Ayanda Being

It is a pleasure to be writing this here instead of my journal and it is a pleasure to have a sort of active blog. Five years ago I wanted to be someone who has a blog and ta-da! I am writing this blog post for myself above everything else, I want it to serve as a reminder of how I feel today and how I want to feel going forward. Today I am grateful to be alive. I am grateful to be surrounded by love, I am grateful that I have hope, I am grateful that I believe in myself a little more than I did yesterday, the list is endless and you get the gist of it- I am grateful. A day or two ago one of my favorite YouTubers Qhawekazi was talking about that "surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life"verse and she touched on it a little bit. My relationship with God is not the best yet. It makes me angry at times but that's not the point right now. When she was talking, she said God is an intentional God and His intention is to love us. It hit me a bit because...

Hi Awesomers!! It has been long since I updated the blog. I hope you have all been well as I have been. I know the lockdown hasn't been kind to everyone and if you have lost a loved one, I am sorry for your loss. May God comfort you and your family. This season will pass, we will rise again.  In the midst of the lockdown I was lucky to receive a book from SA Indie Author Publicity and I ideally wanted to review it on my podcast however travelling has been a mission. I did manage to get the author to answer some questions. This is an important part of the blog because I care about stories, I love books and South African writers need us to talk about their books. It is going to be an ongoing segment and I hope you guys enjoy it and also try when the opportunity arises to buy South African books. The book is written by Tshepiso Dumasi, he was born in Limpopo Teneriffe and is currently based in Kempton Park.  Uncovered is a book about leadership, it is written as ...

Hi Fam, How have you been?  This is not a serious blog post, so you can relax. I just realised that we have been in lockdown since the 27th of March and I haven't been that active on the blog as I assumed I will. The purpose of this blog post is to catch up and let you in on what I have been up to.  I do want to mention that there is nothing wrong if you decided to chill and do nothing. These have been unprecedented times and everyone has been doing their best to cope and adjust. We shall not judge how people chose to deal with this time. I know it has not been easy, I for one, really missed going to the movies. I know there are movies in the house but it's not the same. I think the biggest thing that really affected people is freedom to just be. The freedom to be at home because it's your choice - we are creatures of free will and that not being available to us can have negative impacts. When the lockdown started there were so many challenges and I remember at some point ...

I am such  a fan of "new something", I get so excited to start a new day, a new week or whatever. What I have been doing consistently this year is planning my month and making sure that I do my best. I was doing it last year but I had no direction and I was not consistent. The first day of a new month is a good opportunity to check in with yourself and figure out what areas of your life need improvement. In this post I am going to share five prompts that you can use to plan your month and check in with yourself. 1. How was last month? If you had any goals for last month, this is where you would check whether you achieved them or not. Things you are proud of, things you are not happy about, just pour your feelings out and be honest with yourself. 2. How do you feel about each area of your life (work, relationships, health, side hustles, love, parenting etc)? This is very important because it gives you an opportunity so see where you have been lacking, where you are...

Hi Awesomers, I hope you are well and have been taking care of yourselves. From the title, you can already tell that this is more of a think piece which I would like to hear your opinion on. I have noticed that I have a problem with how some people choose to practice their positivity - this may sound a bit negative but read me out 😂. I believe the point of being positive is to see a better world for yourself and those around you. It is to spread love, share love and focus on the good more than the bad. People tend to totally ignore the bad or brush it off . I have a problem with totally ignoring situations; or the state of the world in which we live in, and pretending like things are not burning or that it has no effect on us at all. I find that in a way, it takes the responsibility away and that, for me, is toxic. It is dangerous to not aknowledge the impact negative situations have in our lives. Actually, I think healing is what brings forth the positivity and my problem lie...

