Today it came to my mind again.

A good reminder that letting go is ok. ♡

Letting go takes love

To let go does not mean to stop caring,
it means I can’t do it for someone else.

 
To let go is not to cut myself off,
it’s the realization I can’t control another.

 
To let go is not to enable,
but allow learning from natural consequences.

 
To let go is to admit powerlessness, which means
the outcome is not in my hands.

 
To let go is not to try to change or blame another,
it’s to make the most of myself.

 
To let go is not to care for,
but to care about.

 
To let go is not to fix,
but to be supportive.

 
To let go is not to judge,
but to allow another to be a human being.

 
To let go is not to be in the middle arranging all the outcomes,
but to allow others to affect their destinies.

 
To let go is not to be protective,
it’s to permit another to face reality.

 
To let go is not to deny,
but to accept.

 
To let go is not to nag, scold or argue,
but instead to search out my own shortcomings and correct them.

 
To let go is not to adjust everything to my desires,
but to take each day as it comes and cherish myself in it.

 
To let go is not to criticize or regulate anybody,
but to try to become what I dream I can be.

 
To let go is not to regret the past,
but to grow and live for the future.

To let go is to fear less and love more ♡

The post To let go takes love appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.

It’s early in the morning.

While drinking my coffee, I just realise, that after I thought I learned so much during my burn out, I’m still a perfectionist. Never completely satisfied with anything I do.

Damn.. Just when you think you’re doing so well.

Haha.

I am going to kill this habit, right here right now, by writing a post from scratch. Like writing a journal.

Not thinking about a storyline, techniques, keywords. Not thinking about a beginning and an ending. Not thinking about how people might read this. What you might think.

No deleting, no re-arranging, no editing.

No dictionary (help).

I’m just going to write, like writing a journal (a censored journal).

Pure, raw, impulsive, imperfect.

So… what’s up? How are you doing?

I’m on the ferry to the South Island of New Zealand

After spending 2,5 months on the North Island of New Zealand, mainly working, I’m heading South again.

I thought my heart belonged to the South, but the North Island has earned a lot of credits the past few months. I’m sad to leave, but mostly, I feel grateful. Grateful for all the beauty, the experiences I had, the people I met. It was amazing and unforgettable. Life-changing even. Beautiful.

Let’s summarise the North Island. Roadtripping with Anna in the van, doing The Tongariro Crossing (twice), soaking up some Maori Culture, mountainbiking, spending some time in Piha, meeting people, doing soul searching, working at the Tauhara Centre, meeting amazing people, falling in love, learning, growing, roadtripping on my own. Mountains, hills, lakes, waterfalls, hikes, yoga, runs, swims

and here I am… on the Bluebridge Cook Ferry, because it’s a little cheaper than the Interislander.

Goodbye North Island. Until we meet again.

The past 1,5 week I spend at a beekeeper and on a remote beach in Hawkes Bay. 

Being on the road again, the sun reflecting on my windshield, open window, hair in the breeze, I felt extremely free.

That is what the vanlife is all about for me. Freedom.

You can go wherever you want. When you like it somewhere, you decide to stay. When you’re done with a place, or when you have no more reason to stay, you leave. You sleep on beaches, in the forest or on a carpark. Wherever you feel like. You only spend money on gas and food. No rent. Not having to work for your accommodation, saving your money to do valuable stuff. Wow. That feels good.

So, after two months of working, I was on the road again. I felt like absorbing sun, so I stayed a bit longer in Hawkes Bay than I originally planned. It was almost 20 degrees, which was a surprise to me, because it is winter in New Zealand.

From now on, I decided, I will follow the sun

Teardrops

But first, let’s go back to the start of my roadtrip. I felt sad when I left Tauhara Centre, and I cried a lot while driving to Napier. Weirdly enough, this is what happens to me in New Zealand a lot. I cry. All the time. Haha.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a good thing. I opened up.

Every tear is something you’re letting go off. I love to cry. Let it out. Feel a lot of self pity and then be free. Crying is such a relief.

I can also cry from gratitude, beauty.

Raw emotions. Don’t think about it, just feel. Hate it but love it more.

The vanlife: the importance of speakers and travelbuddies

I have a good speaker in my van and damn, I used it well, playing my ‘Guilty Pleasure’ playlist on Spotify. Of course, it started to rain. It was like the perfect movie scene. Me, self-pity music, rain and teardrops.

And then something shifted. I arrived in sunny Napier…

Though I thought I needed some alone-time, when Nadja & Anthony – who I met at the Tauhara Centre – texted me, I felt so happy. An hour before, at Countdown, I’d found a bottle of wine from a brand which I know from back home. I have a special connection to this wine, because I shared it with someone special a long time ago. I was reliving happy memories.

The first night in Napier was spontaneously amazing. 

I parked my van at the beach in Napier, had a glass of Diablo wine and damn I felt happy.

An hour later, Anthony and Nadja arrived with their van. It was windy and it looked like it was going to rain, so we made a little hut.

They brought their awesomeness, good music and honey vodka, made by the beekeeper at who they were Wwoofing at.

We had an amazing night. Good conversations, music, drinks, good food.

Banana Pancakes for breakfast, while listening to Jack Johnson. It was the perfect start of my final road trip in New Zealand.

Beagles Bees in Napier

When you are open and spontaneous, you end up having the most amazing experiences.

Anthony & Nadja invited me to join them at Beagles Bees, a beekeeper in Napier who produces 100% natural, unheated honey. I always wanted to learn about beekeeping and they told me what an awesome time they are having there, so this was a no-brainer. I went beekeeping. See Instagram to read about my awesome time with the bees, and if you would like to learn something about honey.

We tasted at least 10 different types of honey, had the most interesting conversations, played table tennis and darts (I beated them all :P), drank honey vodka, smoked weed out of an apple, and we had heaps of free time to do our own stuff. It was perfect. One day, Beagle took me to two of the places where his hives are and I helped around. Priceless experience.

Seasickness, bummer

Ok, something happened. I was supposed to write this story and upload it directly on the ferry from Wellington to Picton. I guess I worked on my laptop too much, doing some work for the website of the Tauhara Centre (which will be released soon :)) as well, and I got a bit seasick.

So my perfect plan is again, imperfect. I didn’t publish my story.

But it doesn’t matter. I’m in Napier now, met up with Giulia, who I Wwooft with at the Tauhara Centre. I kept the promise to myself to follow the sun. We are sitting outside now, it feels like summer.

In two days, we will do the Abel Tasman Coastal track. Four days of hiking on beaches, in the forst, sleeping in huts, sitting next to the fire.

We are super excited!

I’m going to end this perfectly imperfect post now, because I want to chill in the hammock. Enjoy the sun. I might write about my time on the remote beaches in Hawkes Bay later. I might not. We’ll see where life will  take me next.

See you soon 

The post The vanlife journal, 19th August 2017 appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.

To all the people back home, who have expectations: I’m sorry, but I won’t climb any corporate ladder.

I’ve been in New Zealand for ten months now, leaving very very soon. Without doubt, I can say this has been one of the most valuable times of my life so far. With everything I’ve learned and changed, I know that it’s going to be even better. Did I answer the question “What do I want to do with my life?”, and how? Continue to read…

Let’s start with what I don’t want; climbing the corporate ladder

It used to be a measure of success, and maybe for some conservative people it still is. Climbing the corporate ladder. Having a big career. Working for at least 60 hours a week, wearing a suit, pretending to be important. Hierarchy, endless meetings, targets.

Earning money, but having no time to spend it. Buying a house and a big car, but lacking the time to enjoy it.

Spending the most valuable years of my life in an office, a system, where profit for the top is key? Not very appealing to me. But this standard, and the expectations which came with it, always confused me. “You are so smart, why are you not using it”, was a common thing people told me. “I just want to be happy”, is what I always thought. But it sounded too stupid to say it out loud.

What do I want to do with my life? ‘I will become a digital nomad’. I thought I knew it all…

One or two years ago I thought I knew it all. I was going to be a freelance online marketing & communication consultant. I was going to help companies increasing their profit. Becoming a digital nomad. Although mentally I thought I knew it all, I also knew something was off… A gut feeling. Intuition. However you want to name it. I ignored it for a while.

‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’

As a kid, I think I knew better. I can’t remember the answer I gave the grown ups when they asked me these questions. What I do remember is I wanted to be a dancer, a musician, writer, singer, an artist, an entrepreneur, a creator, or a psychologist. When doing career tests, I remember I always had the ‘weirdest’ outcomes, with as a result, teachers telling me “that’s not really a job”. The last test I did was the Myers Briggs, and according to this test I should become a guru or musician. I don’t like the world guru. It’s even weirder to me that they include it as a profession, in a career test. But that is off topic:). When you tell people you want to be a musician, they say ‘you can’t earn money with that‘, and I remember people telling me that when I was a kid. Why I was influenced by that comments, I don’t know. I think we should do what we love. Money is not the most important thing. When you do what you love, the money you need to do more of what you love will come. And if the money doesn’t come easily, you will contribute to society in a different way, and you’ll survive, without struggle, being happy. So, as a kid I knew better.

