Achieve Your Greatest Dreams - one step at a time.

Sociidot is a new app to help you reach your goals step by step.
I designed the roadmaps featured in the app for:

• How To KickStart Health
• How To Reverse Diabetes
• How To Burn Fat.

Downloadable in the app store.

God, please make life easier for me.

No.

How many times have we not wanted life a little easier, a little bit more like a fairy tale, a little less painful, a little more tylenol.

How many times have we not in our hearts late at night prayed that one day, someday, some way, when we wake and open our eyes with the first ray of morning light streaming through the cracks in the window, that all our fears, our sorrows -would all be gone. Gone with the darkness of the night.

What do we think would happen if our prayers were answered accordingly?
How fragile would we not be, never able to tackle the lightest branches brushing against us, falling to our knees with the first autumn breeze. How weak in this skin would we not be, if we never had to face our fears, if we never had to grow through pressure. Like a muscle dissolves with no resistance, so do we.

Many of us have not learnt how to handle pain - especially emotional pain. We are so emotionally disconnected, that we are like an electrical wire vibrating with every stimulation, not able to relief the sensation. And all this ongoing stimulation that we accumulate leads to an electrical short-circuit. When our brain fails to recharge and our emotions feel like needles on the skin, this makes us vulnerable to addictions and other numbefying behaviors, because we have not learnt to handle pain. We simply have no pain tolerance. Not being able to handle pain, kills us. Pain will leave us if we let it. And next time it comes looking for us, we  have thicker skin to deal with the cuts.

Never pray for less pressure, pray to become better, stronger and wiser. Pray to know what to pray for.
Pray for love. In the end nothing else ever mattered.

Breaking patterns, habits and ceilings.

I love this. Breaking habits. Breaking patterns. Breaking blocks. Breaking points. Breaking addictions. Breaking chains. Breaking confinements. Breaking the ceiling. To become what we already are. By breaking through the walls of glass we have created ourselves. So we can walk right over the shattered glass beneath our feet, no longer confining, defining us. No longer able to scar us. It is beneath us.

How To Kickstart Health - there's an app for that!

I’ve got some great news today:  Sociidot just launched and I’m in the app as a featured expert!

Sociidot is a tool to help you visualize and achieve your dreams. The Sociidot team built the app with the innate understanding that while many people go after their “big” dreams, they may need some help and motivation to get there. Sociidot is designed to push you to spend time on the things that are really important to you.

As a featured nutrition expert in Sociidot, I provide the roadmap of how to get where you want to go. You simply take one tiny action at a time and move forward. Since I’m a food-as-medicine expert, I know the steps it takes to meet your health goals. So I’ve put together what I know and created a couple of roadmaps for Sociidot’s Health Maven category. The roadmaps outline how to achieve certain health goals, so anyone who really wants to can follow the dots and achieve the goal. Whether it be how to reverse diabetes in 30 steps, how to burn fat or simply kickstart a healthy lifestyle that makes you FEEL great in the skin you are in!

Sociidot is available for download here. Look for my roadmaps in the Health Maven category. It was a lot of fun putting them together, and now I’m looking forward to seeing people follow them!

3 Things That Matter More Than What's On Your Plate.

Christina Santini offers nutrition target therapy + coaching + meditation/yoga .

Your body's biochemical functioning + brain chemical rebalancing takes place ONLY during those deep layers of sleep. If you are not sleeping at 10PM which is where we know from Ayurvedic Medicine that our body's main healing takes place, your body is simply not capable of healing from whatever stressors it has encountered during the day - that means that you can be an overly fanatic health-nut, cutting out this and that and carrying around Spirulina bags and whatnot, and yet you will suffer from a body that is slowly but surely breaking down.

Hormones such as testosterone and insulin are STRONGLY sensitive to sleep and the way you deal with stress.

