Do you know the “Humans of New York” (HONY) blog? Brandon Stanton shares portraits with compelling stories on Instagram and Facebook. He started in New York, but has since done several trips. All over the world, strangers share particularly intimate stories with Brandon, about their health, relationships, wishes and traumas. You can read three lessons from all these stories below:

1. You are not alone

First of all, you are not alone. We don’t often talk about traumas, feelings and doubts. We fear what others will think about us if we share our “deepest” secrets. We are afraid of rejection or do not want any pity. But nobody’s life is perfect. On HONY you can read stories about addicted parents, bad relationships, unhealthy friendships, mental health problems but also stress because of university or insecurities. You soon see that you are not alone in what you experience or have experienced. This recognition can provide peace and perhaps courage to also share your story with a friend, family member or a psychologist.

2. Openness is contagious

HONY is a community, which means that readers are active: they offer support and understanding through the comments, sometimes organize collection campaigns and offer references to, for example, other websites where you can read more about a certain topic. In addition, many comments appear in which someone else shares a similar experience. This way, taboo is broken bit by bit around any subject.

3. We can handle more than we think

The most extraordinary and intense stories appear on HONY. Apart from the fact that these stories break taboos and help others in similar situations, they are often stories of people who have gotten out of a certain situation. They have endured the most difficult moments in their lives and have achieved something positive for themselves. These stories show how resilient we are when it comes down to it!

A preview – click on the picture to see the original post

“I see myself in my son.

I know what it’s like to be in that teenage stage when you feel the need to prove yourself. One day when I was about his age, I was hanging out with some friends after school, and they wanted to go to the mall, but I had to go back to school and work on a project. A few hours later, they all ended up getting arrested for shoplifting. When I got home, my father was crying. He’d gotten a call from one of the boy’s fathers, who told him everything that happened. He told my dad: ‘Barak didn’t get arrested because he went to school.’ My dad dropped to his knees and started hugging me, and telling me that I’d made the smart decision, and that night he took me out to dinner. Today, every one of those friends is either dead or locked up.”

“Over the past few years I’ve been having a lot of negative thoughts.

Toward the world. Toward myself. Toward other people. I’ve been struggling with chronic depression, and I think the most obvious symptom is negativity. My perception changed so slowly that I didn’t even notice. It didn’t feel abnormal. I just thought I was seeing the world clearly. I thought people were basically mean. I couldn’t find the energy to sit down with them, talk to them, and learn they aren’t bad. But watching her grow has been a revelation. She’s positive toward all humans. And everyone is positive toward her. I never know who starts it. I don’t see who begins the interaction. But so many times I’ll be on the bus or metro, and I’ll look up, and she’ll be smiling at a stranger. And they’re smiling back. And it makes me so happy. Sometimes my face hurts from smiling so much. She’s taught me how prejudiced I’d become toward other people. Somehow I’d forgotten that if you smile, people smile back.”

“He put me in the hospital when I was pregnant with her.

The next day he started crying, begging for forgiveness. He said: ‘I’m so sorry, I was drunk, I need you so much.’ So I took him back. The next time it happened, he managed to convince me that it was my fault. He said that he wouldn’t have gotten so angry if I had paid more attention to him. So I started thinking that I could be better. Then it happened again. Honestly, I stayed with him so much longer than I should have because I was afraid of becoming the stereotype of a single black mother.”

Which post has inspired or motivated you?

Do you take care of yourself? Put yourself first and ensure that you take all necessary steps to take care of your body and mind. Sounds simple, right? Maybe for some. Because, there are many people who actually do not take care of themselves (so well).

If you do not do self-care, this can affect your entire life. The balance between work and private life is lost, your eating habits are not healthy, you may be stressed or overwhelmed, you arrive and doubt any decision you make. That way you will never be in balance and you will most likely feel unhappy!

To take care of yourself you don’t have to turn your whole life upside down. Far from! Learning a few simple new habits is the key to success. Small changes, big results.