My digital nomad life in New Zealand

When I was working for Christchurch Lavender Gardens, doing their new website, helping with social media and Google Adwords, doing Search Engine Optimalisation, it suddenly became very clear to me. Although I had an amazing time there, working at an amazing place with lovely people, it dawned on me… “This is not what I want to do with my life”. Looking at a screen every day. Working with numbers. Thinking about how we can make people buy more. Yes, I can earn a lot of money doing online marketing. But will that make me happy?

My most valuable moments at Christchurch Lavender Gardens, were the times I had conversations with the owners and when I was talking to the visitors. It became so clear to me. I want to work with people. I want to help people. One day, both Google and Facebook failed on me. I lost a whole day of work.

I cried, saw the light, and made a decision.

It was such a release to admit to myself that I don’t want to do that anymore. The next step was telling others. First, I told the owners of the gardens, who had become good friends. Next, it was the people I was working with, starting up a company, and then one of my best friends, who was also in New Zealand. Fjeewww, that was out. What now? I still didn’t have the answer to the question “what do I want to do with my life”.

Soul-searching while you travel

A few months later, I dropped one of my best friends, Anna, off at the airport in Auckland, after a roadtrip. I spend some weeks alone in Piha, New Zealand. I took that time to do some ‘professional soul-searching’. When you travel, you already kind of do that on an (almost) daily base, but spending weeks alone in a van takes this a step further. I read books, listened to audiobooks, did a lot of meditation, followed a course at Coursera and listened to motivational speeches. I bought a notebook and started writing. Doing exercises for personal and professional development.

“What do I want to do with my life?”. Find your values!

If you struggle with the question ‘what do I want to do with my life’, go find your values and don’t take this lightly. It is important. This is life, live it. All you need is time and some tools (which are easy to find). In my self contained van (traveling in New Zealand on a budget), who was parked on the beach in Piha, I was answering questions like ‘what does your ideal day look like?’ and ‘what makes you happy in a job?’. I was writing down situations in which I was happy, analysing this.

So, one of the exercises was writing down your values. This exercise made everything clear.

The values that I came up with were health, freedom, personal growth, adventurousness, open mindedness, love/connection/belonging, balance, friendship, community, creativity, honesty/integrity, empathy, optimism/positivity, variety and versatility, making a difference, environmental awareness and minimalism/simplicity. There was nothing like achievement, money, status, hard work, professionalism, security, structure, success, traditionalism, fame, reputation or wealth. I don’t care about this. I don’t care about money, I don’t care about big houses. People buy a house and they are happy (are they?). I would be extremely happy building my own house. Maybe even a tiny house. I am extremely happy living the minimalistic lifestyle in a van.

Is consumerism a cause of unhappiness? 

Most of all, finding my values made me think about the consumerist society we live in. The lack of community and connection. Our brains are wired to think we need money, big houses and cars to be happy. There is little or no sense of community where I live. Every day, big companies are working hard making more profit each day. Almost every second of the day, we are exposed to advertisements, whether consciously or unconsciously, to make us want more, buy more. We are never satisfied. Studying Online Marketing, a couple of years ago, made it even more clear to me how stupid we are. How badly we are influenced my media and how this makes our world dysfunctional. We are living in fear. Fear of what might happen in the world, fear while thinking we are not good enough, not worthy enough, less worthy than others, fear of connecting to people.

Fear sucks, fear causes unhappiness. The media is feeding us with negativity, creating fear.

“What do I want to do with my life?”. Well, for sure I don’t want to leave it in fear.

Social media, not very social

Sometimes I just want to scream, when I’m spending time on social media. When I see the 16 year old girls on Instagram, posing in their new clothes or, even worse, half naked, I feel sad. I think ‘what the f*ck is happening in the world’. They are beautiful, talented.. where is their self esteem? Why do they think they need to do that? Proving they are beautiful? Is your self worth really increasing when you get likes and shares? Don’t they realise that the likes have nothing to do with people liking them as a person? We don’t need to buy new clothes every month. It doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change how we feel about ourselves. It doesn’t make us happy, or how Brene Brown will say it, more worthy of love and belonging. What is creating this, is advertising and marketing. It’s food for dysfunction. Highly addictive. It has been a discussion for years now. It seems like it is getting worse. I don’t want to contribute to this world. So if I advertise, if I do marketing, it will be for a company or person who has good intensions for the least. Social media is not social. We don’t connect. We are selling, in the hope other people will like it. By looking at our phones we lose connection to the real world. We value likes and shares, instead of hugs and good conversations. I believe connection is one of the most important things to be happy. First of all connection to ourselves, our heart, our passions, our values. And then connection to others. Not on social media. Real connections. We are not alone in this world. Everything is connected already. We just lose it, by staring at our phones and losing our self worth, being influenced by advertisement.

One day in Piha, all pieces of the puzzle came together

Ok. I’m wandering off topic. Blame it on the ADD:P.

When I was in Piha I realised I don’t want to contribute to this world. I don’t want do do online marketing for companies who care about profit and who are the roots of the consumerist society. I don’t want to make people desire things they don’t need.

Your work has to match your values

Working in advertising or online marketing is not matching my values. That’s why it will make me extremely unhappy when I would continue on this path. I will work according to my values, which are health, freedom, personal growth, adventurousness, open mindedness, love/connection/belonging, balance, friendship, community, creativity, honesty/integrity, empathy, optimism/positivity, variety and versatility, making a difference, environmental awareness and minimalism/simplicity. What I love is leadership. Not for the hierarchy. Not to be important. A leader, a manager, however you want to name it, is not more important than the people he/she leads. Together you achieve things. A leader inspires. I love to inspire people. To find people’s strengths and give them jobs that fit within their capacity. I love to built community, to connect, to make people connect. I would love to make the world a happier, healthier place for everyone. I would love to make a positive difference in the world, and I will. I’m not going to find this in a corporation, multinational or any other commercial organisation, where it’s all about profit. Working from 9-5. Procedures, systems, hierarchy.

I won’t climb a corporate ladder, to buy a big house, lot’s of clothes and stuff and feel miserable, being stuck into a system that is dysfunctional. I will do work that matters. Work that inspires people. I want to spend my time connecting, to myself and to others, doing what I love.

So that is my answer for now, to the question “what do you want to do with your life”. Is it a complete answer? Not really, but it’s good enough for me, for now. And now is all we have.

Do you know what you want to do with your life?

If you ever question if you are on the right path, asking yourself ‘what do I want to do with my life?’, I can promise you that travelling, or even better Work & Travel, (Wwoof, Workaway, HelpX, or anything else), will help you get closer to the answer. But you don’t need to travel, if that’s not what you aspire. Do some soul searching, connect again, to nature, to your heart. During this journey, pay attention to what makes you happy, passionate. What puts a smile on your face? What makes you feel like work is not working? Where’s your strength, when do you feel in your power, when do you feel balanced? Find your values. Act upon them. Don’t listen to media, don’t get caught up in expectations from the outside world.

There is only one person who knows what you want to do with your life. It’s not me. Its you.

I can promise you, taking this time will improve your life drastically. It did mine.

Get in touch!

I would love to hear your experience. Please share your comment or questions below  

And please SUBSCRIBE

Note: when I started this blog, I wanted to make some money with it, so I put on advertisements. Damn, I am contributing to this world. This sucks, and I need to find a solution. I tried to let Google only put ads on my blog of products I would recommend, though that’s hard. This is the first step. To be continued…  I do have to earn some money to pay the bills. Please click on the ads but only buy something if it’s going to add real value to your life. haha:)

The post “What do I want to do with my life?” To everyone with expectations: I’m sorry, I won’t climb a corporate ladder appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.

Though I had some problems as a child, nobody ever thought off ADD. ADD in girls is highly underdiagnosed.

After this ADD diagnosis, I took some time reading about ADD.

‘DUH, that is soooo me’, I thought.

It explained my whole life. It made me cry. On the other hand, it made me laugh so hard. But mostly it made me cry, from both sadness and happiness.

One ‘little’ add diagnosis made me feel like ‘finally, someone understands me’.

All hyperactive kids have ADHD now, right? 

ADHD has probably the highest ‘diagnose-rate’ at the moment, when you talk about ‘mental disabilities’. Some people argue that doctors are giving this diagnose too quickly. This might be true, but I think that statement is a little too black and white.

I read a lot about ADHD, and about the neurology of this ‘disorder’. I think the name Attention Deficit Disorder is wrong. It’s not a disorder, and it shouldn’t be treated as a disorder. It also shouldn’t be treated with medication, because there are other solutions. Solutions which treat the source instead of the symptoms.

I guess people with ADD/ADHD just have a different type of brain, and this brain doesn’t fit perfectly in our society.

But this is another story… Let’s stick to the subject: What does ADD feels like, for a child, without having the ADD diagnosis?

ADD is less obvious than ADHD

ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder (without hyperactivity) is not so obvious, because kids with ADD, mostly girls, are not hyperactive.

The symptoms are more subtle. Not for the kid, but for the outside world.

What’s an ‘ADD kid’ like?

Children with ADD aren’t especially hyperactive, as kids with ADHD are.

Kids with ADD are more dreamy, impulsive, unpredictable, chaotic.

Highly sensitive, often overwhelmed by their surroundings.