In other words, if you can't seem to be losing that stubborn fat (particularly abdominal fat is due to an imbalance in testosterone/estrogen), and your energy levels are going down the drain - and especially for any sexual dysfunction - you may want to reconsider your sleep and meditation habits.

And if the word habit is not part of these practices, well, then you don't need to look at what's on your plate to improve your health in these areas - because it's a waste of time before your sleep and stress management tools are in place. Before that happens, your blood labs will be reflecting hormonal imbalances that are all over the map, including borderline diabetic tendencies. And this is true, EVEN if you eat a strict low-carb Paleo diet or whatnot. Doesn't matter - sort out your sleep and take some herbs that will help you calm down your mind. Everything else will fall into place after that.

Managing your nutrition before your sleep habits is like painting a house before the fundament is laid out.

Reference: J Pediatr. 2007 Apr;150(4):364-9. Association between inadequate sleep and insulin resistance in obese children. Flint J et al.

By Grace I Am Saved.

If you haven't been sleeping under a rock lately, you will no doubt have noted how it's become ever so trendy to conform to LOVE and spiritual awakening and embrace that we are all god and that if you just put up some goals on a transformation board then the universe will hand it over to you. Just like any spoiled brat, we sit there and feel like we deserve this and that and here and now, and more and more.

And throw in some vegan cupcakes on top of that and you have LA.

I want to share my thoughts on this, because I believe that what we embrace as awakening as a form of love for all and tolerance for everything and everyone can pave the way for more darkness  - like a wolf wrapped in sheep's clothing.

Love is not tolerance for all. Love is not acceptance of everything.
Love is confrontation when something is not right. And we as humans have a very narrow mind and do not see clearly what is good and what is bad. If the truth is subjective, then we can spend into eternity discussing every case - because some of us will always be able to argue for why a certain behavior actually stems from love.

Love is not tolerance - ignorance is tolerance of everything, and when we tolerate everything, we stand for nothing. Love stands for something, love can be unconditional, yet it is still confrontational. Love is not acceptance of everything - and deep down we know, because that feeling of guilt we get, where do you think that comes from? Guilt simply does not make sense without a wrong and a right. Guilt does not make sense without a God.

The fact is, if you talk long enough with anyone who is embracing many of these spiritual concepts that are going rampant, you'll notice a deep profound longing to be whole again. And that their behaviors do not match that of a loving being - rather that of a deeply narcissistic being, trying to find fulfilment within themselves - in vain. It's not news that many yogis and gurus go absolutely bonkers, and go off on sexual escapades, as they cannot control the energy that is released within them during their practice, and they are still very much a slave to hedonism.

The paradox being that these are the exact same teachers, that we take advice from on how to become more mindful. People who proclaim that god is within us, and we are all we need.

This is absolutely crap. No one has ever found healing in their own solitude. Rather they go out of their mind with insanity, drugs (and yes, mushrooms count too), fanatical religious eating behaviors etc. All while proclaiming that love is everywhere, and god is in the stones and you and me, but please - let's not refer to the bible or pray, because that might offend someone, so let's just without names, thank whatever it is we believe in - let's pray to the rocks who cannot feel, the rain who cannot answer - but let's keep god out of this.

If I were God, I'd get pretty offended. As in: what, here we are thanking the sun and the trees and the bees and thanking you and thanking me - for what, I really don't know. It's not like we created anything - most of us have messed up so much, that we need grace and we need to let go of our attachment to our obsession with what we are so that we can follow our calling in life.

We are not god -  we are anything but. Fact is, we are only saved by grace.

And we are alone until we find God - that's why the God void within us was created in the first place. Certainly not so that we can dance around high on mushrooms and pretend that we are God and perfect beings. Actions speak louder than words - and if we were perfect beings, we would have a clean record. I don't know about you, but I have a lot of grace to accept in my life - and I could not stand on my own, that I know.

The feeling of being alone, even when we are in a committed relationship, have kids etc. only exist when we have not accepted God into our lives.

Because we are all alone without God - and through his Grace we are, indeed, saved.
And thank God for that.

