For some time I was stuck in the chaos of my own discontentment. As a woman of faith, that alone caused me frustration. I’m supposed to be thankful and at peace. Right? Despite an abundance of blessings, I was struggling. And are you ready for the real and very raw reasons why? (Admitting this to myself and putting this out into the world makes me uneasy and uncomfortable.)
I was in a professional place where I wasn’t the rockstar, and yet I was committed to being perfect. But the ugly truth about perfectionism is that it's simply fear. The story I told myself was that I needed to be the star, the teacher’s pet, the favorite. (See why this is uncomfortable? Because that boastful voice sounds so shamefully narcissistic.) On the other hand, I wasn’t getting that external pat on the back. I certainly wasn’t getting a trophy. I wasn’t winning. I wanted to play on a different team, or even a different sport. But what if I didn’t win there either? I was terrified of failing. I was dealing with a whole lot of internal bulls$*t, and I was tired of it.
I thought if I could work on my need for approval, my discontentment would be cured. But, it was just a symptom of something larger.
When people ask me about my “health” journey, it’s not enough to talk about food choices or exercise. It's about more than that. I'm on a mission to inspire healthy living, to help people move out of the darkness of their fears and into the light of courage, to dream about what they want out of life and relentlessly pursue their deepest desires.
My health exploration is a small part of a larger life journey, and it all started with intention. My quest is better because accountability walks alongside me. My quest is fueled by the power of decision. Please, embrace the immense importance of your thoughts, your accountability and your power of decision. I beg this of you because I know how freeing it is.
Will 2018 be the year you live your purpose and pursue your interests and passions? It doesn’t have to be in an Eat Pray Love kind of way. It can be in small ways every single day. For me, it’s inspiring people to live their healthiest life. It’s about protecting and exercising my power to choose my life’s path in everyday moments. It’s writing and sharing more of myself with the world in a way that works for me and my life. Actively creating a life that reflects my internal longings has calmed my discontentment and my need for approval. Intention — that was my cure.
“For some reason, and this just boggles my imagination, there are still just huge swaths of women that never got the memo that their lives belong to them.
And, there’s this instinct that they have that they need a permission slip from the principle’s office for anything and I feel like in a way Eat Pray Love kinda was a permission slip from the principles office. It said you are allowed to ask yourself to ask yourself some really important questions about your life. You are allowed to take accountability and ownership for your own journey. You’re allowed to ask what serves you sometimes, because I know you have been trained up to serve everyone but you are allowed to turn that on yourself and honor your own life that you were given. And, I feel like it just got to people somehow that they hadn’t quite put together that they could do that yet.”