As a kid, I started a lot of things (little projects, hobbies, etc.), didn’t finish anything.

I wanted to play guitar, piano, violin and sing, all at the same time.

One day I wanted to be a professional dancer, but a week later it could be a professional basketball player. Or a writer. A be journalist.

I was losing things all the time. Keys, shoes, clothes, schoolbooks…

I always arrived at school with something missing. A book, clothes, lunch…

During the day, I couldn’t focus. When people where talking to me, I often couldn’t bring myself to listen.

I was easily frustrated or overwhelmed.

During the night, I couldn’t stop my mind from spinning. I had the worst insomnia.

The most common feeling for me as a child with undiagnosed ADD was the feeling ‘nobody understands me’. 

At home, I had a lot of fights with my parents, or discussions, however you want to name it. I always had problems with ‘authority people’. I often felt like the world wasn’t right, that things were not fair. Why didn’t they understand me?

People called me lazy or stupid.

In the middle of my sentence, I forgot what I was talking about. Well, that is stupid, right?

My mind was never quiet. Always full with creative ideas, but sometimes a lot of negativity. I had non-stop conversations with myself. Some people have an imaginary friend. Well, I was my own friend. Or enemy.

I was exhausted a lot. Also very impatient.

Having the ADD diagnosis, would probably have helped me a lot.

ADD in school

My results at school were mostly good, even above average. But they could be terrible as well. I remember feeling bored often.

I also remember feeling ashamed, when my mind wandered off and the teacher asked me a question. 9 out of 10 times I had no idea where they were talking about. In my mind, I was in a completely different world.

Mostly it happened like this:

The teacher was talking about a specific subject, and after a few minutes I got it. But then he kept talking about the same thing. I tried to listen, but after a while, I lost my focus.

Ten minutes later, when the teacher asked me a question, my mind was somewhere else.

Oops. I was wandering… In my own world. Completely left the classroom.

The result was a blushy head and an angry teacher who thought I was not paying attention on purpose.

With math, I often had the right answer but couldn’t explain how I got there. The teachers always thought I had cheated.

It was so unfair.

I can still feel the despair I felt. I was so angry and sad at the same time.

At some point, I even remember thinking ‘ok I just give up. From now on, I’ll just pretend that I don’t get math. There’s no point in trying anyway.’

I was about nine years old.

I still remember the teacher asking me what was suddenly going on. Why I couldn’t do the basics anymore. I had no answer. I couldn’t tell her ‘oh I just stopped trying, you don’t understand me anyway and you will think I cheated’.

As a result, I didn’t like math. this turned into a backlog and this never improved.

I still hate math, and I’m terrible at it.

Now I know that I could have just said ‘no miss, my brain just works differently then yours. I sometimes skip some steps’. I don’t think she would have believed me, but anyway.

ADD at home

I drove my mom crazy, on a daily basis. As I mentioned, I always forgot stuff and I always lost stuff. Keys, clothes, books, toys, anything… When I came home from school, completely exhausted because of all the stimuli, I literally dropped everything on the floor and went upstairs. I left the doors open (except for my own), my room was always a mess.. The result: tension at home.

Each morning, my mom needed to pull me out of bed, because I had just fallen asleep at around 4 am. Before that, my mind was wandering for hours. I just couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop my brain from spinning. I would now say my brain exploded, every single night.

Exhausting, right? It was all I knew… I couldn’t imagine having a proper sleep, or even proper ‘relaxation time’ as I know now.

A time without thinking? Never.

The result: a struggle every single morning (and sometimes falling asleep during the day).

Children with ADD know what they need, they know what’s good for them.

My intuition as a child was very strong.

I also remember having pretty clever stories, questions or requests. When I was young, I knew exactly what I wanted and what I needed.

Most of the time, the people who I was talking to had no clue what I meant. They thought it was nonsense. They told me it was nonsense.

The result: I became insecure about everything.

I stopped speaking my mind, because ‘I knew it was nonsense’.

Now I know, I knew exactly what I needed as a child. I remember saying to my mom ‘I want my bed on the other side of the room, because then it’s easier for me to relax. Or let me at least put my pillow on the other side of the bed’. I also remember always wanting to create corners, and wanting to be able to see the door from my bed and desk.

‘Nonsense, it doesn’t matter where your bed stands’ was the response of my parents. I can understand why, because how can you understand when you’re brain is not wired like mine, but at that time, it was infuriating.

And this is how a child with ADD stops trusting their (highly developed) intuition. 

During one of my first ADD coaching sessions, my therapist told me how important space is, for people with ADD, to be able to have focus or to relax.

As a child I already knew, but when the people around you keep telling you it is stupid, you start losing to trust your intuition.

Children with ADD need alone time

The society we live in has so many physical and emotional stimuli.

People, noises, smells, emotions, expectations, possibilities, access to information, schools, offices, other buildings, cars.

The brain of a child (or adult) with ADD has difficulties to process all these stimuli.

When I came home from school, I always was in desperate need of alone time.

At school there were so many stimuli. I was exhausted. My mom, as any loving mom, wanted to talk to me about my day. I just wanted to be left alone.

Must have been hard for my mom.

Again, the ADD diagnosis would have helped here.

Now that I know this, I just take my alone time when needed.

ADD and hobbies 

As I said earlier, as a child, I wanted to play piano one week, guitar the next. I had the desire to sing in a choir, but I also liked to write a song and participate in contests.

I wanted to do sports. Handball, basketball, soccer, tennis, taekwondo, I wanted it all. And when I got bored, my wish was to do something else. I was so mad when my parents didn’t want to buy that piano for me, or provide for singing lessons.

This is one thing that really sucks about ADD.. Not having the focus to start something and stick with it, without getting bored. I wish I kept playing the guitar or the piano. I wish I had the focus to practise on a daily basis, because then I would be a good musician now.

The only thing I was able to do for a long time, was classical ballet. I don’t know why. Probably because I could just lose myself in it. I could forget anything, needed my full attention to control my body. Unfortunately, a case of ‘bad feet’ killed my dream of going to the conservatory.

Wish I had the ADD diagnosis earlier on?

I don’t see the ADD diagnosis as a bad thing. Except for the word. There is no Attention Deficit Disorder. Our society is disordered, not me, not all those kids!

I wish I had the ADD diagnosis years ago. It would have helped me to understand myself. It would have helped my parents, friends, teachers and other people around me help understanding me.

The only thing I’m grateful for, for not having the ADD diagnosis when I was a kid, is the fact that I lived my childhood without medication.

Now that I’m grown up, I can make my own decisions about how I feel about the ADD diagnosis.

I take vitamins instead of medication. I meditate, do physical exercise, take my alone-time when needed. While traveling in New Zealand, I found out that gluten increase my ADD symptoms, so I adjusted my diet.

Also, thanks to the ADD diagnosis, I was able to find a good coach who teaches me a lot about ADD and how to cope.

I could never have hoped for being able to concentrate for hours. Now I can.

So do I wish I had the diagnose earlier on? I believe life always happens how it needs to happen, But if I could choose now. absolutely (but without medication treatment :P)

The post Missing the ADD diagnosis, what does this feel like for a child? appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.

Diagnosed with ADD at age 27. 

I’ve got a wandering mind (called ADD, Attention Deficit Disorder), so concentration wasn’t my strongest quality. I got diagnosed at age 27 and since that time I made it my life mission to find out how to be able to concentrate.

During my adult life, I’ve started at least 6 studies/courses and finally, after years of failing en quitting, I completed 3 of them. How? By following these guidelines (with a little help of vitamins, as I write about in this post)

Why would you want to know how to concentrate on studies for long hours?

When you’re studying, being able to concentrate is one of the major factors of success. You hardly accomplish anything, when you are not able to concentrate. The result is frustration.

Stop wasting your time and stop being frustrated. If I was able to increase my level of concentration, so are you!

When your level of concentration is high, you need less time to gain more information. It’s way more time effective to study with a high level of concentration for a short amount of time, than trying to study all day without being able to concentrate.

Is it easy to learn how to concentrate on studies for long hours?

Improving your level of concentration doesn’t happen overnight. Following these guidelines might be difficult in the beginning. Your brain is like a muscle, which needs training to improve. I needed a year of ADHD-therapy and a lot of practise to be able to say ‘I am able to concentrate when I want to’ or ‘I’m happy with my level of concentration’. This training was definitely worth it. It improved my life in many ways, during and after my studies.

So here are my 10 tips on how to concentrate on studies for long hours

My suggestion would be: read my tips and start practising one or two of them first. When you see improvement after a few weeks, or when it becomes easy to do it, add another one.

Here we go…

1) Focus on your body before you start, by doing physical exercise and/or meditation.

Before you start studying, do some physical exercise.

This doesn’t necessarily have to be long and complicated. Just ten minutes of stretching, jumping, some push-ups or yoga will already help you focussing afterwards.

Or just shake your head for 20 seconds and take 10 deep breaths. Focus on your body.

How do you feel?

You can do a meditation (when you know how to meditate), or just focus on your breathing while doing physical exercise.

If you’d like to have some background information about why this helps to increase your level of concentration, read this article in the Guardian.

