Women who inspire me

A dear friend of mine asked on her Facebook page to share names of famous women who inspire you in your life. I tried to think about it for a while. Of course I admire Mother Teresa and Princess Diana for what they have done, I like Jennifer Aniston and Meryl Streep, and Martha Stewart as public figures, but I don't really know these people personally, so I can't truly say they are my role models.
But I was lucky and honored enough to have met women who really inspired me in my life.
I'll tell you about some of them, keeping them anonymously, since I actually didn't ask for a permission to write about them on my blog.

When I was a student, I lived in Germany for some time. There I met a wonderful woman who was the mother of my guest father. She had no easy life, believe me - 5 kids, three sons, two daughters, one of them had down syndrome, the other one died in a car crash in the age of 18th. That's a whole bunch of tragedies already, isn't it? But as if that wasn't enough, sons didn't have easy destinies either - a lot of complicated marriages and relationships. Her husband had weak heart, had 3 heart surgeries by the time I left.
Despite all said above, she was the most kind, loyal, devoted, sympathetic and inspiring woman I have ever met. She reminded me of Melanie Hamilton from the "Gone with the Wind", remember her? Sweet dear Mellie, who always thought about others more than about herself, very kind and sympathetic. I read definition of the word 'lady' somewhere (maybe even in the "Gone with the Wind"), it said something like 'a lady is a woman who tries to make everyone around herself to feel comfortable'. That was exactly what my guest father's mom was like. No matter how many ex-wives and kids her children had, everyone felt always welcomed in her house, she always had some treats for grandchildren and some food for unexpected guests. She always knew when you wanted to talk and was there to listen to you. She understood my situation, that I was a young girl in a foreign country, and always tried to offer me some extra work so I could earn some extra money (earn! which is important, not to offend me by just giving me money).
She is the person whom I miss mostly from that period of my life, not my guest family where I actually lived or my friends.

When I moved to Kiev, I met a lot of amazing, kind and talented people, I wrote about it on my Russian blog in my post 'why I'm proud to be Ukrainian'.
The next person who inspires me and about whom I'm going to tell is one of them. She is a young gorgeous woman (long legged blond, almost like Bond's girlfriend =)), practicing lawyer with two great daughters. And by the way she had no easy life by all means, just believe me.  She is really an amazing, loving and understanding mom, and I admire her for this a lot (when I learned that she allowed her oldest daughter to tattoo wings over her back, because her daughter explained her decision, it just blew my mind).
I met her when she was selling beautiful women's clothes through her blog as her hobby, and we became good accuantaties. But when bad things started happening in our country last winter, she took her doctor's diploma and went to the hospital to offer her help. She just became my hero and my icon after that, an incredible, brave, very intelligent woman.
To my mind, she made the most right choice considering her children's future - she fought for them to live in a better country, instead of staying at home and trying to protect them from a hypothetical threats.

I was thinking who I should tell next about when I realized, I have so many amazingly cool people in my life!)) really, I never realized how actually blessed I am to be surrounded about such fantastic women.

One of my friends decided to go for her passion, left her career in banking and became a baker! This takes some guts, doesn't it?!
Another friend of mine is a single mom, and despite all difficulties she meets in her life, she manages to live on her own, raise a beautiful daughter and help the others.
I also admire my dear friend who inspired me to write this post a lot)) who is an amazing mom and wife and an incredibly talented artist!

I have lots of girlfriends who are great mothers, and are doing lots of fascinating things like charity, own business, lots of art projects, etc. But this post is long enough, I'll end it here.

Thank you all, incredible, beautiful by all means, amazing women, who I know, for doing all magical things you are doing, for being my friends, and for inspiring me everyday to be a better person!

You can learn anything you want to.

Did you know? I discovered it recently and was pleasantly surprised.
You can really learn how to draw, run marathon, do yoga, and many-many other things.
Yes, there's a saying that 'hard work beats the talent'. But I never thought of it, or didn't take it seriously till recent time.

