“Don’t spend your precious time asking “Why isn’t the World a better place?” It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is “How can I make it better?” To that there is an answer.” – Leo F Buscaglia

Things and people evolve over time. My journey of self-love, acceptance, and awareness began with making healthier choices for my body and mind through exercise, healthier eating, and eventually mindfulness practice. It was through taking better care of myself, physically, emotionally, spiritually that I became more aware that ultimately I need to make some serious lifestyle changes to take BETTER CARE OF OUR PLANET.

We only have this ONE EARTH, and it needs our help. We cannot just sit back, wonder about, and be sad and frustrated with the current state of our planet, we must truly ask ourselves “What can we do to make it better?”. Each decision, each choice we make to use less and reduce our consumption and waste, to choose reusable products over single-use items, to eat a more plant-base diet and fewer animal products all add up.

I know it can seem overwhelming to start at times, and you may think that your change and contributions won’t make a difference, but we must ALL start somewhere, we must NOT give up hope that we can make positive changes on a global scale and save our precious Earth that we call home. With each of us that makes a change, we do make a difference, through our own actions and that these actions can inspire those around us to think and reflect on their own lives and usage of resources and hopefully make those positive changes as well. It can become a ripple effect. The more of us there are fighting the good fight, the more people (and especially politicians) will HAVE TO pay attention, and hopefully make sustainable choices through their own personal use and actions, and in policy change. Ultimately, we need to continue to recognize these issues and make changes at a Global scale.

I am very passionate about sustainability, reducing my waste and carbon footprint, and sharing all that I learn with others, and will do my best. But I also want to recognize that I will make mistakes, screw-up, and still produce waste along this path. But I will always strive to be aware, to keep learning, keep doing better, and sharing all these lessons along the way.

I am evolving, my eyes have been opened wider,  I am growing as human of this Earth. This blog is evolving along with me. I will not delete previous posts related to fitness, or other healthy living aspects I’ve been passionate about and written about at one point, because they will always be a part of me, and this journey. But it will grow onward and upwards from them. I do believe that through taking better care of ourselves, physically, emotionally, spiritually, we will realize how essential taking care of the Earth is intertwined in that. And in taking better care of the Earth, we are taking better care of ourselves, emotionally, physically, spiritually as well. It’s a beautiful cycle.

I’ll be sharing my personal journey towards more sustainable living in my every day life and during my travels, my journey of self-love and acceptance, and all of the things I learn along the way. I will also be sharing a variety of sustainability tips and zero waste resources both here on the blog and on my Instagram account @alenaelizbeth that I hope will help inspire YOU to make a positive sustainable changes in your life.

We are all in this together my friends.

Much love, Alena

P.S. This blog is a work in progress, as am I, so I appreciate any comments, feedback, advice, and the understanding that I won’t get it all right. If you have any sites, individuals or resources sharing about these topics that you’d recommend myself and others check out, please share in the comments below.