How I find motivation for running

      In this whirlpool of private experiences and philosophical thoughts, this will be something different, more lightweight. 

Sports is my passion - running, volleyball, cycling, badminton, you name it. However, I do it not just because I can. I have my goals and I work hard to achieve them, but this is the tricky part. This is where laziness comes in. I like to share my progress in social media and the response I usually get was my major inspiration to write this post. 

When I share my workout results, sometimes people leave a comment or message me saying they wish they were as motivated as I am. First of all, let's make this clear - my motivation is not a given. Just like everybody else, I have my lazy days and dozens of silly excuses in my head (it's too windy, the park might be too crowded, I have a lecture in five hours etc.). I am always on a hunt for good motivational quotes and tips and over the last couple of years I have developed a coping strategy for my laziness when it comes to sports (to tell you the truth, it's not 100% per-cent effective and will never be - after all I'm a human, not a robot).

So, here's some tips and tricks that help me stay motivated.

1. Set a goal. It can be absolutely anything from fitting into your favourite jeans that became too tight to a thigh gap, toned arms or a flat stomach. This is probably not news for you, but it really matters. However, it didn't work well for me on its own, so here's another tip from me - buy an item of clothing that will not be flattering unless you reach your goal. For example, my goal is to have a flat stomach until the middle of June, so I bought this beautiful crop top. I promised myself that even if I don't get a flat stomach, I will have to wear it at least once in June. So now, when I am all cozy in bed and I want to stay there the whole day, that's what I tell myself. Trust me, it works!

2. Earn your shopping day. I discovered this tip only a couple months ago and now I don't even know what I would do without it. I'm sure everyone knows the feeling when you see something you really like but it costs so much you would feel guilty if you bought it. So earn it! Set up a cute little jar and put some money in it after each workout. However, it is very easy to cheat here, so I would recommend to define what a "workout" is (is 20 crunches same as a 5k run?). For example, I put 10SEK (around 1€) for each workout that is no less than 25 minutes long. This has two major outcomes - you don't waste money on expensive things you don't need and it's a big pleasure to buy an expensive item you worked so hard for. 

3. Find a gym buddy. This is probably the hardest thing to do. I haven't found people motivated enough to run with me at least a couple times a week. Also, making a running schedule can be really complicated if you're both busy. However, now I know what it feels like to have a gym buddy and it's magical, especially on days when you feel really lazy. You just get up and do it, knowing that someone is counting on you. This one helped me even in my darkest times.

4. Find some motivational quotes that make you want to do a workout. These might be really cheesy, but there's something in them that gets me out of bed and into my running shoes. They're very personal and what works for me might not work for you. I usually find them on WeHeartIt. Here are some of my favourites at the moment:

And (surprise surprise) Ryan Gosling

So, that is all I have to share with you for now. Writing this type of blog posts is new for me, but I enjoyed it. If you would like me to talk more about sports, workouts and my lifestyle, let me know and I'll see what I can do :)

Swing until you're calm

I moved to Vilnius the capital city of Lithuania one month ago and I've been loving it a lot. I got an internship in one pf the biggest online newspapers in the country and couldn't believe there's so much going on in town all the time - all the exhibitions, concerts, workshops etc. However, all the fuss and chaos of the city made me want a restart sometimes, or at least have a good break.

I may not be the first one to say this, but I have found a way to disconnect from everything for a short while. What you need to do is simply find some tree swings!

Every morning, on my way to work, I pass by a public garden and that is where I now find my peace every time I have 5 extra minutes. On my walk down a busy avenue, I just turn up there and sit on a semi-comfortable wooden swing under a giant oak, near a sculpture of a well-known Lithuanian writer Zemaite.

I couldn't wait to have those 5 extra minutes to try them out since I started working three weeks ago, and one day I did. The sun was shining and it was quite cool outside. Sellers were preparing their mobile shops for a weekend fair in the busy Gediminas avenue, and I sat on the swings for a while.

Trust me, life just feels better on swings.

Beautiful as we are (I)

This post has been here as an empty draft with only a name on it for exactly one month and one day. Everybody starts with a blank page, but I don't usually struggle with it as much as I did this time, not sure if it's because I have too much to say and I don't know where to start, or because I'm just afraid of being misunderstood, my words and thoughts being misinterpreted or thought of as egoistic and narcissistic.

I'm pretty sure I'll write more on this topic because I have way too many thoughts on presently existent perceptions of beauty and I don't want to make my posts too chunky and overloaded. I know - I'll make a series of posts on it :)

So, to start off, a few days ago, a friend of mine recommended a book called "1984" by George Orwell, which I will definitely read. From what she told me, it's about how societies can become dull only by narrowing down people's vocabularies and making them use basic words. As I think of it, it hits me just how true it may be.

