Happy And Healthy Lifestyle

“Winning the war of words inside your soul means learning to defy your inner critic.” ~Steven Furtick We all have that voice in our head, the voice that’s always negative about ourselves. Our inner voice.  Our inner critic. The one that tells us we’re not good enough, not smart enough, not attractive enough. That voice that continuously compares us to other people, so we come up lacking and feeling less than. Sometimes that voice is our own. Other times, and for some people, maybe those of us who have felt unloved or disliked by a significant person in our lives, that voice belongs to them. Then there are times when that inner critic will take on the voice of multiple people. A parent, a past lover who jilted us, and an abusive boss, for example. It can be quite the party in our heads, and not always a good one! For a while, the voice in my head belonged to my mom. It became a lot more frequent after she passed away. And a lot more persistent. Her best times to chat with me were...

“Tears are words that need to be written.” ~Paulo Coelho It was lovely to see you today. I haven’t seen you in such a long time. So much has happened since the last time we saw each other. You asked me how I was. I politely replied, “I’m fine” and forced a smile that I hoped would be believable. It must have worked. You smiled back and said, “I’m so glad to hear that. You look great.” But I’m not really fine. I haven’t been fine for a very long time, and I wonder if I will ever know what “fine” actually feels like again. Some days are good, some not so good. I’m doing my best to stay optimistic and to keep faith that tomorrow will be better. Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s worse. I’m never prepared for either outcome. I’m doing my best to pretend I’m fine. The mask I wear hides my pain very well. I’ve been wearing it for so long now that no one can see through it anymore. It’s my new face, and it smiles on demand. Some days I wish I didn’t have to pretend to smile. I long for t...

“Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.” ~Eckhart Tolle Do you ever catch yourself being critical, judgmental, or full of fear and worry ? And do you ever worry about how many negative thoughts you have? If you do, this post is for you. We’re taught that negative thoughts are bad, that they’re “toxic,” they “lower your vibration,” keep you stuck, and so on. We’re taught that in order to feel self-assured and confident, we should banish negative thoughts from our lives. Kind of like, goodbye, negative thoughts; hello, higher vibration, better boyfriend, nicer car, inner peace, and so on. So what do you do with all that negative junk in your head? How do you make it stop? And is trying to jam a positive thought over a negative one really the best way to manage the situation? The reason I’m thinking about this today is that it’s 7:30am and for the past three hours I’ve been watching Mad Men . Yep. Instead of setting myself up for the day with a restful sl...

“Never feel sorry for choosing yourself.” ~Unknown I was eleven years old, possibly twelve, the day I first discovered my mother’s betrayal. I assume she didn’t hear me when I walked in the door after school. The distant voices in the finished basement room of our home drew me in. My mother’s voice was soft as she spoke to her friend. What was she hiding that she didn’t want me to hear? I leaned in a little bit closer to the opening of the stairs… She was talking about a man she’d met. Her voice changed when she spoke of him. The tone of dreamy wonder when you discover something that makes your heart race. She talked about the way they touched and how she felt being with him. I felt my body go weak. I could not tell if it was sorrow or rage. All I knew was, she had lied to me. Several months prior, my parents had announced their divorce . My mother told me the decision was my father’s choice. She told me he was the one breaking up our family. She told me she wanted nothing more th...

“I really want to, but I can’t because [add semi-valid reason here].” That’s a template sentence to let yourself off the hook. It’s not copyrighted, so feel free to use it any time you want to let go of your dreams and not feel bad about it. Honestly, it hurts me every time I hear someone say it. I see it for what it is—an excuse. Every single one of us has ambitions, hopes, dreams, and goals. We fantasize about them on our commutes to work and before we sleep. We talk about how we will one day achieve them, but when it comes time to put them to action, we use that template sentence. I had every reason to use the template sentence. I live in a third-world country in the Middle East. We suffer from a lack of water, electricity, security, and opportunities—especially for girls. In the Western world, if you want to learn a new skill, you sign up for a training course, get a book, find articles online, or join a club. It’s different here. Here, we don’t have training courses, librar...

