Thank you!!

To all of the lovely people who have found, followed or enjoyed this blog in some way — thank you!!  It really was a treat to post every week and talk about life through a Disney lens with you all.

With that being said, though, I have some happy and sad news.  The sad news is that, as this blog was curated as an assignment for my social media class, with the termination of my college career this past Saturday, I have decided to stop posting on this blog, at least for now.

The HAPPY news, though, is that all is not lost!  I would be honored if y’all would follow me on my personal blog, Operation Belle, where I post about Disney, my life, and anything that tickles my fancy.  Like I said, I’ve really enjoyed taking on life one Disney quote at a time here on Through Walt’s Eyes, so definitely anticipate some similar posts in the future on Operation Belle!  Honestly, it’s just much easier to upkeep one blog rather than two.

On that note, like I mentioned before, I graduated from college this past weekend (check out my awesome grad cap in the pic above! I know, I’m tooting my own horn, but I just can’t help it in this case haha), and now it’s onto the next chapter in my life — a public relations professional internship with Disney Cruise Line!  I’m so excited to be able to share my journey on Operation Belle, and I would love, love, love for you to follow along.

And with that, it’s time to say … See ya real soon!  Thanks for all the fun, friends.  To infinity and beyond. ❤

Just Keep Swimming,

~ Jordyn ~

Grow from each of life’s chapters

Today’s quote is brought to you by the surge of bittersweet nostalgia that is setting into my psyche as I enter into the last month of my undergraduate career. So buckle up and prepare for the sappiness, y’all.

If I’ve learned anything over the past four years, it’s that life is a book, made up of chapters. Just as with any book, we pick it up — we take on life — because we’re intrigued by its promise. We’ve read the synopsis on the back cover — we’ve been exposed to the possibilities life has to offer — and we feel we can grow from working through it, page by page, chapter by chapter.

I don’t know about all of you, but I feel accomplished when I reach the end of a chapter in a good book. I feel like I have checked off a milestone in my journey through the book’s world, and I now have the option to either move onto the next chapter or put the book down to come back to it later.

In life, though, each chapter is a new place, setting, situation, or relationship in our journey — honestly, in keeping with our book analogy, life is like one of those quirky books that jumps all around and makes you think about where you are at each step of the way in order to fully understand. Sometimes chapters overlap, and sometimes they move in a more linear fashion. Sometimes we’re completely invested in growing as much as we can from each chapter — reading every single word on the page — and sometimes we choose to just skate through a particular chapter — to skim the pages, just grasping the gist.

However we get through a given chapter, some type of emotion is experienced upon its completion. Of course, if it’s an important life chapter, we feel a sense of accomplishment upon completion, just as we do when we finish a chapter in a print book.

But more often than not, this accomplishment is either replaced or accompanied by another emotion: relief, denial, fulfillment, eagerness, sorrow.

For me, leaving college, my home for the past four years, brings on all of the emotions. I feel accomplished for having completed my degree. I feel relieved that I am done with homework … at least for the foreseeable future. I am in denial that I am entering into the real world. I feel fulfilled, having made the most of my college experience. I am eager to show the world of public relations what I can do. I am sad to leave my college home and family.

And this is where, to me, Peter Pan’s quote comes in: yes, I am completing my undergraduate career and leaving a place that I hold so dear, but there is no need to say goodbye. I am not closing the book, but simply moving onto the next chapter.

As I move onto this next chapter, it makes no sense to forget everything I have gained throughout the chapter I am currently writing the ending to. These lessons, people, skills, and experiences will be my foundation in the next chapter, and all chapters to follow. Just like we can’t forget what happens in one chapter of a book as we move onto the next, it is useless to box up the contents of one chapter of our lives when we move onto the next.

And this applies, too, in other situations besides just leaving school. Say you’re in a toxic relationship, for example, and you are, thankfully, bringing that chapter to a close. Instinct may be to just compartmentalize everything from that relationship, that chapter, in the back of your mind and start anew for all subsequent chapters.

But you can’t just say goodbye to that chapter. As much as your gut wants to, you learned from that experience. You grew from it. You learned how you wanted to be treated, how you didn’t want to be treated, what you expected and deserved from a relationship. While there are parts of that chapter that can be forgotten — a lot of every chapter is just filler information that holds no real value to the overall message of the book — be sure to put in the effort to take away and keep with you the positives that came from that chapter, because they will serve you in the future.

So, we must never say goodbye. Although we may physically and/or mentally leave each chapter, we never really go away, because the memories and/or lessons will stay with us forever, guiding us as we go. We must never forget the gist of each chapter of our lives, because when we put all of our chapters together into one beautiful, meaningful life, we will be able to be proud of how far we’ve come, and thankful for all of the experiences along the way.

