Surviving vs. Thriving: Why I Choose Survive

I've seen a lot of articles titled something like, "How to Thrive and Not Just Survive in Life," or "Surviving is No Way to Live--You Must Thrive!" In the past, I found that these types of articles inspired and motivated me to be better--to do more, be more, create more. They caused me to take a look at my life and decide if I was surviving or thriving, and helped me make my life more meaningful and important.

Nowadays--not so much. 

After 6 months of facing a mystery illness that has caused me to constantly feel the worst sickness I've ever experienced and more pain than I can describe, I've decided to redefine what survive and thrive mean to me.

The past six months I've been pushing myself to continue living my life. I've gone to work feeling like death, I've been contemplating a move out of state to start a high-paying job, and I've tried to keep pushing myself to reach various goals that I set for myself. Needless to say, I'm burnt out and exhausted because of this. I'm trying to thrive, but my body is too sick to thrive. I'm not thriving. I'm actually getting worse.

What I really need to do right now is just survive. I need to stop stressing myself out with work. I need to step away from work, from job searching, from trying to perfect everything in my life because I cannot do any of those things until I get better.

I don't know when I'll get better. I don't know when the doctors, if ever, will finally make a miraculous breakthrough and tell me what's wrong with me and how I can fix it. I HAVE NO DANG CLUE! It sucks, but it's the reality.

The reality is that I simply will not be able to thrive until I am better. I can try to adapt to the constant sickness and pain, ignore my body telling me to stop trying to do all the things, and accept this new normal--or, I can take time off from life and focus ALL of my effort on getting to the bottom of my health problems. That should be my only focus in life right now. I can't move states, get a new job, find a husband, have children, or live any sort of a 'normal' life if I continue to be this ill.

This is so hard for me. It's so hard for me to be 'lazy' and to not have 500 goals and a to-do list every day. It's so hard for me to lay in bed while everyone else is out 'grinding.' GOSH IT'S HARD!

But I have a better shot of getting to the bottom of this mysterious ailment if my mind isn't elsewhere. I have a better shot at getting better.

Once I get better, I can thrive. For now, I just have to survive.

If you're sick, or hurt, or mentally drained--I suggest you take the same approach as me. Allow your mind and body to heal completely before you resume your thriving lifestyle. Otherwise, you'll be stuck in a quasi-thriving, unfulfilling life because you failed to address your issues. Get better, then be better. 

I WILL SURVIVE! (I had to.)

Life isn't Hard.

Let me just preface this post by saying that I am someone who fully recognizes the fact that life is hard. It can absolutely suck. Life can be going swimmingly, and suddenly it throws you 907 curveballs ALL AT ONCE. 

Life is extremely hard. But it's not.

Recently, I have really been focusing on energies, intentions, and vibes (all that yippie-hippie stuff). Despite whatever unfortunate and miserable events I am going through in my life, I cannot deny that the power of setting positive intentions and putting out hopeful energy has the power to make a world of difference in how I experience life.

We have all heard the saying claiming something to extent that 'we experience the world the way we choose to see the world.' It's true! 

Say we have two completely different men--one lives in a rural town in Kentucky, while the other lives in upstate New York. Both of these men have a wife, two children, and a dog named Steve. (Human dog names are my favorite.) 

Both of these men graduated from college, got a job as a salesman, and have been able to provide for their families. To sum it up, the two men have lived very similar lives.

Suppose for a moment that both of these men get the news that their wife has cheated on them. 

The first man grieves, but eventually regains his desire to date again and ultimately remarries a wonderful woman. His children stay with him every other week, and he decides to maintain a healthy acquaintanceship with his ex-wife for the sake of their kids. He is happy.

The second man grieves, as well, but decides to swear off women entirely because all women are lying, cheating, horribly awful people. His wife takes custody of their children because he is such a wreck emotionally and physically. He lives in solitude. No, loneliness. He spends nights binge drinking. His job disintegrates between his fingers. He is not happy.

What happened here?

