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be THAT girl who inspires…

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And then she found her hero staring right back at her in her reflection…

Tj

As I reflect on my year there are a few lessons that I have learned that I want to share with all of you. But before I begin, let’s chat about what your word is for 2022??

2019 my word was Self. This was my year to be selfish and to begin focusing on ME. We have all heard the quote, “you can’t pour from an empty cup”, but do we all really listen to that? Nope. We allow others’ needs to come before our own and it’s exhausting. In 2019, I had a lot of self-growth, but this was not easy at all. The guilt I felt daily was hard but I realized that I needed to make a change so I could show up better in all areas of my life.

2020 my word was Intention. I made it a goal to make decisions based more on willful direction. I became more mindful of my decisions. I intentionally created habits, learned to plan more, and became more intentional with my time. This was not an easy year, we can all attest to that. It was dark, it was hard, it brought on anxiety that a lot of us didn’t know how to deal with. It was also a year where I have never been more grateful for my health and my family time. A year that I realized that I needed to live in the moment and let go of the past.

2021 my word was Action. This past year has been a huge year of growth for me and it never would’ve been that way had I not taken action. Here are a few things I completed this year…

This year I successfully completed the 75Hard; a challenge that I had wanted to do for quite awhile. The best part, I was able to do it with my hubby and we crushed it together. That experience gave me the confidence that I can do whatever I put my mind and soul into.

I promoted to District Manager in my Arbonne business! Who knew sharing my love for the products would lead to me actually creating a new business opportunity for myself. I have been part of this company for years as a customer but it wasn’t until early this year when I went all in using the nutrition products during the 75HARD challenge that I made the decision to start working this business. These products have truly made such a difference in my life and I will continue to share what works for me. It feels so good to see other people’s health thrive after trying our products.

I also completed my Health & Life Coach Certification! Something I had been wanting to do for a couple of years but was too afraid to do it because I was nervous about failing the exams. Test anxiety is a thing. LOL! Well, I can say that I did very well on the exams and I passed with flying colours. I also registered for my Personal Training Certification that I will be starting in January!

Lessons I have learned this year…

  1. Your Health is Your Wealth. We have one body to carry us through this life. Why not do everything we can to keep it in tip top shape! Most of us own a vehicle. Would you put oil in the gas tank? No because we know that it will not run properly! Plus, we can purchase a new car if we ruin the one we have. We can’t just go and purchase a new body, so treat it like the precious Queen it is. We are all going to face challenges in our lives, why not be ready to face them both physically and mentally.
  2. Slow the hell down. If nothing else, the last 2 years have taught me that I need to live in the moment and slow down. Life is not a race that we win. What happens at the end if we haven’t cherished the moments in between. If you are living a life of competition, you are going to miss out on all the good stuff.
  3. Connection is a must. We are built for connection. We need connection. This has been huge for me in my life. Connecting with other’s who push me to be better has kept me going. I appreciate the friendships that I have so much. But the most important relationship I have is with myself. Put yourself first. Fall in love with the person that you are and the person you are becoming.
  4. Love people for who they are and where they are at. No one is perfect. No one is going always agree with one another’s choices but loving them and accepting them allows them to feel seen and that’s what we all want.
  5. You do You. Our family motto for this year. I couldn’t love this more.

I would say that 2021 has definitely been a year of good Action and I am not about to stop. I will be launching my Coaching business this year so stay tuned for that! This year is going to be my year to INSPIRE. Inspire other’s to get healthier, to get stronger, and to realize that they are worthy of what they want. It’s time to focus on YOU because you matter. I want to Thank ALL of you who inspire me Every. Single. Day. Bring on 2022 and let’s get inspired together.

I’d love to hear what your word is for 2022 and some lessons you’ve learned in 2021!

be THAT girl who challenges her choices…

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“You owe it to yourself to challenge your choices”

Tj

Have you ever been in the middle of doing something and you start to wonder why you chose to do it? I was working on an assignment from a class I was taking and I had this thought…..why haven’t I been questioning EVERYTHING??? Why haven’t I been questioning my choices throughout my life? We all start out curious. Why don’t we stay curious?