Self-care tips to add to your daily routine:

1. Sleep: ensure sufficient sleep and try to create regularity in your sleep rhythm. Go to bed at the same time every day and get up at the same time every day.
2. Exercise: daily exercise, moderately intensive, for about 30-60 minutes provides more energy and a healthier body. Cleaning, stretching or climbing stairs: everything counts!
3. Outside: try to go outside every day. Only a few minutes makes a difference already.
4. Breathing: do you feel stressed or anxious? Then consciously breathe in and out a few times. This way your entire body relaxes.
5. Take breaks: a break from your computer, telephone, social media, anything you can “turn off” for a moment.
6. Music: turn on your favorite song. Make a playlist for when you feel happy, sad, angry or hurt.
7. Dance: “Dance like nobody’s watching”, it is fun, gives you energy and contributes to positive emotions. Turn up your volume and dance!
8. Pay attention to your body: which dishes / snacks make you feel good? What makes you feel slow? What gives you energy and what makes you tired? Study your habits, and note what works and what doesn’t.
9. Hydrate sufficiently: 2 liters of water are recommended per day. Add some lemon or cucumber for an extra flavor!
10. Take a rest from visual stimuli: you record so much visual stimulation and information throughout the day, give your eyes a rest. Resting your eyes for 5 minutes feels great, give it a try.
11. Freshen up: shower or simply wash your face or hands. It refreshes you and gives you energy.
12. Give yourself the best: don’t feel guilty when you take time to look after yourself. You are important and you can treat yourself that way!

Try to include these quick tips in your daily routine. Making it part of your daily life ensures the best results. This way you become your best self!

In an earlier blog you could read more about the happiness hormones dopamine, serotonin and oxytocin. In this article I would like to tell you more specifically about the hormone dopamine. A number of things have an influence on the production of this happiness hormone and I would like to tell you how that works! You can read about dopamine here.

Dopamine & nutrition

The substances “phenylalanine” and “tyrosine” are needed to produce dopamine. In any case, food already produces a dopamine production, but you can also choose certain foods that are naturally rich in these substances to boost your dopamine production. These are almonds, avocados, bananas, chocolate, dairy, legumes, seeds, nuts, lean red meat, chicken, turkey, seafood and tofu.

In addition, it is useful to eat antioxidants. These can prevent certain substances from damaging the dopamine-producing cells. It is about these three antioxidants:

• Beta-carotene and carotenoids: leafy vegetables, orange fruit and vegetables, asparagus, broccoli, beetroot
• Vitamin C: peppers, oranges, strawberries, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts
• Vitamin E: nuts, sunflower seeds, leafy vegetables, broccoli, carrots

Furthermore, vitamins and minerals such as folic acid, iron, magnesium, vitamins B3 and B6 are involved in the production of dopamine. Make sure you get enough of these vitamins and minerals by eating vegetables, fruit and red meat, possibly supplemented with nutritional supplements.

Finally, it is good to avoid foods that can reduce brain function. This includes processed foods, white flour, cholesterol, caffeine, saturated fats and sugars.

Dopamine & exercise

Activate your NiceDay step count and make sure you have enough exercise! You can do this by walking, cycling or practicing a different sport every day for 30 to 60 minutes (or at least 8,000 steps). Exercise increases the calcium in your blood, which stimulates dopamine production and uptake of dopamine in your brain. In addition to sporting, sexual activity also stimulates dopamine production in your body. By having sex, your dopamine supply is quickly replenished and the threshold is lower to do it again!

Dopamine & sleep

Your brain uses little dopamine when you sleep, so with enough sleep you have more dopamine for the next day. Sleep at least eight hours a night. Here you can find tips for a good night’s sleep.

Dopamine & relaxation

To get your hormones in balance it is important to relax. By releasing hormones, you experience a rushed feeling during stress. This feeling can be useful if you have a deadline and need to complete tasks, but it is less useful if you feel this continuously. For this reason, try to balance your hormones by consciously dealing with your thoughts. You can read more tips to relax in this article.

When did you last take a day off? Or have a bath for an hour? Read a book in the middle of the day? In your busy life it hardly ever happens. And that is a shame, because you actually charge your battery by concentrating your thoughts on something completely different then work. What you need is a good hobby. The best, to be able to switch off completely on a regular basis. You can switch off optimally by meditating; 5 minutes a day already do wonders (says Harvard).

Here you will find more tips about increasing your happiness!

Do you want to increase your happiness? Then make sure you supplement your dopamine supply! Eat, exercise, sex, sleep, relax, read and have a nice day! 🙂

“Do more or what makes you happy”

NiceDay actions:

Try to write down your thoughts and feelings in your “Feeling Registration” so that you gain insight into what is going on inside of you.

