What Fills Your Cup?

As I was standing at the bookstore, browsing for a gift for a friend, I was instantly intrigued by the title: Gentle Living. A guide to slowing down, enjoying, and being happy. Not Simple Living, Clean Living, or any of the types of living adorning the many book covers on the table. No, it was the word gentle that caught my attention and resonated with something deep inside of me. 

Here is a confession: When I buy a present for someone else, I sometimes end up buying one for myself too. So, over the past weeks, I have had the chance to study and reflect on this book's invitation to make good things happen and do things you care about to increase your sense of connection and quality of life. 

The book also has some great examples of how to activate some of this, but let me get back to that later. Before getting to the actionable level of any trend, I like to understand some of the context and underlying drivers of its appearance. 

Those of you who are active on TikTok might have noticed the “Soft Girl Era” currently flooding the platform with strategies for tackling uncertainty and transitional life stages. The type of content mobilizing the ‘’soft girls’’ trend is broad. But what is remarkable about it, is its strong focus on self-compassion and self-care as the enablers of success and not a reward!   

When going through changes in life, you have a fundamental choice between being led by something you try to avoid and get away from, or something you long for and would like to create more of. Depending on the focus of your attention, you will automatically attract one over the other. Therefore, being aware of your current focus is essential to all kinds of personal development. 

Building awareness about your starting point and exploring what you want more of is a central component in my coaching and the retreats I lead. Knowing your inner truth stimulates your inner vision of yourself and can help guide your day-to-day priorities and actions.

Feeling connected to what you want and how you are going to create it requires a certain degree of balance in life. And, as simple as it might sound, tapping into your inner sense of flow can’t happen with an empty cup. Understanding what stimulates you in a mental, spiritual, and physical sense is essential to your ability to thrive, and accepting a steady and step-by-step approach is often what will make you succeed. 

From a neurobiological perspective, science shows that the dopamine associated with feelings of happiness and joy is one of the key drivers in building the mental and physical capacity to set and achieve clear goals. By performing activities that allow us to feel certain emotions we are able to mobilize our mindset and actions in new and different ways, which brings me back to the topic of gentle living and the practical aspects of knowing how to slow down, enjoy life, and be happy.  

Some of the inspiration I have taken from the book (the one where I ended up buying a copy for myself), revolves around overall categories like the way we live, work and play. For that reason, recurring topics and practical examples naturally have to do with the food you choose to eat, the activities you decide to engage in, and the spaces you create for yourself. Just to name a few. 

What fills someone's cup varies from person to person. It is highly subjective and often changes over time, depending on the current circumstance. At this point in life, it fills my cup to light a candle in the morning to welcome in the day and to go for a short walk in the nature of my neighborhood before jumping on the highways of the internet and virtual meetings. My cup is literally being filled when I find the time to make freshly pressed juice, and when I pay attention to the energy and joy I get from watching the slow growth of the vegetables in my garden. And the list goes on. 

But filling my cup is not just about doing, but is also about making space for moments of just being like taking a nap when my body needs it, or talking with someone I care for on the phone (even at times when I was supposed to be writing this post instead). 

One of the things that has taken me the longest to understand (and something that I still work on when going through times of imbalance), is how filling my cup is always the fastest way to reconnect with myself, show up, and be there for others.

And so now I’m dying to know… what is filling yours?

Love,

Sille