Just Keep Swimming,

 ~ Jordyn ~

Bring the Sunshine to Your Own Life

Sunshine — one of my favorite things!  Today’s quote comes from The Fairest of Them All, Miss Snow White.

Have you ever felt like nothing is going your way, like you can’t catch a break?  Everyone has those days — sometimes those weeks … months … years — when it seems like the world is grey.

And while there are often external factors outside of our control that may cause this grey-ness, we sometimes forget the power we have to influence our own experiences!

Only you truly know what makes YOU happy — jamming out to headbanger music in the car with the windows up and the music on full blast?  Not my cup of tea, but if that’s your happy place, you do you.

Only you know your personal sunshine, your personal path to happiness.  Don’t deny yourself the respite from all of life’s stressors that only you can provide for yourself.

Your own happiness is just as important in the grand scheme of things as is that of others, so don’t skimp on delivering the sunshine to your own backdoor.  Take time to take care of yourself, to make yourself happy in whatever way you know how.

And once you take the time to make yourself happy, that slice of sunshine will emanate forth from you, bringing sunshine to the world around you.  Life is difficult and is never full of solely sunshine, but if you take the time and effort to create sunshine for yourself, you will serve as beautiful, happy sunshine for those around you.

Just Keep Swimming,

~ Jordyn ~

You Are 100% You

Today’s quote goes out to all of us out there who are searching for love, sometimes in the wrong places.

I feel like the phrase, “you complete me,” has been so engrained in our culture that we have stopped even thinking about what it means.  If you meet that special someone, fall in love, and get married, movies, TV, and pop culture say that a proper phrase with which to address this beloved soul mate would be, “you complete me.”

But wait — does that mean you weren’t complete before?  That before you met this amazingly wonderful individual, you were less of a person, had less value?  ABSOLUTELY NOT!

The way I like to look at it, everyone is complete at all times — a beautiful, compelling, talented individual whether (s)he is still waiting for Cupid’s arrow to strike or (s)he has already been bitten by the love bug.

Meeting that knight in shining armor or fairytale princess does not complete you — you were already 100% to begin with, remember — but it simply meshes your 100% with this other amazing individual’s 100%.  Y’all are now 200%, for the math challenged out there. 😉

With this 200%, you, as a team, can take over the world.  You have your complete awesomeness and your partner’s complete awesomeness meshed together into one amazing bundle of awesomeness.  You accept each other and build each other up and feed off of each other — instead of completing each other, let’s say you compliment each other … and you do a gosh darned fantastic job of it.

In order for this all to happen, though, you have to begin by accepting yourself as complete.  If you don’t believe that you are truly 100% complete, how can you expect someone else to do so?

So love yourself, your flaws, your talents, your insecurities, your quirks, your perspectives, yourSELF.  Just focus on being who you are — all 100% of who you are — and you will find that  your special someone out there will find it incredibly easy and desirable to appreciate, accept, and support you in doing so.

As Rapunzel so wisely said, you don’t need anyone to complete you, just someone to completely accept you, all 100% of you.

Just Keep Swimming,

~ Jordyn ~

The Struggle Leads to Inspirational Success

While I’ll be honest, Mulan was never one of my go-to movies as a child, this quote has become one of my absolute favorites to come from a Disney movie.

Whenever I see a beautiful flower, I don’t know about you, but I love to stop and observe its beauty: as a simple plant stuck in the ground, I find it amazing that it has the power to make me stop in my tracks, appreciating the joy it is bringing to my life in that moment.

But this quote always makes me think: what if someone was to walk by when I am basking in my moment of flower-induced bliss and tell me that it’s a miracle that flower has bloomed where it has — maybe the soil isn’t conducive to supporting life, maybe there just isn’t enough sunlight to feed a plant — for whatever reason, that beautiful flower survived the odds, fought fate, and now exists to bring me that moment of pure joy.

Doesn’t that make me appreciate the flower even more?  Of course it does!  Instead of simply a beautiful bloom, I now see before me a breathtaking specimen that fought for success, and came out on top.

So now let’s quit the metaphor and bring the Emperor’s words to light in the context of our own lives.  Every person — every flower — has faced some adversity in his/her life.  And in the face of that adversity, we can either choose to give in, or we can choose to face it head on and move past it, onto success — to bloom into a beautiful, inspirational being.

But just like I had no clue about the struggles that beautiful flower had undertaken to turn into the beautiful bloom that it had become, nine out of ten times, we don’t know the struggles of the people we meet that have led them to where they are today.

And on that same token — some people are more private about their struggles, while others prefer to make them known.  While there is no right or wrong way to handle one’s personal struggles — as they are just that, personal — each way of handling can yield a different result.

Private struggling yields an overwhelming feeling of pride and accomplishment upon victory over the adversity.  No one else knows what you have gone through to get to where you are, but now you’re here, and you’re rolling with the big dogs, just as well — if not better — as if you handn’t faced any struggles along the way at all.

