“Is that really how it went or just how you want to remember it?” via mindset therapy.  Earlier this year I talked about one of my relationships and how this person always seemed to remember things differently than I did—or anyone else who was there.  It drove me insane.  For a long period of time, I had a really good memory to the point it was nearly eidetic—pregnancy hormones took that ability away 6 years ago (still waiting for that to go away, doc). I would literally remember what you were wearing and where you were sitting when you told me something and I could replay the conversation in my head, verbatim.  After pregnancy I still remembered a lot but it wasn’t quite as clear but I really struggled retaining new information.  So I started holding on desperately to what I could remember.  When the pattern this person created used to come up I would become irate because what they said verged on outright lies.  We talked recently and my perspective shifted.

There was a long chunk of this person’s life where they weren’t themselves.  As we discussed that time period, more and more of my part in it was left out.  That was when it hit me: this person isn’t being malicious, they have completely blocked out this portion of their lives.  They weren’t cutting me out—they were trying to cut out what happened.  That took away the pain of believing they wanted me out of their lives but a new pain erupted.  I started to realize that as traumatic as this time was for her, it was just as traumatic for me.  You can’t negate what happened in my life because you wiped it out of yours.

I’ve had other relationships to similar effect, and the table has been reversed.  There are people who will tell me what I did and I will have no recollection whatsoever of the event.  It makes me feel like a different person because how can I have done these things and have no memory?  It doesn’t feel like it’s my life when people tell me what happened from their perspective.  It’s like watching a video of myself: I can see it’s me, but I don’t have ANY recollection of it.  Then I started thinking of my emotions surrounding the actual memories and the perceived memories: In reality, are we all living in a cycle of self-induced trauma?  Are we torturing ourselves by telling a story over and over again?  One that may not have even happened?

I’ve also learned that the conviction of my youth was often mis-spent.  I need my memory now more than ever, especially in this society, so I feel like I wasted a lot of years filling my mind with junk.  I spoke the other day of carrying the memories with me and how I always had to make room to continue to carry it with me.  I realize now that I did that, I held onto the things of my past because I was so afraid of not remembering what happened.  So, on the opposite end of the spectrum is romanticizing what happened and living in a world of imagined perfection, a world of bliss that didn’t exist—at least it may not have played out like that for those around you.    

We are so caught up in the day to day, in the race of what we are told to do that we have lost the ability to remain connected with our bodies and our souls.  We have dampened the ability to hear what our mind is truly telling us.  We live in a state of strain and emotional stress to the point that we can’t tolerate reality.  In order to stop that and get some semblance of what we need, of our bearings, we need to stop.  We need to slow down the stimulation and learn to be with ourselves.  We have great capacity to do things—we just need to listen to how it’s done. Not everything is as it seems—even if we “know” it was.  But if we learn to quiet the rush of our minds, we just might be able to connect with more of what IS. 

“It is very rare or almost impossible that an event can be negative from all points of view,” the Dalai Lama.  This was a tough one for me to swallow and it brought out my formerly natural pessimistic state, particularly the victim mentality.  I operated form a place where if something good happened to me then it meant something bad had to happen to someone else for a long time.  And it was easy to believe that the “bad” things that happened to me were some kind of punishment.  That I was meant to spend my time as a miserable human being, destined to go nowhere and I was supposed to be a doormat for others to succeed.

A ton of self-help later, I can fully acknowledge how bonkers those beliefs were.  When we look at the intricacy of the world and how we are all connected, we quickly see that things happen for a reason.  Even if we don’t get exactly what we want, we get what we need and things always turn out for the greater good.  Our perception that we are victims comes from ego.  But we do not operate in a bubble—everything has an impact so we are not always meant to get our way.  Sometimes our loss is another’s gain and vice versa.  The bottom line is that we all go through cycles and we all win and lose.  It’s how we get back up that says something.

I really started looking at the quote and I understood it was more about perspective than anything.  At the end, it says “from all points of view.”  It’s important to acknowledge that our perception tells us more than the event itself.  All events are neutral, it’s our mind that tells us how to feel about it and places judgement, telling us if it was “good” or “bad”.  Our minds are clouded with preconceived notions as well as ego and preset beliefs.  Our mind doesn’t tell us what actually happened.  In fact, it creates a story around the event that puts us in the center and it often isn’t the reality of the situation when, most of the time, it has NOTHING to do with us.  In all honesty, even when we react to other people, it doesn’t have to do with them or what they do—it has to do with what we believe about what they did. 