2) Rest before you start

Trying to concentrate is very hard when you haven’t had enough sleep.

Before you start, make sure you are well rested.

If you feel very tired, don’t even start studying. Have a rest first.

Meditation

Meditation will also help you increase your energy level, but you will probably need some training in meditation before it will give your the energy boost you are looking for.

When you just started to practise meditation, the benefits are less obvious. Don’t give up. Your brain (which you train with meditation) is a part of your body and you need to practise to improve, just like when you are learning to dance, to play soccer or tennis.

Whatever you do to increase your energy level, make sure you feel rested before you start.

3) Eat before you start studying

Before you start, make sure you have eaten something healthy.

When you want to put effort in something, you’ll need the right type and amount of fuel.

When you leave your home to study elsewhere, for example go to a library, it’s a good idea to bring food and some snacks (for example fruit and nuts).

I’m not a dietician, but from experience I would say: don’t eat too much (processed) sugar.

I can write a whole article about the effect of sugar on the brain and I probably will in the future. As I said, I’m not a dietician nor a neuroscientist, but I’ve read a lot about this subject and experimented with different types of diets, so I can write from my experience.

In my opinion and experience, processed sugar has a negative effect on your brain and for me, it definitely decreases my level of focus.

On the other hand, natural sugars (which you find in fruits for example) do help me concentrate.

Coffee doesn’t help me. At least not on the long term.

Coffee gives you a quick boost, but decreases your level of energy later. (at least this is how it works for me. You can try out drinking less coffee and see how you feel, to find out if it works for you as well).

4) Workspace. Find a quiet, peaceful, relaxing or inspiring place to work.

This tip is not rocket science, nevertheless very important: Find a quiet space to work. A space where you feel calm and relaxed. Somewhere where you can’t be disturbed.

I prefer to work in clean, white, tidy rooms with a minimum amount of stuff.

Some colours can help you focus (a little bit of orange works for me), some inspirational words on the wall as well (like ‘you can do it’, or something more creative ;))

Don’t underestimate the importance of your workspace.

Some tips:

• Clean and tidy up your desk. A mess in the room is the worst distraction.
• Only put on your desk what you actually need. Get rid of unnecessary stuff.
• White calms the mind, as do pictures of nature.
• Don’t underestimate the power of words (on your unconscious mind). Putting a powerful quote on the wall can really help you focus.

So step 4 in how to concentrate on studies for long hours: find your ideal working space.

5) People. Find likeminded people to study with.

Concentrating is hard. Concentrating on your own is even harder.

Finding people who are ‘in the same boat’ will definitely help. You can motivate each other and help each other when you get stuck.

That person doesn’t need to be a classmate.

While I was writing my thesis about brandmanagement, my study buddy was a friend who is a doctor in addictive medicine. I know close to  nothing about medication for addicts, nor does she know anything about brandmanagement. Nevertheless, we were able to help each other when we got stuck, just by asking questions and talking about the subject.

While working together, keep each other posted about your progress.

When you know you have to give a report on your progress, you will be motivated to really do something, instead of staring at your screen or book.

6) Goals. Set small, clear, measurable goals.

When you tell yourself ‘I’m going to be studying all day’, it will be hard to concentrate.

What is studying? Will you be reading, writing summaries, collect data for your essay, watch video’s?

Will you be using your laptop, or only books?

Setting clear (preferably small) goals and marking them when you are finished will help keeping you focussed and motivated.

Make clear goals for the day, like:

• In the next hour, I will read 50 pages of this book
• I will make a summary of these chapters
• I will spend an hour collecting data for this purpose
• At the end of the day, I’ve written …… pages.

When you finished a goal, celebrate by marking it and treat yourself (tea, cake chocolate, a walk outside, 10 minutes of brainless Facebookscrolling… anything that makes you happy).

Don’t expect too much from yourself.

Be realistic and be proud of yourself when you finish a goal.

Taking small steps on the stairs is the only way up.

So step 6 in how to concentrate on studies for long hours is important: set clear, measurable goals. 

7) Timer. Set a timer. Train your brain, improve your focus. 

It might sound childish or stupid, but when you have to study, wether it is writing your thesis or studying for an exam, it is really helpful to set a timer.

Make the commitment to yourself NOT to do anything else but your task until your alarm goes off.

Start with short timeframes, like 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes have passed, it’s okay to check Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or go grab something to eat.

Be very specific here. Before you set the timer, know exactly what you will be working on. An example is “Within the next 10 minutes, I will only read in this book” or “I will only structure my data”.

After a while you will find that 10 minutes of concentration is easy (when it doesn’t, go back to 5 minutes).

When it’s easy to concentrate for 10 minutes, make it 15 minutes the next time.

You will train your mind to focus better and therefore improve your concentration.

So step 6 in how to concentrate on studies for long hours: use your alarm/timers. 

(Note: I used to be very stubborn…. like ‘nehh, that doesn’t work’.

Let me tell you this… In the beginning, it won’t work. You need to try, fail, and keep trying. Sorry to kill your dream, but improving your concentration doesn’t happen overnight. As with sports, playing the piano or learn a new language: you need training to improve).

8) Try vitamins to improve your level of concentration

In my article Vitamins for ADHD I wrote about how vitamins helped me overcome ADD symptoms. I’m not a doctor and I’m not pretending to be an expert on vitamins. All I can say is that research has been done about vitamins and Attention Deficit Disorder, and that it helps me.

I took medication for a year (Ritalin or DexAmphetamine) to help me concentrate, after I got the diagnose ADD. When I realised this only helped me on the short term, and it wasn’t helping my body, I tried different things and I came upon this article about how vitamins can help reduce symptoms of ADHD (among which concentration problems)

If you’d like to know more about vitamins for ADD and to improve your level of concentration, I suggest reading my article.

9) When you’re tired, take a break. When you are very tired, just STOP. 

There is no point in forcing yourself to concentrate when you are too tired. To be able to concentrate, you need energy.

When you have enough energy, you will accomplish ten, twenty, maybe a hundred times as much as when you tired.

Be smart about your time.When you are a bit tired, take a break. When you are very tired, just stop for the day. There is no point. It’s a waste of time.

Go meditate, take a bath, make yourself a good, healthy dinner.

And the most important thing is: don’t be angry with yourself.

Shit happens.

Instead of being upset and blaming yourself for not studying, make good decisions about how you will charge your energy level and how you’re going to make sure not to be tired the next day.

10) Schedule ‘worry time’

For most people it’s common that the mind wanders off to day to day worries. As Echkhart Tolle says in The Power of Now (a must-read), it’s a disease.

We think about the past, worry about the future. For a lot of people, this happens all the time. Our mind controls us. We need to learn how to control our mind instead.

Learning how to meditate will be the solution to this ‘disease’.

If you don’t know how to meditate (yet), or when you need another method to stop worrying, you can set a timer for ‘worry time’.

Take 10 minutes to think about all your worries and write them down.

If you want to learn how to stay in ‘the Now” and stop worrying so much, go and buy The Power of Now.

This book changed my life. I had to read it a couple of times. It’s lying on my night stand for years now.

Keep training your brain and never give up

Remember that improving your level of concentration needs time and effort.

Use my tips (start with one or two at the time), try, fail, and keep trying.

Your brain is a muscle.

It needs training and the right fuel (nutrition).

There’s always room for improvement.

And maybe the most important thing: Don’t be hard on yourself.

For some people, being able to concentrate is easy. For others, it’s very hard. The brain is very complex, as the rest of the human body.We are all different.

Start trying different things, start listening to your body and mind and keep working on it.

I promise you it will pay off

If you would like to know more about training your brain to be happier, I can strongly recommend the book Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson Phd (click on link to buy with free shipping today).

I hope my tips will help you being able to concentrate on studies for long hours.

If you have other tips, please share in the comments below

The post How to concentrate on studies for long hours? Here are my 10 tips…  appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.

In this article I will give you 10 straight forward tips (and a bonus),

to travel in New Zealand without having to spend over $20.000.

1) ACCOMMODATION: Buy a self contained vehicle (or buy a van and make it self contained, like I did, not so easy but doable and fun)

If you travel in New Zealand without your own accommodation, this is what will kill your budget. Paying 40 dollars a night to sleep in a hostel with 10 other people in the room, is no exception.

That’s why my first, very important suggestion to travel New Zealand on a budget is (when you’re here for a couple of months), buy a self contained car or van.

In a self contained vehicle, you are allowed to freedom camp everywhere, except for places where there’s a ‘no camping’ sign. This will save you heaps of money.

Being self contained means that you have a water waste and water supply system, a sink and a toilet. If you’d like more details, visit the website of the NZMCA.

