New leaf 2.0

All they wanted for me was to be mindful and conscious of the present moment. 

I remember the last heart-to-heart conversation I had with my uncle like it was yesterday. It was the three of us: my dad, my uncle, and I; chilling on the dinning table, finishing off dinner. I was listening in while my uncle and dad were reminiscing the good old days, just like two childhood bestfriends. Somehow, the conversation was switched to me. The topic was ambition; my ambition, to be precise. 

Rewinding back time, at that precise moment, I was a single 26 year old engineer with a stable situation in Europe. You can say, somehow, I was considered to be successful back home. However, both, my uncle and dad were shocked by my lack of ambition; they were really curious as to why I didn’t care about climbing the corporate ladder. My uncle was concerned that I was trusting my “self limiting beliefs” to be true. My dad expressed his concern as well. 

I reassured both my dad and uncle by telling them that the problem wasn’t my ambition; but rather, the ambiguity of my next steps. Slightly reassured by my vague reply, the conversation was switched back to the good old days and again, I became the active listener I usually am when my favorite people tell stories. 

Fast-forward two years later, after replaying the conversation several times in my mind, I realized that the key takeaways were mindfulness and that the definition of ambition is different for everyone. 

Today, my goal is to reach a certain level of mindfulness and to accept my always evolving, constantly changing definition of ambition.

PURPOSE (a.k.a the WHY behind the blog)

I have always loved writing, ever since I was a little girl, it has been the one constant thing that I’d always go back to. The idea here, is to use this blog as a platform to express my views on life, while providing value to you, the reader. In other words, to produce value-driven content. 

I hope that this blog can also be a safe place for us to engage in meaningful conversations (via the comments section) in order to learn from one another, practice positivity, and much more.

Now, that you know what this blog is about, here is what it is not. This blog is not a  monetization tool and it will never be. For the time-being there are advertisements here, but that is only because I am on a basic wordpress.com plan. I do plan on upgrading my package someday, once I prove to myself that I can stick to an editorial schedule.

CONTENT

I’ll be mainly covering three themes in this blog: Spirituality, Minimalism, and Life 

• Spirituality will be mainly about my views on Islam as a Muslim woman. 
• Minimalism will highlight the conscious steps that you and I can take in order to simplify our lives to make room for what really matters. This section will include anything from day-to-day practices to decluttering or social media cleansing, wise spending, you name it. 
• Life will include everything else that doesn’t fit into the two previous categories. For example, this blog post. To be precise though, I plan on writing on productivity, value setting, and positivity.

The length of each post will be roughly 600 to 1000 words. 

The frequency of publishing will be every other week starting from today. So, my next post should be out on Dec. 6, 2020.  

TARGET JULY 2021 

To be advertisement free (ad-free) because I value your attention and time. 

Together, let us think about how we can live more mindful lives that are inline with our core values and beliefs. We can start small, simply by choosing who or what we give our attention to.