- You won’t be able to fully receive love from others if you can’t even love yourself. This is something I actually struggled a lot with on and off for the first 3 years of Nick and I’s relationship. When I felt down or not good enough I would blame him and tell him that he needs to love me more, when that wasn’t even the problem. He loved me more than I would ever know or feel until I was able to find love for myself first. Once I was able to find that self love, that mindset that I was stuck in went away and I was able to fully receive and feel his love for me.
- To take a step back from one’s thoughts and to turn that mirror on myself and not others. Meaning instead of immediately blaming others for things, turning to myself and asking what is really making me feel this way? Does it really have anything to do with them? Or is this all me? Acknowledge those toxic thoughts or whatever they may be and then letting them go. Letting go of thoughts that no longer serve me and that only hold me back.
- Having a healthy mind is as important as a healthy body. Sometimes you have to take one step at a time when it comes to starting a new healthy lifestyle. In my opinion the first step is getting into a healthy mindset first before going into anything. Including working out. For example you could have the mind set of “I want to workout to live a better life and keep my vessel in shape” instead of fueling your workout with thoughts of “I want to workout so I can look better, and people will see me different”.
- Looking at your body as the vessel, the home, to your soul. Ever since I started looking at my body in this way I never EVER look in the mirror and hate it. Even on days that wake up and I am so bloated and I look like I am 14 weeks pregnant, It sounds so cheesy, but in my head (and sometimes out loud) I just say “you’re ok. We will get through this. I will treat you better” And I remember to thank it EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.
- Money is energy and you should spend your energy well. The best way to explain this is you use your energy to work a job and you get paid. Then when you buy things you are spending your energy on it, because it took you how many hours to buy that something? Also little note: you vote with your energy. Every time you purchase something from somewhere you are doing your part to keep that company in business. Meaning that businesses that you don’t agree with how they make their products, it’s really easy to just not vote for them. If the whole world did this, think of how many companies that do horrible things would go out of business. And how many good companies would thrive.
- On that same topic realizing that it’s worth the extra money/energy to spend on products that are actually good for you. Organic, NATURAL, chemical free, and cruelty free. Your body is your FOREVER home. It’s not like a house that you can upgrade and even move out of. You have one chance and one life to treat it with the most respect so that you can live the fullest life you can.
- Not caring what others think. This is so simple and yet true. This may be a little hypocritical of me since I have a blog and I’m trying to succeeded in social media. Of course I care what people think of me. Of course I want people to like me, to read my blog, to like my posts, and to buy the clothes I link so that maybe I could make a bit of money. The difference is, I don’t mold myself to be what I think people want. I be my purest self and just let people who like me find me and for the ones who don’t, oh well. I will find my tribe.
- Stuff is stuff. So this has been a big one for me in the past year or so. For those of you who don’t know I also on the side work for an estate sale, auction company, and it has really flipped my world. I have always been a collector. I love anything vintage, antique, or pastel. I always knew, if I didn’t keep my collecting in check it would most likely lead to hoarding, if it hadn’t already. When I first started working for this company I practically spent every paycheck I got right back into the sales. I would buy cool unique items that I thought I would never see again. Then as time went on and I had dug though my share of the grossest of homes, gutted and reorganized too many kitchens to count, I start to realized stuff is just stuff. One day we all die and all of our stuff is left behind to our poor children who not only just lost a parent, but now have to go though the thousands of items that their parent collected over their life. Most things they probably completely forgot about and hasn’t seen sunlight in decades. How flipping sad… Like I hate looking at it in this way, but it is just the cold truth. I have realized just recently that I would rather live a minimalistic simple life with the few things that bring me the most joy. Then a bunch of things that I only keep out of guilt.
- Everything is what you make of it. Every little moment, every blink in time is what you make of it. It makes me so sad when I think about all the hours and the days that I have completely wasted just being sad for myself. Or even just being mad at the world about God knows what. Moments that could have easily just flipped directions, but I did everything in my power to keep the same. If you ever have a bad day and the thought pops into your head, “I wish this day was better”, then make it better.