Some tips for buying your own accommodation:

• Buy it in winter, sell it in or just before summer (you pay less in winter and get more money for your car in summer. The price difference can be 2000 NZD)
• Buy your car from a local, for example on trademe.co.nz or buy it from another backpacker in one of these Facebook groups:

Backpacker Cars New Zealand

Campervan Buy Sell Cars New Zealand

Working Holiday New Zealand – Sell and Buy Cars

Christchurch cars Buy/Sell/Exchange

Christchurch Cars Buy Sell Exchange

• When you buy from another backpacker, slim your chance of not buying a lemon (a local expression for a car that sucks/is likely to break down quickly). You can do this by (1) buy a car that has less than 240.000 km (2) buy an asian brand (cheaper to repair when something breaks down) (3) make sure the cambelt doesn’t need to be changed soon (expensive to do) or buy a van without a cambelt, like me (4) ask for papers, receipts, WOF check sheet to check the history (5) DO A PRE PURCHASE CHECK. This last tip is the most important.
• Do a pre purchase check in Christchurch instead of Auckland. My friend payed 280 dollars to check two vehicles (140 dollars each) in Auckland. In Christchurch, you pay 40 dollars (or at least I know a place where they charge only 40 dollars. I can give you contact details if you like).

Where to stay? Use Apps on your phone.

There are a couple of apps to find (freedom or cheap) campsites.

CAMPERMATE | A lot of backpackers use Campermate, but I don’t like it (annoying user interface and not all campsites are on there)

RANKERS/ CAMPING NZ | I guess this one is developed by the government. It’s not user generated and the amount of campsites you find is less than on my favourite app:

WIKICAMPS, the one I use | WikiCamps will cost you about $2 and it’s totally worth it. It’s super user friendly and user generated, which means that us travellers help each other to find the best spots. You can find campsites as well as showers, hostels, dumppoints, water points, day use areas or other points of interest, by using filters. It also works offline (except for the comments, you can only read them when you are online or have checked that site before.

Downside to freedom camping: not all the locals you meet are happy with the freedom campers in their country. I can see why… A lot of backpackers dump their rubbish and their shit (literally) everywhere. And we don’t support the country’s economy the way that the richer travellers do. I would say, if you’re going to do freedom camping, ‘give back’ to New Zealand by behaving well, be good to the environment, don’t dump your shit, buy from locals along the road and donate to DOC every now and then. 

2) FOOD: Buy at Pak’nSave, at local markets or from locals along the road. Eat seasonal products. That will save you heaps of $$$$

BUY FROM LOCALS | My most important tip is, to buy as much as you can from locals. You support the local people instead of the rich supermarket owners, the products are mostly spray-free and you pay less. Just pay attention and watch the signs while you are driving, or visit local markets. Local fruit & veggies stores can be cheap as well.

CHEAP SUPERMARKET | Avoid convenient stores or supermarkets like New World. The prices you pay are absolutely insane. Pak’nSave (huge supermarket) will be your best friend in the category supermarket. They’ve got everything and it’s cheap. There’s a Pak’nSave in every big town, buy a lot, save big!

If there’s no Pak’nSave, no local and no market, Countdown is another option. More expensive than the other two options (in general, some products are an exception), but the prices are better than at other stores.

So:

• Locals along the road
• Local markets
• Fruit & veggie stores
• Pak’nSave

EAT SEASONAL | A lot of backpackers live on instant noodles. If you’re happy with that, I would say, enjoy!

I can’t do that…

My tip to eat fresh, healthy food and still being able to travel New Zealand on a budget, is buying seasonal products! In November/December, I payed only $0.90 for an avocado and $2 for a bunch of asparagus. At the moment, I pay $4.50 for an avocado. Shocking, right?

3) WORK & TRAVEL: become a Wwoof– or Workaway member. If you’re to lazy to work, go Housesitting. 

The best way to get to know the country, to give back to the locals and to travel New Zealand on a budget, is volunteering. Wwoofing and Workaway are the two most well known communities to find volunteer jobs. You work for 4 hours a day (on average) in exchange of accommodation and food.

In addition to having a great time and getting to know the Kiwi lifestyle, you gain a lot of new skills. I can put gardening, landscaping and making a swing on my CV. Who doesn’t want that?

I love the combination between travelling and volunteering, as I wrote in my article ‘What do you prefer, travelling in a van or work & travel in New Zealand?’

4) TRAVEL: hitchhiking (when you don’t have a car) & car relocation. 

HITCHHIKING | If you want to save money while meeting the most awesome (local) people, go hitchhiking.

I have not much experience in hitchhiking myself (except for taking hitchhikers), but I’ve met a lot of people here who do it and it seems to be a very safe and convenient country for it. Everyone I met so far says it’s super easy, I haven’t heard one bad experience, and as a bonus they meet so many awesome people.

CAR RELOCATION | Another cheap option for travelling in New Zealand on a budget, is to relocate a car. When you are lucky, you pay nothing and they even pay for the petrol. The downside is, that you have to travel a certain amount of km’s in a few days, or even a day. you don’t have complete freedom. But it’s definitely one of the cheapest ways to travel the country.

A selection of car relocation companies:

Transfercar

Juicy relocation

Rental Car Relocation

5. Sleeping: Couchsurfing

Couchsurfing is awesome. The concept: you stay at someones place for free. You give back by sharing something, like food or just a great time, good stories. You also give back to the community to host surfers  when you’re back home.

Members (hosts and surfers) have a profile so you can look for likeminded people to stay with. It’s safe as long as you use it wisely. My tip here: always read references and don’t stay at someone who has less than 8 (positive) references.

The best people I met here, I all met while Couchsurfing. Couchsurfers are way more social than campers. They are all open minded globetrotters and they have great stories to tell. At some places, you are not the only surfer. You meet other travellers, share experiences.

Local people can tell you all about their culture and beautiful places in the area.

If you haven’t yet, try it. Join the community, you won’t regret it!

6) SHOPPING: New Zealand on a budget? Go to the cheap shops!

Do you need anything, from a cheap tent to new shoes to a blanket to an insulated travel mug? Go to one of these shops:

• KMART (camping stuff, outdoor gear, clothes, underwear, home decor, bedding, gadgets and more)
• OPP SHOPS/opportunity shops (these are second hand stores, for example Eco Store, Salvation Army and local second hand shops. These are the place to be when you are building your van. They have mattresses, linnen, towels, kitchenware, mostly in good condition. Go to the OPP shops in the good neighbourhood when you’re looking for quality)
• THE WAREHOUSE (clothes, electronic devices, arts and crafts, camping stuff, kitchenware)
• PANEL BEATERS, CAR WRECKERS, AUTOMOTOR DISMENTLERS (when something happens to the outside of your car)

7) DON’TS: Stay away from alcohol and tobacco

I know, this one is a little tricky for addicts, but if you can, staying away or reducing the use of these two stimulants will save you heaps, because they are super super expensive in New Zealand.

Don’t ask my why I know this, I don’t smoke, but a pack of cigarets costs about 26 NZD. No, I’m not exaggerating. The cheapest bottle of wine will cost you about $7, which isn’t too bad when you don’t drink a bottle a day.

8) WORK: Find seasonal/temporary work

I haven’t worked here yet myself, but everybody else does. And if you want to travel in New Zealand on a budget, you might have to.  It’s super easy to find (and quit) seasonal jobs here. You can do farmwork and stay for a week, a month or longer. When you’re done with it, you go to the next place. Mostly they ask you to stay for at least 1 or 2 months, but nobody does and they know it (is what people who did it told me).

Some places to find seasonal work are:

• Backpackerboard
• Pick NZ
• Hostels

WORKING IN A SKIING AREA | If you would like to work in a skiing area, prepare it to be a bit more difficult. I applied at a few of the most popular ski fields, and haven’t been lucky so far..

9) TRAVEL: Share your ride (when you do have a car)

When you are travelling in your car and you have space left, let people know where you’re going, share the ride and the costs. You can post rideshares at:

New Zealand RideShare Backpackers

Ride sharing New Zealand

Ride Share New Zealand

10) FACILITIES: Use cheap or free facilities

This is not rocket science and you could have come up with this yourself,

but I would like to share some places that are cheap or free. This will definitely help you to travel in New Zealand on a budget.

WIFI | Mc’Donald’s (buy a coffee), local library’s (free), café’s (buy a coffee)

SHOWER | Local swimming pools (2$-5$ for a shower), outdoor showers (free, see WikiCamps), and of course the ocean, lakes and springs.

Those were my tips for travelling New Zealand on a budget.. When doing this, everybody is able to travel the country. Oh wait, I promised a bonus…

BONUS TIP: booking activities. Use a website, do it off season and book in advance 

Everything is expensive here, especially touristy stuff. If you’d like to do bungee jumping, skydiving, glacier hikes, helicopter tours, kayak tours or anything else, and you don’t want to kill your budget, this is your website:

DISCOUNTS | Bookme

OFF SEASON | When you’re planning on doing expensive activities, try to do them off season. I wanted to do a Heli Hike on Franz Josef Glacier in December. The price was $850. I did the same Heli Hike in April. I payed $410 (through Bookme).

Save money, do the touristy stuff off season.

BOOK HUTS | This hasn’t to do anything with money, but it’s worth mentioning anyway because I’m still sad about this. If you’re planning to do one of the great walks: book your hut months in advance. I wasn’t able to do a multiple day great walk because I didn’t book anything.

Go to the website of the DOC and book now

As I mentioned, I spend not over 750 euro (1000 NZD) a month since I arrived in New Zealand. And I didn’t even work for money.

So is New Zealand expensive..Yes.

Is travelling in New Zealand on a budget possible? Absolutely.

Travelling in New Zealand on a budget: you will have even more fun than with a big budget. 

