practice the above.