I am certainly not thanking Tony Robbins, Buddha or Bank of America for that, just saying. Even though I am sure they are caring organizations, they don't know me nor you. And they can't do anything after darkness falls.

You don't HAVE to change.

I'm really stubborn if I feel like someone is trying to control me.

Christina Santini coaches health a-z incl. addictions
+ eating disorders in office in Los Angeles + Skype.

Like, I can't even control myself for crying out loud. So I've had to figure out a way to trick myself into doing what is essentially best for me without me getting all rebellious and whatnot. If I set some boundaries I can be sure that it is only a matter of time before every cell in me will itch to go beyond that line. Because I don't like rules. They feel so confining. Mind you, that is even those rules that I have chosen to set for myself because I know I should stick to them. I do like values - and I think integrity and living according to your core values is crucial.

This stubborn 5-year old mentality has led me to tap into how I can use intrinsic motivation to change. The only way I can change and motivate myself to implement better behaviors is to tap into WHY would I want to do this -- because I don't absolutely have to. I don't have to do anything absolutely, in fact. 

Yes, there are consequences if I don't - but then I am doing this because I WANT to, so I can avoid dealing with the consequences. That's valid. 

Do you get this? Because if we simply tell ourselves "well, you gotta stop eating burgers and fries, cos you're fat" - which is in fact, what most of us tell ourselves along with other nasty adjectives daily that we don't even notice because they're on autoplay, brainwashed by magazines, tv and peer pressure - we will get very resentful, focus on the negative and what we CAN'T do - and where focus goes energy flows. So sooner or later we will do what we are focusing on not to do.

Here's the thing, though, none of us like to be told what to do. We like to do stuff because it feels good from within our soul. We like to do stuff that nurtures our core values and resonates with who we are.

That is, when we know who we are.

And that's where the struggle lies for a lot of us: We have no clue who we are, we just know that we feel disconnected, and we have a void that we want to fill. With something and anything - so we try diets to fit into skinny jeans. 

When that gets boring, and we really... like... REALLY... want that double stuffed chocolate cake with a layer of whipped cream, then we decide we binge for a while. 

When that gets boring and our jeans don't fit anymore, we go to the bars and pick up guys, girls or both or many or whatever rocks our boat. 

When that gets old, we chase money. That can sometimes last a lifetime - always chasing something that we can complain about is the root to all our sorrows in life. When in fact we are just using it to project our inner dysfunction onto something external, and remove the weight of responsibility from our own shoulders. Nice, but not so nice - because when we don't carry the weight of responsibility, we can't change, we are stuck in status quo complaining aimlessly over everything and everyone but us. And this leads to resentment and bitterness in the end: We feel that we didn't get in life what we deserved. When, in fact, we didn't really even try. We didn't make the effort, we just hummed along in the herd making a lot of noise, but not really going anywhere, as we didn't want to venture out on new grounds. We just did the minimum of what (we thought) was expected of us to fit in and stuck to the rest of the flock. All humming along to the same old tune. That's the comfort zone. Unfortunately, the comfort zone is not very comfortable in the long run. 

It's a pretty dirty place in fact. 

The key to change is to ask yourself: Why might you want to change in the first place? And why is that reason important TO YOU? 

Remember no one absolutely has to do anything. We change because we want to. We change when we can't stop ourselves from reconnecting with our core values and calling in life. We change when we tap into that motivation within.

We change because we want to become a better person - only you know what that person looks like, feels like and acts like, in your skin.

So ask yourself one simple question: Why MIGHT you want to change?

And why is THAT reason important TO YOU?

Because you don't HAVE to.
No one absolutely has to do anything.
You too have been granted free will, you are not a passive victim being pushed around even if that's what you are telling yourself. You can always choose not to change. It's your decision. 

How To Create New Habits

The biggest downfall when trying to break bad habits is to rely on willpower to carry you through the storms and emotional turmoil that comes with every change.