Why will you have more fun?

• You meet locals trough Couchsurfing, volunteering and hitchhiking. They take you to places where you won’t come as a tourist.
• Through volunteering and Couchsurfing, you will really learn about the culture, the Kiwi Lifestyle.
• You learn new skills while volunteering.
• You meet more travellers (you also meet other backpackers in hostels, but yeah, what can I say. If you come to New Zealand to get drunk and smoke weed all the time, you might like the average hostel. I’m not really the hostel type (or I’m simply too old, help!).
• More fun, for less money… Which means, you will save money for your next trip!

Do you have any questions or anything to add to the list? Please comment below

The post The ultimate guide to travel in New Zealand on a budget (10 tips + a bonus!) appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.

September 2016: my journey began, I went to New Zealand with my backpack

In september 2016 I went to the airport with my backpack. Some clothes, a laptop, phone, powerbank, toothbrush, e-reader, sleeping bag, some money and my paspoort. That was about it. Two months later, I bought a van which I converted into a self contained home. I fabricated a bed, curtains, shelves, a ‘kitchen’ with sink and gas cookers and I bought a toilet (which I haven’t used yet). This is pretty much all I own at the moment.

What we think we need… Do we make a mistake?

The delusion behind what we think we need is, ‘I want to be comfortable. Comfort makes me happy.’. We also think ‘I need new clothes because it makes me feel better about myself, people will like me more when I look like those women in the magazines. I need a good kitchen and a good bed because then I can cook and sleep better’.

My conclusion after seven months: this is bullshit. Comfort makes us numb.. sleepy.. We get bored, and we don’t even realise it. What about stuff? Your self confidence, feeling good about yourself, doesn’t depend on the beautiful clothes you wear.

So here’s my list of 7 things I thought I needed…

• A hot shower, twice a day
  Let’s start with the obvious. I’m a little ashamed to tell you this now, but I used to belong to the top 5% shower addicts in the world. Back at home, I showered at least twice a day. Ask my mom. Even as a child I showered at least 20 minutes a day, it made my mom almost cry, and the number only increased when I went living on my own. When I did my workout around noon, I sometimes showered three times a day. I loved, and still love hot showers. In the morning, I thought I needed it to wake up. In the evening, I thought I needed it to ‘wash off the day’ or in other words, to relax. Like everyone with ADD, I’ve been a troubled sleeper my whole life, and a hot shower helped me fall asleep, so I thought.

I don’t have a shower in my van (except for a portable shower) and after six months I’m convinced that we don’t need so many showers. I do still care about hygiene, and luckily I have a sink and water supply. When you travel around, there are a lot of other ways to refresh yourself. You can jump in lakes, the ocean, use public (cold) showers or go to the local swimming pool. Lately, I’ve been a huge fan of the public cold showers. I guess it’s pretty healthy, boosts the immune system. It’s the best way to wake up in the morning and I’ve been sleeping like a baby lately.

That shower doesn’t make you happy. It’s just comfort. So come on guys, save the planet, have at least one shower less a day. (To be honest… I’m really curious how often I will shower when I’m back home)

• Wifi, all day, every day
  
  I must admit that I have been a little frustrated about this one, here in New Zealand. The Wifi access is pretty shitty here. When you are alone in your van at night, and the sun goes down, besides reading, it can be nice to watch a movie or to listen to an audiobook. Besides that, I’ve set my mind on creating a successful blog. ‘Come on, I need wifi’, I thought…

After six months, I’m finally getting used to the fact that wifi is not so evident in New Zealand. And although I already knew it rationally, I’m only since recently experiencing the benefits of not being online all the time. I don’t need to be able to watch what’s happening online all day, every day. I don’t need to know how many people have read my blog or liked my posts all day every day. And when I want to work, I can just go to a library or Mac Donalds. Being able to be online all the time gives me more stress than pleasure. But it’s an addiction, and so we think it makes us happy. We think we need it 24/7. We don’t.

Have you ever felt completely happy while looking at your phone? If yes, how often?

• Central heating, heating every room of our big house
  Damn I’ve been cold here in New Zealand. In New Zealand, most homes are made out of wood and Kiwi’s heat their homes the old fashioned way. I haven’t seen much central heating here.
  It’s autumn now, and it can be soooo so cold. Freezing. Sometimes, I really wish to be in my home in The Hague, with my central heating on.

Do we need to heat every room in our house all the time?

Nope, there are other solutions to the cold. One of them is getting used to it. Or take other measures. I insulated my van with bubblewrap, for example. My New Zealand mom (where I worked for and stayed with at Christchurch Lavender Gardens) gave me a woollen duvet. I wear a lot of thermal underwear. But besides that, my body is getting used to the colder temperatures. Maybe you should ask me about this in two months, when it’s winter, but for now: We don’t need to put our central heating on 20 degrees and let it run in every room of our big houses. We can put on a sweater, use a blanket and let our bodies get used to the cold.

Central heating doesn’t make us happy. It’s just comfort. Comfort makes us numb. When I feel extremely cold, while cooking next to my van in the woods, at least I feel alive.

Oh crap. I really feel like that annoying climate activist now, but so be it. We’re killing the planet, and for what? Comfort?

• A nice kitchen, a big fridge, good knives, a blender, an oven, a juicer… etc…
  Though all these things are pretty nice to have, it’s easy to survive without. One of my favourite backpacker meals is pastry with spinach and fetacheese. You just fill the pastry with the spinach and cheese, fold it and fry it in a frying pan. Who needs an oven? You can cook heaps of delicious meals with two gas cookers (or even one), a pot and a frying pan. Or have some raw food. Have you ever tried rice with avocado and raw garlic? It’s the best! Eat it with tomatoes, raw carrots, poached eggs and tadaaa, you’ve got some foodporn.

Yes, having a good kitchen is absolutely great. But at the moment, I have the best dining room ever. I’m having breakfast, lunch and dinner next to my van, while I look at the ocean, the forest or a lake. I’ve never been happier.

• A big comfy expensive box spring bed
  We need good mattresses with the newest technology, to support our backs right? Let me tell you a secret. I’ve had back problems for a long time, from since I remember up until a couple of years ago. I didn’t have back problems because of my mattress, I had back problems because I didn’t do the right physical exercise. Probably, some psychological issues, the fact that I wasn’t completely happy, even had something to do with my back problems.

I’ve been sleeping on a very thin something for months now. I can’t even call it a mattress. I do yoga, I workout, I make sure my back and my core have some strength. Tadaaa, no back problems. I feel better than ever. (When your mattress is really old, you should probably buy a new one, but I hope you get my point).

Wake up guys. Whether it is technology in phones, shoes or mattresses. It’s all marketing. Commercial guys in suits, tricking you into buying stuff. Think twice about where to spend your money and about how much you spend. (you can still buy a nice mattress of course, but it doesn’t have to be a big brand and cost you thousands of dollars).

• That big house
  We need at least a room for sleeping, a room for eating, a room for working and a room for cooking right? While I’m convinced that our living space is very important, I know now that it doesn’t necessarily have to be a big house. At the moment, I’m happier than ever living in my 2-3m van.

It’s a matter of choice. When you wish to own a big house, in general, you have to work more hours or harder or have a job where you have more responsibility. If you don’t mind doing that, than yes, enjoy that big house (but please don’t heat it all the time ;-)).

• A toilet bag with how many products for skincare, haircare, foot care, hand care and whatever I don’t care
  We think we need 15 beauty products a day. Day cream, night cream, not getting old cream, deodorant, toothpaste, scrub, shower gel, shampoo, shaving stuff, mascara, eyeliner, foundation, lipgloss, soap to clean your ‘you know’, shower gel in 20 different smells.

I found out that I like to live simple when it comes to beauty products. Use as few items as possible. It saves me so much money, and 90% of the products aren’t even healthy to use. We don’t need it, but we get addicted to it. Our lips need balm because they are dry, oh no wait, it’s because they are used to the balm. Same with our skin, hair, etc.

What have I been using for the last couple of months?
Daily: sunscreen, baking soda (as a deodorant), toothpaste
Occasionally: shampoo, day cream, shea butter, lavender oil, avocado oil, coconut oil

(No, I don’t smell or look like a swagger. You might think I’m not at my most pretty self without make up. Well, that might be true, but hey, I’m living the backpacker lifestyle so I’m allowed to be unpretty ;-))




Is my list of what we think we need complete?

Absolutely not. It is incomplete, messy and a bit chaotic, like me. I could make this list longer. We think we need new clothes all the time, that new pair of shoes, that new watch, the newest phone. But I hope you get my point. We don’t need what we think we need. We can be happy with less stuff and less comfort.

So minimalism is the key to happiness. Can’t you enjoy your big house?

Of course you can! I’m not trying to talk you into feeling guilty, quitting your job and sell your house. You can still live in a nice house, with a good kitchen, the most comfortable bed ever and buy new clothes. When I go back home, I will have showers again and I will use my blender and oven. I’m also dreaming of having a property. Not necessarily a big house, but I would love to have a garden, maybe live with likeminded people in a community or own a peace of land and build huts. Or I will buy a tiny house, or a caravan and keep traveling. I don’t know, but what I do know is that living space is important. It just doesn’t need to be big, expensive and luxury.