We all want to be special, because being ‘normal’ is boring. Yet there is profit to be gained in just being ordinary. In the book ‘The courage to be disliked; How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness (2019), published by Allen & Unwin, Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga offer tools for developing courage to change without focusing on what others think about you. In addition, they discuss how to move past barriers that prevent us from being truly happy.

What is wrong with being “special”?

In principle there is nothing wrong with being ‘special’, but striving for perfection (the very best version of yourself) can cause you to strive for an unattainable goal. If we do not achieve this goal, the desire to be a better version of yourself will turn to the idea that you have failed. This in turn ensures that you feel unhappy.

Being normal and happy: how do you do that?

Self-acceptance is an important first step. If you manage to have the courage not to be special, your view of the world will immediately change. Nothing else needs to be done and a burden falls off your shoulders. You are no longer busy making continuous improvements to yourself, looking for the next mountain to climb, no you can just be. Sometimes something does not work out as you had previously thought or you will find that you are not good at something. And that is fine: You can’t do more than your best and that’s enough!

Your look at life

Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga also state that, to be ordinary and happy, you need a different view on life. We have learned that life is a line, you live from goal to goal until the moment of departure, death. We are constantly on the move in this image.

But, life is not a line, it is a collection of moments in the here and now. Future and past do not exist. If our life were a line then life planning is a good option. You don’t have to keep giving direction to a collection of moments. There will always be unexpected circumstances, planning is not always helpful.

All you have to do is live your life moment by moment. Happiness is then not the result of a goal achieved, but the by product of being allowed to here.

Do you have the courage to just be?

You may have read about the effect of a gratitude diary: a notebook (or app) in which you, for example, write down 5 things every morning and evening for which you are grateful. By focusing on what you do have, what is going well and the nice people you have around you, your sense of happiness grows. But in addition to this tip, we have a few more for you!

1. Life is not as heavy as it seems:

   Our thoughts easily get to us: “Pff, I really don’t feel it today, this will be a bad day.” and tada, at the end of the day it was a bad day. No matter how real these negative thoughts feel, they don’t have to make the truth. You determine what you think and to a large extent also how you feel. Your thoughts are super powerful, so try to evoke as many positive thoughts as possible and let the negative thoughts “pass” without attaching any value to them.

2. Think about what is really important:

   You are pulled in all directions, your work, your relationship, friends, household, social media. It all feels equally important. But is it all really that important? What is important differs per person, but ask yourself: what do I want to spend my time and energy on? If I look back on my life later, what more could I have wanted to do? And on what should I have spend less time?

3. Small steps, big result:

   Our daily life is busy, we want everything and that’s okay. But it can sometimes be overwhelming and this feeling makes you no longer know where to start. Try to ‘cut’ large projects / tasks or things that you don’t like in smaller steps. Ask yourself which small step you can take to make the situation a little better. Once you have taken the first step, you can ask yourself the question again. You go on and on! Problems seem (or are ultimately) less significant and this ensures that you experience less stress while you get more done. Win win!

4. You can learn to accept:

   “Life comes as it comes”, “it is what it is” or “c’est ça”, all statements that indicate that you can’t change life. If you often wish it to be different, you experience stress and negative feelings (such as dissatisfaction). Acceptance of what is ensures peace in your life. This does not mean that you “always have to let everything happen”, it mainly means that you use the current moment as a starting point. It is how it is and that determines your next steps and actions. Less stress, less dissatisfaction, more rest!

A toolset

These tips are actually all “tricks” or “tools” that you can teach yourself. They help to put things into perspective, accept things. you can not change, be in the present and be grateful for what is nice in your life. It reduces stress and the chance of an “off day”  (because you will still have those sometimes!).

NiceDay actions

Keep your gratitude diary in NiceDay, write down what really matters to you and plan “small steps” on your daily planner. Also monitor your mood, hopefully these tips will ensure a positive mood! And don’t forget to share this article with someone who can also benefit from these tips!

It has been a long time since I told my social circle that I am going to a psychologist. At that time I didn’t know what kind of diagnoses I had, but despite that I wanted to tell someone. I first told my best friends via WhatsApp. At that time I lived in the south of the Netherlands and all of them on the other side of the county, so it was inevitable that it was told via WhatsApp. In addition, I found it hard to tell face-to-face, so WhatsApp was a good alternative, without that I might not even been able to tell at that moment. They responded very nicely and supportively and did not condemn me for the fact that I went looking for help. They are still a great support to this day.

And what about your family?