Simply because willpower is fragile and emotions change with the wind - it's only human to give into pleasure as we are hedonistic creatures baseline. That, however, does not mean that we should tolerate it. What we need to do in order to create the life that aligns with our core values, is to outsmart our tricky mind and create a strong fundament that will support us through change.

When working with any client who wants to change something in his/her life - whether it be breaking an addiction or simply dealing with the stress of life in healthier ways than emotional abuse and/or binging behaviors, I always start out with assessing what they are getting out of their current behaviors, and how we can create a substitute to avoid creating an empty, hollow void when abstaining from their previous "filler". This is CRUCIAL to understand. It is useless to abstain from behaviors without filling the void with something else.

Humans do not like emptiness and we will do anything and everything to avoid feeling that empty space - even create drama that is completely uncalled for. Simply because we get addicted to the feeling of fullness - even if that comes from misery. Also interesting that intense drama and misery actually results in a spike in our natural painkillers, beta-endorfines, kind of creating a natural high/numbness from life temporarily. This is why so many of us are addicted to whining and complaining instead of taking responsibility for our life choices and make a conscious choice to play the cards that we have been dealt differently to make for a different outcome.

Below is a sample of how I work with changing old behaviors and trading them for new ones that will rewire the pathways of pleasure trigger-points in your brain.

And after having worked consistently with this for typically a couple months, you will find that you can let go effortlessly of your old habits.

And you are now free of the chains of whatever was causing you to feel like a victim before.

Do not underestimate the power of small, simple steps - after all that is why staircases are so popular: many small steps lead to mountains of change.

Embrace the change - step into the wind.

Fill out below and put on your fridge as a daily reminder.

My keystone habit:_________________________
My current Cue:____________________________
My current Routine:_________________________
My current Reward:_________________________
My new Cue: ______________________________
My new Routine:___________________________
My new Reward:___________________________

Here is an example of what it could look like for someone:


My keystone habit: Emotional Eating
My current Cue: I turn on the TV and drop into the sofa (to eat).
My current Routine: I skip breakfast, I work overtime and come home and open the freezer to disconnect.
My current Reward: Letting go of control and feeling comforted.
My new Cue: I go straight into the bathtub after work.
My new Routine: Eating 3 square meals and take a swim in the ocean or simply a herbal bath when I get home from work to recharge.
My new Reward: I lower my stress levels, my body+mind gets stronger and I respect myself and my body without the crash and burn from abusing food.

What this simple exercise does is, that it creates for the ability to THINK before you react. And the more conscious you get, the easier it gets to let go of something that initially felt like it was hardwired into your brain. Initially you may still find yourself in the cookie cabinet after your herbal bath, but that's OK - the point is simply to delay the pattern of what you usually did out of habit - because THAT breaks the impulse slowly, but surely until you can effortlessly let go. This is the science of neuroplasticity in practice - how to retrain your brain to form new happy behaviors rather than living a life of deprivation and constant struggle with willpower.

The biggest obstacle is to let go of that black/white thinking where you expect perfection and that your new habits just happen overnight. What you want is to change whatever it is you get pleasure from, so that you naturally let go. This is so super powerful once you start applying it into your life. The thing is, most of us never do, and thus we never change. We tend to think of change, as something that is this big peak to climb, and we feel like we should be climbing it like running a marathon; so we give up before we ever started.

Christina Santini offers life coaching via skype
and in Los Angeles based office.
Read more here. 

Do not let your mind trick you into telling you, that you are not strong enough, not worth enough. Outsmart it by being OK with the process - the journey to change.

In the end, that is all that matters in life. Whether we take the journey, the steps... or we refuse to let go and hang on to that fragile branch hanging over the cliff, which will eventually break, and we will fall so very far.

Take a small step today. Just to show yourself, that today is different - and this will mark the rest of your journey. However slowly you move matters not. What matters is that you are no longer stagnant.

I AM.

