''Keep giving me hope for a better day 
Keep giving me love to find a way 
Through this heaviness I feel I just need someone to say, everything's okay''

(Bali 2018)

''Sometimes I need a little sunshine 
And sometimes I need you''
______________________

This morning, I woke up with a little heaviness in my chest. My day seemed a little dark, and I felt like I really needed something to get me out of bed.
I forced myself to shut my brain down, and get up to do some stretches on my yoga mat.
In front of the mirror, I practiced to get all my poses right, even though my body felt so stiff.
This song came up, and I paused my stretches and looked at my reflection in the mirror.

The song goes something like :

Woke my weary head
Crawled out of my bed
And I said, "Oh, how do I go on?"
Nothing's going right, shadow's took the light
And I said, "Oh, how do I go on?"

I gave my hope to you
When you were nearly through
And you said, "Oh, I can't go on"
Well, now I need it back
'Cause I have got a lack of all that's good
And I can't go on

Yeah, sometimes I just need a little sunshine
And sometimes I need you

Through this heaviness I feel
I just need someone to say, everything's okay




And I smiled to myself. Looking in the mirror and telling myself, the person you're needing to lift you up right now, is YOU.
If the sunshine doesn't come to you, YOU create it.
The person you need to say ''everything's okay'' to you, is YOU.

A feeling of sudden peace in my heart.
A feeling of clarity in my head.

Sometimes we try so hard to find comfort in things outside of us, to find others to tell us everything will be okay, to comfort our hearts, to ease our pain, to love us, to be there for us.
But why can't that person be ourselves?
Yes. It is incredibly beautiful to find someone who loves and cares for you in that way, but you'll never be fully open, happy or satisfied with their love, if you haven't accepted or loved yourself first.
And similarly, you can't fully love, or care for others, if you haven't filled yourself with love first.

How can you pour out of your empty glass?

This is something I've been working really hard on lately, and I may make it sound easy on here, but it's not. It's a long and ongoing journey of self love.
Everyday, you have to CHOOSE to love and accept yourself.
Just like how you CHOOSE to love the people in your life everyday.

Loving YOU will help you see the world in such a clear and beautiful way.
Loving YOU will help you enjoy other people's love SO much more intensely.

I felt the need to write this down, because this moment felt so precious to me.
It felt like such an ''aha'' moment.
I wish you all can find the time to get those little moments with yourselves.

SO much love for you! 
Thanks for reading

xx Hind

On January of this year, I bought ''The Happiness Project''. And since it is about a whole year's resolutions, I decided to start reading each month as it goes. 

Unfortunately I am a very slow reader and I like to take my time so I didn't really reach November in the book just yet. I don't know what it is but I feel kind of sad to finish a book that I enjoy so much, I wouldn't want it to end so I take my time reading and going over it again and again!

Every time I read this book, I find myself smiling, crying, laughing and feeling everything Gretchen writes. You will definitely relate to it in one way or another! She talks about happiness, attitude, family, work, friends, and much more.

I like to keep a pencil close while I read, to underline all the quotes or sayings that I find inspiring and relative to me. So I thought I'd share what I've got so far.

I haven't finished the book yet so these are just some of my favorite quotes from reading halfway through.

♫  ♫

''You've been there and done that so you know it's possible to do it again. It's a matter of weathering the storm and navigating to your happiness destination. It probably won't be the same path but it is achievable.''

''I'd been haunted by an uncomfortable feeling -- that I wasn't doing what I was ''supposed'' to be doing. Now, through my wiring career can be a source of ''feeling bad'' as well as ''feeling good'', I do ''feel right.''

''Happiness'', wrote Yeats, ''is neither virtue nor pleasure not this thing nor that, but simply growth. We are happy when we are growing.''

''I need to think about feeling good, feeling bad, and feeling right, in an atmosphere of growth''

''Of all the things that wisdom provides for living one's entire life in happiness, the greatest by far is the possession of friendship''

''Whenever I feel blue, working cheers me up''

''And perhaps most important, I would take care to remind myself to remember how lucky I was to be as eager for Monday mornings as I was for Friday afternoons.''

''People don't notice your mistakes as much as you think''

''I didn't want to be like the novelist who spent so much time rewriting his first sentence that he never wrote his second. If I wanted to get anything accomplished, I needed to keep pushing ahead without constantly second-guessing myself.''

''Starting my blog, for example, made me feel anxious, but deep down, I knew I could do it and would very likely enjoy it, once I'd overcome the initial intimidating hurdles.''

''In order to have more success, I needed to be willing to accept more failure''

'' ''I enjoy the fun of failure''. It's fun to fail, I kept repeating. It's part of being ambitious; it's part of being creative. If something is worth doing. It's worth doing badly''

''I think I might have shied away from pursuing these goals, because I wouldn't have wanted to deal with rejection''

''If I do my project my way, I'm unspiritual and gimmicky; if I tried to do it in a different way, I'd be inauthentic and fake. Might as well ''Be Gretchen.''

''The most effective way to lighten up, is to make a joke''

''The days are long but the years are short''

''Family traditions make occasions feel special and exciting. They mark the passage of time in a happy way. They provide a sense of anticipation, security, and continuity.''

''I think by knowing who we are as people and being ourselves, we can start making the world better''

''I started a ''Happiness Box'' in which I'd collect all sorts of little trinkets meant to trigger happy thoughts and memories''

''Just because something is fun for someone else doesn't make it fun for me.''

''I think a real life-shaking catastrophe can provide in-sights into happiness that you couldn't have any other way.''

''Samuel Johnson said, ''The business of the wise man is to be happy.'' In whatever condition life happens to offer.''

Until next time..

Much love.. 

So much love, 

A while ago I teamed up with StartUp Fashion to do a fun little collaboration and share my working process on their Instagram page throughout the day.

It was one of those ''multi-tasking'' days where I tried to do a little bit of everything I've been working on lately which is making accessories and starting up my clothing brand. 

Sometimes I prefer focusing on one thing all day, and other times I just feel like curling up in my bed and cry all day! It's always ups and downs.

When I left my full-time job in November to start my own fashion label, I thought that I would be set and done with at least one collection by April. But guess what, its MUCH harder than I thought it would be. There's so much more to creating a brand than just ''designing a collection''.

Having my own fashion brand has been my dream for a long time, not necessarily since childhood, but since I decided to study fashion design for my BA.

The more I created clothes in college, the more I became passionate about it. I truly fell in love with the feeling of seeing my clothes on the runway, on photos, or simply on a hanger.

I cannot even explain how my heart was flying with joy when I saw my graduation collection down the runway. It really was the best feeling I've ever had in my whole life. I can't describe it in words. All I know is that I want to live for that feeling and no matter how hard things get, I will keep pushing myself forward to make it happen again and again.

It has been a tough journey since I started working on my label in January. There has been times where I wanted to give up and start something else, and times where I stopped believing in myself and my dream. Times I thought I couldn't do it, and that I don't know enough or can't do enough or just not good enough to do it.

Through all these discouraging emotions, I try my best to pick myself back up and make myself believe I can do it. It's hard, but possible. There's always something new to learn.

Nothing in this world is impossible if you work hard enough. Yes, failure is scary, but it can also be fun. You learn and you grow and you try again. Nobody ever made it by getting it all right the first time.

On Startup Fashion's blog, they asked me this question that I'd like to share here for anyone who's on a similar boat :