The universe works in mysterious ways and there is most certainly a greater plan than ours.  Not that we aren’t on track, but we are guided along that path.  Putting aside ego in favor of what is good for all can be challenging, but it is also incredibly rewarding.  We are trained to want to win in our society but the world flows much more smoothly when we all win.  The universe doesn’t give a damn who wins or loses, it cares about what is right for all involved. Learning to put aside what we feel needs to happen in order to let the divine plan unfold is where it’s at.  Nothing is personal—we are just trained to believe it is.  So accept what is and work on training your mind to operate on behalf of something bigger than yourself because that is when you find your place in the story.

“Consider carefully: what prevents you from living the way you want to live your life?” the Dalai Lama.  Yesterday’s conversation touched on the gap between where we are and where we want to be.  This also requires a lot of honesty because you are not only evaluating your current circumstances, you’re evaluating how you ended up there.  It is never easy to acknowledge that what we do keeps us stuck.  Our imaginations take us through so many possibilities that sometimes we believe we are operating from a place that will get us where we want to be when we are really just expanding the circle and not moving from the track.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t external circumstances that stop us.  Challenges and obstacles always arise—that is just a natural part of life.  But how we deal with them and how we learn to overcome them is what moves us forward.  Sometimes the universe isn’t actually trying to stop us, rather it is trying to build the skills we need to get to the next level.  It may also be redirecting us to where we need to go.  The universe is all too willing to work with us and help us get where we want to be—we just have to see it that way.

Shifting our mindset from victim to creator liberates us to move forward.  When we feel victimized or like everything is conspiring against us, it’s difficult to see the opportunities.  When we see that everything is happening FOR us, it is easier to learn the lesson.  It’s also a matter of understanding that not everything is meant for us.  While we are able to create the life we want, not all doors are for us.  I’ve tried living multiple lives at the same time.  I wanted to bring in money through work, I wanted to have my own work, I wanted to spend time with my family.  And no matter what I was doing, I always wanted to be doing something else.  My mind scattered and I got scattered results.  I also never stayed in the moment.  I had to learn that I could do all of those things, but I couldn’t do them all at once.  Clarity and purpose was key.

The other elephant in the room we need to acknowledge is our obsession with comfort.  I’m SO guilty of this.  I love being comfortable and I love having a perceived amount of security in my life.  As a whole, we want to be secure and we have a tendency to equate security with things.  The more we have, the safer we are.  I certainly love building my little nest and having all of my trinkets and things around me.  But all it ended up doing was overwhelming me and taking up space.  And anytime I had to move or change, I carried it with me.  It became a burden rather than a blessing.  What’s more is that I started looking for ways to continue to accommodate what I always had rather than letting them go.  So not only was I carrying the weight of my entire life (and keeping it prime in my life because I had to make sure there was room for it) I wouldn’t try to move forward unless I could take it with me.  Let me tell you—put down the weight. 

We all say we want something different but we have to be willing to do something different.  Words are great but the action has to match the intention to get anywhere.  We have to understand that we have a say in where we go and the universe wants us to get there.  Most of our purpose on this Earth is growth and evolution.  It’s a matter of us deciding to let go of what we’ve held on to in order to get to that next level.  We are not victims—we are intentional beings and everything we want is on the other side of what we are told to want.  It’s on the other side of what we carry.  It’s on the other side of the fears.  The good news is, it is all possible.  In fact it’s all probable.  We just have to be ready for it. 

“To conquer oneself is a greater victory than to conquer thousands in a battle,” the Dalai Lama.  Yesterday I spoke of the loneliness of being on top, of spending our lives trying to prove we are the best.  There is often no one to join you and celebrate with you when you spend your time demonstrating you’re more proficient or more powerful than them. Knowing who you are and how to share those gifts is far more rewarding than climbing to the top alone.  When you behave as if you know it all, no one is there to help you.

It takes an incredible amount of resilience and determination to pull yourself out of the rat race and learn to value yourself internally rather than externally.  When you learn to master yourself you see you are capable of anything.  You also acknowledge that there is no need to prove anything.  When we stop trying to prove our worth and start using our inherent gifts, the world changes.  We naturally start seeing the gifts in others and may even learn how our gifts fit together to do something even more powerful.

