Positive role models

I’ve been thinking a lot about positive role models lately and how there are so few of them. I look at my friends and none of them live as I do, they are all still caught up with spending and over consumption. I love my friends dearly but I am not inspired by how they live.

So where do we usually find women, or men for that matter, who act as role models – who simply by the way they live and present themselves, inspire others to live to their true potential? Certainly not in the popular media, and I won’t go further than that as this would turn into a tirade if I did. If there is no inspiring light in your group of friends or someone at work, then where?

Well, for me it’s been in blogs. I have found wonderful role models online. Women who show me a way of being that allow me to stay true to who I am, and simply by sharing their lives demonstrate important, honourable and creative ways to live.

The blogs I like best are those written by women who are living an authentic life. I’m not interested in the political and intellectual blogs that talk about change and how to achieve it; I prefer to get that information in books. I am more interested in people who live their changes rather than talk about them, and who share their experiences. I’m fascinated by those blogs that show you, with words and photos, how others live simply, while being mindful of environmental responsibilities, in ordinary and every day ways. For me, living a life that works well, and honestly sharing it with all its ups and downs, is the best example.

At the moment I find inspiration in a few blogs that you might have already discovered yourself. If you haven’t, I encourage you to check these places out. 

Path to Freedom I have been visiting this website for the past five years and am still as motivated by them as I was on the first visit. The Dervaes family live in California and show us all that true change is possible.

Sometimes I see love and caring in photos and I see it often in Little Jenny Wren’s photos of her home. Jenny is a Tasmanian woman who shares her family and her crafts with all of us. There is plenty of simple wisdom there.

When she writes about her day-to-day life Jewels clearly demonstrates that everyone and everything matters. She lives in the US with her husband and ten children and shows us that simply living can also be elegant, heart warming and a lot of fun.

Phelan is living on farm and tell us about all the changes she's making. I love her honesty and her enthusiastic small steps.

I really like the cooking on the free range living blog, but there is also a lovely small house she sold recently and the excitement of a new house she and her family are now moving in to.

There must be many more blogs that document the authentic extraordinary lives of ordinary people. I would love to find more blogs to inspire and motivate me. If you have favourite blogs you go to everyday, please tell me, and everyone else, about them and add a link so we can visit.