I recently started reading the book “Eat, Pray, Love”, which reminded me that everything good, everything different, everything creative comes from a dark, dark place. The darkest hour of the darkest day – the moment we have lost hope and direction is actually some sort of a breaking point. The point of no return when the darkest emotions have surfaced and we are just unable to breathe, to think or to digest is also the point of the greatest enlightenment – the point when surviving means becoming a different person. And becoming a different person does not mean living by a 10-step rule or keeping up with exercise and a healthy diet. This type of becoming a different person happens all by itself, naturally.

Experiencing such a great, enormous, inexplicable pain can make you see, feel and experience life differently, can bring you so much closer to your soul, to your own God, can make you so much more empathetic that you start to see things like you have never before. And this change is so painful and so beautiful at the same time – now you have this great, enormous soul much bigger than the pain you have experienced and much bigger than the world itself.

For me personally a lot of things have changed in my feeling and understanding of the world for this past year. I have started to care much more deeply about the world and everything that happens in it – I feel for all the people suffering, for all the people affected by war and by bad politics, for the nature and the climate change, for the water and food waste in western nations whilst children in Africa suffer from malnutrition and poor sanitation, for recycling… and so much more.

I did not care much about that before I was so badly affected by my mental health issues, I knew that the world was in bad shape, that there was a lot of pain and suffering but somehow I felt as if I was living on a different planet, as if it was happening but it won’t affect me, as if my problems are not really related to the world problems so why should I care?!

Well, I was not exactly right because my problems were and still are mainly related to the people around me. Those people in turn also suffered some sort of a heartache, which made them behave the way they were – destroying everything around them. So as a result of this vicious cycle people on this planet started giving and receiving only the bad – bad emotions, bad talks, bad actions, bad food and so on. And now everyone is suffering, the whole planet is suffering, the air is filled with hatred and frustration. Everyone is so preoccupied with their own problems and battles that they do not even realise that even one person changed for the better is actually a big change for the world.

My boyfriend once told me that my secret dream was to change the world – yes, this is true, but I know that I can’t really change the world all by myself. I now know that changing the world actually means changing yourself and the ones around you for the better – see more good and do more good – donate your old clothes to the people in need; do not make fun of the ones fallen on their knees – you do not know their struggles and you will only make them feel worse; volunteer more – it does not have to be very formal like every Sunday in the soup kitchen, you can volunteer simply be helping someone out on the street, by stopping for a second to think about someone else other than yourself.

Being good does not have to be expensive nor time consuming – the key is in the small acts of kindness.

Eat more, Love more, Pray more – Enjoy life more by being good.

Remember that everyone and I really mean EVERYONE has experienced pain, suffering, frustration, sadness or angriness to some extent in their life. This means that everyone also has the right to be bad and to want to get this pain out of their chest. But choosing to let go of the pain without feeling the need to spread it to the world so that everyone knows how you are feeling is actually changing and becoming better and kinder to both you and the ones around you and of course consequently to the world.