Then why did I want to tell this story about minimalism?
When you realise you don’t need all that stuff, that it’s just luxury and that it’s not what makes you happy, you can start focusing on things that do make you happy. You won’t feel upset when something breaks down, or when you don’t have the money to buy that big house.

It’s nice, it’s comfort, but it doesn’t make you feel good about yourself. It doesn’t make you happy.

I have close to nothing (in Western terms) and I am happy.

What you need to feel alive and happy every day, has nothing to do with stuff, with comfort.

I already knew it, now I’ve experienced it.

Minimalism and ADH/ADD

One last thing I would like to add to this story, is the brilliant combination between having less when you have ADD or ADHD. The fewer things you have, the fewer things you can loose or destroy while being clumsy. It’s as simple as that.

If you want to read more about needing less, read my article about Buddhism, where I explain why owning more causes stress.

The post Minimalism: after living in my van for seven months, these are my thoughts about what we think we need… appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.

Whether correct or not, I never categorised Buddhism as a religion, more as a spiritual way of life. Buddhists offer a practical path, to become completely and perfectly happy & free from suffering. Everything they do is focused on mind-training, gaining more focus, creating a positive mind. I like this. I’m a big Eckhart Tolle fan (I absolute recommend reading The Power of Now) and there are many similarities between Tolle’s perspective and Buddhism.

Chandrakirti meditation centre, a Buddhist centre in New Zealand
During my stay in New Zealand, I spend some time at a Buddhist Meditation Centre (Chandrakirti, in the Nelson area). I read some books about Buddhism and I’ve always been interested in becoming a Buddha (lol, I’m kidding, but Buddhism always fascinated me). This was my first actual experience with Buddhists.

In the centre, there lives a Geshe from Tibet, as well as a (Kiwi) nun. There are teachings, meditations, retreats and other events, like yoga retreats. I volunteered at this place. We worked for 4 hours a day. Every morning we did meditations with Youdon, the nun resident. 3 times a week, there was a teaching about a specific subject.

So what did I learn from Buddhists, and how can Buddhism make you a happier person?

• Everybody is the same
  You probably think ‘bullshit, everybody is different’ and I can understand your reaction. What the Buddhists teached me is, that everybody is the same in the way that everybody wants to be happy and free from suffering. So in essence, everybody is the same. Everybody has the same wish. There is no-one in the world who doesn’t want to be happy and be free from suffering.

Why is this important? Because when you realise this when you are in a difficult situation with someone, it’s easier to feel compassion for the other person. The other person is working on being happy and free from suffering as well. Maybe not in the way you are, but he/she is. Nobody is behaving like an asshole while being happy. They behave like assholes because they are suffering.

• Everything in life is cause —> effect, according to Buddhism. So create good causes!
  You are responsible for your own happiness. When you want a specific result, you need to create a specific cause. This sounds (and is) very logic (unless you say ‘if you kill a mosquito you will create bad karma and be unhappy’, like some fanatics would say). I would say it is more common sense, like this… When you want to be surrounded by happy, healthy people, you need to have a happy and healthy attitude, otherwise you won’t attract these people. When you kill, lie, gossip, you will attract people who do the same and as a result, be unhappy. (This is not exactly the Buddhist explanation, more my own point of view and experience).

When you are angry at someone, who suffers from the anger? Not, in particular, the other person. It’s you who feels the anger, who has a high heart rate, who feels like shit, right?

• Nothing is permanent
  For Buddhists, it’s important to acknowledge the impermanence of things. When you realise that everything is impermanent, you have a totally different mindset. Everything is subject to change and alteration. For example.. A stranger is just a stranger, right? You don’t particularly care about that person. But when he does something nice for you, you suddenly like this person and maybe you even care. So your relationship to this person changes, sometimes very quickly. It also works the other way around. When your friend does many things you don’t like, you will, at some point, start to dislike that person. It’s not your friend anymore. Same happens in relationships. When you realise that nothing is permanent, you won’t be attached to things and feel more happy and free. This is a very complicated subject which I am still trying to understand better.

• Friendships and relationships are more important than pride
  Many people, whether it’s couples or friends, argue about small stuff. Why do we always want to be right about everything? When you have an issue with a friend, partner or family member, think about what’s more important to you. Is it you being right, or your friendship/relationship? You may feel that you loose, when you ‘give in’ to an argument, but in the end you win (the relationship/friendship). Breathe in, breath out, and think about what’s really important. This can be really helpful.

• Humour is very important in Buddhism
  Geshela (the Tibetan monk who’s living at the centre) was smiling and laughing all the time. It’s important to have a ‘light mind’, he said. Focus on love, joy, compassion, enthusiasm, and you’re life will be easier. Have fun, cut the crap. It can be that simple. You need to train your mind though. To develop this state of mind doesn’t ‘happen’ overnight.

• You are not alone: everybody suffers
  Suffering is part of being human. Fear, jealousy, sadness, anger.. everybody has experienced it. Some more than others, depending on the causes you create of have created in the past, according to the Buddhists (I’m not sure what to think about this). Again, when you realise that everybody suffers, it’s easier to feel compassion. For example, for that homeless man on the street who looks angry, drunk and worthless to you. Or even for your friend, who doesn’t call you often enough. They also want to be happy and they suffer. Again, they don’t behave like assholes because they are happy. It’s always a reaction caused by some kind of suffering, according to Buddhism.

• Thinking of others makes you happy
  Every morning, we did a meditation to set a positive motivation for the day. The main focus was this sentence: ‘May all my actions today, of my body and my speech, be only for the benefits of others’. This one is still a little tricky for me. During my burnout, I learned to put myself first, instead of others. I struggled with this sentence the first weeks. ‘How is it possible to benefit others, when you don’t take care of yourself?’, I thought. I misunderstood the concept. The focus of this sentence should be on ‘only for the benefit’, so it means not harming or disbenefit others. Buddhists see all sentient beings as the same. ’Others’ also includes yourself. So your actions (body & speech) should be positive, towards others and yourself. When doing this, you will feel happier. Trust me, I tried.

Last week I went to the library, which was located next to a school. I got the last parking spot, but when I saw a mother with three kids in the back, I asked her if she would like to have my spot. I could park on the street and walk a little, right? She was happy, and I was happy. I can’t exactly explain why, but it’s nice to put a smile on someones face. It didn’t cost me anything, except 5 minutes of walking.

• Less self-cherishing, less wanting too much
  Geshela, the Tibetan Monk, kept repeating these two points. When you cherish yourself less, and when you want less, you’re going to be a happier person, is the Buddhist perspective. You will experience less suffering. Why? Because if you want too much, you suffer when you don’t get it. Whether you can’t afford it, or that person you’re in love with doesn’t love you back, you suffer when you don’t get what you want. Or you suffer when something breaks down, or when it gets stolen, when your relationship ends.

• Everything you buy (own) is heavy on your shoulders
  Geshela said: ‘everything you buy.. that nice car, expensive watch, big house.. is something else that’s heavy on your shoulder.’. It makes sense.. When you have a big house, you have to pay for the mortgage. You have to work hard every day, and you might not even like your job. When you loose your job, you feel stressed, because you cannot pay for the house anymore. You can’t have the lifestyle you are used to anymore. When you use an expensive camera, and it starts to rain when you’re using it, you have stress because it might break down. When you have less, you have less stress. Now that I lived a minimalistic lifestyle in my van of a while, I can speak from experience, this is true. Having less will make you happier.

Are you convinced yet, that Buddhism can help us Westerners?

It’s a lot to take in, I get it. But believe me, when you even start to understand a glimpse of the Buddhist philosophy, you will become a happier, lighter person. Who doesn’t want a life without feelings like greed, jealousy, fear, and anger?

Do you have to become a Buddhist to become happy?

Of course not, you silly! I’m not a Jehovah witnesses. And I think Buddhists will never try to convert you. It’s not like Christianity. But you can learn a lot from Buddhist, like I did.

So I would stay, when you’re convinced that this may help you to feel happier… Read a Buddhist book or visit a Buddhist place some time. Or start reading The Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. I promise this will be the best money you’ll ever spend. Don’t read it ones, put it on your bedside table and read it again and again. I can promise you that it will help. You don’t have to become a Buddhist. I’m not a Buddhist. But I definitely benefit from what I’ve learned.

I can also highly recommend this Buddhist book, based on neuroscience:

Buddha’s Brain by Rick Hanson (free shipping when you buy today or tomorrow, via this link)

Do not take my words too seriously. I’m not a Buddhist. I just write from my experience. If you would like to know more, as I said, start reading, or go to a Buddhist Centre. Nevertheless.. Comments are more then welcome!

Let me know what you think, and I hope to see you back here

(Many thanks to Chandrakirti.. mostly to Youdon, Geshela, Philippa and everyone I met there. You are the best. :))

Read more about:

Eckart Tolle, author of The Power of Now

The Buddhist meditation centre in New Zealand, where I had all these insights)

The neuroscience of lasting happiness

The post Can Buddhism make you happy? What I learn from Buddhists in New Zealand appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.

I used to be the worst cook ever, now I make gluten free, vegan stuff. HOW?