- Social media is what you make of it, 100%. You can go into Instagram or Pinterest and see all these people doing amazing things, whether is is traveling, makeup, hair, modeling, fitness, blogging, and you can think “why can’t I do that”, “I will never be able to do that”, etc. Then feel down about yourself and basically sabotage your life. Or you can look at it and think “If they can I can”. It’s actually kinda funny, but both Instagram and Pinterest helped me get out of a really tough time in my life. It made me realize what is possible and it gave me a glance into my future. I am so very grateful for this.
- To try new things. UGH I have always been so very bad at this and at times I still am! I can sometimes be the pickiest, hardest to please person. However even if I know I am not going to like something that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t give it a chance!
- Short term change for long term goals. Remembering that big goals are not going to happen overnight. Saying no to eating out so that over a couple months you can save some money towards a car. Or taking 10 mins every morning to work out so that in a year from now you can see and feel the progress and be so very grateful for starting.
- Being able to say no. I totally understand being a people person and always wanting everyone to be happy, but you should be happy too. Whether it is peer pressure or someone asking you if you can help them with something, sometimes you just have to say no. Not because you don’t want to help, but because you need to put yourself first and there are maybe things that you haven’t even found time to do for yourself so how are you suppose to make time for them?
- Don’t under value your time and you’re talents because you don’t think people will like it or will want to pay that. If you are good at something that’s worth something.
- Not being colorblind to the grass underneath me.
- Everything in moderation. Doing this can also lead to even healthier habits. For example when Nick and I first started dating I use to drink 4 cans of Pepsi daily. I look back on this and think what the actual crap Willow! Anyways I had a realization that it was probably terrible fo me so over a couple of weeks I started slowing down to only one a day. I kept this up for quite awhile and I start to feel so much better. After a month I decided to quit it fully. It sucked.. I was getting migraines daily for about 3 weeks and finally they just stopped. My body started to feel so much healthier and more energetic naturally. Now I only drink Pepsi and really any soda, only every so often. It’s funny because it’s not even the same anymore. I would much rather have lemon water, tea, or just a lemonade than any fizzy drink!
- Staying organized. Giving everything you own a home. The amount of time that it would take you to completely organize everything would save so much more time in the future trying to find things. Especially at dire times that you are in a time crunch! Something that has really helped me is giving everything you own a set home/place. No item should ever not be in its home if not being used. This has saved me CRAZY amounts of time not searching for things!! I have always been an organized person, but I always seem to lose thing as well. You use it and then it gets put away. Simple simple.
- Wealth comes in a lot of forms. It’s not all about the money. Wealth can be love, family, friends, experiences, and yes of course money. Money can only buy you so much happiness until that happiness just starts to wear off and you are looking for other sources. Happiness from love and other people can bring you a lifetime of happiness.
- Being present. No amount of stress can change the past and no amount of worry and anxiety can change the future.
- However there is such a thing as good stress. We all need a certain amount of stress to stay motivation and driven, however the majority of stress is not productive and is useless. There are so many times in our lives that we are just unnecessarily stressed about things that we can not control. For example, when you have a big exam at school a little bit of stress during the week isn’t a bad thing if it is keeping you motivated to prepare you for the exam. However, the day of the exam or even the hour before, that stress is unnecessary. At that point you have done all that you can, and you now just have to let go because no stress is going to change the outcome from there. If anything it will make it worse. This is not an easy thing to do. It’s a mindset that takes a lot of practice. Luckily, I found this mindset in high school. Before a big test, even on ones I knew I was going to bomb, I would just think, “it is what it is. In an hour from now the test will be over, in a week from now I will know my score, and in a year from now I won’t give a crap. I won’t even remember my score OR care”.
- Finally, to just breath.
Hope you enjoyed all of these! If there is any one of them or a few of them that you would love to hear a full blog post on just let me know in the comments below or dm me in Insta. Hope you have an amazing day!
xo
