Living the life of your dreams

I was just very inspired by an article on MindBodyGreen.com called “7 Reasons You’re Not Living the Life of Your Dreams” by entrepreneur Rachel Rofe. While I found her 7 reasons accurate, I have a few reasons that have continually come up throughout my life or throughout my college career. I think listing them out will create my life to-do list to work on as I move to my next opportunity in Jordan! These are specific to me - think about what is holding you back from an amazing life!

4 reasons why I am not living the life of my dreams

1. Hanging onto destructive health habits

This is the worst one! My horrible eating habits during college (like stress binges) have damaged my health and happiness. I feel unable to take care of myself when I purposely hurt my body by eating badly, not sleeping enough, and not exercising enough (or exercise too much to lose weight). I always think it will get better when I am out of the college stress but healthy habits start by taking care of yourself when you need it most!

2. Staying in unhealthy relationships

I am not necessarily referring to any romantic or sexual relationships specifically but also friendships and acquaintances. There are many interactions that happen on a regular or semi-regular basis that make me feel uncomfortable in a number of different ways! As I write this, I am thinking specifically of a “friend” who won’t talk to me for weeks, then will bombard me with texts, Facebook posts or FB messages until we arrange some sort of meet-up. The meet-up will almost always leave me feeling rushed (especially with eating), judged, and very much uncomfortable with the way this person compares her life to everyone else and does the same thing to mine. I want to end our “friendship” because I don’t think she considers me a friend as much as another person to judge and compare herself to! I am far from perfect, but I really don’t need someone like her to tell me so.

3. Thinking negatively/Not focusing on what really matters

I tend to overthink all the time and just end up procrastinating on everything! If I care about something, I should be happy to work on it to reach my goals. But I will instead think of it as too hard and feel stressed which will lead me to procrastinate! Taking 2nd Year Arabic this summer was so stressful because I would procrastinate on my 5hours of homework that we had to do per night and then I would not get enough sleep to finish it. But I genuinely love learning Arabic so why would I put off doing the work that will help me reach my fluency goals? It is not so bad if I just remember that it is a subject I love. It is the same way I used to dread working out - not because I don’t like working out (I actually need to or I will go crazy!) but because I knew it is hard and didn’t want to start!

4. Living my life in an unnatural way - i.e. letting media or a someone else dictate my own actions

I should always follow my gut feelings because I know what is right for me. N one else knows everything I know about me and my own needs. This one took me a long time to learn, but I am learning more and more about my uniqueness and how to use it to my advantage!

Onto my incredible future.
Shimmy