A way of living.  At least, it is for me.

Enlightened by Bravery is a blog I started back in 2014, a couple of months after experiencing my very first (and scary) anxiety/panic attack.

I grew afraid of the world and, worst of all, grew afraid of myself. Everything I thought I knew became estranged and re-finding myself seemed daunting.

Through the help of my family & friends, I was able to take back control of my life, step up to my fears and become ready to face and learn from them. You can read posts about my obstacles, progress and overall personal growth here.

Through my persistence and yearning to not let fear control me, I have learned how to control my anxiety and found strength to really try and focus on what makes me happy in life. I am always on the lookout for things that can further inspire me to learn more and live a richer life (think: more smiles, laughter, peace, love and health).

The term enlightened has multiple meanings and instead of trying to fit into a mold definition from someone else or what the dictionary may say, this blog was started so that I can try to find my own definition of the word.

I like to think that to be enlightened means to have an experience that awakens your inner self; it can be a motion, a thought, a split-second memory, anything– just as long as you are inspired by something you saw outside of your self, as well as something you felt inside your self.

‘Bravery‘ is a tool that may help allow us to find new things to be inspired about.

Its antonym, ‘fear’ is what stops us from being inspired. Being brave doesn’t mean that you are ‘fearless’ and that you can conquer anything without fail. No, it means that you know you can fail and that things will be hard, but that you have the courage to put fears aside and reach for that experience of getting closer to what you want. It is a powerful tool for the ability to help you understand more about yourself.

Confront your fears; take your learnings, analyze them and either build on them or just move on. But know that you learned something new. And that’s huge.

I started this blog to find out who I really am inside and to learn more about my self, to be inspired by my self, and to pass on these self-learnings openly so that I may help inspire others to find their own selves.

I openly decided to share my experiences because there are many people out there that are going through similar things. They may choose to be private and that’s respectable. My decision of being open is because one of my fears was actually hiding and not being my true self to the world.  My experiences are out there.  It has allowed me to open up to it.  And, believe it or not, the process has actually allowed me to finally start to live.

I may not know where life may take me, but I feel that I’m bold enough to try to find out. So if you see posts about random things, that’s because my life is reflective of the random! But… it is always something that inspires me.  Currently it’s a passion for fashion, style and health – who knew! 🙂

The only thing constant in life is change, so drive that change. Be who you want to be. Have the experiences that will lighten up your world. Be enlightened. Be brave. Be you.

And be enlightened by bravery.
xx
Loren.