I love the fall. It is my favorite time of year. The moment the wind picks up. The September sky changes into a richer shade of blue. The first howls of the season that reaches right through to your core. The first kisses of the wind against your exposed skin. The still burning bright sun-rays that warm your soul from within. The leaves changing. The mesmerizing contrasts of green, burning reds and bright, nourishing oranges.

So vividly alive, everything is changing. Once again, never to be the same. In this moment we let go of everything we don't need anymore. The hurt, the pain, the heartbreak, we simply dust off the cookie crumbs and move on. And with the wind of change we fly away. We grow stronger, wiser. With every breath we take, we refuse to look back. We walk on. We keep moving, crawling, running. It matters not how. We choose to embrace the change that the creator brings with the seasons as so within.

I love standing in the middle of the tall trees in the midst of the forrest in the autumn storms.
Listening to the sounds of silence, the wind howling my name, tearing me to pieces and putting me back together.
Never to be the same.

The feeling of how little I am in this big beautiful world that we have been handed over. I recognize how insignificant I am yet still how powerful every single one of us can be when we choose to stand our ground in this moment, calling in the one.

I can walk forever in the woods, just getting lost in translation, in colors, in the maze of life, letting go of all these small, useless things we think we need. And realizing that nothing really matters, yet everything does.
In that, there is bliss.

I love the fall. It is so alive, and never fears change. It is always solid yet never rigid. It always comes, yet always changes. There is comfort in the turmoil.

And it is the perfect time to embrace the change of the seasons with lots of steamy hot chai all cuddled up in soft blankets in front of the window late at night.
I love this time of year.

Always be a first rate version of you.

One of the most important things in my daily routine is that I take time every morning to meditate - it connects me with who I AM and de-clutters my mind from all the constant ongoing bombarding from what society tells us we should want (to be, to have, to look like, to talk like etc. etc.).

As long as we try to be someone else - we will always be a second-rate version rather than a first rate version of who we are. 

We did not come here to be anyone else but exactly who we are - and our purpose is to embrace that so that we can give back and discover our full potential while carrying those we meet on our path through life's rocks.

We are all tigers when we listen to our core beings.

Yet the sheep all end up running off the cliff with the rest of the flock. 

I 

What's YOUR relationship with FOOD?

Eating takes us to the CORE of who we are - what we believe we are worth and can achieve in this life. Don't underestimate the importance of the way you eat with the way you carry yourself in life and the results you get elsewhere. How you act in one area transcends to every area of your life - are you present when you eat? Do you listen to people when they talk to you - or are you eating over your laptop and pulling out your iphone whenever at a social setting, stuffing yourself with chips or counting the calories that pass your lips and believe you need to burn off bad calories at the gym.
That is not normal behavior, regardless of how accepted it is in our instant-gratification and vanity driven society. Healthy is not the woman in the gym with the perfect body, who eats the perfect raw vegan or whatever diet. The woman on the treadmill who controls every morsel passing her lips, posting pictures of her abs on instagram and facebook - living in misery. There is no pleasure, and yet our society is praising for that type of behavior - woman and man alike. And it is NOT healthy. These behaviors do NOT make you happy. They make you controlling, restrictive and moody. And yes, this affects your intimacy level and close relationships as well.

Success is being happy, vibrant and well-nourished activating our potential in life regardless of what we look like - it's time to let go of that shallow judgment we all do when we decide whether someone is healthy and successful - because most people with perfect abs are NOT happy - they're controlling and restrictive and severely insecure. We must stop this insanity. We cannot move forward if all our time is spent talking about weight loss and measuring our fat percentages - it has got to stop.

Are you overriding your hunger cues; did your relationship fall to pieces because you didn't listen and pick up the signals that started months, years before? Same baseline qualities manifesting in different ways in life.

If you enjoy food - savor the bites, the flavors of life, usually you will find your connections to humans also deepen, because you have trained yourself to be present and pick up subtle signals in the moment, before they turn into red flags (overeating/restricting/relationship break-ups/etc. etc.).