Throughout most of my life I have not been a curious person. In fact, I found it easier to just go with the flow and not ask questions unless I absolutely had to. You know the saying, “ignorance is bliss”, well that was me. I liked living in this so called bliss….so I thought. Just doing what I was conditioned to do. Believing what I was conditioned to believe. Portraying an image of the perfect daughter, wife, mother, and friend. To me, life just seemed easier that way. I looked for anything to support my way of being and found what I needed to feel good about living in that “bliss”. Little did I know that I would one day have to challenge my choices.

In April of 2016, my beliefs were challenged. (More details are in another post… http://www.bethatgirl.ca/blog/be-that-girl-who-shares-her-story/ ) My comfortable life as I knew it was turned upside down. I had to make a choice that would ultimately change everything, not only for myself but for generations that follow. No pressure. LOL! As I pondered what I was going to do, this thought kept popping running through my head…”figure out what you truly believe”. So, for the first time in my life, I actually started to study (approved church literature) about my religion. Crazy huh….39 years of being a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and I never questioned anything about it. I just believed because my family and friends did and I figured it was easier to just keep living what seemed easiest. My testimony was built on the testimony of others. Clearly I didn’t understand what a testimony really was.

Once I started to read more about the prophet who restored the gospel, I knew I couldn’t support that religion any longer. I won’t get into what I read but it was enough for me to know that this was not an organization that I wanted to be a part of anymore. Although this has been one of the hardest choices in my life thus far, I have never regretted the decision I made because I have asked the hard questions. I have challenged my choice. I have found my truth.

My hope is that we all challenge our choices. Ask more questions! I don’t just owe that to myself, but I owe it to my children to question everything. Search for your truth by getting the facts and correct information. We have all heard the quote, “you don’t grow in comfort”. Get uncomfortable and just see what unfolds for you.

be THAT girl that is socially aware

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i’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and your’re not in this world to live up to mine

BRUCE LEE

Day 21 of quarantine….how are you all holding up? For myself, I am okay. I am trying to keep some sort of routine just to help me stay sane. I am so impressed with the amazing teachers out there that have had to readjust to fit the new “curriculum”. Gosh…how lucky are we to have these humans to help hold our littles’ in a time of such chaos. HUGS to all of you doing your very best. I think I can speak for most….THANK YOU SO MUCH! We love and appreciate you all.

Our next lesson for our C.A.L.M Class is on Social Awareness and Social Management. Again…this is an add on once we have become aware of our purpose, our core values, our character, our feelings, and taking responsibility for our behavior and well-being .

SOCIAL AWARENESS is the ability to understand and respond well to the needs of others. This is something that is going to be used everyday in our lives whether it be at work, at school, at a party, at a family function, even social media….we need to be able to “read the room” as some might say. Being able to notice other’s emotions and respond empathically will help us become more aware of what others need or want from us. One thing that I have been working on is learning to manage my expectations of individuals or situations so that I don’t get offended or become disppointed.

I have been noticing, on social media or even when I go to the grocery store, people becoming very defensive and some just down right ass holes to each other! Where there is crisis, there are scared feelings which a lot of the time are presented as anger. This is the time that we all need to be socially aware of what each of us is feeling and try to give each other some grace. Some of us need to make sense of it all. Some of us can’t make sense of it all because it causes too much stress and anxiety! Let us all be aware that we do not think or feel alike so BE KIND! You do not know or understand everyone’s mental state right now. We are all in this together just trying to navigate through this experience. In the words of Ram Dass…”We are all just walking each other home.”

Let’s be the positive influence to and for each other while we manage through this. When we are socially aware of each other’s needs then we can begin to manage ourselves socially and become a positive force to be the change!

Be the change you want to see in the world

Gandhi

be THAT girl who is self-aware

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the start of all growth is the introduction of higher states of conscious awareness…

Leo Tolstoy

Something I’ve learned on my own journey of self-growth is that in order to begin we need to understand what it means to be self-aware. That self-awareness allows us to pivot onto a path of self discovery that we should all be working towards.

