Reintroducing Myself...

'There is a voice that doesn't use words. Listen.'- Rumi

I have enjoyed reading meaningful quotes for quite sometime, but recently, my love for quotes just reignited and whenever I plan to write something or sit to work on a topic, I first research on some deep, meaningful quotes to go along with my writing. The quote above is one I found out just right now and fell in love with instantly. It describes my feelings about Steemit and something that I learned to do after joining the @ecotrain which is one of the most amazing communities on Steemit and today i'll be talking about myself, my journey here and my experience with the @ecotrain primarily.

A lot of the people who know me or have been following me are aware of my journey so far and how stumbled across Steemit. For those who don't know me or those who would like to refresh their knowledge about me, this post is for you :P

I am 29 years, will turn 30 this August and just so excited about it. Yeah I'll be older but somehow that doesn't scare me. When people say 'Oh my God you are going to be 30', I am like 'Yeah, happy to be :)' I guess a lot of people worry a lot about not being able to achieve something worthwhile after crossing their late twenties and while this thought did slip my mind a few times, i have made my peace with it. For me, life is about growth and as long as I am growing, I do not care too much about the materialistic gains I have achieved over the years.

So yeah I am 29, mother of a 4 year old amazing boy just cannot say enough good things about him. Love him to bits. I am also a wife of an amazing man. He loves me a lot and that just makes me too happy. I am a freelance writer by profession and for about 6 years, I have been working on writing different content online and from the past 3 years I have been focusing primarily on writing e-books focused on the self-help and personal development niche. I did self-publish my own book on amazon but it didn't do too well, but that's okay. It is majorly because I did not focus too much on marketing it. I love writing and it is my topmost passion at the moment.

Writing gives me an outlet to express myself and be who I am and this has changed and improved a lot since I joined Steemit. Seeing my love for writing and my consistency with things I feel strongly about, my husband suggested me to start blogging on Steemit. While I was apprehensive of it at first, I did start my blog on it and made sure to write a post a day consistently for 2 months and soon I started experiencing growth here. Real growth came when I participated in a question of the week challenge by @ecotrain and got in as one of the passengers as @eco-alex liked my answer. That was when I started breaking out of my shell and began interacting more with people and yes also because @topkpop encouraged me a lot to socialize more on discord.

While I have been writing for quite some time, it is through my blog here that I get to be who I am and who I want to be. One of my biggest interests and passions in life is observing people, seeing what excites and ticks them off, how they behave and feel and then using that knowledge to train myself to be accepting of everyone and everything. For a long time, I was a very judgmental person. I used to label certain people as good and certain as bad and had a habit of classifying everything as good or bad. It was only after becoming aware of what true mindfulness is that I realized that there isn't any good or bad, right or wrong. Yes I do feel strongly about somethings like abuse of all sorts and pedophilia, but keeping these aside, I really think that labeling a certain practice as the best one and shunning everything else isn't what mindfulness is about.

Earlier I believed that smoking or drinking too much is what intoxicates you. Now I think too much of anything can intoxicate you. Like I remember I was intoxicated by feeling too good about myself since I earned better than my husband. That feeling of accomplishment slowly poisoned my mind as I kept telling myself that I was better than my husband. It was this feeling and intoxication that ruined our bond to a great extent and then it took me a couple of months to correct my mistake. When I became aware of mindfulness, I started applying that to my relationship and began non-judgmentally analyzing my behavior towards my husband. It was then that I realized that the reason I felt too proud of myself to the extent that I started suffocating my husband was because of the patriarchal society I was living in. Since I had always heard and was told that women cannot earn as much as men and aren't as good enough as men, I felt a strong need and urge to prove myself and when I was able to earn good enough, I made it a point to shove it in my husband's face.

This is just one of the many lessons I learned because of mindfulness and the reason I am explaining this detail here is because mindfulness is one of my biggest interests and the one area I am trying to constantly dig deeper into and a state I am working on achieving. I have yet to attain that state, but yeah I have started experiencing it because now when I feel or experience something, I am able to understand its cause and also figure out whether it is my own emotion or something that belongs to someone else. That happens because I have started listening more to my thoughts and instead of always speaking, I am listening more and this is why I shared that beautiful quote above.

Listening to my own voice nonjudgmentally and to others especially the many people I have found here has helped me so much. The @ecotrain has played a monumental role in bringing this change because as I came across the different passengers on the train I realized how diverse everyone was and how all the passengers were beautiful and unique in their own way. Also, the more I listened to them by reading their posts, I became aware of different ideologies and perspectives and all of these seem right in their own way. I tried viewing every perspective as its own without analyzing it from my own viewpoint or under any other light and when I did that, I was able to perceive each viewpoint differently. This is something that has changed me a lot personally and I feel has made me stronger, more accepting and more peaceful emotionally.

This is what I talk about on my blog here mostly too and even otherwise. I am quite clear on my vision for a good life- I want to let go of any sorts of judgments that hold us back and keep us from exploring ourselves and living life the way we genuinely want to live. This is my motivation for living a good life because I feel if I let go of the different judgments I have in my mind, I will move on to feeling happier and more liberated. And the good thing is I have helped my husband and mother become more accepting towards different ideologies too and have somewhat influenced them to be more unbiased and they are helping me a lot too. Whenever my mother sees me passing any sort of judgment, she reminds me of my mission and this helps me correct myself and also become more grounded in the process.

I know this has become way too long, but I just get so involved in writing about what truly drives me that there's no holding me back haha. I'll quickly finish it so apart from my mindfulness, my other interests are spending quality time with family, reading and keeping my house in a good condition. I love shopping too almost everything and I love helping people buy presents for loved ones. And the biggest and most important influence in my life is my son. He is the one person whom I love the most and I don't even know what the extent of the most is. He is the one who has helped me become non-judgmental and keeps influencing me to keep being more accepting and unbiased. I will forever be indebted to him for that. So I guess, by now you have a fair idea of who I am and what you'll be finding on my blog- posts about motivation, mindfulness, acceptance, personal growth and development and my daily experiences with these things. Do share your views on the topic and do let me know what excites and interests you.

Love and light,

Sharoon.

If you are new on Steemit or have been here for a while and are looking for a great community to join in particular one that aims to make this world a better place, consider joining the @ecotrain. I love it and feel at home there.

https://discord.gg/Cuew9Z

Here are some of my articles that may interest you:

How to Keep Your Eyes on the Goal...

A Discovery I made about Myself with Self-Awareness...

Celebrate the Inner You- Happy Women's Day!

When Things Don't Go as Planned...

After Deep Darkness Comes a Beautiful Dawn...
Something to Think About- Issue #4: A Selection of Amazing and Enjoyable Curated Posts
Stop Listening to People and Focus on Yourself

Listen More, Feel More and Experience More to Become More Aware and Wise...

@ecotrain qotw- What is patriarchy? Is a patriarchy the same as a society led by men, or is it more, a society led by fear and a feeling of scarcity, that happens to be an environment in which the masculine takes charge?

How Positive Stereotypes can Make Life Difficult

Why is it so Hard to Apologize for Your Own Wrongdoings??

Confessions of a People Pleaser...