Categories
Words of Wisdom

The Evolution of a Blog and of a Life

how blogging changed my life

When I first started blogging, I didn’t know how it would greatly influence me. I started out hoping to influence many and in the process, I was the one who had been pruned, and fertilized. I was developed at the same time that my blog evolved.

My first blog, which was with a free host was very simple. But to me, it was a dream come true of having a website of my own. I was very new at blog design and templates and CSS codes that compared to the many other looks my blog achieved, it looked so simple and ordinary, even corny at times when I look back. But even then, it was a big leap for me. And I learned many things from then.

What’s more important however, are not the technical things I’ve learned, though I’ve learned so much in there. What’s significant are the life changing lessons blogging taught me:

  • I’ve learned that sharing is crucial to learning. At first, I was afraid to share my best articles. There was a fear that it might be copied, stolen or plagiarized. But then I realized that there is really no worth to what I’ve written if I cannot share it with others who may benefit from it. So I wrote prayers, inspiring poems and healing articles which I hope to comfort even the most downtrodden people. My first readers were the sick, the hurting, the grieving. I connected with them, through my writings, even if they haven’t even met me in person. Words truly have power, and words must be uttered, written, shared in order for it to bring forth its fruits.

  • I’ve learned that if one truly desires to live in full, one must welcome change and move on. The first theme of my blog was okey, it reached the audience my writing spoke to at that time. But then later on, an old friend gave me a feedback that my blog was a sad blog. I knew it was, for I had the sorrowful in my heart when I wrote most of the articles there. Yet I learned that even sadness has a season, and the people I desired to comfort should not remain in their sadness forever. They must move on, they will move on. I’ve realized that comforting them in their darkest hours was only a part of my prayers for them. The second part is how to reach their joy, how to protect it, how to expand it endlessly as God’s beloved children were meant to experience.

  • I’ve learned that I was hiding myself just like the templates I initially used, which were dark and not so easy to understand. I was deep. But I was not easy to read. I was mysterious, but mystery is nothing if it could not reach the people whose lives you’d really want to touch. You can’t stay in heaven if you want to be of use to earth. You have to go down that dark valley so you can help people living in the darkness find their way up to heaven as well.

  • The time I spent developing my blog was also the time I relearned my life principles. As my blog evolved, I passed through stages of questioning my life principles, setting my core beliefs, strengthening them, and now, of applying them in real life.

  • I’ve learned that there is always room for growth. When I reached writing 300 articles, I thought it was the end, that I couldn’t share or write anything anymore. But I was wrong. As I write today, I have this good feeling – that I’ve only just begun. 🙂

When blogging, you don’t have to think you’re writing for the whole world. Think that you’re writing to one person, and one person is a whole universe of significance which God has given you.


Categories
relationships

Loving Yourself

LOVING YOURSELF

I’ve noticed that the quality of my relationships improved in proportion to the improvement of my relationship to myself. Indeed, it has drastically increased throughout these years. Even the quality of my suitors improved! 🙂

I guess that’s one of our main problems, or should I say, the source of many of our problems and frustrations. The inability to love ourselves enough. And more often than not, whenever we fail to do so, we play the blame game with everyone. We blame our boyfriends, we blame our best friends, we blame our parents, we blame the country, we even blame our dog! And that blame game would certainly lead us nowhere. It certainly wouldn’t lead us to better relationships with other people.

I have just browsed over the book, “If Love is a Game, These Are the Rules.” It spoke of the same thing. That if we expect to be loved, if we expect to be special, we should learn to love ourselves first and treat ourselves as special. People respond only to how we treat ourselves. If we believe we are not important, guess how they would treat us?

The book also mentioned that treating ourselves special is a habit that has to be formed, and habits are usually formed by repetition, usually in a matter of 21 days.

Today I begin that day. I’ve been more conscious on the way I treat myself, even in small things. For instance, I usually don’t mind the heat of the sun damaging my skin and drying my hair. Now I’ve used an umbrella and protected myself, the way I wish my boyfriend would have done so if he were here. I also treated myself to good lunch, bought make-up that I liked and even chose the best seat in a cafe. Hmm… was not as easy as I thought. But practice makes perfect they say. And how could we expect others to do these things for us when we couldn’t care doing it for ourselves?

I guess I just have to carry on for the next 20 days. If you think you could also benefit from this, why don’t you begin today as well? 🙂