Hi Guys 😀 Y esterday I had the privilege to watch Seriously Single before it hits South African cinemas on the 1st of May. The movie is South African (if you didn't know), written by Lwazi Mvusi and directed by Katleho Ramaphakela and Rethabile Ramaphakela. It stars Fulu Mugovhani (Dineo), Tumi Morake (Noni), Yonda Thomas (Max) and Bohang Moeko (Lunga)  Without giving away too much the movie  centres around Dineo, who can't seem to be "single". She dates to fall in love. She falls in love to get married. But she never gets married. She always ends up dumped, through all of that it's also about two friends trying to find their version of love: romantic love, love as friends and self-love. Before I mention the good, I'm quickly going to mention that this movie didn't need to be this long. The redundancy of certain points was unnecessary and it became predictable. That took away from the film.  Moving on to the good, this movie was fun to wat...

Happy New Year Awesomers! What a break it's been! I am excited to be writing this post and I hope you have all been well, having fun and taking care of yourselves. I rested and I enjoyed my time away. I was still keeping fit, reading, journaling and as always constantly learning and trying to be better. 2020 is here and we all feel like it's going to be a great year and that is exciting. While I was away I challenged myself to something that I want to share with you and urge you to try. We always complain about how often we don't have time to do certain things but if we can learn to manage our time better we can achieve a lot. Time is life and every second that passes can never be gotten back, it's in the past. I wish that we all use our time wisely and focus on things that matter to us and make our lives more enjoyable, meaningful and less stressful. So...what is it? I call it #NoSnooze2020 and it's a very simple thing. When your alarm rings in the morni...

Hello Aweso mers! I hope you've been good and taking care of yourselves. I don't have much to say today except thank you. Thank you so much for giving me your time a few times a month to read my blog posts. I love blogging so much, I enjoy it and I always look forward to it and it makes me so happy when you guys share with me your feedback. I've been wanting to blog since 2015, which is the year this blog was created but I only really started blogging properly this year and I love this community so much. It's not a lot but it's genuine and it really means a lot to me. I have so many things planned for this blog and I am excited. I am really grateful for your consistent support, your words of encouragement, you sharing my posts and leaving comments, I really really appreciate it. Ngiyabonga 🙏🏽 I'm looking forward to doing better next year and really growing this platform and having conversations that impacts our lives in meaningful ways that we can grow fr...

Hi Awesomers Before I leave I just wanted to share something with you that I also want to practice. I have noticed with myself and a few people around me that we know what we want, sometimes we even know how to go about getting the things we want but something (I don't know what to call it) just happens and you end up not doing those things. Time does not wait for us and it's up to us to make use of the time we have. Your ideas will stay as ideas if you don't act upon them. What I wanted to say is: I challenge you and myself to go after what we want, commit to it and go through with it. Whether you fail or not doesn't matter, what matters is you got up and did something. I refuse to be a person who has ideas and plans but somewhat get cold feet when it's time for action. If you are also like that in any area of your life, I challenge you to start doing, even if it's one task. Sometimes we don't think we're good enough to pursue what we really want and th...

Hi Awesomers! I hope you are all well and everything in your lives is going well too. I know most people around this time complain about year end fatigue, if you are suffering from it I hope you get your much needed rest. Today I just wanted to share with you the power of will and how I believe that if you really want to do something, you will do it and you won't make up any excuses. I do understand that there are people who suffer from mental illness and sometimes it becomes hard for them to complete tasks which may seem easy to us. If you do suffer from mental illness please get in touch with a professional and try to seek help. In July I started with intentional exercising, I say intentional because I had been exercising before and instead of achieving my goals, the results were fluctuating. I made a decision when the second half of the year started that I will achieve my goals and I did. In 26 days I lost 5kg because I made a decision and stuck to it. I did not make any ...

Hi Awesomers! I hope you have been well and taking care of yourself. If you haven't noticed, I upload every fortnight, this is just to help you know when to expect a blog post from me. Today's blog post is a bit different and is inspired by a caption I wrote on Instagram a few months ago:   @ayandabeing  and I am honestly proud that even though it's not much, I did live a little. I am sharing these places because I had suggested one of the places to someone and they enjoyed it and I am now suggesting them to you so that if you are  interested you can visit them.  1) Anniversary at Indaba Hotel and Mowana Spa After spending so much time cracking my head, Googling and asking on Twitter what I can  do on this special day, I found Mowana Spa on  Healthspas . I love how efficient that site is. Shout-out to whoever had the idea. I really liked that it grouped everything so well and luckily for me and you 😉, they almost always have packages that can...

