One thing that never fails to help me get to know myself a bit more and to be conscious of the present is questioning myself and then giving detailed and honest answers. Every now and then I have Self-Discovery sessions with myself where I get down and personal about how I feel and basically reflect on what has been happening lately and what changes I need to make and every time I ask myself different questions which aren’t quite related.

Sometimes, I write them down in my Self-Discovery journal and sometimes I just answer the questions out loud as I am reading them. It has been a while since I shared anything personal on my blog so I figured I should share my latest session with you…

⁃ How’s your life lately?

In reality, my life is honestly in good shape – pretty much everything is working in my favor, I get to do what I love everyday, I get to travel when I want to, I try out new foods, new places and have interesting conversations with new people. However, mentally and emotionally, it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. Literally one minute I’m like, “Yeah, I’m totally doing great!” then the next minute I am questioning everything I am doing and whether I am making wise life decisions and it is quite frustrating because I haven’t figured out how to get this rollercoaster to stop.

⁃ Are you happier single or in a relationship?

If you asked me this from year 2010 until 2017 I wouldn’t have let you finish your question because I was definitely going to tell you I’m happier when I am in a relationship. Don’t get me wrong, I still enjoy being in a relationship but being single for the first time was just weird at first but after a couple of months I got the hang of it and realized that I am having more fun (in every way imaginable) and I am more spontaneous when I am single. So to answer the question, I honestly don’t think I’m ‘happier’ in any relationship status.

⁃ What do you want to be more like?

I want to continue digging deeper into knowing and discovering myself. I want to be that person who has stories to share about their own personal experiences, a person who isn’t ashamed of anything they have said or done and a person who isn’t afraid of the unknown and failing.

⁃ What lesson in life that you had to learn the hard way?

What you allow is what will continue. This applies to every single context you could possibly think of. Listen, if I treat you badly and you never speak up about it, what will ever make me stop? I could easily assume you aren’t bothered by it. If I keep messing up your name, I will never stop until you correct me. If you procrastinate or hit the snooze button 3 times every morning, nothing will change because you allowing it to continue. Unfortunately, it took me almost a year to realize this and allowing ‘it’ to continue deprived me of so much happiness.

⁃ What do you need to get off your chest right now?

It hurts me, it hurts me so damn much to see my friends share quotes from influencers and/or ‘big’ people who basically summarized an article I have published on my blog. I know it’s probably a weird rant because it’s unrealistic to expect people to read literally all my blogs but when I see something I have once said, my heart starts to feel a bit heavy because I put in so much time and effort in creating content that is purely helpful and enjoyable to read and it just makes me feel way less relevant than I actually am when they completely disregard what I posted.

⁃ What distractions are hindering your productivity?

Currently? Comfort. I am beyond comfortable with where I am and that is not pushing me to do more and to work as hard as I did before. In a sense, I kind of understand, last year was a tough year for me, mentally, emotionally, spiritually and financially but this year my life pretty much took a 360 turn and I am doing better than ever before. Not only because I moved to New York but because of other personal factors too like completing my degree and such. Being comfortable is good but it can be terrible if you get too comfortable and I feel like I have gotten to that stage where it has become bad for me, I just literally stopped trying to better myself and my craft and that is most certainly something I need to put to a stop.

⁃ What trait makes you a toxic person?

One thing that probably makes me a toxic person is that I manipulate people to get what I want and when I’ve gotten it, you’ll never hear from me again. Well, I know I just made it sound super evil (although I kinda have done evil things to get what I want) but it’s not just big things, sometimes what I want is to get to know you and after like 4 consecutive days of talking with you non-stop and I feel like I am satisfied with all the information I have gathered I cut you off the next day.

⁃ Which ex taught you a lot?

Londa. He taught me how to speak up for myself – prior to being with him I used to be an ‘absorber’, I would just take in any hurtful comments and judgements from people and smile it off but I learnt to speak up for myself and what I believe in and that also encouraged me to be myself and to always be ready for harsh remarks and/or disapproval. He taught me to watch out for people who play the victim, how to identify toxic people and behavior, taught me to not put in more effort than my partner, how to say ‘No’ to anything that goes against my will, to not try and impress people and be myself rather (at some point I also felt like he was part of the factors that inspired me to start a blog and speak my mind) and he taught me all of this through heavy tough love.

⁃ What’s a strange thing about you?

I think about death more than I should. I don’t mind dying, even at my peak of happiness, I still think about death. This is something I grew up thinking about and I guess it never wore off, I casually think about my death, my friends death, my family, my partner, my kids… It’s surely something strange but to me it has become a norm, I always try to make peace with the fact that people we love and want to spend the rest of our lives with will die and if they don’t then you will die.

⁃ What is standing between you and complete happiness?

If there’s such a thing as complete happiness then I’m already there – with all my mental issues, struggles, failures and bad days. I couldn’t be happier right now and complete happiness surely cannot disregard life problems because that is not something you can just swerve and continue on your joy ride. With that said, there is no such thing as complete happiness because there is always something inevitable that is bothering us and needs our attention. Nonetheless, I am the happiest I can be right now, genuinely.