All of this starts with our individual mindset.  How are you viewing yourself?  When you wake up are you happy with what you see in the mirror?  I’m not talking about the physical portion, I’m talking about seeing yourself looking back and being happy with the type of person you are.  Are you operating from integrity?  Do you have clear boundaries around what you are and aren’t willing to do?  Are you operating in a state of love?  When times are tough, are you battling yourself or are you trying to win?  Are you the person you want to be?  If you aren’t that person, or if you don’t recognize yourself anymore, then it’s time to look at the gap.  Who ARE you and who do you WANT to be?

I’ve spoken of radical honesty many times.  It’s something I’m still getting used to because I told myself a million lies a day—the habit is hard to break.  Everything from believing I was a bad person and the universe was punishing me to feeling like I would never get out of my current situation, like I deserved to be miserable.  I also went through phases where I believed I did nothing wrong and that I was simply a victim of circumstance.  I think that was the hardest mindset to break because that is a generational thing in my family.  I spent so many years educating myself in mainstream nonsense, regurgitating “facts” (and some real facts too) that I learned to operate from a perceived infallible mindset.  When you know everything you learn nothing and it kept me stuck.  I had to acknowledge that it was my ego and the habit that was keeping me locked in place—not the universe.  So I started asking different questions.  I started asking myself, “Is this really true?” “Is there room for another side to this?”

The funny thing is on a subconscious level I knew that I wasn’t always right and I was ALWAYS quick to acknowledge if I was wrong.  But when it came to my marriage and raising my son, I started to ask if that was even who I wanted to be.  I didn’t want to teach my kid that the important thing was to be right—I wanted to teach him how to get to the right answer.  I didn’t want my husband to be a child that needed correcting—I wanted us to get to the right answer together.  See, being right is nice and all, but there comes a point when you realize that you need people.  It isn’t necessarily about conquering them or even yourself—it’s about conquering the demons we carry and the whispers we hear every day that keep us in our perceived safety.

So when you recognize the gaps between where you are and where you want to be, identify where that is coming from.  Is it a real thing?  If so, what can you do to overcome it?  Is it something in your head?  If so, what are you going to start telling yourself in its place?  Is it a generational belief passed down? If so, what do you want to learn instead and how do you want to break the habit?  The bottom line is opening your mind to the possibility of your power and your potential.  Once you recognize that in yourself, there is no better feeling.  There is no need to prove—your actions speak for themselves.         

“The goal is not to be better than the other man, but your previous self,” the Dalai Lama.  Since I was a child, I’ve compared myself to other people.  Part of that is human nature.  We see what other people do and we mirror that behavior to make it work and fit in.  Our society loses the meaning of that type of comparison when we start to rank each other by who can do it better.  We praise those who appear to succeed by having more or doing more.  For me it started off simply with grades and doing better than my classmates at school.  Then it evolved in choosing college and how well I did on tests.  Then it evolved into work and who I could outperform at my jobs and how quickly I could learn new skills and attain them.  We do things to stand out—by doing the same but better.  And we quickly lose ourselves in that process. 

It wasn’t until I saw how dysfunctional my friendships and other relationships were that I really began to question that behavior.  Why was I trying to be better than people I loved?  Why was I trying to prove I could do better than the people who supported me?  Because I was looking for some assigned value of worth by those witnessing my ability.  I wanted to be better and the best at everything I did.  Quite frankly, I wanted to prove I could do it all and that I wouldn’t need anyone.  Being smaller and physically weaker in many ways, I needed to show the world that I was capable and that, even though I was short, I had power.

All that did was leave me with the medals and no trace of friends who had once supported my efforts.  While I felt an initial surge of pride that I could be successful, I felt empty in the end.  When you try to prove you’re better than everyone without bringing any real support yourself, you’re left alone.  And it was lonely.  It was unfulfilling because I would only push myself far enough to get ahead of the next person, leaving them behind.  I never followed through on anything as long as I could say I did it better than someone.  Ironically, I never felt better than anyone.  It was a hollow sort of pride in feeble accomplishments.

It wasn’t until I started looking at the life around me, filled with accolades from those I thought I needed, but empty of any real connection that I saw how disconnected I was from myself.  Everything I did was for external validation and not the expression of who I really was.  Quite frankly I saw what a jerk I was and I knew the destruction of many valuable relationships was the result of my own actions, nothing more.  It wasn’t jealousy from other people—they were annoyed with someone trying to one up them.  How can you relate to someone always trying to surpass you?   You can’t.  I couldn’t even relate to myself anymore.