The two men decided to see their world in drastically different ways. The first man realized that what happened was, indeed, terrible... but he held on to hope and fought on in pursuit of a happy life. 

The second man gave up. His world was shattered, and nothing mattered anymore. He was destined to a life of misery from the moment he decided that his life would only ever be miserable.

So, yes. Life is hard. It's so hard. But we don't need to spend our lives thinking that life is hard.

If we can make a point every single day--maybe multiple times a day--to set the intention that life is a beautiful thing...maybe it will become a beautiful thing. 

And maybe things won't immediately improve for us, and we will get thrown another curveball. But if we can sincerely hope for greatness and recognize that our lives will not be fulfilling until we let them fulfill us, then surely we have a better shot, no?

You don't need to tell yourself that life is hard, because life will show you that it is hard. Tell yourself that life is beautiful, amazing, and enriching...because life will begin to become all of those things for you. 

Eat More, Weigh Less?

Hi humans!

I'm just going to jump right into what I want to say today: eating less does not equate to weighing less.

A couple of days ago I was in my yoga class when I heard three girls behind me talking about their 1200-calorie-a-day-paleo-diet which consisted of NO fruit, no grains, lots of chicken, turkey, and more chicken. One of the girls talked about how she had a hard time FILLING her macros (lol wut), and how she was planning on cutting her intake further the next week. (LOL WUT)

I listened to them talk about this for quite a while before I finally turned around.

"You know, I eat upwards of 6,000 calories a day. Mostly carbs."

They looked at me with shock and disbelief. 

"Do you like, run a lot?"

"No. Not at all."

"You're like, really skinny.."

"Yeah, I recently gained 20 pounds, too."

"You don't gain weight eating 6000 calories?"

"No. I have been trying but it seems the more I eat the harder it is to gain weight."

"I wish I could do that!"

"You can. You're essentially starving yourself eating that little."

*stops talking, even though I want to start lecturing*

In the past, hearing people talk about their low-calorie diets and intense exercise regimens would trigger me like no other. Now, it just makes me sad FOR THEM.

With no disrespect, the girls in that class that were talking about their 1200 calorie diet were not slim. Rather, they were quite overweight. 

Based on the fact that (through my eavesdropping) I learned that this 1200 calorie diet had been going on for two years now, obviously something is not working. 

Our society has a really huge problem with believing that eating less is going to make them lose weight. Um, no.

Yes, the amount of energy you consume is relevant to the energy expended--but all you are doing by eating that little is KILLING your metabolism and making it impossible to lose weight because your body is desperately clinging to any and all of the food you give it.

Once you start giving your body the energy is really needs and deserves, your metabolism will be on fire and start working normally again.

I believe EVERYONE should consume at least 2500. As a minimum.

You're a man? More. You exercise? More. You use your brain a lot on a daily basis? More. Pregnant? More. Pretty much if you do anything other than lay in bed all day--more. 

I'm not recommending that everyone eats as much as I do, because I know that my metabolism is ridiculously fast and it is uncommon. I get that. However, the people who think that eating LESS is going to make them weigh less are really missing out on thousands of calories of food that could actually be helping them LOSE weight.

There are countless stories out there of people who were running miles upon miles every day and eating a minuscule amount of calories--only to be "skinny fat" and not making the progress that they want. Enter: more calories and less cardio (usually replaced with strength training) and that person suddenly has their ideal physique. Imagine that.

The stress of cardio on your body mixed with such a low amount of calories sends your body into confusion and panic mode. It holds onto every bit of food because it's unsure when it will be fed again. Not good.

I could talk for hours about this, but I'll just leave you with this:

Eat more, weigh less.

(No I'm not saying you can just eat and eat and never gain weight indefinitely.)

Give your body what it needs and it will thank you. Stop the stupid restrictive diets and eliminating food groups because you think it will make you skinny. Just stop. 

If you choose to ignore this message, no problem. I'll just be over here with my carb-filled bagel and continue struggling to GAIN weight.