Creatures of Habit: Changing the Game

What if we were able to change the characteristic of being 'creatures of habit'? What if we could alter our patterns and completely change the way we live just by making slightly different choices. The human race is known to be habitual. Bad or good, habits dictate our future. Most of us are lead by the habits that we have accumulated along the way. The norm would be to let our habits guide us and control us leading us through life with blinders on.

What habits have you picked up along the way? Which of those are not beneficial to enriching your life or others? You can call them bad habits if you'd like. Bad habits keep us from reaching our full potential. How many times have you tried to rid yourself of your habits and found yourself returning after a small amount of time?

Bad habits are sometimes like an addictive drug. They become a part of you that you can not get rid of. You know what is best for you, but the habit you created is just so powerful, or so we think. It really comes down to a mental challenge. Try starting super small. Pick a habit that seems easy to get rid of, maybe swearing at work.  For one week, try to turn your bad habit into a positive. For instance, if your bad habit is swearing, pay someone a compliment instead. You can do anything for one week and if you succeed, try something a little harder the next week.

There is really no rush. Most of these habits have been around for a LONG time, so be patient with yourself and begin changing your patterns. By bringing more positive in your life greater things will come to you and you will be closer to reaching your full potential in life. By reaching your full potential you can help others reach theirs.

Unearthing the Gift

Through my life experiences, I am a true believer that everyone was blessed with a God given gift to be used in this life time. These gifts give our lives purpose. These gifts also are something that, when unearthed and shared, encourage others to seek, find and share thus spreading Gods gifts. 

Here is the problem, it is the norm to walk blindly through life without even understanding our purpose. We just go with the flow of society allowing our gift to be burried alive by 'life's dirt'. Life's Dirt-anything that keeps us from reaching our true potential. i.e.: money problems, poor body image, abuse of drugs or alcohol, unhealthy relationships, dead end job, fear, anger etc. Basically, anything that encourages the negative is getting in the way of you unearthing your gift. 

These gifts are a powerful thing. The question is how do you reach them? You need to dig and get rid of the dirt that keeps it hidden. This means confronting each of your layers of 'life's dirt' one at a time. This takes commitment and discipline. I think that is part of the test. If you are committed and disciplined enough to dig and continue to dig even when it gets hard, you will have earned the trust to properly handle the gift that you worked so hard to find and your path/purpose will be clear. 

Can you imagine if we all unearthed our gifts? World peace. 

You Better Recognize (the foods you eat)

Have you ever slowed down enough to actually recognize what you are using to fuel your body? In our earth life our body is our temple. We need to respect it. By feeding your body inrecognizable fuel like processed foods and chemically altered drinks we are not able to fulfill our potential that we have in this lifetime. We are selling ourselves short, literally. Lives are ending because of what we use as 'fuel'. Now the question arises. Is this really fuel or some sort of comfort? Well, if we were using food properly than it could be considered fuel, but by the looks of Americans food is no longer being used for this purpose. The fuel that most Americans seek to live comes from a cup full of energy, magic medicine bottle and a fast food burger disguised as real meat. 

Just slow down. Look at what you are putting in your body. Can you recognize it and understand where it came from? If you can't, put it down. Just by taking this small little step every time you eat you give yourself a fighting chance at life. It's simple, eat only things produced in nature that you can recognize where they came from. Put down things that were produced in a plant (with the long list of ingredients that you don't recognize and you can't pronounce) and you will save yourself a lifetime of medical problems! 

Happiness Overrated?

My last post was a little dip into my thoughts on the meaning of life, since then I listened to a sermon on Happiness. Ironic. Anyway, it made me take this idea one step further. Happiness is shallow, so the meaning of life is not just to spread happiness, because happiness is short lived. If you want to spread goodness through the world you need to spread joy and answers to living a full life. Those of you who's life is full will understand this idea, but those of you who do not yet may have a hard time. I know because I have been on both sides. A full life brings you joy. Once you experience the joy-full life you crave it and do everything in your power to reach that state. Most of those who have not experienced the joy-full continue seeking happiness and wondering why they never feel complete.

It wasn't until I started a relationship with God at the end of 2011 that I experienced Joy-Full. (Yes, I know joyful is a word, but I have created my own altercation of he word/term/etc. to give it the more pronounced meaning that I want.) Those of you who read this and are turned off by my mention of God, I get it. I was there too, so I don't take offense. However, if you can not relate my term, Joy-Full, to your own life then you might want to stay tuned.

My life has changed drastically since I began seeking the Joy-Full life instead of chasing happiness.  We are talking two years, people. It was only two years ago that I changed my beliefs and thought process on things. Previously, I sought out short lived, fulfilling, happiness. Sure, I had a great time doing it, but I continued to search for some feeling that would stick around.  I felt empty. I even got married, finished college, had a good job and a great family, but it wasn't enough. Finally, I was unwillingly pulled into the doors of a church, that I now call home. It was different than what I was used to, there was loud rock music, coffee and people my age. The people also had a different glow about them, unlike any other church that I have been to. They were actually Joy-Full. Huh? I was a little perplexed as if I had stepped into another dimension.