Yesterday’s lesson and today’s lesson go hand in hand so I wanted to make sure I had covered both topics before I posted about each one of them. Yesterday we discussed self-awareness and today we built upon that and discussed self-management.

SELF-AWARENESS is the ability to focus on how our thoughts, emotions and actions align with our core values. If you haven’t had a chance to write down your top 10 core values from most important to you and so on (not that any aren’t important), then refer back to my previous post about that. When we are self-aware, we focus on the reality of our behaviour versus the story we tell ourselves about ourselves. Basically we stop trying to convince ourselves that we are someone we’re not. One way to help become more self-aware is to pretend you are looking at yourself through someone else’s eyes. Really look in the mirror and study what you actually see. We all have our own self-image of ourselves but it is not always the reality of the situation. For example…we might call ourselves OCD when it comes to cleaning our house but in reality, we live in chaos. Don’t be fooled by the image of yourself that you have convinced yourself of being. This is a time to get really honest with ourselves and become better aware of our reality.

Another step to becoming more self-aware is to not ignore our feelings or intuition. The more we ignore that feeling the more anxious and stressed out we become which causes us to feel stuck. I spoke about feeling our feelings a few posts back. If we do not acknowledge those feelings they will not go away. We can learn to repress them but they will resurface at a later time and may become increasingly difficult to deal with causing a major reaction that is hazardous to our health.

We asked our kids to help us list some ways that can help us to become more self-aware

  • Journaling our feelings multiple times a day
    • making sure we journal how we are feeling throughout the day Noticing positive, negative and meh feelings
    • ask yourself, where is this feeling coming from?
  • Recognize when our energy is high, low or meh
    • most likely it will coincide with our feelings and emotions

Once we become more self-aware, we can start to work on our self-management. We begin by taking responsibility of our own behaviour and well-being. One thing that I have learned and live by is, responsibility breeds empowerment. I know we all love that feeling of being empowered to do something. This is why finding balance in my life has been so important to me. Now, when I say find balance that doesn’t mean that each part of my life is going to get equal attention. That is IMPOSSIBLE!! It just simply means that I acknowledge the 4 cornerstones of MY life. Spiritual, Physical, Mental and Social. If I can do one thing a day in each one of these “bubbles” then I feel like I have some balance happening. That is going to look different for all of us.

Again, we asked our kids to give us an example of something that may help them manage themselves….they came up with…

  • Create a Routine
    • having a routine is definitely a key element in helping us create good healthy habits
  • Consistency
    • being consistent is what we, as humans, crave. We are built for boundaries and thrive when we have them.

As much as this situation isn’t ideal, I enjoying the time we have to reconnect with each other. Life get’s so busy and full of “schedules” that sometimes we forget to say NO to things. This has been a great reminder that we could be better at creating a routine where connection is more present.

I hope you are all hanging in there! Keep your heads up and search for the silver lining because there is one friends. Stay safe and Stay home.

be THAT girl that feels the feelings

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feel the feeling but don’t become the emotion. acknowledge it, allow it, & release it….

I am writing this on day 4 or quarantine…I’m sure we are all at the point where we have been feeling extremely emotional saying goodbye to our former normal. I know it has been for me and for most of my family & friends. In these uncertain times we start to let our emotions take over which does not serve us, or the people around us, well if we don’t know how to release those emotions. Let’s all be mindful that we need to feel the feelings but becoming the emotion is hazardous to our own health and well-being. Most of us have learned how to suppress our emotions from a very young age. We learn to “get over it” and not deal with that emotion which will absolutely resurface at a later time where we will repeat the same reaction of suppression.

Learning how to process the emotion while feeling the feelings is something that I am still working on. In fact…it’s something that I had to do today. I’m not an expert….let’s just state that fact….but I feel the need to share with my friends what works for me. Take it or leave it. I won’t be offended.