The course I took on my Erasmus exchange this semester really got me thinking about so many cultural and social aspects of my life and my environment, and I think I might have found the connection between the ideas in "1984" and what I heard from my lecturers throughout the course- endless streams of academic vocabulary. Every time a simple word could be substituted for something more scholarly and professional - it was. It is shocking how much my own vocabulary has grown and how critically I started to see things since I started it in January, 16 weeks ago.

Even though I will be writing my own thoughts, mainly based on what I have read when I was searching for quotes to use in my exam papers, I feel like I need a disclaimer here: I do not intend to be egoistic or, worse, narcissistic. I have been told numerous times that I am physically beautiful, and it's not an achievement that I intend to brag about. And yes, technically, from the global point of view, I have, in fact, an "ideal body "- pale white skin, blonde hair, blue eyes, tall, long legs and all this shit that makes people think I am beautiful and assume I'm not smart at all, sadly. That is purely a social and cultural thing about which I intend to talk in my "Beautiful  as we are" series. Here we go :)

On the daylight: my latest shots

I have been leaving my camera at home for a long time, and only a few days ago I started taking it everywhere I go. So these are my most recent shots that I would like to share.

The first one was made by me two days ago as I was walking home, all feverish and tired. I was just cutting off the usual path and crossing the cemetery as I saw this very autumn-like view: some leaves on the ground and the sunlight on the path surrounded by trees. I got this urge to take the camera out of my backpack and it just felt wrong to not do it. So this is what I captured :)

The second one is really fresh, made this afternoon. I was sitting on my bed using my laptop when I saw this just outside my window :)

As time passes, I'll try to keep enjoying those little moments of absolute beauty and even though my camera is old and cannot capture everything so well anymore, especially after I tried using a brand new, digital one, I promised myself I'll do my best :)

Summer pleasures that prevent from writing

Summer is at its hottest, friends and love is all around, the food is always fresh, the volleyball is on nearly every day, and the water is bearable as well. The adventures are calling one after another and there's no such thing as using the computer for more than one hour a day anymore. Sweden looks far behind me, and I am far from longing to go back there. Well, I miss my friends a lot, but they are not actually there right now, so it doesn't really count. I've been up to so much lately, but, I must admit, I did not write. What motivated me to come back to it was the first payment I have ever received for writing ^^ So I am back again and I will try to come up with new ideas to write on and avoid making such long breaks in writing. I start to miss it very fast :3

Sports challenges

So, as I wrote before, I am currently working on two sports challenges: squats and crunches.
To be honest, I have dropped the squat challenge and settled at the number of 50-100 squats a day, depending on how I feel and how much I run. One more thing: starting from the 1st of June, until the 18th of June when I will be going home, I promised myself I'll go running every single day, no matter the weather. So far, I have only been running 3.5 kilometers a day, but I am seriously planning on coming back to 5 kilometers in a couple of days. So, this is the main reason why I quit squatting to the schedule - when I had to do 160 and even more, it got too much, so my legs would shake and the muscles would get extremely tense when I was running. Anyways, even though it is not so intense anymore, I haven't given it up :)
About the crunches: I just did 115 and that looks really good so far. The number is still growing day by day, but since my legs have nothing to do with it, I have no right to complain :)

So, to sum up, my daily routine has to do a lot with sports. It has gotten pretty intense lately, and takes quite a lot of time by the way, but, since I can see the summer at home coming, it keeps me motivated and happy :)

Cute hand-written letters ^^

I have a really good friend, who used to be my classmate. Sadly, when we graduated last summer, she went to the capital of my home country, and I left for Sweden. Since September 2012, we met only twice: on the Christmas and Easter holidays. Despite that, we stayed really good friends and now we can't wait until the end of June when we will meet and spend the summer together. But for now, although we are a few hundreds of kilometers apart, we still communicate, and the best part is, we do it old school - we send each other long hand-written letters, where we write, draw, share our adventures, worries, and joys. So, I wrote her this letter last night, and I felt like doing something differently. After giving in to this impulse, I ended up drawing this little cute giraffe on the envelope. I bet my friend will be really happy to receive it (last time I wrote some extra quotes on the other side of the envelope, someone crossed them out :( I hope it won't happen this time).

So this is how the letter looked just before I sent it out :)

My motivational desktop background

So, this is what's on my desktop right now. I made this when I started doing the challenges, so that I don't have to look for them everyday in my photo gallery. What is more, there were enough space for Ryan Gosling to sneak in and take half of the space there. It's not that I am a no.1 fan of him, but I just looove this picture. It really does motivate.