Are you in that phase of life where you are desperate to change your life completely?
You are done with all the nonsense. You are done feeling low all the time, and you are done playing small with yourself. You’re done languishing in some mediocre version of yourself.
You now want to transform yourself and completely change your life. And I want to tell you, that yes, it is all possible.
As dramatic as it sounds, you can do it. And I wanted to share five things we did to change our lives AND cheer you on for making the decision to enact change in your life.
This is a long post, so you can definitely bookmark it and save it to refer back to later 🙂
1. Removed Toxic People from our Life
When someone falls into a pattern of mean, toxic, immature, disrespectful, and unhealthy behavior, it can seem cruel to abandon them–especially if you grew up like I did where you were taught you had to just “deal” with certain behaviors because those people were “family.” However, when that toxic behavior has been addressed repeatedly and is taking an emotional toll, you have to remember that prioritizing your own well being comes first and foremost – and that may involve letting these family members go. And we did that very recently with some members of our family and when I say the move was life changing….it was life changing.
Suddenly we found ourselves freed up for a more energetic and vibrant life. We no longer had to invest valuable time, mind space, or physical energy to dealing with those toxic people. We no longer had to do the mental gymnastics involved in navigating how to interact with them at Thanksgiving. We no longer had to get caught up in the emotionally draining drama that always seems to come up when they were around. Our sleep improved because we weren’t staying up with insomnia over the last text convo we had where they passively aggressively said I was a bad mom, James was a bad husband and Callie apparently was a wild child for having a boyfriend. Our stress levels dropped significantly because we weren’t constantly flooding our systems with cortisol. Our vibration instantly rose because weren’t constantly in the gutter with their yucky attitudes, jealous tirades, immature antics, and generally just gross behavior.
And when your vibration rises, you open yourself up to bigger, bolder, and better opportunities, relationships, and experiences. By cutting out the toxic family members in your life you can focus your attention to the people, passions, and projects in your life that light your heart on fire.
Almost overnight we saw changes–Callie was approached for a commercial, one of my blog posts went viral, one of our investments did well, and I was promoted at work. Coincidence? I don’t think so. But removing that toxic energy from our life, we were able to allow good energy to find us.
Not only does your life significantly improve for the better but when you set and hold a boundary, you learn that you can keep a promise to yourself. You learn that you can keep yourself safe, you can protect yourself, and you can practice self care. You learn that you can make tough choices, navigate hard situations, and ultimately your confidence will sky rocket. You trust yourself more implicitly because you’ve learned that you are perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. You gain a boost of independence and security in who you are as a person.
And when we talk about removing toxic people–we don’t just mean in real life. We also did a ruthless clean out of what media we consume–social media, movies, books, news programs, and more. We are very cognizant of who (and what) what we allow into our space and who we allocate our energy to now.
2. Became debt free
I think a lot of people “look” successful. Brand new car, big house, a boat, big engagement ring, lots of designer bags and clothes.
But then you take a peek at their finances and….
They are upside down on their car.
They are financing their furniture.
They owe everyone money and are drowning in debt.
They are one financial hardship away from being broke and living paycheck to paycheck.
They have zero money in a savings account, retirement account or even a college fund for their kids.
They live every day in stressed out state because they have a terrible relationship with money.
Finances, and our relationships to our finances, can be a huge stressor in so many people’s lives. The key thing that we did to fundamentally change our life was to become debt free and change our relationship with money. We made the decision to hold zero debt–no house payment, no car loans, no credit card balances, and pay off the small amount I still owed on my student loans.
Believe me, I am not Dave Ramsey and if you ask my husband (or my dad lol) they both will attest to my lack of money management skills when I was younger.
But….I do like goals. I do like having nice things, supporting my family, and setting up Callie for financial freedom so it was the combination of those things that helped get me on this debt free bandwagon.
We live very well below our means now. We could trade in our cars every year, we could move to a bigger house, I could buy a boat or an Airstream trailer–we could buy a lot of things.
But we don’t want to take on the debt. We don’t want the stress of worrying about paying for Callie’s braces or fighting about how we spend our money because there isn’t any money.
Now our money is going towards our future and we have adopted an abundance mindset towards money–we know that each investment we make, each deposit we make, and each smart financial decision we make, is setting us up for success in the long run.