If there is one thing that I have learned over the years…feel your feelings. You hear people say that all the time. What does that mean? To me, it means that whatever feeling arises, I need to honor it and just let it take over my body for a while. Let that feeling come over you like a huge wave and feel it. It will be painful and it will make you ugly cry….well, at least it makes me ugly cry. Like I legit look like an Asian Yoda with tears. And even when I’m all cried out then I look like Hulk Hogan took a few rounds outta me and left me with a very swollen face. (I’m sure you get the picture) When we deny our feelings that can cause us to choose undesired or harmful behavior. Which is never good for any of us.

Once we learn to feel those feelings, we need to acknowledge where those feelings are being stored. For example, some feel tension in our muscles, some feel a sharp pain in an undesired place, some eat, some feel it in the gut and some just feel that “heavy” feeling everywhere. For myself, it us usually a heavy feeling felt in my gut or tension in my muscles. This feeling has caused many sleepless nights. Did you know that motion unwinds emotion? For myself, getting myself in the gym and working out has been the best way for me to unwind. I first started hitting the gym to lose weight but soon realized that it was serving my mental and emotional health far beyond my physical health. Some days when I feel especially emotional, I lay on my yoga mat and meditate after my workout. I turn down the lights, lay on my back comfortably, take really deep breaths and I focus on the inhale and exhale. I think about what emotion I am feeling…I acknowledge it, and then in my mind say…”thank you (emotion…whatever it is) good-bye” and I visualize the word of that emotion actually being blown out with each exhale. I can’t explain the peace I feel after I have let go of those pent up emotions. When we are unbalanced it will cause us to be in a very negative mindset which isn’t good for any of us.

I know this all may sound completely silly but I’m just sharing what works for myself. I’m curious what works for you? Feel free to share your ideas…no judgement on my part but I’d love to hear.

Hang in there friends! I will be posting more and more since I have a little more time on my hands. Haha! We are all in this together.

be THAT girl who knows she’s a good mama

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it’s like no one in my family appreciates that I stayed up all night overthinking them…

This is gonna be a long one friends so get cozy….

We have raised each of these incredible humans basically the same and they are all so very different. They each came with their own personalities which is what I absolutely love about them. Life would be so boring if we were all the same. Because we are not all the same and none of our kiddos came with a user manual, we are not going to know how to raise them the “right” way. We will make mistakes. We will not always know the answer. But one thing is for sure…we will do our very best!

I remember when Awesome and I were dating and we had the discussion about kids…you know…the one where you decide how many kids you want to have. I only wanted 2 kids. Awesome wanted lots. Almost a deal breaker but I was far too attracted to his hot legs to give a shit so I brushed it off and figured I would get my way regardless cause I am the girl. Haha! Soon after we were married and I wanted to start having babies, I quickly changed my mind on how many littles I actually wanted. I loved the thought of a big family, maybe not as big as his but bigger than mine. I don’t think we were ever set on a specific number we just figured we’d just know. Each one of our babes were planned…well, except one but that ended in a miscarriage. That’s another story for another day. I remember having number 5 and thinking to myself…can I do this again? Let me just say…do not decide that right after you pushed that watermelon out of your pinhole with no drugs.

Now, our number 5 was not an easy baby. In fact, I’m pretty sure I nicknamed him Satan. LOL! He was the worst sleeper EVER!! Picture this, Awesome’s last year of University (his 9th year). I birth a baby. One week later Awesome begins his last year of dental school. I’m up every hour to feed Satan. I have 4 other kiddos that need me all day (Kato had just turned 7, Kami was 5, Mari was 3, Mak was 1 1/2). By the time the hubby got home, I was ready for a nap. I clearly couldn’t keep functioning like this. I was on the verge of a break-down. So, Awesome being his awesome self, he offered to sleep on the couch with Satan every other night so that at least one of us was getting a good night’s sleep and could recharge. Oh….In case you are wondering….I was not nursing. We put a stop to me nursing when I had the first one. It did not work for us. Anyhoo, after about 4 months of “shift work” for us, he finally started to sleep a few hours at a time so we could get back to a “normal” sleeping schedule.

