A whole new year lays ahead of us and I’m excited.

Excited and positive, anxious and scared.

Life is unpredictable which makes it interesting but scary at the same.

As a perfectionist you are going to hate it not to know what comes next but the truth is, we will never know what comes next. Neither planning nor wishing will bring us to the point that a life is going as smoothly as we would like.

I just need to look around our home and since we have a child it looks sometimes as if a bomb of Lego and toy animals exploded.

The wonderful part of these “explosions” is that there is life! I admit that I would sometimes which for this old home where you don’t have to clean 24/7 without an end in sight, the times where I just sat down on the couch with a book because nothing else needed to be done. Nowadays there is no “nothing else needs to be done”. This wishing back the old days are only short moments because reality quickly sets in and I’m so grateful for this reality.

Life is far far far away from perfect and this imperfection is so lovely. We are the happiest when we three are together (my son, my husband and I) because indeed, that’s life, that’s reality, that’s all to wish for.

The perfectionist in me is almost crying because I have no idea how this year will go along but what I know is that we can manage all as long as we are a family and love each other like we do.

Is it wisdom that comes with age? I don’t know. Is it what you learn through motherhood? Maybe.

I cannot tell you when exactly this thinking was setting in for me-The more I think about life and what matters most the more I realize that there are profound things like love, trust, emotions, feeling grounded, mindfulness, thankfulness for what is, appreciation of what we have. These are what matters most.

The NOW of our life.

Tomorrow can be anything but if we manage to be happy now we reached a lot!

I’m not a spiritual teacher nor a motivation guide but the more I read and the more I do some research the more I see that many seem to seek happiness and fulfillment.

Our life has far too many choices to reach this stage and we get lost. We lose focus due to the amount of possibilities we have.

Nobody can have it all! I think this is the first and most important step towards an inner satisfaction of what is.

We need to stop ourselves along the way, take a step back, and start to sort. What are our personal priorities, what makes us really happy.

Social media are great, if used properly, and at the same time our personal nightmare, if used as a comparator (in both directions).

As long as we are realistic enough to know that we never ever see the whole picture on social media the usage may be utterly inspiring, we can learn lots and get input. There are some influencers out there who are really showing lots, their raw authentic self, but careful, for the majority we will never grasp the full picture and this is completely OK. We ourselves would also not expose our most vulnerable moments or dark sides to strangers. Just be sure that everyone has these sides (just not visible). The trick is to get inspired by the exposed good stories but don’t feel less worth because of our own failures.

The same goes for news – I barely read them nowadays because I feel more and more depressed, it seems as if there is no peace on earth at all but that’s wrong. Nobody will write a headline about a country at peace. We are responsible to filter all of this for ourselves because no news agency and no influencer and no person besides you is able to see what you need or what you can take at this moment.

You are the first responsibility for yourself and afterwards you decide what you watch, listen to, hear, read, where you step in, help, work, etc. This sounds selfish but it isn’t. Only if you feel at ease with yourself you will be capable of taking the rest.

My husband’s country is in a war state since we met. It won’t help if we start to site here each day and cry and complain and talk about how blessed we are to live here and what an injustice it is that his family is there and and and – it simply won’t help! We need to make sure that we are fine, we are parents, we have a responsibility. And when we are fine we can work, we can try to support, we can be the realistic part on the outside as we are not within, we can be the uplifting part when things go wrong again and try to soothe, we can only give our best in these moments. It is hard but that’s life – unfortunately – we cannot change the world but we can change our approach to our “small” circle in this world and try to be good examples. If everyone would be the best version of him or herself we would make a step in the right direction.

And at teh end of the day my biggest mantra for this year will be nobody is perfect and new ways are always possible – these sentences from a perfectionist are a big step.

My lessons learned from the past years. They may be an inspiration or just a small hint in which direction to think.

Being grateful for what we have and never taking anything for granted is one of the biggest epiphanies ever.

Living in a country without knowing war is not my achievement, it was simply luck of being born here at that time. Thanks!

Having met my husband was such a coincidence, this could never have been planned. Thanks!

Having a really full fridge is a blessing. Thanks!

You could go on like this but you know what, waking up each morning, feeling my heart beating should be reasonenough to be grateful for this life.

A whole new year…lays in front of us.

Let’s focus on the good.

Let’s try to ease the pain.

Let’s help where we can.

Let’s do what we can to make this a better place for all of us.

This year, next year and as long as we are here.