Journey

We are all on a journey to somewhere.

The only thing is we don't all know where we are heading or where our journey is taking us?

So if you are unsure on where your journey is taking you?

Just enjoy the ride until you figure it out.

That's what I am doing.

30 Habits & Beliefs that Hurt Your Body Image

• Not listening to your body’s needs, such as skipping meals when you’re hungry or exercising hard when you’re tired. 
• Hyperfocusing on supposed physical “flaws.” 
• Making numbers like weight and clothing size your body image barometers. 
• Letting women’s magazines determine your beauty rules. 
• Participating in physical activities that you can’t stand. (Remember movement is joyful! You just have to pick the activities you like.) 
• Confusing tension, unhappiness, anxiety and anger with feeling “fat” and thinking thinness is the answer. 
• Thinking thinness will garner love and attention that you actually want. 
• Believing body weight reveals well-being and health. 
• Staying in because you don’t think you look “good enough.” 
• Comparing your inside to others’ outsides. 
• Ignoring your emotions, and letting stress stockpile. 
• Believing binge eating can be fixed with a diet or weight loss program. 
• Not reaching out to others when you’re upset or clearly need support. 
• Thinking a positive body image means loving your body all the time. Even body image bloggers get down on ourselves. Avoid making your positive body image another trap for perfectionistic tendencies. 
• Not turning to healthy strategies to soothe your stress or manage your emotions. 
• Forgetting that beauty comes in all shapes, sizes, weights and colors. 
• Skimping on sleep. 
• Bonding with girlfriends over how much bigger your butt is. 
• Always eating on the go. 
• Blaming your body or your wilting willpower for not looking a certain way. 
• Keeping clothes that don’t fit. 
• Wearing clothes that don’t fit or make you feel unhappy. 
• Viewing food restriction as a virtue. 
• Waiting to accomplish certain goals until you lose weight (and presumably become worthy). 
• Similarly, waiting to treat your body well until you lose weight. 
• Criticizing another person’s appearance, weight or shape. 
• Eating what you don’t want because it has fewer calories. 
• Weighing yourself daily or weekly.
• Dieting.  
• Thinking your voice doesn’t deserve to be heard. 

I think I need to read this everyday :-)

When You’re Alone

I want you to sit by yourself in your room. This is the moment you are wallowing, this is the moment you want to listen to sappy music and curl yourself up in a ball and feel all lonely. There are moments when you feel self-pitying, there are moments when you wonder how you are so young and so pissed off at everything. People piss you off. People cuddling in public piss you off more. Instead of listening to music on your I-Pod and thinking about the time somebody kissed your forehead, I want you to look at the things you have collected over the years. There are the terrible pictures you have taken of yourself at school- the one where you were at a bar with your best friends and you make the ‘holy shit what am I doing here’ face, or on the beach where you are laughing so hard because somebody just fell over. The ring you got from your grandmother is here and so are the flip flops you’ve had since form four because your mum bought them for you. I want you to pick up the postcards you got and your favorite book that is creased by the sides. You have read this book so much you can finish the lines by yourself and you probably love it. Then I want you to pick up your phone and look at your text messages. The one from your flatmate that asks where you are, or maybe the drunk ones late at night from all the people you couldn’t be with at the moment. Oh, look! Your favorite high school bud who tells you they miss you! I want you to pick at least five people from your phone that you can call because you are feeling bad. Don’t call them, just know you can.

I want you to look at yourself in the mirror. There is a scar on your hand from the time you did something really fucking stupid with some really fucking great people. There is the face that you have grown from a little shitting baby to the person you are now. I want you to make the lamest face you can in the mirror, I want you to remember all the things you like about yourself. I want you to laugh at it. I want you to stick your butt out at the mirror and smile.

Then you put on a song that reminds you of summer, or of driving in a car. Then you put on the song that you remember listening to when somebody was in love with you. I want you to think of the best memories you have had, and simply appreciate how you have had them. How you have felt something so big for somebody it made you nauseous and when they left, the best people in the world listened to you when you cried about it. You would feel that again, you think. You just might, you think. Refuse love being the end-it-all of your life. It happens and it doesn’t, and it usually happens again (which is what is so great about it.) Then I want you to cough or scream or raise your arms and simply remember how you are not alone. How you are here and you are here and that is where you are. And then I want you to think of the worst moments, the ones that made you feel shell-like and how you got over them. How you have the ability to get over shit because you are a person and people go through bad things and you are still pretty okay. How you can still laugh and give high fives and go to bars and not get how people function the way they do.

Then you realize how many more days you will feel alone. And how you sometimes crave figuring yourself out more than other things. And how many times going out or meeting certain people will make you feel like you don’t understand humans or how much you love them. Then you remember all your friends, and how much you will laugh at all the douchebags you have dated, and all the mistakes you have made, and how one of these things will always outweigh the others. I want you to allow yourself the biggest kind of optimism you can muster for the future moments of your tiny life. And I want you to sit by yourself and I want you to fucking enjoy it. Pick your nails. Eat a block of chocolate. Savor it.

Then I want you to not feel so fucking alone. You are not.

My Grandad

Sometimes I get so scared and freaked out about not being able to afford to get my hair done, to go out with my friends, what is the right thing to say, the right people to hang out with, what to wear to which event....

Then I think about my grandad... possibly the greatest man alive - his heart is blind to the colour of skin, blind to a person's appearance. His heart speaks all languages, and isn't affected by the disability of judgement ....He lives in a world where helping others comes before helping himself.

His heart is what makes me want to be a better person. He himself is why I try never to judge a person by their job. His influence is why I pretty much talk to anyone that is near, why I buy the homeless man up on Ponsonby road muffins and a coffee, why I donate my clothes to women's refuge instead of selling them, the reason why I voice my opinion when it really matters and why I am who I am.

You see my grandad installed into my brain that it doesn't matter where you come from... what matters more in life is the journey and where you are heading.

He taught me that respecting others is the greatest gift you can give, and that laughter and love is the only medicine your soul needs in order to keep you well.

Little things

Please look in my eyes, For I have nothing to hide

As I wipe the slate clean and share this with you as I take on my own and the pain of your soul.

It's the little things in life That really matter.

These fine fine lines, make for trying times, show the life that I am living, these lines show the laughter and joy I have had in my life, The tears I have shed, The pain and hardship I have had to endure to get to where I am, the trying times that also make you stronger.

In life you need to take your strength, pass it around , and then move on.

Move on to bigger and better, never waste a moment thinking about the woulda coulda shoulda's in your life.

Don't for a second give up your time worrying about those that hurt you, brought you down, broke your heart. As hard as it seems to believe you do get through that pain that soul destroying heart ache does pass on, and leave you behind to move on only leaving memories and lessons for the future .

Trust me the little things in life .....They are what truly matter.

You are what gets me through the day

I love you Chch

I know times are tough at the moment. It has been a week since the horrific earthquake in Christchurch, and my heart goes out to everyone who has been affected.

I feel so selfish at times when I dwell over my problems.

In the scheme of things they are really so minimal it makes me drop my head in shame.