Our eating is connected to our intimacy, love, money, our values and what we believe life is. That's why HOW you eat is equally important to WHAT you eat. Eating is connected to a primary domain of life... changing your eating, changes your life on a much more profound level than getting healthy, looking good etc. etc.

Do you get how important this is? Changing your relationship with food will TRANSFORM your LIFE!

The online conference for eating psychology is running online right now  - check it out here, it's great stuff.

In this skin.

I was thinking of something the other day while digging my feet in the still-warm-sand watching the last rays of the sun scatter across the ocean.

I was thinking, why. Why are so many people struggling with just being human - in this skin. Why can we not just embrace being in this skin - alive and well. And yet, everyone is fighting their own battle regardless of how picture perfect it may look from the outside. Regardless - and in spite of, and sometimes indeed because of - everything they have been given, that's been handed to them on a silver plate.

And it's not very difficult to answer. It's just sometimes it is so very easy to forget.

We don't grow if we do not struggle. And the whole point of being in this skin is to develop character - to grow. On a wider scale - every culture who has chosen to embrace hedonism and the easy life has been struck by nemesis. And the fundament they built their empire on has been made by sticks that the wind could easily blow to pieces. Resilience is like a muscle we develop through trying again and again and again and again and again. And yet again. And when we crawl through mud and think we are sinking, that is when we must pull ourselves up - that is the turning point where we change, where we grow stronger, wiser and compassionate. That is the moment where we do not care of the reflection in the mirror, because we have faced our inner demons - we know exactly what we are made of.

This is the only muscle that matters in life - developing resilience enables us to overcome our own weaknesses, to have compassion for others who need help and to burn our ego and vanity, because we are not giving into the pressure of a toxic environment to live up to a certain set of fake and hollow standards that are morally corrupted and will slowly eat us up from the inside. Ultimately leading to our own destruction - whether we turn to drugs, foods, relationships or what not, in attempt to numb the pain of disconnecting from our core self.

We must never give up. We must always grow... however slowly, that is the only way.

STRONG is the NEW skinny!

Get fingerlicking recipes for health a-z here.

Forever.

It's funny how we hope - against all odds that we some day will discover something that is forever.
It is as if something is carved in our backbone - something that is so deeply ingrained in our body but a distant memory of a forever. Something that we remember yet we are not quite sure what it feels like.

What it tastes like. What it looks like.

So we search.

And search. In bars. On the bottom of whiskey bottles, trazodone, painkillers and empty pints of ice cream. Behind closed doors. The search continues on. Until we realize that nothing can satisfy the void. The hunger our starved souls have for something that will last foever. Something that will go against all odds, narrow minds and against the fragility of our thin skin that tends to break under pressure, leaving scars that last almost forever.

Forever.

Nothing is forever but change.

Changing paces. places, spaces and faces.

And yet, somehow in the depth of our soul there is something that feels like it will last forever.

Something that is forever when we recognize that nothing of that which can be touched with the tips of our fingers is forever, yet something that will touch our soul in some way may just be what will in fact last forever.

I believe some things are forever. Some things are meant to be forever. Some things that are to be found in the depth of our soul. Perhaps, maybe, someday.

Sunset, Venice Beach, Cali 2013
Photo from my Eat+Travel book.

Do they know your shadow?

If no one knows your shadow. 

If no one knows your cry when the lights are out and it's ohso quiet. 

If no one has ever seen the rainstorms on your cheeks,

because they only show when it rains outside.

It's the rain you say - I never cry.

Then no one really knows you.

And they can't love you, if they don't know you, for who you are

 and because of and in spite of.

Who knows your shadow? 

I love this quote by Marianne Williamson 

 - it reminds me that only the weak think they are strong. Or in other words: the stronger you are, the weaker you were. Through suffering came perseverance.

Relax... let go... and just be.

What's Your Story?

