Category: Growth

Culture & Identity

A recent discussion on Bloom  facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/Bloomcocreation, is still triggering my mind. I decided to sit down and write something about this. It concerns the cultural factor. How do we experience our own culture and how do we experience other cultures?

Currently I am living  in a very multi diverse European society and I sometimes wonder how all these different cultures interact and deal with often contradicting beliefs systems. And how did I deal with this when I lived abroad?

Is culture a chain around your ankles holdings you back from personal growth? Or is it an opportunity to look at yourself? What parts of your own culture suits your inner self? Can you choose which parts of culture you integrate as if you were picking out clothes that suits you well?

Do you see culture as an opportunity or rather as an obstacle for personal growth?

I believe that culture can be as liberating as it can be restraining, it all comes down to being aware of your cultural self and making conscious decisions.  For me it comes down to being aware of how you perceive culture and how you deal with that part of you that is related and structured around cultural beliefs. Negotiating with yourself  and society at large on what parts and aspects of culture you integrate or not is a process that can be a key factor for personal growth.

It is this negotiation you have with yourself on who you really want to be that can create personal growth or not. It is your choice.

What parts are holding you back to be the person you really inspire to be?

By Sarah Neirinckx

The old, the new and the inbetween

New year has always puzzled me. What is new year? When does it start and when does it end? Is it just that moment when we reflect on what we achieved so we can reevaluate and start again trying to achieve the goals we have set for ourselves?
Can we just step from the old into the new overnight? Or is new year just the summon of our attempts to grow through life’s’ transition stages?

Celebrating new year is a joyful moment where we make time to reflect on what we have been doing and make plans for the coming year.  We start the next round, the next phase, we get ready for the new challenges or we once again tackle old challenges. The rest of the coming year we will have our goals to work through.

In my head it looks something like this:

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On paper it all seems so easy and logical while in reality it can be quite messy. In reality it looks more like this:
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It is not so much your starting point nor reaching the end goal that matters most, it is that bit in between! That is exactly where the magic happens.

Making the most out of the  ‘in between’  will make you grow, increase your consciousness,  build up your resilience, expand powerfully and transform across all levels.

How you deal with that space in between and how you use this adventure to nurture you, will make the difference.

It can learn you how to absorb life’s ups and downs, heal yourself, integrate everything that happens on a deeper, more profound level.

In the end overcoming the difficulties on your path will give you gifts you can treasure for the rest of your life. These gifts are called experiences!

Making a clear roadplan to achieve your goals will increase the likelyhood of obtaining your goals.

Beeing clear and realistic about what your goals are, will keep your focus. One powerful tool to do just that is the outcome model.

By Sarah Neirinckx