Becoming the best version of ourselves means letting go of the need to win and learning to develop what we already have inside of us.  It means honing what we are naturally called to do and using that to serve others.  It isn’t about winning or being greater, it is about being great with what we do.  The truth is, there will always be someone better, stronger, faster, smarter, more beautiful than we are and if we measure ourselves by that hollow benchmark, we will spend our lives proving that we can achieve their goals before our own.  I had no clue who I was. 

I had to let go of the idea that I needed to find worth outside of myself.  Then I needed to sit with myself and really discover who I was/am.  Discover my abilities and focus on what that meant to other people.  I learned that I have an adept ear and a good eye to help people clear the bullshit they tell themselves in order to navigate to the next level.  I no longer wanted to show people I could do what they wanted to do, I wanted to help them do what they wanted to do.  I no longer wanted to prove I was capable, I wanted to show people they were capable as well.   

Using my gift to unravel the stories people tell themselves is my calling.  Breaking patterns and learning to trust that we will be taken care of is my purpose.  Giving people the tools to define themselves and learning how to use them to cultivate their skills is my passion.  The one good thing about being a former arrogant know-it-all is that I proved to myself that anything can be done with focus, determination, clarity, and hard work.  Truly.  If you believe you can do it, you can.  Sometimes it’s messy getting there, but letting go of the idea that you need to be better than someone else drops the weight and takes you exactly to the height you need to be.  So look at yourself and ask what you can do better, not to be number one, but to make everyone their own number one.  Watch the world flourish when we all share our gifts.

Today I am grateful for healing relationships.  I had a long talk with my sister yesterday and, without even trying, managed to clear up some misconceptions I had about how she operated.  We were speaking of individual and shared traumas (which is hard enough to deal with let alone with family) and we were discussing a really dark period in our lives when the light bulb went on that none of the behavior is intentional.  I had been operating under the belief that the pain was so great she created something else when in reality she completely made herself forget—so she tried to fill it in as best she could.  For a long time it felt calculated when, in reality, it was chemical.  Knowing that makes it possible and easier to move forward.

Today I am grateful for clear self-delineation. I spent most of last night in a panic attack.  Between the conversation rehashing a lot of painful stuff, setting a boundary regarding my son, having a food cheat day, and not being exactly where I wanted to be, my world went a little off kilter yesterday—and I paid for it.  I know I can no longer allow emotions to run my decisions because I pay for it every time.  I may have been able to recover from it previously, but my body and mind take longer to recover now.  Plus they are more reactive to it in the first place—maybe sensitive is a better word.  As I continue to build the boundaries and callouses necessary to move forward, I need to take it in moderation.  Last weekend I knew I overindulged with gusto, this weekend it was an emotional over indulgence—and neither left me feeling well.  I know my boundaries and I have to stick with them.

Today I am grateful for clearer perspective moving forward.  Side note, it will never cease to amaze me that when you think you have dealt with a certain facet of your personality that the universe will nearly immediately deliver something to say, “Oh yeah? You sure about that?”  Ok, so I have never hidden the dysfunction in my upbringing.  Specifically my co-dependency on my parents that has followed me to adulthood.  My parents have helped me with so much which I am so appreciative of, but it hindered my growth as much as the expectation of perfection.  In fact they would find ways to aide in perfecting things around me.  It never dawned on me how I used my physical limitations as a crutch because I was so determined to do things on my own, but I used it as a crutch whenever it came to something not working right or to keep unhealthy relationships because I was afraid no one really liked me.  It also never dawned on me how people can have different relationships.  I know this is SO selfish, but I had deemed my siblings relationships with my parents as almost sub-par, like they weren’t as close to our parents as I was.  Granted it was all subconscious and I never outright thought that, recognizing how my siblings behave with my parents as a healthy function of individuality made me see how sick I was/am.  I learned early on to behave exactly as my parents wanted and I thought that was normal.  Now I see how defining self and being who you are from an early age is vital—you won’t have to do this crap at middle age.

Today I am grateful to let go.  I thought I had been doing a pretty good job going with the flow and I thought I had been doing an even better job of recognizing when I wasn’t.  Sometimes it takes a different, outside perspective to show you just how deep that rabbit hole goes.  I still placed a lot of blame externally, both for who I am and for my reactions.  I am still placing a lot of external focus on perfection.  The armor I thought I broke through had merely been cracked and I have a lot of work left to do.  For all of the things I believed I was doing right, I still have many layers to break through.  There is still a mountain of accountability I need to climb—I was nowhere near the summit.  As someone striving to be an example of healing and moving forward, I believed I was further along that road—now I see I’m merely beginning. 