Public struggling yields an outside community of support and recognition for your hard work and determination – your story inspires those around you, and your ultimate success is a cause for rallying around your accomplishment.

So no matter how you choose to struggle, know that your positive attitude and determination are always a source of inspiration to those around you, and you must allow them to be a source of inspiration to yourself, too!

The flower the blooms in adversity is rare — not all flowers are able to withstand the hardships of life — but those that are able to withstand the storm are the most beautiful flowers of all, because they have a story and a drive that pushes them forward, willing them to achieve greatness and providing pure inspiration.

Just Keep Swimming,

~ Jordyn ~

Trust.

Dory is one of my all-time favorite Disney characters, partly because I just love her, and partly because her song in the live musical version of the movie – in Animal Kingdom! – is one of my absolute favorites.

Known as being Marlin’s ditzy sidekick, Dory actually has a surprising number of wisdom nuggets she drops throughout the movie that are definitely worth taking a look at.  Today’s is rather simple, but I think that’s the beauty of Dory – in her simplicity is pure, beautiful truth.

If you are anything like me, there are times in your life when you feel alone – as if it is you against the world, and not even that ant you just passed on the sidewalk is on your side.  I think this is a natural human tendency, to unintentionally exaggerate our own – hopefully and usually – trivial problems until we feel overwhelmed, unable to see beyond them.

But we must always remember: we’ve got our peeps cheering for us from the sidelines.  Instead of getting so focused on what we need to accomplish ourselves, we have to allow ourselves to take a step back and accept the support of the loved ones around us.

These loved ones are the people we have chosen to surround ourselves with because they make us feel loved, supported, and happy – we trust them to support our happiness through their love.  So why, in our times of distress and need, do we let ourselves forget about these people?

For me, sometimes, it’s honestly because I forget that I can trust them.  Now, I KNOW this sounds silly – how can you forget that you can trust your loved ones?  And, to be honest, I think the answer is simply because I allow myself to get so fixated on myself and my own problems.  But I keep these loved ones around for a reason, and I constantly need to remind myself that they are there because I trust them, and I need to allow myself to be open to them and their support in order to get me through any tough times I may face.

Now, I know, this all kind of simplifies things down to an almost elementary degree.  But, to be frank, that’s what I love about Dory and her outlook on life – she has no short term memory, she basically can’t lead a normal life due to this, and yet … she’s content.  She has found a friend in Marlin, she knows she can trust him, and to her, that’s all she needs to get herself through.

So always remember that you are not alone – just like Dory and I have to remind ourselves that there are people in our corner rooting for us to succeed, never forget to trust your loved ones to support you through even the toughest of times.

Just Keep Swimming,

~Jordyn~

Believe In Your Dreams

Today’s quote comes to you from my own personal place of desperation as I enter into the final stretch of my senior year of college.  I’m talking about that place of internal panic where, for the first time in your life, your future is completely up to you and  – HOLY FUDGE BALLS – you’re just realizing this and allowing it to sink into your already slightly panicking psyche.

But right now, I’m taking a step back and looking to the one and only Cinderella for a bit of guidance.  Before going to that fateful ball, Cinderella lead the definition of a mundane life – spending her days cleaning and catering to her step sisters and step mother.  Yet, even with no end to the hum drum in sight, she allowed herself to dream.  And to believe in those dreams.  And to follow them through to fruition.

So why shouldn’t I do the same?  I’m an intelligent young adult with a college degree in sight, a good head on my shoulders, and the drive to succeed (tootin’ my own horn here, I know, but just bear with me).  So if I have dreams, what’s to say I can’t achieve them?

Sure, there are – and will be – external factors that stand in my way, and that’s unavoidable.  But I can eliminate any internal obstacles by simply believing in myself and in my ability to achieve whatever I want to achieve.

I don’t know how much I subscribe to it, but I do think there is something to say for the power of positive thinking.  There is something about believing you can do something and visualizing yourself completing it that is so empowering.  Just as Cinderella did, truly believing in yourself and in your dreams can yield real-world results.

So we have to remember not to sell ourselves short!!  Life is going to throw us curveballs, and the best way to prepare ourselves for these curveballs is to believe in ourselves, our abilities, and our dreams.

This is something I’m definitely struggling with at the moment, and so I challenge myself – and you! – to continuously remember to keep on believing – then, and only then, will the dreams that we wish really come true!

Just Keep Swimming,

~ Jordyn ~

The Golden Rule As A Means Of Self-Improvement

Eeyore is forever known as Pooh’s beloved melancholy friend – as adorable as he is depressed.  But amidst all of his trademark sadness can be found a few nuggets of wisdom – just take a look at today’s quote!