Gradually it became clear that I was suffering from PTSD and depression. In the meantime I had not yet informed my family circle. I found it difficult because I feel that a lot is expected of me and I didn’t want to let them down. I did not want to come across as a disappointment or as someone who was pathetic. Family parties during this period were not something I was looking forward to. I did go, but I would always put on my mask and answered all questions with “good,” “well,” “fine.” Of course there were a number of family members who also saw that the way I spoke did not match the way I looked. I then confided in a number of these family members and told them what was going on. They also responded very nicely and not judgmentally. So my delusions that I would be seen as a disappointment or pathetic were (luckily) wrong. But my family is big, so a part didn’t know anything. And then Lisa from NiceDay asked me if I wanted to write blogs for the website. I had put the very first blog that I wrote, about one and a half year ago, into the family app and everyone was informed. The responses were all very positive. They thought it was great that I shared this part of me with them.

Open

Since writing for NiceDay, I have been much more open about my mental complaints. I can tell much more easily about my present depression and that I have just recovered from PTSD. For example, I came across a number of old acquaintances who also went to a psychologist for, among other things, depression, PTSD, eating disorder, burnout or anxiety disorder.

It feels good to know that I am not the only one in my environment who is suffering from psychological problems. By not being frenetic about it and sharing it with loved ones, I feel freer. Freer in the sense that I don’t have to pretend that I am super happy, while it is not the case. Because with a mask on life takes so much energy. Of course you have to feel for yourself whether or not you can share it with the people you are currently with, which can mean that you sometimes wear a mask. And that’s okay, as long as it doesn’t become a habit every day. So if I have to give you advice: share it with your friends and family. They won’t judge you. And if a few people do, you know who you can and cannot count on in this case!

Love,

Ghyta

In my previous blog I explained how I got to the point of seeking help. I wanted to be able to deal better with certain thoughts and needed some support. In this article I want to tell you what I did to change my behavior, thoughts and attitude after my conversations with my coach Sarah were completed. Of course these are all things that work for me and maybe not for you but I hope I can give you some inspiration with my four tips!

#tip1: mindfulness

I try to meditate every day to calm myself, observe my thoughts, let go of unnecessary feelings or simply reflect on the day. By doing this regularly I am aware of the factors that cause me stress, but I also think of everything I am grateful for. Simple breathing exercises also ensure that I can overcome moments of panic or intense tension. I often use applications on my phone such as RelaxMelodies, Breathe and Youper to meditate or do other mindfulness exercises. There are of course many other options to explore when you start researching! Coach Sarah also pointed me to this article about progressive relaxation: very nice exercise if you have difficulty relaxing!

#tip2: the essential triangle of movement, sleep and nutrition

Enough exercise, enough sleep and good food: it sounds incredibly logical, but often not enough value is attached to these three things! The three factors are also very closely linked; good nutrition ensures that you sleep better; sleeping well ensures that you have more energy to move and movement in turn ensures a good night’s sleep. For me this triangle is the basis to feel good. If I don’t feel good physically, I will soon notice that in my mental well-being. Since a year I have been consistently exercising for the first time in my life by bootcamping twice a week and I find that it works wonders for my mental well-being. Sport helps me clear my mind. I find it incredibly difficult to not cling to my thoughts and my thoughts never stand still. An hour of exercise is the only moment for me to succeed. Never thought that I would ever enjoy killing myself in the open air: but I came to love it and wouldn’t want anything else!

#tip3: customized relaxation

This is a valuable tip for me which I received during my coaching trajectory from Sarah: relaxation is not synonymous to doing nothing. For some people doing nothing works great and that is of course super nice but if – like me – you really love planning and structure, doing nothing can feel incredibly useless and therefore sad. So: make lists and make a schedule if that suits you. I was always convinced that in my free time I had to relax by “doing nothing” while I am someone who has a to-do list for everything. I sometimes felt really useless after a night alone at home and this could even result in crying or provoking quarrels with boyfriend. Sarah reassured me by telling me that many people secretly love structure and things to do and it makes sense that you also look for this in your spare time. When I am home alone on days off I make sure I have a schedule with moments of relaxation such as watching series, reading a book, exercising and meditating.

