Sometimes we are our very own worst critics.  We have a picture painted in our heads of how life should turn out and it’s far too hard on ourselves.  So what if we don’t have a picture perfect life by the time we set for ourselves or if ever?  The idea of a perfect life is an illusion.  It’s an unfair expectation that we place on ourselves.

We set ourselves up to think that we should be doing everything perfect in life, so when it’s not, we think we’re not doing everything right.  Life doesn’t always pan out the way we planned but it doesn’t mean that we’re “screw ups” it just means we’re taking an alternate path.  We set ourselves up to fail with impossible standards, and that’s the key.  When we stop expecting something impossible we realize we’re doing much better than we first thought.

Our society tells us that we need to get married, have kids, get an education, buy a house with a white fence and YOU DONT HAVE TO! We live in an amazing time when we can carve out our own path and live our own life that we design to be whatever we want.  But don’t measure yourself based on that idea, measure yourself based on your own happiness, measure yourself based on you!

I promise you are doing so much better than you think!  Have a little faith, don’t compare your beginning to someone’s middle.  The world of should makes us think we are doing far worse than we actually are. You’ve got this and you are doing so good!

I remember the day the white envelope was set in front of me.  The envelope that ended my career of over a decade at a major theme park.  I felt so lost, not only had I been injured (pain I still struggle with to this day) but then I also was required to separate from the company to get treatment paid for since it “wasn’t their fault.”

To say I felt lost was an understatement, what comes next?  What do I do when this is all I really know and now I’m in insane physical pain.  This was a massive curveball I newer saw coming, but this is the moment we can make a choice.

This was the universe telling me I needed to be something different, something more but it’s not always that easy.  Those times when it literally feels like your world has come crashing down on you remember it isn’t, and you’ve got this.

One of the very first things I recommend is really focus on the things that you love, these will always lead you to what’s next.  You may not always see the clear path of what’s next but focusing on the things you love will lead you there.  When the pain ended my career I focused on my health, fashion and running a business.  Out of it I realized what I was good at and what actually brought me joy!

Redifining what found me joy was the key to no longer feeling like the world was going to crash in on me anymore.  Suddenly it no longer felt like I was trying to find my footing anymore.  I may not have all the answers still (but do we ever?) but I no longer feel like I’m drowning.

Reading became a really important part of my daily routine.  Jen Sincero’s “You Are a Bad Ass” became one of my favorite reads.  She is so empowering that no matter what, roll up those sleeves do the work and make your life happen for you.  The right pieces will always come to you if you keep putting in the work.  I have a big belief in leap and the net shall appear.  The mindset change really made shifts for me and out pieces in front of me I could have never imagined!

In reading her book so many things were set in my path to change my life financially and give me new focus in my life.  I was making more money than I had ever made in a job I didn’t mind that gave me the time and energy to focus on my “what’s next.”

Something you hear me talk about a lot is taking time for meditation.  I can’t stress the importance of this enough, even if it’s three times a week.  The time to quiet you mind and just be is amazing for your nerves, giving better focus and just taking time for you.  This doesn’t look like Rifiki from Lion King.  This is simply sitting or laying comfortably while quieting your mind or using a guided meditation (there’s some amazing ones on YouTube, feel free to message me for recommendations) to take some time for you.

Some times it feels like the floor has opened up and the world has swallowed you whole with no idea where to go or what’s next.  It happens and it’s ok!  Life doesn’t always turn out the way we want, things don’t go the way we plan and we get twists and turns.  You’ve got this! You are bigger than this, you are  stronger than this and now you have some tools to conquer it!

I hope these help you find your footing again!

So this week I worked an event that was like any other corporate event. It literally was a sizeable event like any other.  They all eventually blend together, this one they threw around a ton of money but really the same people and the same entertainment.

Throughout the night hundreds of people flowed in and out taking photos and generally having a great time (some maybe a a little too good of a time).

One woman truly struck me in a very tragic way.  She was a beautiful older woman, I would say in her mid to late 50s and as she handed her phone to the male with her she started some of the saddest self deprecating talk I’ve heard in a long time.  “Don’t take the picture from there my arms are too fat,” “only from the knees up because they are so ugly” and on and on it went.  She took over a dozen pictures criticizing the way she looked with “flaws” that frankly didn’t exist.  She did not have fat arms or ugly knees or a giant stomach, she was a beautiful lean woman who tore herself to shreds and broke my heart.

