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Time to love yourself just the way you are: how to practice self love this year. 

Roses are red, violets are blue, Valentine’s Day is close, and we got a little something here for you… Find here our favorite jewelry pieces that will enable you to empower you to embrace the love for yourself this year.

Within the past years solo globetrotting has become a popular trend. Especially the number of female travellers has doubled since 2015 which shows that either the world has become a little bit less hostile or that there must be some pretty good tips and tricks on how to travel alone, enjoy it, and stay save. Spending more time with yourself can be a healing but also quite scary adventure which however, can ultimately lead to powerful self-transformation. We’ve put together a list for you on why and how traveling alone is a must this year! Those experiences will make you grow Handling tricky situations on your own can get to a completely new level if these are happening outside your day-to-day life. At the end you will certainly learn from and never forget all the good and bad things happening during your trip which might then allow you to see the world, people and yourself from a new perspective. Make those travelling blogs your favourite reads Studying the countless online blogs, Instagram pages and articles on everything you need to know when solo travelling, as well as different cultures will make it a lot easier to get around and make those trips feel less intimidating and a lot more relaxing. What’s your purpose? Focusing on what you might want to discover and achieve during your travels is a pretty good start before hitting the road. Are you a fitness lover? Why not going for a big hike discovering the Camino De Santiago in Galicia? Or do you want to get more into meditation? Then maybe that yoga retreat in Bali is more for you. The options are endless and the choice is yours! Be wise when taking advice Especially if you haven’t travelled alone yet, you will probably realise that a lot of people along the way will try to give you their well-meant but maybe not always reliable advice. And while a few of them might genuinely help you along the way, you should not follow all of them straight away. Especially in third-world countries it’s better to ignore the chats with locals and trust your gut feeling - and those foreign travel advice books instead. Stay save and happy travels!