“We only live once, Snoopy.” ~Charlie Brown “Wrong. We only die once. We live every day.” ~Snoopy I am an anxious person. I haven’t always been though. When I had my first child, fourteen years ago, it was the week after my father died. My son was born and went right to the NICU where he spent the first fourteen days of his life. In that moment, I changed. I’d already had one miscarriage. I couldn’t lose anyone else. Man, life is fragile. I spent the next decade making sure he played on the swings at the park, but not too high since he could fall and break his neck. We always took him to the river or the lake, but no swimming. There are amoebas in the water. (Funny and crazy, I know.) I now have two children who are fourteen and nine. Just a couple weeks ago, we went to the zoo. I had to talk about not leaning on the railings; you could fall in an enclosure. I am exhausted. The worry never ends. I am a mom, a wife, a daughter, anxious, neurotic, controlling, and scared. I never m...

“You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” ~James Clear If you pull up any popular motivational video today, you’ll probably hear things like “Set big goals!” and “Aim high and don’t stop until you get there!” After watching a video like this, you may get inspired and start mapping out your plan to leave the 99 percent in the dust. And typically, because you’re riding a wave of motivation, you’ll write out these monstrous, Mount-Everest-like goals. These goals paint a picture of your life that is so exciting that you can’t wait to wake up and get to work the next morning. But when you roll out of bed and take a look at the goals you set the day before, reality hits you like a truck. Instead of being motivated to take action, you feel a massive wall of internal resistance. You want to take action. You know you need to take action. But for some reason you just can’t force yourself to muster up the discipline necessary to make progress. So i...

“Your value doesn’t decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.” ~Unknown In my early twenties, I was a food and beverage manager at a nice hotel in Portland, Maine. About a month after I started working there, they hired our department director, a man twice my age whom I would report to. At the end of his first week, we went out for a “get to know each other” drink at a loud and busy bar. As we drank and chatted, he was physically very close to me. I told myself it was because of the noise. His knees were against mine as we chatted facing each other on barstools. It made me uncomfortable, but I didn’t do anything about it. He put his hand on my thigh as we talked. I pretended it didn’t bother me. He leaned in very close to my face and ear as he talked about himself and told me how attractive I was. He led me through doorways with his hand gently on the small of my back. There was more of this over the next few months. More of him stepping on and just over that invis...

“Your inner critic is simply a part of you that needs more self-love.” ~Amy Leigh Mercee We all have that critical and judgmental inner voice that tells us we’re not good enough , smart enough, pretty enough, etc. It tells us we don’t do anything right. It calls us stupid. It compares us to other people and speaks harshly about ourselves and our bodies. It tells us all the things we did or said “wrong” after communicating or connecting with someone. Sometimes it projects criticism outward onto others so we can feel better about ourselves. Other times we try to suppress our inner critic through overachieving, being busy, and accumulating more and more things. Sometimes it’s a protective mechanism that’s trying to keep us focused on our self-judgments so we won’t be authentic, because, if we are, we may be rejected and not get the love and acceptance we want. But, by doing this, we’re creating even more pain and suffering because we’re disconnecting from and rejecting our own esse...

“Stop shoulding on yourself.” ~Albert Ellis I was buried under a pile of shoulds for the first thirty-two years of my life. Some of those shoulds were put on me by the adults in my life, some were heaped on because I am a middle child, but most were self-imposed thanks to cultural and peer influence. “You should get straight A’s, Jill.” “You shouldn’t worry so much, Jill.” “You should be married by now, Jill.” “You should get your Master’s degree.” I could go on forever. The pile was high, and I was slowly suffocating from the crushing weight on my soul. What’s so significant about age thirty-two? It’s when I decided to divorce my husband of eighteen months (after a big ole Catholic wedding) and ask my parents for money to pay the attorney’s retainer. This is a gal with a great childhood, MBA, and a darned good catch for a husband. From the outside, our life looked charmed and full of potential. We’d just purchased our first home, were trying to start a family (despite sufferi...

“Shame derives its power from being unspeakable.” ~ Brené Brown I felt like a hypocrite. I would tell my nutrition clients to eat a salad with vegetables, then I’d go home and scarf down an entire pizza. After guilt and shame set in, I would purge and throw it up. I think I became a nutritionist partly so I could better control my relationship with food. If I learned the secrets behind eating I could biohack my way to putting the fork down, losing weight, and finally being happy. This was back when I thought thinness equaled happiness. It’s taken me over ten years to recover from an eating disorder. Years filled with perfectionism, shame, and isolation as I untangled that my worth is not tied to my weight. I share my story in hopes that it sparks a deeper dive into your own relationship with food. Growing up I was an over-achieving, people-pleasing perfectionist. Which by itself may have been fine but, paired with a sexual trauma I experienced in early University, it was the perfe...