Today I am grateful to drop expectation.  Following letting go, I now see that I still held onto the outcome when it came to my healing.  I guess I never examined or expected to have to go this deep because I initially thought my trauma came from a specific set of circumstances.  It turns out those circumstances were only the beginning.  Now I look at the self-induced trauma and allow myself to come back to reality which is my failure to accept accountability.  I am more than proficient in admitting when I am wrong and I am proud that I have embraced my humanity to know that is normal.  But I see how I have, yet again, only taken the briefest of steps toward where I want to be.  I’ve been so afraid of letting go of the reins and so focused on how I want things to be that I have failed to take into account the full story of how I got here and what it will take to get where I want to go.  I practiced that radical honesty only so far.  Now as I have reached another level, I have to take in a new level of honesty and accountability. I have to let go of the outcome I envisioned and be open to what is really coming my way.

Today I am grateful to acknowledge fear.  As I sink deeper into this journey, I see my relationships changing.  It almost feels like an out of body experience as I see who I want to be and how I’m not fully aligned with that.  I see how I still try to control everything including my son’s behavior and I admit now I have been afraid of losing his love.  I’ve been afraid of losing everyone’s love.  I’ve been afraid of being alone and not accepted.  By controlling the outcome, I merely pushed them away faster.  So now I ask what I can’t accept about myself.  I create space to spend time doing what I love, not in an effort to escape, but to learn and do the work of becoming.  It means letting go of everything I know, and I am terrified.  I know embracing the unknown will take me where I need to be, but I’m afraid of losing what I know.  But I know it is time.  This is the precipice; I can either dance around it, pretending that is enough, or I can jump with humor and grace and joy, believing the ladder will appear (or my wings).   

Today I am grateful to be exactly where I am.  I’ve spent so much of my life out of my own body, locked in my head, planning for things that never happened and coming behind the surprises of life.  But I am here.  In this moment, I am breathing, I have food, water, clothes, a house, an amazing family, the means to support us, a burgeoning business, and the ability to call the shots in most of what happens next in my life.  That is nothing to sneeze at.  There will always be struggles but keeping them in perspective is key.  This life is as hard as you make it.  I’m blessed and I am grateful to be able to share that with those around me.  Everything I’ve been through, especially over the last 18 months, has been a blessing.  An awakening.  And every painful veil that is lifted brings me closer to where I need to be.  For now, I’m taking it in and loving where I’m at.  Life is good.

Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead.

“If they say you are too much maybe they’re not enough”—unknown.  People equate evolution and leveling up as a threat.  When they see others at a different level, especially when there was a common ground before, they automatically face all of their fears of being left behind and their insecurities of whether or not they can do the same thing.  I’m incredibly guilty of this.  The bitter voice of jealousy often rang through my mind when I saw people close to me succeeding in ways that I believed I should be succeeding.  I felt like they were too much for me, like I wasn’t good enough. I kept quiet and swallowed any potential I had because I wasn’t where they were at and didn’t believe that I could get there.

The funny thing is, I’ve always had a voice.  I always had something to say and I often got loud about it.  But I didn’t always monitor the content of what I said.  I was always told how loud I was and how I needed to rein it in.  As a child, I was even called a bimbo because I still wanted to have fun.  So I made sure to always appear extra studious and serious and focused.  But that wasn’t mean either.  It hurt me at first, taking in the judgements of others.  I had to learn to stop internalizing it.  I had to learn to stop adjusting the quality or volume of my voice and learn to work on the content of what I was saying.  Two very different things.

There are some people who will be offended by what we do or say no matter what.  And honestly, if we spent our days tailoring our conversations to each and every single person we met we’d be wasting a lot of time and nothing of any value would be shared regardless.  We lose the message when we focus on making it palatable for everyone instead of getting to the root of what we are trying to say.  And, really, it doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t like what we have to say because an opinion doesn’t change the facts of what we share.  Often they wish they had the courage to say what you’re saying. 

Keep sharing your message because you wouldn’t have it if you weren’t meant to share it.  While some people may think it’s too much, it will be just enough for others and it will inspire them to go to the next level as well.  We aren’t meant to be the same flavor for everyone—the world is full of lots of colors and don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you’re meant to stay one shade.  We are here for a reason and that is to be completely who we are.  The world needs you, just as you are.    

One of my favorite authors began a conversation about love and disagreeing with someone’s lifestyle.  She said that you can’t love her if you disagree with what she does.  The whole context she used is that who we are is tied into our lifestyle so if we disagree with what someone does then we don’t love them.  I honestly felt angry when I heard this at first because I didn’t see how she tied our actions so entirely to our definition of who we are.  I think there needs to be a better delineation between lifestyle/actions and who we are. 

