After sharing seven of my favourite quotes a few weeks back, I wanted to share today some of the wise words from the thinkers and writers who inspire me that I like to remember from time to time. There's nothing quite like the words of others helping you find your way, and the following ten are some of my favourites:

As well as running this little blog, I'm also the co-editor over at the online lifestyle magazine A Little Opulent alongside one of my favourite people in the world, Rebecca, and our awesome and super talented team. I look after our Lifestyle, Beauty, and Culture & Entertainment sections and every now and then I like to bring you a round-up of some of my recent content from over there. 

There are so many talented photographers and designers out there in the online community creating awesome visuals for their blogs - Rebecca, Corina, and Megan are just some of my favourites. If like me though you're not all that confident when it comes to the visual side of content creation, I wanted to share some awesome web tools and online resources that can help you find your feet and create visual content you can be proud of. 

Blogs exist for so many different reasons, and they usually evolve into something much more over time than what was first envisioned. We all have different motivations behind our blogs, and knowing our purpose and finding our voice is key to really utilising our space to create something that has both impact and reach.

But how do I know my purpose, I hear you ask. It's not really as intense as it sounds, and after being involved in the online community for a while now I think I can break it down into five different categories - though most of us exist somewhere in-between one or two (or even three) of them.

Something I've learned this year is that creativity will always need feeding - I can spend my days creating content, but if I don't fill my life with the things I love and the things that inspire me, my work would become stale and stagnant. Surrounding myself with daily inspiration that helps me see the world from different points of view, and explore my own process and creativity, is key to my creative process and today I'm sharing five of my favourite ways to stay inspired.

Be A Farmer, Not A Hunter I stumbled across this mantra thanks to the awesome Kathleen and Tara over at Braid Creative in this post. The idea of being like a farmer, who gets up early and looks at the bigger picture and sticks around for the long haul, really resonated with me and guides me now in how I approach my work (and my life). Head over and read their post as they explain it perfectly.

Be Kind, Stay Humble To be the kind of human I want to be, I want to stay kind and humble every step of the way. Treating everyone and everything with kindness and respect makes us better people, and I've found that ego and arrogance is one of the biggest things that can get in the way of us leading a positive and happy life.

After sharing What I Have Learned About Blog Growth last weekend, I wanted to talk today about monetising your blog in a way that works for you and your blog. For me, my blog is not my full time job; I'm a writer, a consultant, and an editor, and my blog is part of my brand and just one of my income streams. When I first started this space back in 2013 I never dreamed it would become something more than just an online journal, and even though being a full time blogger and making a living from monetising my blog alone has never been a desire for me, I do earn a part of my income from this blog and I wanted to share today some of the biggest lessons I've learned so far.

Of course, you don't have to monetise your blog, it's a personal choice everyone makes along the way as their blog develops and I know and read (and love) so many awesome blogs who don't build income streams into their space. It's up to you, and what's best for your online space, and hopefully this post can encourage anyone who does want to explore monetisation to do it on their own terms and in a way that stays authentic and true to their voice and their blog.

I've shared 8 Things We Should Stop Apologising For and Things We Should Stop Doing So We Can Be Happier on ALO, but I wanted to touch today on some excuses I think we should stop making to ourselves in our day to day lives. It's far too easy to hold ourselves back and not move forward because things scare us or because they take hard work, but to really make the most out of our lives I think it's super important to quit those excuses and focus on building a life we really love. There are so many excuses to myself that I've made over the years, but these four are the ones I've found can hold us back the most:

Dealing with criticism is something we're all faced with when we put ourselves and our work out there online. We can never control how others behave, but what I think is super important is not letting the criticism of others (when it's not constructive) to stop us from doing the work we want to do. Bethany wrote an awesome piece on the topic here, and I wanted to share some thoughts and advice today for any fellow bloggers for when they're faced with criticism and negativity online.