I wasn't taught to challenge myself, to achieve things. I was just satisfied with what I had. It was always very difficult for me to run and do any physical activity (I'm not fat or something, and never was. Just weak and untrained). So I just accepted I couldn't run. Yes, I have legs, they function ok, I can walk. Just not run.
I was ok with it.
Once I started working out, I used a short run as a warm up. Just in 10 minutes of light jog I wanted to die. I ran 4 times a week for 10 minutes on the interval program (1 min run, 2 min walk).
In a month I increased the time to 15 minutes.
After 2 months I decided to try running as long as I could. The result just blow my mind - 20 minutes of jogging non-stop! It was a big victory for me back than.
Now I run 6 miles in less than an hour and plan to train for my first 10k run.

I used to be ordinary in drawing. Not horrible like when you intend to draw a horse and the result is something with four legs)) but also not very good.
And I saw an online course 'learn drawing before the end of the year' that started in October. I started with them, but didn't make it through. Now I have this book 'you can learn to draw in 30 days', will try it out and put updates here.

I also want to learn how to sing, and maybe one more foreign language.

Just never stop challenging yourself. It's the only way to keep your mind and body sharp.

Ok, I'm back

Back from amazing vacation, from beautiful San Diego to my everyday life, fitness, house stuff, my blog), ect.
We're moving pretty soon, so mainly what I do is look for a new place.

I did my workout today after almost a week break, and I felt like I missed the routine. It keeps the life on track, keeps everything together. Even when you don't go to the office every day, you need discipline, or you'll just spend half of the day in bed playing 'candy crush' :-)
And of course I felt much better after the workout, I missed everyday challenges. 

Vacation diary

We're in San Diego till next Friday. It's been only two days now, and loved every minute of it! I'm looking forward to the day at La Jolla beach tomorrow))

Happy Fourth of July!

I live in US almost for a year now, but none of the holidays I experienced here is that big as the Independence day. It's surprising for me, and it's beautiful. Usually national holidays are just long weekends for most of the people. But the 4th of July is really celebrated.
I admire people who value so much what they have, even if they didn't experience something else.
And I'm very grateful I have a chance to live in this great free country =)

5-minutes journal

I went to a business camp once and there we were told about 'morning pages' technic. Every morning first thing you do (after brushing your teeth, I guess) is sit down and write 3 pages about your plans for the day, about things you are grateful for, and stuff. This helps to clarify your thoughts, set plans for the day, obviously, and put you in a positive mood from the beginning of the day, which is an important thing.
But not everybody can squeeze 3 pages of text out of himself on the daily basis, and not everybody has time to do it in the morning. When I tried doing it, it took me from 30 minutes and longer, and I'm pretty big of a graphomaniac myself! So I imagine it can be a real challenge for people who don't like/can't write.
That's why when I heard about this technic of '5-minutes journal', I liked it much better. It's so much easier - you spend only 5 minutes a day on it, and you answer specific questions, and don't need to write a lot of stuff and blah.
There are 5 questions, 3 of them you answer in the morning, and 2 in the evening, to go to sleep in a positive mood as well.
Day questions:

1. What I am grateful for today? 
e.g. I am grateful for waking up healthy, next to a person I love most in my life, etc. 
Basically good stuff that's going on in your life and that you're grateful for, pretty easy.

2. What would make today great?
e.g. A lunch with my dear friend, nice weather, successful business meeting. 
These should be your plans for the day, that you describe in present time, and imagine they go well.

3. Daily information ('I am' statement). 
 e.g. I am a popular blogger, I make good money with my blog, everybody wants to work with me. 
Again, in the present time, statements about things you would like to achieve, imagine you have them already.

Night questions:

4. Three awesome things that happened today.
These can be even tiny-small things like someone held the door for you, or nice weather, or a beautiful sunset that you watched. You always can find at least something positive in your day. This will help you go to sleep in a good mood.

5. How I can make today better?
This one shouldn't be critics or something. This is more like pont 3 - things about yourself you wish you did better, in present time.
e.g. I did two workouts today, and I'm in a great shape! 

And it does work, and it helps. When you do it every day, it becomes a habit, and first things you think of when you wake up are things you are grateful for. This is amazing, it makes you so much happier!

Have I tried it? - Yes. I like it, I will continue doing it. Do I do it every day? - No) I do it when I remember about it, sometimes only in the evening, but I'm doing it.

BTW, you can buy special journal for it, with printed questions and all, just google it.