About

Hiya, welcome to Merely Merel, my personal blog. It is good having you! If you are looking for anything personal-growth-related, you have come to the right place. Because over here, I write about my personal journey towards health, abundance, success, love, fulfillment… towards HAPPINESS, in short.

Who I am

I am a 29-year-old from The Netherlands, but I live in Spain since 2017. I have art and ancient history degrees, but earn my money as a freelance text writer and editor. I forever want to grow my hair long and cut it short at the same time. See? I am full of dualities. Not surprisingly, I am a Gemini – astrologically speaking. Not that I really believe in astrology… or do I?

Typically Merel

You can call me an introvert, a planner, a bookworm. I am disciplined, determined, dedicated. Apparently I like adjectives starting with a letter D. I am goal-oriented, tidy, and creative. But as a true perfectionist, all of that goes to shit when I cannot do it perfectly. So sometimes I leave my home a mess, my calendar empty, and my work neglected. Duality really sums up the story of my life.

I am eager to learn and gain knowledge, I work best alone, and I have tons of self-confidence when it comes to topics I know a lot about. When it comes to those topics, I always believe I am right. But I also love to hear opposite opinions if they are argued well. After all, I can definitely admire a good conversation and I will always look for depth and realness in relationships. Any person who doesn’t live up to those standards is simply not interesting to me.

INTJ

If you are familiar with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (only the best personality test ever developed), yes, I have an INTJ-personality, which is dubbed The Architect. Funny, because I took extra math classes in high school just in case I wanted to study architecture. Apparently, only 0.8% of the entire world population has the INTJ-type and is female, making me a rare species. ‘It can be lonely at the top,’ 16personalities.com says – and as arrogant as that sounds, architects do tend to feel that way sometimes.

What this blog is all about

Being part of Generation Y (the millennials), I am naturally burdened with depression due to financial problems, social media addiction, entitlement, and (according to ypulse.com) Donald Trump? Just kidding. It is probably just an early thirties crisis, but yes, I do believe my life can be improved shitloads. And as a proper millennial, I also believe I can be / achieve anything I want. And most importantly, I believe that that is entirely my own responsibility.

The Happiness Project

So back in 2019, I revived this old blog of mine to start a Happiness Project – based on Gretchen Rubin’s book of the same name. I will spare you the details of the project itself, but I loved it. Unfortunately, I fell off the happiness-bandwagon early due to several events in my personal life. Nonetheless, the project sparked a fire in me. I had tasted enough of the possibilities that open up once you deliberately work on happiness. What happens when you consider happiness as something you create, as something internal, rather than something that you derive from external sources / people.

A Personal Growth Journey

It took me pretty much the entirety of 2019 to get back on my feet. I immersed myself in whatever personal-growth-related thing I could get my hands on: books, documentaries, courses, Instagram accounts, YouTube videos, anything. And I started to implement changes into my life. Better sleep and food, running, meditating and journaling, a focus on my business and more control over my finances. Since then, small steps every day added up to big changes.

Obviously, there is no stopping me now. I have big, big dreams and I am confident I will turn them into reality. Over here, I am sharing my journey.

XX

PS. I hope you’ll enjoy following along my personal growth journey and get inspired to change your life for the better as well. If you wanna stay in touch, follow my blog via Bloglovin’ so you’ll get an update every time I post. For some visual updates about my life in Spain, follow @merelymerel on Instagram. If you have any comments, questions or feedback, or if you want to collaborate, leave me a comment here on the blog, or send an e-mail to info@merely-merel.nl.