Concepts We Build On - How To Jive with life!

Hey hey beautiful, welcome back!

Today we are going to put together all of the concepts we have talked about so far and then we get to start off sharing our first bit of encouraging advice to help you get started with this simple temple living the joy way thing we were talking about.

Let's get started!

Okay, so quick reminder the 4 pillars we built our site on are joy, integrity, vibrancy, and encouragement. We love acronyms and these 4 together create the acronym J.I.V.E

We mentioned in our introductory post that this is a nod to old fashioned family values, and all things vintage because we are all about that.

Again if you're not that's cool, you can stick around if you want to, as long as we can all be respectful here, or else maybe this blog just isn't for you, in which case thanks for trying us out, and we wish you the very best for the future.

Anyway, those of you still here,  let's get back to where we were.

So yes, old fashioned family values.

Here's the thing guys some people need to be focused on family values because without a basic standard, there is nothing to jump off from into whatever other lifestyle you so choose.

We have no problem with people with different views or lifestyles to our own, in fact, we encourage them to share their views with us because it takes all sorts to make a world, and you never know when you will learn something valuable if you stay teachable.

That said, we aim to be a safe place for people who have chosen to lead a life that lines up with what the basics of what Christian faith teaches is God's original plan for mankind.

That is that the man was created first and woman are created to be his help-mate. We are created differently, but still equally valuable. The home works best when families work together leaning into God's original plan, loving and learning together.

Women are answers not problems. 

Men are leaders not lounge-abouts. 

Children can reveal more of the heart of God, then us adults sometimes, due to their simple faith.

All life is precious, but beyond that, we don't comment on peoples' choices for themselves and their own families.

We don't do debates, it takes away from the joy-centered vibrant vibe we are aiming for but we are also not afraid to stand up for what we believe in, right here are the start of this new project. 

Anyway like I said J.I.V.E is multilayered in meaning. 

That's the old fashioned family values bit done, another meaning for the phase J.I.V.E is the art of learning to dance with life. 

Last post I hinted at  our mascot Lambi-lambs. 

This is her time to shine! 

Lambi-lambs, or Lambi for short, is lovely drawn by our house artist Alex Bax. (You can check out his Dievent Art profile here) She and her friends are not Alex's normal art style but that just goes to show he is not a one-trick pony. ( or should that be gentle-colt, where are my bronies at??)

Lambi waving at you because she thinks it's awesome you are here. 

Lambi is our blog mascot and she and her friends help us to give a little clarity and fun to our articles. Lambi loves cheering you on as you learn how to jive with life, and she is the perfect embodiment of what  Hayls, the writer, is all about. 

Life can hit hard sometimes, and so it's really important to learn how to manage changes, especially the ones we didn't see coming. We will be sharing our signature art of change management method in an up and coming post, but for now, it's enough to say that we are really good at handling a variety of changes life throws at us, and we will be sharing what we have learnt with you shortly. 

To give you a little taster of the kind of content you can expect moving forward here's a little piece of an article that will come out shortly. 

Look out for How To move from stuck to seasonal, coming out soon. 

You may be in a rut but you don’t have to stay there.

You may feel stuck, but that doesn’t mean you are. The fact is rubbish times happen to everyone, we all go through stages where we wish things would move a little bit faster like life is not being fair and the world seems to be against us, this is a normal part of the human experience. 

Granted, some of us go through harder things than others, and there are other elements to consider when looking at this whole topic (like tragedy, mental illness and emotional makeup)but generally, what it all boils down to is life sucks sometimes and when It does, it’s really easy to get stuck in a rut and feel like there is no way out but our feelings lie.

I hope you are ready for this because I am about to hand you a key that may just change your life.
The number one secret to getting out of a rut is to stop seeing yourself as stuck and start seeing yourself as just in a tough season. Seasons change, life moves and we all grow older...

There are more meanings to jive but I will leave it to your imagination for now. 

That's about it today guys.

See you next post

Concepts We Build On - J.I.V.E (Joy, Integrity, Vibrancy, Encouragement)

Hey awesome reader, thanks for coming back.

Today we would like to introduce the pillars we built our foundations on. If you have read are introductions post then you will know we love acronyms around here, and our blogs' pillars are based on this.

So to do this, we are now going to look at each word and what it means in the context we use it. Then we will look at a few other little things that tie up what we build our blog on.

The Pillar of Joy

Our first word is Joy, we did say that this could be an acronym of its own we will get to that in a moment.

Joy to us is about chasing fulfillment not happiness. We need it to be our strength when things are not going so well, it is not just a feeling it is a lifestyle.

We haven't made it a secret that Christian faith-based elements will be incorporated into this blog from time to time and the concept of joy for us is the faith-based pillar we build on. 

Building on the concept of simple temple living we talked about the last post, joy represents the spiritual element of our pillars. We put Jesus first, then the fun stuff can follow.

Joy as an acronym stands for

 Jesus

  Others

You

We put Jesus first, and so we take care of others, but in order to do this we need to take care of ourselves so we are able to handle taking care of others.

You have to take care of yourself or else you won't be effective at caring for others or building a relationship with/serving Jesus. 

Rest is super important and this element allows us to build our little blogger house in a state of calm.

The Piller of Integrity.

In an age when super polished youtube videos and crazy- profitable blogging is a thing, it can be easy for people to lie about pretty much anything for money.

That will never be us.

If you sell your integrity, how exactly are people suppose to trust you?

Even when we do bring out products, do collaborations or encourage you to follow an affiliate link, we will do our best to get you a super sweet deal from an individual or business we actually trust ourselves.

If they do something to lose our trust more than once, we will no longer support them because we want to take extra special care of our awesome readers and to be honest, anything less wouldn't feel right to us.

We believe in transparency and authenticity is a dying art, we don't want to contribute to making it extinct online.

This is the soul element and pillar of our little blogger house.

The Piller of Vibrancy

So as is probably obvious, this is the body element of our little blogger house.

If you think about it though, this doesn't just cover our physical body, but the environment we live in also.

Everything we do on this site is going to have a fun, vibrant vibe to it.

Why?

Well, we happen to think that fun can be injected into just about anything, and life throws us enough hardships without us adding to our own sorrows by not choosing to see the glass half full.

Going back again to simple temple living, this does also mean that we will be recommending fun self-care, products, and quirky fun items for your home and wardrobe. 

Expect to see cosplay, blind bags and lots of other happy vibe items recommended here for the young and young at heart. ( age is just a number to us remember)

Also on this note, this would be a really great place to let you know that Lambi-Lambs is our blog mascot. She and her friends will be hanging out here to help us explain our points in various posts and to be your personal cheerleader as you learn to dance with life, but more on this later.

Right now we need to move onto the 4th pillar. of little blog house.

The Pillar of Encouragement

So we have already covered body, soul and spirit in our simple temple living pillars, so what could possibly be left?

Tone.

As we hinted at just a moment ago, our goal is to be your personal cheers leaders as you learn to dance with life. I, (Hayls) am a born encourager.

Nothing comes more naturally to be then complimenting others and helping them to see how awesome they are.

 In the name of authenticity and because being kind can go along way in this world, everything we share with you will be done with a tone of encouragement because we believe that you are worth it.

We don't take for granted the fact that you are choosing to spend some time with us, so we make it our mission to make you feel really special for as long as you choose to follow our work. 

Encouragement is the pillar that holds the other 3 in place and together these 4 pillars lead to the final concept we need to talk about.

It's time to put it all together, it's time to J.I.V.E....next post. 

See you then guys!