Happy And Healthy Lifestyle

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.” ~Pema Chadron The hardest part of hearing the words, “I’m sorry, but you have cancer” at the age of thirty was knowing I had to tell my mother and my husband. Why? Not because I was afraid of their reaction, although it would be especially heightened since my father had died of cancer three years prior, but because I was going to take on a role I had never experienced before: a patient. For me, being a patient equaled being dependent. Someone who was needy and required others to change their lives to accommodate them. That wasn’t me at all. I was a people-pleaser. A self-sacrificer. An empath who could feel the emotions of my family members and worked hard to avoid adding to their stress.  I spent my entire life making things easier for those around me. I never complained. I didn’t ask for anything. I willingly gave up my desires to make other people happy. I built my life around the premise that I could han...

“Thoughts fuel emotions. If you don’t like what you’re feeling, step back and examine what you’re thinking. Pain is inevitable, but you’ll suffer a lot less if you disengage from your thoughts.” ~Lori Deschene The warm droplets from the shower are bouncing off my skin. I could be relishing in the warmth. I could be exhilarated by the cleansing power of this precious water. Instead, I am entranced by an argument. I’m animated and tense. Gesticulating wildly and frowning. In the shower. There’s no one else there. I’m not shouting or even speaking out loud. This is all happening in my mind. Over and over, I rehash my position. Imagining my opponent’s rebuttal and conjuring up another defense. Each time I hone my argument feeling more certain that this is the winning strategy. Finally, I realize I’ve been in the shower for far too long. So I step out and start my day, barely noticing what had just happened. I’m driving to the shops. I could be singing along to my favorite tunes or...

“Hardships often prepare ordinary people for an extraordinary destiny.” ~C.S. Lewis I was talking to a mentor of mine several months ago, and they cut me off midsentence and said, “Zach, it sounds like you’re trying to be extraordinary. How about you just work at being ordinary?” I paused then promptly broke into tears. Yep. Tears. Not ashamed to admit that. Tears because the meat of the conversation was about self-worth and being enough. In that moment my deepest childhood wound was tapped into, and ordinary sounded horrible to me. Who wants to be ordinary? Not this guy. My mentor asked what was coming up for me, and I said my mom. Let me explain. My mom was a celebrity. She was an Emmy award winning actress that was on the cover of TV Guide, and she dated one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. She died tragically of cancer when I was three-and-a-half years old. One day she was there, the next she was gone. I interpreted her death the only way I knew how: I made up a story to make...

“I used to dislike being sensitive. I thought it made me weak. But take away that single trait, and you take away the very essence of who I am.” ~Caitlin Japa “You’re making people uncomfortable,” my mother would say. “Stop being so sensitive,” she would then quip. I have always been sensitive for as long as I can remember. Now I understand there’s a name for it: highly sensitive person (HSP). The scientific term is sensory processing sensitivity (SPS). As it turns out, 15-20 percent of the population has this trait. As a highly sensitive person, my nervous system filters less information. I take in more from my environment. It’s theorized this can often be a survival mechanism set up during early developmental years—particularly if the environment the baby is in does not feel safe. Often, this can be due to the emotional state of the parents, especially if they exhibit emotional unpredictability or volatility. This isn’t always the case, but it’s very common. It was the case f...

“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.” ~William Arthur Ward I live in the windiest city in the world—Wellington, New Zealand. Perched between the North and South Island, this colorful little city gets hammered by wind. The winds from the south bring cold, and the winds from the northwest seem to blow forever. My body is regularly under assault. But amid all that blustering lies the answer to one of life’s great questions: How do we feel at home in with wind? Or, more, how do we live with the hard things that blow our way? This research can shed some light. The Biosphere 2 was a scientific experiment in the Arizona desert conducted in the eighties and nineties. A vast (and I mean massive) glass dome housed flora and fauna in a perfectly controlled environment. It held all of nature: trees, wetlands, deserts, rainforests. Animals, plants and people co-existed in what scientists’ thought was the perfect, optimal envi...

“Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different.” ~ Oprah Winfrey When I was a little girl, I made many wishes. At first, I believed all of my wishes would come true, just like in the fairy tales my mother read to me before bed. However, slowly but surely, life changed my attitude, stole my optimism, and I stopped wishing. My parents fought a lot, and their unhappiness made me believe that I was not good enough. Poverty replaced my birthday wishes with socks, the bible, and sheets for my bed. When my parents divorced, my father abandoned me and I was sure I was broken and unworthy; after all, I believed that if a father could leave his own child, then it must be my fault. My mother’s hurts turned into bitterness. Criticism, disappointment, and blame replaced her nurturing voice that used to calm my fears. The few wishes I held onto faded into the fog of confusion, fear, self-hatred, and catastrophe. Instead of wishes, I believed that bad things woul...

“Lean into the discomfort of the work.” ~ Brené Brown Anxiety was the core of my existence for decades. When I look back at my life over that time, what comes to mind first is the constant tension in my chest, a knotted stomach, and a lump in my throat. From the outside, my life looked great. I was college-educated, had a good job, was in a relationship; I lived in a nice place, had a decent car, and enough money to buy organic food and a gym membership. But I was miserable. Not only was I anxious all the time, worrying that people would judge me , I felt like I couldn’t feel happiness. Even when the situation around me was a happy one—a surprise birthday party for me, getting gifts on Christmas, a lazy Sunday morning with nothing to do but enjoy a nice cup of coffee, or a hilarious scene in a comedy movie—true happiness never seemed to surface. Those were all my favorite things, but I couldn’t feel the happiness in my chest and my gut. I felt like I could only intellectualiz...