I think this shirt is pretty awesome. In fact, I am considering giving it to all my girlfriends.

If there's one thing that we all need to change, and that we in fact are in total and complete control over, it's the crap we tell ourselves day in and day out. 

And for a lot of us, it has to do with a very disturbingly poor bodyimage. Often we are so used to this, that we don't even notice that 75% of our awake time goes with talking crap to ourselves - and every time we eat, catch our reflection in the window and when we wake up - we tell ourselves how fat, ugly etc. etc. we are.

The issue is, that we in fact become what we tell ourselves - where focus goes, energy flows, and that's why it is imperative to let go of our narcissistic focus on our body, because we can simply never evolve as humans and reach another level of being and thinking, if all our time is spent with trying to fix a facade or constantly just hurting ourselves with telling how not-worthy we are. 

This is a huge issue, not just for chicks. The thing is, that it is incredibly emotionally draining and spreads a lot of negativity, when we surround ourselves with people who talk crap-talk consistenly about themselves. No one wants to hear it, and we need to stop for a minute and think about what effect, we are having on other people. Because we do affect other people. And you do not want to be that person, who constantly talks about dieting, needing to lose weight, needing to get married, needing to get xyz needing this needing that and yadayadayada. It's desperate and it turns everyone off - even your goddamn cat doesn't wanna hear it.

Even if you have to fake it at first - do it. Just stop verbalizing all your negative self-talk step 1, and step 2 find a mantra that reenforces the person you want to be. Step 3 repeat this mantra til it becomes your new story.

That's it. 

Simply changing your story and what you tell yourself, not only changes your own life, and how you treat yourself, but it also draws in a completely different friend crowd, and you will no longer be that person who drains the energy out of other people, because you are so caught up in your own vanity that you don't even notice others, but only you, yourself and your issues.

Life is too short for issues. And it's all in your mind. It really is. So get over yourself - there are more important things to life.

Creating your life the way you want it.

"People talk about the reality of their life as if it is important. And we want you to understand, it's only the temporary indicator. Do you go to the gas station-your gas gauge is on empty-do you go to the gas station and look at your gas gauge in horror? "How did this happen? Why, why, why did this happen to me?" Do you lay your head on the steering wheel and just sob? "Oh, look what it's come to. I'm finished. I've lived all of this life, and look where I am." Or do you just fill up?"

- Esther Abraham-Hicks, is a best-selling author and motivational speaker

I love, LOVE, loooove this no-nonsense approach to taking responsibility for your own life, happiness etc. Once we understand that there is no outer circumstance that matters, we are able to choose how to react and how every situation impacts us in the future. Creating habits that bring out the best in us, or habits that slowly destroy us from the inside out.  And that is all that matters in the end. Sure, we can't control the external, and painful events come and go to everyone on different times, different levels, and some more visible to the bystander than others. 

However, too often we get caught in trying to want to be someone else. Someone who portrays an image of perfection. Of having it all. Only to some day to discover, that they too cried at night - feeling that they lived a life of fakeness, of having it all, yet they were not happy beings. And you read in the newspaper how so and so "suddenly" couldn't take it anymore - all the lies, and so they decided in a frantic moment to end their miseries. 

And this is the same for everyone. The pain of disconnection. The pain of trying to be something we're not. The pain of fighting the laws of the universe. The pain of pretending.

Pain is not limited to those with few finances, toxic relationships, or even the pain of a starving kid on the streets of Marrakech. Every life has its struggles, and that is why the moment we stop comparing ourselves to others, and stop wishing we are something, that we're not, and instead embrace the person that God has created us to be, we can live a life that is limitless to the human mind. We are not stuck in this toxic place of envy, jealousy and bitterness, because basically those feelings only come into our lives when we refuse to take responsibility for our behaviors, and we step down that one-way highway to hell that is, victimization.

When You Take Care Of You, You Enable Other People To Thrive Too.

How To Get People To Get You.