#tip4: selfcare Sunday

It sounds like a cliché instagram hashtag but “Selfcare Sunday” has become sacred to me in recent months. Every Sunday I take a moment for myself to reflect on the week, write in my diary, do yoga exercises, meditate, read and put on a face mask so that I can fully relax. Sometimes this session lasts an hour, sometimes three. Of course it doesn’t always work to do it  on Sundays but then I make sure that I plan my moment a day earlier or later. My boyfriend knows this too and makes sure he doesn’t bother me while I go to our bedroom. Everyday I try to write down my feelings in the NiceDay app and I always look back on the week on Sunday: how I felt and what was the cause of it. I write all of these findings in my diary, as well as my goals for the coming week, things I am grateful for and the pitfalls that lie ahead. I notice that by writing things down, I can literally “write off” emotions and thoughts. I hereby give recognition to what I think and feel and believe that it is an important step in self-acceptance and feeling better about yourself!

Love and see you next time, 

Mara

Many patients wonder how treatment will be like in mental health care. Can you expect improvement in a straight line up from the start of the treatment?

Waves

Improvement usually goes more in a wave movement (ten Broeke, 2004). Seen over the entire treatment, the goal is of course to reduce your symptoms and make you feel better. But often changes occur with ups and downs; sometimes you may feel that you are taking two steps forward and one step back. This may have to do with awareness and confrontation with what you previously avoided.

Awareness of your complaints and your behavior

You are going through several phases during treatment. The first phase starts with an intake interview, after which you may already feel a little better because you were able to tell your story and because your concerns were heard (ten Broeke, 2004). Also, you may have received confidence and hope that you can change your complaints.

This is followed by a phase that promotes awareness; you get information about your complaints, you register how often you suffer from your complaints (and you may notice that you are gloomy or anxious much more often than you thought and you may find this unsettling). That can be confronting and make you feel less good. You are more aware of what is not going well, but you still have few tools to get moving and change something (ten Broeke, 2004). This, of course, is not a nice feeling.

Yet becoming aware of what is going on is a sign that you have begun to confront your complaints so that you can do something about them.

Addressing complaints during treatment

When you are more aware of what is going wrong at the moment and how your behavior may sustain your symptoms, you can try to do things differently or changes your think about situations, your professional will be there to help you along the way.

You get tips and tricks to work with, for example by confronting fearful situations that you have avoided before, you become more active again while you previously had the tendency to withdraw. You can also learn to challenge your negative thoughts and become more realistic to start feeling better. And that too can go in waves, with trial and error.

Your development during a treatment is therefore on average not a straight, rising line, but rather a wavy movement. Being aware of this and knowing that this is “normal” can help you to put things into perspective when things go less well. Have faith that you are on the right track and that you will get there. Keep going!

For someone who worries a lot, suffers from negative thoughts or has trouble falling asleep, meditation can help. But also when you are feeling perfectly fine meditation is beneficial, you will feel (more) energetic and your mental resilience will grow. You can find thousands of meditations on the internet: you can visualize, focus on your breathing or meditate while in motion. Finding a type that suits you well can be a bit of a search. Yet it can bring you a lot! We list a few meditation forms for you.

Vipassana Meditation

This form is about observing. Observing your body, your thoughts and your emotions without attaching a value to them. One of the first things you learn when you start using a Headspace module. You soon learn that you can see your thoughts as cars that pass slowly or quickly and all you have to do is look at these cars. Sounds easy, but we tend to run after thoughts or try to stop them. This form of meditation trains you in such a way that your thoughts won’t take a run with you and find peace faster. This type of meditation is good for when you worry a lot. 

Visualisation

We can all visualize, we do it without even noticing. During a meditation session with visualization, you consciously consider the images in your mind. You can recall images of something that has already happened, something that is yet to come or you can, for example, pretend you are on the beach. The sun and the sound of the sea will let you relax. You can also imagine how your day will go. For example, do you have to do presentation which you are nervous for? Try to play this moment in your head with a positive ending, for example enthusiastic reactions from the audience or an overwhelming applause. In the beginning it is difficult to take up this type of meditation alone. There are a lot of guided meditations, they help with stress, anxiety or make sure you fall asleep better. 

Yoga

Yoga is a moving form of meditation and Yoga also has many different forms. During Vinyasa Yoga you focus on your breathing and move from one position to the other based on the rhythm of your breathing. Focusing on your breathing improves your yoga flow and ensures peace of mind. You are constantly on the move, unlike Yin yoga. During Yin yoga you will find peace because you take the time for the different poses. You use the postures to feel what goes on in your body. It is good to do this form of yoga when you have already done something active (Vinyasa yoga or swimming, running). Our Yoga expert Esther shares something new about yoga every month. Don’t know where to start? Follow a video of Esther!

