Last year, I went to Colombia to learn Spanish, and had an AMAZING time💗

This year, I went to Guatemala to continue learning Spanish, and it was a bit more intense than learning Spanish in Colombia😬🙆🏽‍♀️

Guatemala was beautiful, and overall I had a wonderful time!

During my trip, I learned more than ever the importance of giving myself grace and remembering to smile 🙂

(1) Giving myself grace (practicing self-compassion)

In addition to this being my first time in Guatemala, I was also working part-time, taking 20 hours of Spanish each week, and living with a local family ALL AT THE SAME TIME😬

While it would have been ideal for everything to work out the way I’d planned, it didn’t actually work out that way🙄

So after one week in Guatemala, I was a little disappointed in myself.

Fortunately, in week two, I had a wake up call

I acknowledged that I was doing some really hard S#%T! And it was time to ‘give myself some grace’.

And a little bit of space to enjoy beautiful Antigua (Guatemala), its gorgeous weather, and delicious food 😀 without getting too caught up on how much my Spanish was (or wasn’t) improving.

I also needed to dedicate more time to doing things I enjoy with some of the cool people I’d met🥰🙌🏽💗

(2) Remembering to smile

During week one, I noticed the local people did not smile very much. In week two, I noticed I wasn’t smiling very much in the first week either🙃

So, I decided to start smiling! Once I started smiling, there were so many more local people smiling😁

Even though I was going through some S#%T mentally, the simple act of me smiling at people resulted in them smiling back, and an instant mood boost for me! #WINNING

Now that I was focusing on all the smiling faces and the joy this simple act was spreading, I was reminded to smile at myself too 🙂 I was doing the best I could in my circumstance, and that was an accomplishment worth a bit of grace (or self-compassion)🥰

How I am applying what I learned

In the past, I would have been really hard on myself for not posting in March or April.

But before being too hard on myself and allowing the critical thoughts to take over, I gently reminded myself of the two things I learned during my second week in Guatemala.

Remember to smile and Give myself grace 💗

With that said, Please pardon my delay in posting🙃 I am not only learning, but growing too 😉

Challenge

Is there something you are currently doing (or working on) that is really challenging? If so, are you giving yourself a hard time about it?

I encourage you to smile at yourself and give yourself some grace (or self-compassion)🥰 Acknowledge that what you are doing is difficult! If you have not reached or attained your goal, I am sure you have made some sort of progress 😉 So give yourself a pat on the back and a hug for that🤗

As I continue preparing next month’s blog post, I wanted to share more photos from my trip to Guatemala 😀

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Thank you so much for reading this post! And as always, if you have any tips, suggestions, questions and/or comments, please leave them in the comment box below (or reach out to me directly).

Sending lots of love and light your way💗

Until next post!

Xx,

Raina B.