In the Netherlands, my friends always kindly said: ‘oh no José, you don’t have to cook, because I really like to cook. Just sit down and relax. Or cut this carrot.’.

I got the message.. I can’t cook. I’m terrible. Because my friends never let me practise, I stayed the worst cook ever. Thanks friends

Then I traveled to New Zealand, I had to cook, because I was Couchsurfing. When you are Couchsurfing (staying at someones place for free) you want to give something back. And so I cooked…

Couchsurfing: one person doesn’t eat gluten, the other is vegetarian, and number 3 is vegan. Ok. Why not?

I was staying at this amazing place in Christchurch. John had 4 guests, beside me. Ok… this is going to be a challenge, I thought.

One. I have to cook.

Two. It has to be vegan

Three. it needs to be gluten free.

I won’t go into details and I’m not going to tell you what the kitchen looked like after I managed to put 12 delicious spinach patties on the table. Just follow the recipe…

Spinach Patties; Vegan & gluten free recipe

Ingredients (serves 4, cooked in 20 minutes)

• 300 gr chickpeas
• 1 big onion
• 100 gr fresh spinach
• 2 spoons of olive oil
• 2 spoons of fresh oregano
• 2 spoons soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons of paprika powder
• 1 teaspoon of chili powder
• 4 spoons of sunflower seeds
• 2 spoons of pumpkinseeds
• 2 spoons of chia seeds in water (or 2 eggs, when you’re not vegan)
• 100 gr of gluten free flower
• 100 gr of sesame seeds
• salt & pepper
• 1 spoon of sugar if you like (I didn’t use sugar)

Method

1. Mix 2 teaspoons of chia seeds with water (you use this mixture instead of eggs)
2. Grind the chickpeas and onion roughly in a food processor
3. Add the spinach, olive oil, soy sauce, (sugar), herbs and seeds and mix them in a food processor
4. Add the flower, sesame seeds and chia seeds (they now have a similar substance as an egg)
5. Season with salt and pepper
6. Remove the blade from the food processor, wet your hands and make the patties
7. Bake them in a pan with some oil until they turn golden brown.

BON APETIT, or as we would say in the Netherlands… EET SMAKELIJK!

The post Gluten free recipe; delicious spinach patties (also vegan). ENJOY appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.

Note: I’m not a medical specialist, doctor or dietician. I write from my own experience.

I was using AD(H)D medication for a year

I got the diagnose ADD when I was 28, during my burnout. Immediately, I started with therapy. I was really impressed by the quality of this ADHD centre, and they suggested me to use medication. My first response was ‘no way, I’m nog going to use medication for the rest of my life’. I hate medication. It’s unnatural, and most of the times they don’t know much about the long term effects. I immediately thought of solutions like diet or vitamins for ADHD, but I wanted to listen tot the professionals for a change.
One of my best friends, who’s a doctor and who’m I really trust, said I should give it a try. I was really happy about the help I got at the ADHD centre and I was kind of desperate at that time, so because of those two, I decided to give it a try. Also, I was really curious how other people, without ADD/ADHD feel. Can it changed your life completely, as I had heard people say?

Dex methylphenidad Retard, Ritalin, Dexamphetamine.

I remember the first time using Dex Methylphenidad Retard. At that time, I was dog sitting. After taking the first pill, I took the dog for a walk. I looked at the trees and they were so bright, so green, so sharp. My focus was absolutely amazing. Everything was beautiful. My first car-ride was awesome too. I drove to school, as I did twice a week. Many things I saw on the road were new to me. That was so weird, but astounding.

So this is how ‘normal people’, without ADD feel? WOW!

The first weeks of using medication were amazing. I was working on my thesis at that time. And wow, I could focus for longer than 5 minutes. It was so easy to organise all the data that I collected. My house was tidy, I had so much energy, I knew where my stuff was. Another great benefit was the fact that I could be in a crowded space (festivals or birthday party’s) without the feeling I wanted to run away. Normally, I was exhausted after a social event with lots of people. My energy was gone. Not with medication. It was easy. I could participate in conversations without my mind wandering off, or while hearing 4 conversations at the same time.

The side effects of ADHD medication that I experienced

You’re probably wondering ‘why did she use so many types of medication, when it worked so well?’
Well… It was great in the beginning. The side effects weren’t so bad the first weeks. I had a dry mouth, a dry skin and not much apetite. That was it. It was worth it.




After a few weeks, the really bad side effects came. With some types of medication I had extreme rebounds (mostly with Ritalin). That means that when, after a few hours, the medication got out of my system, the ADD symptoms became double as bad as they are without medication. I had a high hart rate, was extremely anxious or just pissed off. Everything was blur. I got a bit of a fever. I couldn’t do much for about half an hour, besides lying on the couch feeling miserable. When that happens every day, it sucks.

White poo, ‘I don’t care about whatever’ and blackouts because of the ADHD medication.

Dexmethylphenidad Retard got to my liver, up to the point where my poo was white. And I lost weight. I only used Dexamphetamine for about two weeks, because it made me feel like ‘I don’t care about anything’. In traffic I didn’t care about other people on the road or about traffic lights. I didn’t feel happy, I didn’t feel sad. I just didn’t care. At one point, I had a complete blackout. I was in the train, at a station where I wasn’t suppose to be. I don’t know what happened or how I got there. The next day, my doctor told me to reduce the dose. I told her I wanted to stop. It wasn’t me anymore.

I decided to stop using ADD/ADHD medication

After a year, The ADHD centre ‘released me’ because I learned enough. At the last session with the doctor I told her I decided I wanted to stop using meds. After trying 4 types of medication over the year, I was at a point where I didn’t recognise myself anymore. Where was my creativity? I wasn’t spontaneous anymore, lost my creativity and didn’t enjoy the things I enjoyed before, like playing music. My body felt week, I wasn’t fit like I used to be.

Let me state this: though I personally disagree with the way in which doctors describe medicine so easily and quickly, I’m really happy for the people who do feel good while using those meds. It’s just not for me.

After I stopped using ADD medication. The ‘Oh crap, I really miss the benefits of the medication’-stage

The first weeks without meds were okay. Probably, there were still some after effects. After a few weeks, I was back where I was before the meds. It was weird, I’d forgot how I felt without medication. It was terrible, I was totally upset. What to do? I don’t want to use that sh*t anymore, but I don’t want to feel like this either.

Google, your friend in need

In the Netherlands, there’s a diet for kids with ADHD. I heard about that and thought well, when it works for kids, why not try it out for myself. Unfortunately, the insurance companies don’t pay for ADHD solutions based on diet for adults, and since I had no job, I had to find a cheap solution. There must be other people struggling with this, I thought, so I tried Google.

New Zealand research about vitamins for ADHD

A New Zealand research came up in the results, which showed results in where people with ADHD or ADD had good results using vitamins. ‘More research was needed’, but I didn’t care. I gave it a try. I thought, budgetwise, let’s start with only a few. So I start using:

• Omega 3
• Magnesium
• Zinc
• Folate/Folic Acid
• B12
• Calcium
• Iron

This was about 9 months ago. I was ‘house-sitting’ (taking care of my sister and her boyfriends cat) and writing another thesis, this time for the online marketing course I was following. Their neighbours were really loud.. kids, music. I couldn’t focus. I had no energy.

After only a few days of using vitamins, among which Omega 3, B12 and Zinc, I already felt the difference.
The vitamins made me more clear in my head. The neighbours didn’t bother me anymore and I could focus on my thesis.

So, do vitamins for ADHD work?

I’m taking the vitamins for about 9 months now, longer than I stopped eating Gluten, as I wrote in my previous post. For me, it makes a huge difference if I take them or not. I have way more energy and focus. My head is more clear. My concentration improves, and because of that I don’t lose my stuff, I can be in crowded spaces, I’m more organised, and so forth… I wouldn’t say they give me the same results as the medication like Ritalin, but about 80-90% of it, and without side effects. I would recommend using vitamins for ADHD.

More research about vitamins for ADHD?

Scientists, pharmacy and doctors would say: ‘There’s not enough research to state that vitamins can help reduce ADHD symptoms’. They might even say that it’s not healthy to take vitamin supplements.

I’m surprised that there’s not a lot of research published or even done in the field of vitamins for ADHD. But on the other side, it doesn’t surprise me. Because who would benefit from this? Not the pharmaceutical industry, who are mostly the sponsor for medical research and who supply the medication.

What’s your story? Would you try vitamins, to help reduce ADHD symptoms?

I would love to hear your experience, so please share your story below! There’s so much information about ADHD, ADD, medication and natural solutions. Let’s help each other make the most out of our life with ADHD or ADD.

If you would like to try vitamin supplements for ADHD, this is what I’m using:

Note: buying cheap vitamins might not be the best choice, because your body can’t always absorb it or it contains things that are unhealthy. During my burn out I went to a doctor who not only studied medicine, but on top of that alternative medicine. He recommended the brand Lamberts. 

• Omega 3
• Magnesium
• Zinc
• Folate/Folic Acid
• B12
• Calcium
• Iron

The post Vitamins for ADHD – Vitamins can be a good substitute for ADD/ADHD medication appeared first on Mywanderingmind.blog.