I looked her square in the face and said “mama you are beautiful and it is breaking my heart the way you are talking about yourself, please tell me you see how beautiful you are” she looked at me like I had a 3rd eye growing out of my forehead and proceeded to tear herself apart some more.

The things we tell ourselves can be the most toxic of all.  They run on repeat in our minds all day.  The daily things we tell ourselves are the most powerful of all! We need to reprogram these first to make ourselves that much more powerful against all of the negative messages the world throws at us.  Changing the way the way the world sees us can start from within, when we start loving ourselves first then the world has no choice but to follow suit.

Next time before you say things about yourself think how it would feel if someone else said them to you first, or if someone small was to have those ideas ingrained in them at an impressionable age.  Changing the conversation starts with us first!

This has been one of those weeks I have been focusing a lot on what I am grateful for.  It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the social media rose-colored image that we all paint for the world to see.

In this previous post I talked about how every morning I focused on the things I am the most grateful for.  This practice has changed how I see everyday.

I sit here surrounded by my rescue babies, with Diana just having gotten her cone off after a serious scare really deeply thinking.  If we spend too much time in the little boxes in our hands we suck the joy out of our everyday lives.  How often do you go on Instagram and see the perfect life of someone “ughh Susan has her 3 kids and is married and got her 3rd promotion and her life is perfect why am I such a failure?”  When in reality Susan is on the verge of a breakdown, hates her job and is up to her eyeballs in debt.  She has us all fooled doesn’t she?  I guarantee she’s looking at the single girl in her entry-level job jealous of her freedom and lack of responsibility.

Social media can lift us up or tear us down.  It’s totally up to us how we choose to interpret what we see.  The toxic view of perfection we want everyone to see through social media is slowly driving us all insane!

Lets all take a serious step back and really examine what’s reality on social media and what’s the rose colored reality that’s being painted for us.  It’s the reality we paint not actual reality.

This week I read an article that hit so incredibly close to home.  I remember when the chain of events that spiraled simultaneously to my own dark spiral of disordered eating.  I cried for the first time in a long time.  I broke down and ugly cried for the pain that I went through and the pain that so many have and are still going through.

She was told to look more like the ‘Little Mermaid.’ Years later, she still weighs food

A week ago I read a status on Facebook that broke my heart.  A former colleague wrote how since being cast at a park she spent every day obsessed with her weight.  She goes to boot camp, thinks about everything she eats and what she weighs EVERY SINGLE DAY.   The very first comment was “I struggle with the same thing… every day. It may not be told to my face but it’s an insecurity I feel every single day.
I wish I knew what we could do to not let it get to us…”

I read the threads over 300 comments long of young women talking about starving themselves to fit into a smaller and smaller dress with zero clue how tiny they actually got.  None of us did or in the moment do.  This is a thread full of women talking about how they starved themselves, how they were never thin enough and how they have a warped sense of body image.  The phrase “I studied my body like it was a damn experiment” hit me really hard, it’s a habit that’s hard to break still to this day!

The tiny meals described, the huge amounts of exercise, and the horrific picking apart of bodies that were already JUST FINE!   Only eating half a salad if anything while doing high amounts of physical activity in the Florida sun.

“I think all of us secretly had issues we hoped no one would notice”

“We lived in a world of silent competition of who can wear the smallest costume. So many conversations circled around the size costume we fit into, how many brackets on our skirt we needed, or how our shoulders couldn’t hold up the bodice. Bragging rights to who could fit the smallest size!  I was in no way concerned with my body (size 4) until someone said something stupid that made me question my body. Desperate to succeed, I lived on laxatives, coffee, cigarettes and diet Red Bull after that – achieved a size 0.”

A dress size doesn’t define anyone’s worth, a job doesn’t define anyone’s worth.  Read those comments carefully, these women sacrificed everything for the “dream” of being a princess and are still paying the price mentally and physically, so many of us still are!

What are we feeding to our children and what example are we setting with this?  How can we teach and do better?  This is my challenge to you!