I remember when number 5 was about 3 years old, I begged Awesome for another baby. I knew that we were supposed to have one more. I just never felt complete even though my sleep deprivation could’ve been the one making the decision….who knows. He was a definite “HELL NO!” At about year 7 of bugging him, I finally accepted the fact that we would not adding another little Aneca to the bunch. Plus I started to do the math and figured that I was getting to old to be a mom. Keep in mind, I started at the ripe old age of 22. I was now 36…obviously too old right? (face in palm)

Well, as you all know, number six found his way into our family when I was 39. Ya…a story for another day but just like I knew, we were not complete until our little Daisuke (Dice) joined us. As hard as it all was to wrap our heads around the idea of a baby 10 years later, he has been the biggest blessing we could’ve asked for. He is such a good mix of all of us combined. He is definitely the center of our universe.

We have been through some really significant changes in our home in the last 4 years. We had a baby and left a religion that basically outlined our existence and purpose. No big deal right? LOL! Needless to say, as our family has grown up and moved forward, we have been through some major speed bumps. Through all of this change we have tried to do our very best in parenting our children with a new set of guidelines that we are still navigating. If there is one thing I know, it’s that in every decision and choice we have made, we have done it because we love our crew so fiercely and want them to succeed in life. Are we the perfect parents? NO! Are we fucking up? ABSOLUTELY! Will we continue to make mistakes? YOU KNOW IT! None of us are getting it right…in fact, I would say that it’s basically a crap-shoot.

So mamas….give yourself some grace. Believe that you are doing a good job and keep trying. That’s all you can do. I see you. I understand hard days….trust me I do. I have a teenage adult. I GET IT! I have those days too where I feel like an absolute failure as a mom. I have those days where I wonder where I went wrong. I have those days where I cry and make it about me. But I also have those days when those little shits hug me, text me, write me notes or even just smile at me, where I know I’ve done something right. Relish in those moments. Allow yourself to take some credit for the good things that they do or say. What I’ve learned is that I can’t control their choices but I can control my choices and how I am going to handle each situation that doesn’t go my way. Just like I need them to be patient with me, I need to be patient with them as they make mistakes and grow. Is it painful to watch them do that? ABSO-FREAKIN-LUTELY!! It has brought me to tears on multiple occasions but I keep going back to the fact that I know I’ve done my very best and that’s all I can do.

No judgement here Mamas! You go this.

P.S. Number 5 is no longer Satan….he is the kindest, sweetest, funny and quiet child ever!

be THAT girl that let’s go of shit that doesn’t matter

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Stop getting upset over things that don’t matter with the people that do matter….

I don’t know about you but I know for myself, I am givin all the gratitudes I can to God to the Universe to whoever I need to, to show my appreciation for these people right here. The people in my life that matter. And in case no one has told you today….YOU ALL MATTER, to me, to your family and hopefully to yourself. I’ll tell ya what… I am holdin these people a little closer with the recent tragedy that has rocked our world. One minute they’re here, the next minute they’re gone. It happens that fast.

Trust me when I say….it is not easy to let shit go. These people right here are my why, they are the one’s that fulfill me the most yet these are the one’s that can hurt me the most because I have so much LOVE for each and every one of them. There are days when I’ve said or done things to them, either on purpose or by mistake, that I regret and wish I could take back and vice versa. But, at the end of the day, what really matters? I’ll tell you what matters…YOUR HUMANS, YOUR PEOPLE. You know, the one’s that you would give your life for…like jump in front of a train for. I’ve really been thinking a lot today about how fast my reality could change if something were to happen to any of my humans. Life can change in an instant friends.

So, keep this in mind when they leave your side in the morning….did you hug them? And not a quick little “routine” hug, I’m talking a big ass bear hug. What is the last thing you said to them before they left? Were you upset at each other? Or did you let them know just how much you love them? Or if you didn’t get to see them off, did you text them to tell them how much you appreciate and love them? If not….DO IT!! I always have the best intentions to do this but some days I definitely fall short because I think I have time. Well…I’m wrong. “We have time” is a lie we tell ourselves so we don’t feel the guilt. The only moment we know we have for sure is right now. Don’t waste it holding grudges and getting upset about shit that doesn’t really matter. Let it go and hold those precious moments close with your people. THAT, you will never regret.