Our lifestyle is comprised of the things we say and do and what we make of our experiences.  WHO WE ARE may determine what we do, that is true, but what we do isn’t always so deeply tied to our identity.  We don’t have to define people by their actions even if it may be an indicator of who they are.  For example, I can’t stand that my son talks back.  He is really sassy and he likes to do things that could physically hurt him.  I hate that he does this—but that isn’t who he is.  Who he is, is a curious, energetic, intelligent four year old boy exploring boundaries and limits.  I love HIM.  The fact that he doesn’t want to listen to me at the moment doesn’t make him a terrible person—a momentary tantrum is not who he IS– nor does the fact that I want him to do what he’s told.  We are learning together.

And that is the key.  When someone we love does something we don’t like that doesn’t mean we have to hate that person, rather we need to see it as a learning experience—for everyone involved.  I think there is an inherent fear in losing that person because they are doing something we don’t normally associate with them.  People change, they evolve, and as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, evolution is both necessary and scary.  We have to understand that one person’s beliefs don’t infringe on our rights (in most cases). Life isn’t about either/or it’s about the AND.  We can disagree AND still love each other.

At the end of the day, I understood what this author was trying to get at.  She had spent so many years living in a way that ultimately wasn’t her.  So when she expressed herself and felt rejection, she equated that with danger and being cut out. I’m not saying that doesn’t happen—people can be cruel and make hurtful decisions because they don’t understand change.  But we need to understand that some change takes a moment to grasp for other people as well.  It is never our job to dim the light of who we are in order to be accepted, but it is our job to understand that when we make changes in our lives, other people may not understand right away.  All we can do is stand fast in who we are and create the space for people to get on board when they are ready.  Just because they aren’t there now doesn’t mean they won’t be.  And if someone doesn’t support a change you’re making, that isn’t a reason to not honor who you are.  Stay strong and keep going. 

“Every time we level up, we have to readjust our boundaries.  What was ok before no longer works.  The people in our lives, our self-care rituals and the environments and situations we engage with must all adjust and meet our new vibrational frequency in order to be sustained,”  Via the third eye heals.  Put simply, as we change our mindset, we learn that what we used to think and feel and accept in our lives no longer works.  Learning to navigate the waters out of what was once ok can feel scary at first because we haven’t fully developed our sense of worth.  It’s a new environment and any move we make is followed by a period of adjustment.

It’s oh so tempting to fall back onto the familiar and what we know, but our soul clearly tells us it is time to move forward. This is how it’s meant to be.  We are meant to explore all the levels of this world and bring forward everything we were gifted in order to share our greatness.  Advancing ourselves advances those around us.  Evolution is a necessary part of life and that means establishing new definitions of what is acceptable and what isn’t.  And here is the key part: those boundaries apply to ourselves as well.

The hardest part of evolution is learning to match our actions with our beliefs.  Learning boundaries means getting serious about what we want and then adapting to what works for that new mindset or new lifestyle.  If we say we want to get healthy, then eating fast food multiple times a week isn’t going to get us there.  While it’s a convenient option, it isn’t what works for attaining health so we have to set the boundary for ourselves and learn that we need to meal prep and make better choices for ourselves. 

Once we are comfortable with our new self-imposed boundaries, then the boundaries we set with those around us at work, at home, or even passing by in the street become easier.  At least they flow more naturally.  But it takes practice and determination.  If we are meant to move forward in our lives (and I know in my heart that we are all meant to move forward) then it is necessary to create an environment in which we can do that.  Again, it isn’t always comfortable and it can quite often be scary.  If our work environment is no longer conducive to the person we are becoming then we have to make the choice to sacrifice a level of security in order to do what we are meant to do.

I made a decision several months back to focus on self-care.  My body has been through a lot this year and I am still putting it through the wringer even though I know I need to be better about it.  I KNOW how important it is to prioritize my self-care and I’m still struggling to make it a priority.  During our recent move, my body struggled with the labor of it but it adapted so well, I know that it’s craving that type of movement.  The first steps we take are always the hardest but it is so worth it.  The things we lose always pale in comparison to what we get for taking the leap.  The journey forward, the journey up, can feel arduous but it will always feel guided.  The things we need always find us; it’s up to us to define what we take into our lives.  Choose to move forward and don’t EVER feel guilty setting a clear boundary on what works for you.