An Ordinary Girl's World: Fashion, Love, Life

Dearest Devotees,

I know I've been gone awhile and I'm sorry. I've been away discovering myself. I will let you know what I've learnt as time goes on but for right now I really want to talk to you guys about the next step of my renovating your life project: getting physically fit.

Over the past couple of weeks and months I've been experimenting with different exercise methods and routines in a bid to find one that truly works for me and that will not only get my sorry behind out of my bed in the morning whether I'm feeling inspired or not. This has been a very difficult because of two little known facts about me:

1. Despite my love of traveling and meeting people I am a homebody. There are few things I love more than the idea of spending a Saturday at home, lounging in comfortable (yet cute!) clothes and alternately reading for fun/looking out the window at nothing in particular, except for the beauty of the day.

2. I am admittedly and begrudgingly a couch potato. While I love the sense of accomplishment that comes with getting things done, I love resting on a truly comfy couch. And while I do love reading on these couches more than I do watching TV and have been that way ever since I was little, the final outcome is still pretty much the same level of physical activity.

So I'm not a huge fan of most forms of physical activity. This is not to say that I'm not a low energy person. No one that knows me would say this. What it means is that I tend to find more creative ways of using up my energy all day. For a while this meant walking everywhere I could, taking the stairs whenever possible and randomly jumping up and down/ breaking out into dance over the course of the day. This worked, but now I want a little more structure to my exercise routine, so this is what I came up with.

• I start the day with a hardcore full body work out which usually consists of me dancing to my "wake-up!" playlist first and then moving on to practicing routines I'm choreographing for swing or steps I'm learning for hip hop. I love dancing because it's a full body workout and art :). Thirty minutes of this and I'm definitely ready for the day.

• Then some time in the middle of the day, after a couple of hours of work (school or otherwise) I take time out for myself to do something fun that has nothing to do with anything else I usually do e.g. taking a walk down the esplanade along the river, or doing some gentle stretching in my dorm before walking down to the cafe to read for fun for a couple of minutes without interruption from anything stressful. The whole idea of this time is to stop and take a breath and to regenerate for the rest of the day. I once read that some CEOs do this by scheduling "meetings with themselves" in the middle of the day to prevent going crazy because of the work.

• At the end of the day, I wind down with calming exercises like yoga and meditation. The stretching at the end of the day prevents your muscles from tensing up during the night and meditation and if you believe in God, prayer at the end of the day helps to put everything into perspective.

I also various short prayers throughout the day, while moving or transitioning between two activities (pray and worship music, the rosary, short personal prayers) to keep things in perspective.

This is what works for me. I share it with you in case in could work for you. The major idea I tried to incorporate was keeping my interests and needs in mind, by taking into account the fact that nature and art motivates me and by creating a routine that involves art and music, and that is very soul centered I was able to create a routine that appeals to me.

Love you all and Stay inspired,