Breathing meditation

You’ve probably heard the phrase “Breathe deeply in through your nose and out through your mouth.” You can do breathing exercises (or meditations) anywhere. It is nice if you have a number that you can do in between, when, for example, you experience stress. Meditating does not have to take hours at all! Just taking 5 minutes for yourself can make a world of difference. For example, try this is: breathe in deeply through your nose as far as you can and then hold your breath for 5 seconds. Then release your breath through your mouth. Repeat this a few times and feel how you react to this. You immediately released some tension!

Mindfulness

Mindfulness is about being in the “now”. We are often lost in thought and think of everything we need to do later. Mindfulness is “living with attention”, focusing on what you are doing now. Imagine you are in your car, you are in a traffic jam and your thoughts begin: what groceries do I need, what is the quickest route to the supermarket, what is a quick recipe so that I am on time at the gym … Mindfulness means that you let go of these thoughts and look at the cars around you, the scenery, listen to the sound of the engine, feel the hills on your way. You perceive everything as it is, without judgement and you do not cling to it. Mindfulness improves focus and performance.

“Don’t hate, meditate”

Experiment and learn

There are a lot of Apps, videos on YouTube and meditations on Spotify to get you started:

Apps to meditate:

• InsightTimer: various meditation teachers, meditation music and sounds all in 1 app. Easy to use in English and Dutch. For example, search for stress, anxiety or sleep for specific meditations.
• Headspace: probably heard of it;)! The modules of Headspace let you get acquainted with meditation in a nice way, good for beginners.

Nice playlists on Spotify:

• NiceDay Binaural Beats: This playlist is full of music that allows you to fully relax.
• Yoga feels: not just instrumental but nice tunes to relax with or to get your own yoga flow

Yoga from your own home

• Take a live yoga class from your own home with our yoga expert Esther or follow a video lesson from Adrienne.

Which form will you try? Or do you already have a favorite? 

In my last blog I talked about how setting goals and attaching conditions to our state of happiness is only temporary and often unsuccessful. I promised to give you an answer on how I found happiness within me so here we go.

Focus on possibilities instead of limitations

We have all done this, I won’t go out and try to make new friends because I already have friends or I do not fit in with other people. If you cling on the notion that something is not possible you are arguing in favour for your limitations. By doing this you are keeping the limitations in your life. If you would argue in favour of your possibilities, you can turn those possibilities into a reality. I think it’s better to prove that we CAN do something instead of reinforce that we can’t do something. It does not matter if we feed our possibilities or our limitations. The one we feed is the one that wins. 

Always ask why!

You know how children are always so curious and always keep asking “why” to understand  the world around them. I think when we mature, asking the why question remains just as important but more in the sense of understanding the world inside of us. What is your why power? Why is it that you want to study this degree? Move to that city? Buy that new thing? I believe that when you do not have a strong why for what you do we tend to be more sensitive for influences of someone else’s why. When you start to question the reason why you are doing the things you are doing in your life, you might notice that some of them are only because of what others might expect from you or what the media and society perpetuates as something that you must be doing.  Asking yourself the why more regularly, makes us understand and set our values. This will make us happy and reassured when making life decisions. 

Prioritize play 

We were all kids once who were giving pens and paint and we expressed ourselves completely freely. But as we grow older we try to conform and fit in. So I took this whole play part a chance by just letting go sometimes of the idea of being good or great at something. We sometimes just need to do something creative and just do it. Creativity goes well beyond play, it helps us think differently, problem solve differently and helps us build confidence. It can come in so many different forms, singing, dancing, cooking, playing sports. Anything that feels like a unique form of self-expression. Anything that helps us reconnect with our inner child! 

Small steps lead to big changes

We live in a society that focuses on crash diets and getting rich quick, so we tend to want big results and we want them fast. But we also know that those quick and fast strategies bring us back to where we started or even worse of then where we were. We can never change our life until we start to change something we do daily. When we put expectations on ourselves such as “I will start working out every day” we tend to not be able to keep it up and quit completely. It is the go big or go home mindset we need to stop having. It are the small things that we do often that makes the changes. Instead of working out every day, start with working out once every week and build it up. 

Thank you again for taking the time to read this month’s blog.

Love, 

Sabrina