Whenever we think about improving our lives, it is healthy to look inside of ourselves and work to improve various aspects of our personalities, rather than looking outside of ourselves to try to fix external factors.  After all, external factors are rarely within our control, so it is always more productive to practice introspection.

But a personality aspect we often overlook is our way of relating to others.  When working to improve our lives, we tend to focus on our positivity, our punctuality, our focus, our dedication –  such individualistic qualities are most easily recognizable as needing attention.  But if we take a look at qualities within ourselves that have more tangible external components, we gain access to a whole different avenue to self improvement.

How we relate to others – how we treat them, talk to them, view them, etc. – is an integral part of who we are.  Although we may not realize it, our manner of relating to others is often a key quality others use to form opinions about us.  I’m not saying that others’ opinions should be the be-all-end-all for us, but rather that if we are not aware of the image we project by how we relate to others, we may be unintentionally projecting an image we don’t necessarily identify with.

SO – let’s break down all of the gobble-de-gook we just spewed out.  As Eeyore so simply stated, treating others with consideration and thought can really make such a huge difference in our own lives, and in the lives of those around us.  If we focus our energies on working to treat others as we would like to be treated, we will reap immense benefits in the end.

And doesn’t that last bit there sound familiar?  Ever heard of the Golden Rule?  Of course you have!  And that’s what Eeyore was getting at in his own unique little way: treat others as you would like to be treated – with consideration and thought – and you will make a difference.

So whether your goal is to improve yourself or to brighten up the world around you, take a page from Eeyore’s book this Friday morning and put a little extra thought into your next interpersonal interaction – you really do have the power to make a difference!

Just Keep Swimming,

~ Jordyn ~

Real-Life Fairy Tales Require Effort

Oh, Tiana.  The dreamer, the doer, the role model for youngins everywhere.  I remember that her go-get-’em personality was so refreshing when she first hit the silver screen a few years ago, and her wonderful sense of independence continues to inspire today.

We can all learn so much from Tiana, from her dedication and good work ethic to her ability to keep her eye on the prize, even when it seems to be so far off in the distance.  In today’s inspirational quote, Tiana comes to us with her signature dose of grounded logic – fairy tales can come true, but it’s up to us to make it happen.

A fairy tale, by cultural stereotypical nature, is something that exists only in fiction – something one can aspire to, but never truly achieve.  We even colloquially use the term to mean something that will never happen – like, if a friend talks about wanting to find her prince charming and live happily ever after with him in a castle far, far away on a hilltop … you get the picture.  You would say she’s living in a fairy tale world, detached from reality.  Poor girl, right?

But what if we re-defined fairy tale to be an end goal that exists in the context of reality?  What if we looked at fairy tales as an ultimate aspiration that includes every piece having fallen into the right place, creating for us our personalized version of a wonderful, fulfilling life?  Fairy tales don’t have to exist only in fiction – we have the power to create them in our own lives.

The key here is that we have to be willing to work for it.  Just like Tiana said: we gotta make it happen.  A fairy tale life isn’t going to fall into our laps.  But if we’re willing to put forth the effort, to put in the time, then we will eventually get what is due to us.

And this is not to say that there is such a thing as an objectively perfect life.  Life is what we make of it, and if we feel fulfilled and choose to be happy in our given situation, then that constitutes as our fairy tale, perfect life, in my opinion.

So be willing to work hard, take risks, and chase your dreams.  We won’t know if we’ve arrived at our fairy tale ending until we get there, but when we do, I can only imagine that it will have been so, so worth it.

Just Keep Swimming,

~ Jordyn ~

Embrace Your Inner Crazy

This is one of my favorite Disney quotes, because growing up, I always thought the Mad Hatter was just that – mad. bonkers. not someone I would typically associate with. crazy.

But rewatching the movie now, understanding all of the hidden meanings and innuendoes, I would honestly LOVE to sit down and have a tea party with the Mad Hatter.  Sure, he’s crazy, but it’s the kind of crazy that makes you say, “Hmm … I bet he was super smart in a past life, and he probably still is, but it’s just hidden under all his crazy!”

Anyways, what I’m saying is that beneath his wild exterior, I think the Mad Hatter’s nugget of wisdom in this quote is super relevant, because, honestly, we’re all a little bit crazy.

Most of us grow up thinking that we have to fit into society’s mold for us, that there is a norm to which we are compared and held.  But the older I get, the more I realize that that’s just a bunch of phooey.

Each and every person has her own quirks that would probably qualify her as crazy by some standards, and that’s ok!  It’s actually these crazy quirks that make us unique, that give us value as individuals and allow us to leave our own mark on the world.  Many of the great minds of history were at one point considered crazy, so embrace those mad tendencies you find in the nooks and crannies of your personality, and run with it.

Don’t be afraid to let your crazy shine through, and maybe one day people will be writing blog posts about wanting to have tea parties with you.

Just Keep Swimming,

~ Jordyn ~