Hello Awesomers! I hope you are all well or at least getting better. I have noticed sometimes I/we are too hard on ourselves and we forget to see the little good we achieve from time to time. So I decided to write this blog post as a reminder to myself and you that we don't have to be hard on ourselves. We deserve a break from ourselves. Simple things like washing dishes before 15H30 or waking up at 04H30 in the morning are achievements. If you said you were going to do something and you manage to do it, that's an achievement. Small wins eventually contribute greatly in your life. You can choose to look at them as good habits but I choose to look at them as wins because sometimes doing anything is really a lot of work. Sometimes something as simple as waking up can be a mission and being able to do that (no matter how hard it was to drag yourself) without a hassle is an achievement. "Habits are not a finish line to be crossed, they are a lifestyle to be lived...

Hello Awesomers! 😀 I did say that I will upload everything I like, have an opinion on and everything in between right? Just one little spoiler ahead 🙃🙃 I went to watch Uncovered which is a South African film directed by Zuko Nodada. It stars Nqobile Khumalo, Thandeka Nodada, Robert Hobbs, Sthandiwe Kgoroge and Dumisani Mbebe amongst others. I don't want to lie, I really loved the story/concept, in the film industry no matter how amazing your concept is, execution is key and this movie didn't do a stellar job in that part. I had problems with the film's technicalities, acting and some sloppiness here and there. I love dope concepts, even though this is not 100% original, I am impressed with the fact that they went ahead and did it. The dialogue wasn't amazing and the lead actress.... Hmm let's just say they could have found someone else. Thandeka Nodada is a good actress and I can't believe I haven't seen her before. She was only on the scre...

Hello Awesomers!  I hope you have all been well, smashing your goals, growing, unlearning and taking care of yourselves. I just thought I have been away for so long, working on my life, growing and I have reached a point where I am ready to share my thoughts and everything in between with the world. I am doing well. I am better. I am ready and I am putting in the work.  Speaking of work, me and a group of friends actually made a film in 48 hours, the screening will be on the 25th of August, at Ster-Kinekor Mall of Africa at 14h00 and I would really like to see you there.  It's August and I am honestly really happy that things have been the way they have been. I may have not achieved some things yet but the time I took to focus on me has been wonderful. I started exercising intentionally (Shout out to Fisiwe Zondi for wanting an accountability partner), eating right, journaling and reading and I have to say it has been so amazing. I just want to say to you: ...

This is a year of doing and I haven't done much. I want to commit myself into doing things. I want to be brave. Take chances and just do it. As we begin March, let's march to the life we desire, the ideas we have and just do it. We have nothing to lose!

I've been gone for so long and I just had to come and say it's a wrap on 2018 as I was here to welcome it - I'm a consistent queen 😂( I know how that sounds considering how I haven't posted anything in months ). I hope the year was kind to you , I was just  busy that's all I can say. In the busy-ness I at least managed to live a little and became beautiful in the process (peep me on Instagram 🔥) I'm here to thank you for your patience and wish you a wonderful new year (I've never done this before so I truly believe it will be an amazing year). Stop beating yourself up about things that didn't work out (I hope those things don't include you losing a lot of money 😭) , you're still alive and you still have the opportunity to achieve a lot of things. We lost, we won and at the end of the day what matters the most is that we're still here and we are better. Our attitude is positive and we are ready to win. ...

We're 4 months into the year, can you believe it? 😱 How far are you with your plans? Are you making progress? Or are you feeling a little bit behind? On this blog post I'm going to share some tips on how to keep it going for the next 8 months and just make sure that above all things you don't disappoint yourself. You can use all tips or none... It's entirely up to you.  Review the plans you had and see how you're doing.   If all is well... Then well done, you deserve a glass of wine, keep going. 🍷 If it's not going so well, Where did you fall behind, what affected you?  Now you know what's wrong, how can you fix it? Work on solutions.   ‎Be realistic.  Start implementing.   ‎Pat yourself in the back because you're ready to go.  Every week (depending on how your goals are set up) Review progress, it will make you identify any unexpected challenges and easily deal with them.  Keep good company.  Have fun... In every...