Take advantage of all those daylight hours and become a happier, healthier, more successful (and suntanned) self. Summer — time for catchy pop jams, days on the beach, and thick triangles of watermelon dripping onto the grass. It’s ripe for vacations, for rest and for relaxation. It’s also the perfect time to get away from work and do a quick check-in with yourself. Are you happy? Are you as productive as you could be? Are you fulfilling your potential? If you’d like to improve any of these areas, why not take advantage of the longer, lazier days of summer and get started? Crack one of these 9 books from the Blinkist library that’ll do good for your body and mind. When vacation’s over and it’s time to get back to work, you’ll be ready to bring your A game. 1. Read this to be more content and joyful: A Guide to the Good Life — William B. Irvine For the Stoics, the prescription for peace of mind and freedom from pain was straightforward: live a life of moderation and self-control and you’re good to go. If you’re not an ancient Greek philosopher, however, this is no easy task, so A Guide to the Good Life shows you how to harness the mindset to deal with the things we can control and reckon calmly with the things we can’t. You’ll learn about why being stuck in traffic actually isn’t so bad, what cold showers have to do with full lives, and, next time you lose a tennis match, how to do it gracefully. 2. Read this to master your habits: Better than Before — Gretchen Rubin Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values. Your values become your destiny.” If that’s not reason enough to better your habits, then nothing is. NYT bestseller Gretchen Rubinstarts with helping you understand what kind of person you are, and then suggests specific, simple strategies that you can use right here, right now to nix your bad patterns and stick with the good ones. 3. Read this to eat healthier: In Defense of Food — Michael Pollan Much of today’s dietary advice is based on little more than hypotheses. Hypotheses that, unfortunately, are swaddled in thick layers of pseudoscience. In Defense of Food is a close examination of the rise of nutritionism and a historical account of the industrialization of food. An expert in food ecology, Michael Pollan limns the ways in which the food industry shifted modern man’s dietary focus from “food” to “nutrients,” and thus narrowed the objective of eating to one of maintaining physical health — an objective it completely fails to fulfill. Here, you’ll learn that it’s possible to escape the dominant dietary approach that nutritionism has become and develop a healthier, more traditional way of eating that even great-grandma would love. 4. Read this to be happier: The Happiness Advantage — Shawn Achor We’re taught to believe that if we perform well professionally, we’ll eventually arrive at a point at which our accomplishments and wealth make us feel happy. Bad news: this isn’t at all how it works. In fact, happiness — far from being the result of all your hard work — is actually one of the tools you can use to increase your performance and your quality of life. In The Happiness Advantage, Shawn Achor looks into the origins of happiness and the positive effects that happiness has on productivity. Based on 12 years’ research in positive psychology, the book offers concrete tips on how to increase your own happiness and your chances for success. 5. Read this to be more mindful: The Untethered Soul — Michael A. Singer Your mind is amazing, but it can also be a big, negative pain in the neck. The human consciousness is potent and often, it’s all that stands between you and the positive energy you need to meet all of your goals. The Untethered Soul explores how you can overcome the thoughts and emotions that are holding you back. Michael A. Singer draws on different spiritual practices to explain how you can navigate your own mind, get in touch with yourself and become master of your own mind. 6. Read this to declutter your life: The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up — Marie Kondo The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up isn’t just a guide to decluttering, it’s a best seller that’s changed lives in Japan, Europe and the United States. The Wall Street Journal even called Marie Kondo’s Shinto-inspired “KoMari” technique “the cult of tidying up.” Kondo explains in detail the many ways in which your living space affects all aspects of your life, and how you can ensure that each item in it has powerful personal significance. By following this simple yet resonant advice, you can move closer to achieving your dreams (and cleaning out your closet). 7. Read this to be more productive: 59 Seconds — Richard Wiseman Jerry’s boiler is broken and he spends weeks trying to fix it. When he finally calls an engineer, the pro walks in, taps it on the side and boom! it’s fixed. Upon receiving the bill, Jerry grouses that he shouldn’t have to pay for a fix that took the engineer a few seconds. “Well,” says the engineer, “you’re not paying for the fix, but for the years of training it took to know exactly where to tap.” What does this prove? That you don’t have to spend tens of years or thousands of dollars to fix most problems. Thanks to huge advances in psychological research and technology, we’re now able to “fix our boilers” in exceedingly simple ways. In fact, Wiseman’s book shows that we can often change things for the advantageous in less than a minute. These are the top psychological tricks to improve yourself in all sorts of ways, from being more creative to spotting a liar. 8. Read this to learn to ask for backup: The Art of Asking — Amanda Palmer Once you’ve heard of controversy queen Amanda Palmer, you always want to know what she’s up to. Her tweets, shows and interactions have reached millions of people — and most of them are now fans and supporters. In her book, she explains how building a successful career as an artist and performer has just as much to do with knowing how to ask for things, network, and treat people right as it does with talent and tweets. Palmer’s journey from street performer to world-renowned artist teach how you too can achieve what you desire. 9. Read this to improve your memory: Moonwalking with Einstein — Joshua Foer What does it take to become a USA Memory Champion? Follow Joshua Foer’s footsteps and you’ll find out. In Moonwalking with Einstein, Foer explains how memory works, why we’re worse at remembering than our ancestors, and why an extraordinary memory isn’t just available to a select few people but to all of us. The best part: he walks you through specific techniques for improving your own memory — including how to squirrel away recollections in your childhood home. Dive deeper into a refreshing pool of self-betterment over at Blinkist. All the books you see here are available as 10-minute summaries more powerful than Uncle John’s jet ski. And, hey! You can read them for free, too!   Written by Caitlin Schiller with contribution from Laura Erler. This piece was originally published on Blinkist. For more content like this, visit Blinkist Magazine.

Busy jobs, bad weather, emotional struggle – at some point everyone gets overwhelmed with the level of stress they have to deal with. Manifesting itself in a lot of different ways, stress can, in the worst case, lead to serious physical and psychological problems. And when life suddenly seems unbearable, the only way to get back to your balance, happiness and healthy ways is by learning how to soothe with your stressed-out mind. Meditation, exercise, a cup of tea or a hot relaxing bath have proven to be top stress-killers. However, if you love sugar and prefer to stay in bed rather than going out for that run, here is another method to calm your mind…Poetry can be a powerful trigger of positive thoughts. Beautiful wording and the playful use of stressed and unstressed syllables are nutrition for the soul. Authors Jonathan Bate, Paul Byrne, Sophia Ratcliffe and Andrew Schuman created the ultimate collection of classic poems against stress with their book ‘Stressed Unstressed’. Featuring poets like Rudyard Kipling and William Blake this must-read hold the perfect selection of poetry from different centuries to handle those unpleasant every-day challenges. Beside classic poetry, there have been a lot of new modern artists inspiring us with their poetry on Instagram. We listed some more of our favourite contemporary poems that will hopefully feed your mind and soul.