3. Adopted a Healthy Lifestyle
Notice I didn’t say “diet.” Honestly, I don’t think a healthy lifestyle is about how you look (although that could be a by product) but I think a healthy lifestyle is about how you FEEL. How much energy do you have? How’s your sleep? How’s your mental health? How’s your gut health? How often do you drink? How often do you get sick?
We’ve made a fundamental decision that one of our core values is our health. We work out 5-6 days a week, we go for walks daily (hitting 10k steps a day at a minimum), we both eat a balanced diet, take appropriate supplements, drink plenty of water, and prioritize sleep. And our life has changed in so many ways:
- Self Confidence soared
- More energy
- Better sleep
- Improved our marriage
- Clearer thinking
- Feel better and get sick less
- Improved mental health
- Reverse aging
- Better skin
- Better mood
- Boost metabolism
I was very cognizant when I was creating this list that I only picked things that would truly change your life. Like 100%, no questions asked, if you did these 5 things you would be able to see a fundamental shift in your life for the better and I think that adopting a healthy lifestyle is foundational for these 5 things. By creating a healthy lifestyle, you then have more confidences with managing your money, you have more confidence to remove toxic people from your life, you have better cognitive abilities so you are able to retain more when you read, and you tend to avoid alcohol.
4. Read, read, read
My absolute favorite hobby is reading. There is a wealth of information out there in books–lessons learned, new ideas, fantastic stories of different ways of solving problems. We prioritize reading each day and recently have been dipping our toes into different genres–I’ve started reading more fantasy and some sci-fi books.
By prioritizing reading we found that it was a natural stress relief–simply by reading 20-30 minutes before bed, we found that we were naturally more sleepy and relaxed. It has improved our writing skills and our strategic thinking skills. We noticed that our vocabulary was expanding and our memories were improving.
But ultimately, the biggest impact I’ve found to reading is the simple fact that if I had a problem–I can find an answer in a book. Struggling with my mindset? There’s a book for that. Trying to figure out how to motivate my team at work? There’s a book for that. Needing to escape to a fantasy world filled with dragons? There’s a book for that.
5. Gave Up Alcohol
I know this one will probably be the one that most people will push back on–but I have yet to find a piece of research that says alcohol has any type of health benefit. In fact, I’ve seen nothing but articles, research, and studies that talk about the negative side effects to alcohol consumption. And I know that alcohol is woven into almost every single aspect of our culture–beers at football games, mommy wine culture, Sunday Fundays, mimosas at brunch, bar hopping on the weekend, and so much more. I realized that in today’s culture….drinking isn’t rebellious. NOT drinking is rebellious. I know that as soon as you start talking about how alcohol is not good for your health, most people will say that outdated line about how “red wine is good for you because it has anti-oxidants.”
Well, so do blueberries and I don’t feel like I got hit by a bus if I have one too many blueberries.
Do not get me wrong, I love a good mojito. And sometimes there’s nothing better than a margherita on Taco Tuesdays with our friends. Honestly, we aren’t big drinkers in the first place–maybe only drinking a handful of times a year. But the times that we did drink, I would feel like dog doo the next day. My head would hurt, I would be dehydrated, completely void of energy, more than likely regretting something dumb I did/said, struggling with fuzzy brain, nauseous, too lazy to go to the gym, and just generally felt…..wiped out. I would feel like it took me 2 days to recover and I felt like I was trying to catch up for the remainder of the week.
The more I dug into becoming #sobercurious, the more I was intrigued. We had said that we made a healthy lifestyle a core value right? So how would something inherently unhealthy like alcohol fit into that vision?
It didn’t.
It was an easy transition. Now when I go out with friends, I just don’t drink. They respect what I’m trying to do and how I’m trying to show up for my life. I don’t have to deal with feeling like crap the next day, I build confidence in myself because I’m keeping promises I made, and I know I’m doing what’s best for my body. And can we talk about the money we’ve saved on drinks?
I haven’t completely gone cold turkey (I had a couple drinks in Vegas a few weeks ago) but I plan on remaining alcohol free for 95% of my time. It’s best for me, best for my health, and aligns with how I want to show up in the world.
I hope one of these ideas sparked your interest and I’m curious to hear from you when you implement them! Drop me a comment–I’m rooting you on!
Love and light,
Jaime
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