Anyway, I continued to go and get more involved and really do some soul searching.  I also opened myself to God and the idea of a greater power, other than myself.  It was then that I began to see the Joy-Full for the first time. Things began to transform in my life, without much effort.  Two years later I look back at the changes I have seen in my relationships, home life, relationship with myself, finances and work. I didn't realize life could really be this good. I feel that I don't deserve all the wonderful things that have happened and it honestly keeps getting better in every aspect. Luck? I think not. Happiness? Would have never gotten me this far. A Joy-Full like only provided by God? Dead on.

Enjoy the journey! It is exceedingly more than the norm of seeking happiness could provide.

Ants

I took a break from blogging because life got a little crazy, to say the least. My 15 month old is now not just walking, but running, climbing and reeking havoc anyway possible, and beyond possible. It is crazy to watch how fast she grows. Every week she is learning something new. Watching her life flash before my eyes has got me doing some deep thinking about life in general and reevaluating some things.

Have you ever stopped in time and really thought things through? I mean, not what you are going to wear and how it would effect your day, or what job will you choose and how much money you will make, but instead what is the purpose of life and what really matters in the grand scheme of things.  I guess you can say that I have been in the land of re-discovery for the past three months and my (open ended) conclusion has left me with the theory that we are all ants.  Yes, three months and all that I came up with was we = ants. It is kind of amusing looking back, but I really think it is that simple.

Let me explain myself. First, I tried searching for explanations, 'meaning of life' sort of things, (not religion or science related, there is a place for that too).  What I came up with was 8 million different 'opinions', none of which worked for me. What I have decided is that we are all just busy little ants.  The meaning of life is only a term that us ants came up with to try to make sense of 'it all'. However, we never will. No matter how many theories there are 'it all' is so much greater than us and so far beyond our understanding that trying to comprehend it is impossible, just as an ants trying to comprehend humans. Make sense?

Okay, so we have no control or understanding of the greater picture, what is our purpose here on earth, if we have one.  I boiled it down to two things, positive and negative.  Positive feels right (but what is right) and negative feels wrong (again, ideas created by the human psyche). It is a simple idea, but I feel that the only thing that we really know and can really do to fulfill any purpose is to spread positive and suppress negative while we are here on earth.


This is just a summary of my idea, but it seems to be just as basic as I described. I am still developing it, but I really think that underdeveloped it will be more accurate than something more complex. So what it comes down to is, toss the 'norm' of everyday life and fill your everyday life with positives and share them with others so that positives like happiness, love and peace can be experienced by a greater number. Suppress the negative in all forms so we can overpower the negative energies with positives making our time here on earth at positively peaceful for all. If you can just look through the fluff of life and discover truth and what really matters maybe it will actually matter in the greater scheme of things, but then again, who knows if we are all just busy little ants just trying to make a difference in our small, little, minute, microscopic world.

 

Back to NORMal

My daughter just turned one over the weekend.  Needless to say, past year has been a learning experience for me.  Somehow my Super Woman switch got turned on as soon as I had Luna and I felt it was my job to save the world. Maybe this happens to all moms, but man, it is exhausting! I challenged a lot of norms over the past year including trash, cable and other technologies, vaccinations, food, disposable diapers and other modern conveniences. I led my family on a wild goose chase as we gave up trash, cable, disposable diapers, certain foods, and so much more.  The journey was a learning experience for all of us. We have all learned to be less wasteful, more responsible and much more aware. 

Life quickly became frustrating and far from enjoyable. We found without some of the modern conveniences life became very stressful. For example, without trash pick up you have to learn how to shop to avoid waste. Mainstream does not make this easy. To avoid problems in our family and relieve the stress we all compromised in our changes. We kept the cloth diapers, but got back trash service, however, we increased our recycling load and decreased out typical trash load significantly. We still don't have cable. We replaced it with Hulu and Netflicks and saved a bunch of money. Since then, my husband also purchased a $15.00 antenna and now we get ten clear channels! As for our foods, we are still learning, but we try to keep our foods local or organic whenever possible. We grew some of our vegetables as well.  Some of my opinions and decisions also brought about controversy, I guess that is all about standing up for what you think is right.

It really has been a great year and I feel confident about the changes that we have made as a family. I am also grateful for the people that have taken the time to listen to our experiences and support us. My perspective on life has definitely changed drastically and the challenges have made me a better person. Time to relax and enjoy life a bit.  

3 Day Juice Cleanse - Day 3 and after

So, I finished up the cleanse and have never felt better. I was ready to get some real food back in my system, but my body felt alive. I also was very energetic and mentally clear. It was a very good experience and I plan on doing the cleanse again soon. I lost a total of 4lbs over the 3 days as well. Of course some of the pounds came back, but that is expected. It was also a very liberating experience. I felt in control and disciplined.  I also find that I make better choices now on the foods I eat. Now, food also has an awakened flavor profile that really makes you enjoy every bite. Highly recommended.