Living a Thoughtful and Authentic Life

Words can be the most destructive weapons on the planet. They start wars, end relationships and cause hurt beyond repair. People so callously hurl hurtful words at each other that cause long lasting damage. Undoing this damage can be long and hard work. Some people struggle with the damage. Some are able to overcome. Learning to chose our words thoughtfully and carefully towards others is a good creed to live by. And although we can start to learn how to choose our words carefully towards others, sometimes choosing the words carefully that we hurl at ourselves can be the most difficult change that we face. It is easier for humans to watch what they say to others versus what they say to themselves. We are more apt to hurl hurtful words that cause self-harm than to speak kindly and encouraging to ourselves. There are many common phrases that many people use to hurt themselves every day. Phrases like "I'm so stupid" or "I can't" are used every day to bring pe

Recently a close friend experienced the death of a loved one. The death of this particular person was tragic. It was a drunk driving accident that occurred on a sunny day in the afternoon and my friend's friend was hit head on by a drunk driver. This driver walked away unscathed and his friend died instantly. My friend who was very close to this person was devasted by such a senseless tragedy. It has been a few months now and he is struggling with how to cope with the death of his friend. He is struggling with how to deal with this death because it was so preventable. I tried to touch base with him after the accident to see how he was dealing with the death but he couldn't talk about it. He finally called me back and after a long conversation, I decided that my next blog post should be about the holistic approach to dealing with grief. Grief comes in many forms and people have different approaches to dealing with grief. My friend reached out to me to see if I had any advice o

The people we surround ourselves with can have a huge impact on our emotions and our positivity in life. Who we chose to spend our time with will either have a positive impact or a negative impact on our lives. Making the conscious choice to surround ourselves with people who lift us up is the key to living a healthier life. We can sometimes get sucked into toxic relationships without even realizing that we are spending our time with a toxic person. It can be very easy to become ensnared in their negativity. It can sometimes take years to extract yourself from a toxic person. Because we form a bond of love with a person, it can be a difficult task to let go. But just because we love or care about someone doesn't mean that the love is But letting go can be the best thing for a person's life. The first step to letting these people go is to identify the people that are toxic to your life. These are the people in your life that will bring you down to their negative level. They

Previously, I wrote about the first step to living a thoughtful life. I wrote about how removing yourself from the falsity and distraction of social media will, in turn, create opportunities to find yourself. The time spent glued to our devices is time that could be spent being out in the world and learning to interact with others and interacting with nature. Our interaction with each other and the world at large is key to living as our authentic selves. The world provides so many opportunities for self-growth that it is shame to ignore it.  When I published my last post about the first step to living authentically, I got a lot of questions about what I do with that time. I do spend some time on social media by spreading the word about protecting the environment, human rights issues and how to live your life truthfully. But when I am not working, I actually take the time to meditate. I have benefitted greatly from meditation. There are so many reasons why I benefit from an hour of med

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it" -Ferris Bueller's Day Off Life is hectic. We are running around at a faster pace each day. We are inundated and bombarded with stimuli coming from all different angles. Our computers, our phones and the tv give us information with the touch of a button. We are over stimulated but yet we want more stimulation. How many times have you been looking at Facebook on your phone late into the evening, instead of reading or going to bed early? It happens to the best of us. The rise of social media has also given away to the rise in addiction to our devices. We now are buried in our devices hence removing ourselves from real life. We move through life with our heads down instead of up. We have stopped interacting and prefer to interact with an inanimate object. Social media gives people an inauthentic avenue of communication. Many people get on their social media accounts and say