Personal Development Archives - Page 3 of 3

The Cost of Convenience

Our society has officially crossed the border into the “I want it five minutes ago” mentality. Because of this, we are much more inclined to hunt down the easiest, most convenient products and services to enhance our lives. You know, as long as it doesn’t take too much effort to do that.

Sometimes when I’m in the grocery store, I look around in amazement at the sheer amount of products that are available at any time of the day. It is truly remarkable and I know that we are lucky to live in a society that has so much to offer. Not everyone has the same advantages.

The problem with this kind of culture, though, is that we are subjected to so many more chemicals and additives than we realize. Yeah it’s great to be able to grab some nail polish on clearance for $1 or to pay a low price for a huge package of processed cereal from a bulk store like Costco, but I believe this convenience is costing us in other ways.

According to the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, there are many cosmetics that contain known carcinogens. Chemicals like formaldehyde, arsenic, benzene, and even coal tar are used to perfect these low-priced personal care products so companies can produce them faster and make them last longer.

Even everyday products like deodorant contain ingredients like aluminum and parabens, which are endocrine disruptors called xenoestrogens that act like estrogen. Not only does this mess up hormones, but it can also lead to serious health issues. Some scientists have even linked products like this to breast cancer.

Personal care products are not the only problem. Even our food contains dangerous additives that hugely affect the health of the nation. According to Jillian Michaels (AKA trainer, nutrition author, and my spirit animal), Americans eat a diet that consists of roughly 60 percent processed foods. 60 percent!

Ingredients like palm oil contain trans fat, which messes up your cholesterol and puts you at a much greater risk for issues like a stroke or heart attack. White processed foods like bread and cereal have been stripped of any nutritional value. This modified grain is much easier for your body to digest, but that really effs with your blood sugar and puts you at higher risk for things like diabetes. Soda often contains preservatives like sodium benzene, which prevents mold, but is also known to cause cancer. I could continue, but I think you’re probably getting the idea.

What I’m saying is these huge companies that are producing these products are, understandably, trying to make money. But the best way for them to make money is to create products that last way longer than they should and have low price tags to be more appealing to buyers. Unfortunately, that means that have to add so many chemicals that it is getting harder and harder to avoid them.

The average women will put 126 ingredients onto her face, neck, and hands in one day from just following a normal makeup and skincare routine. In one year, most women absorb about five pounds of chemicals from these products.

I’m not saying you should throw out the contents of your home and start using leaves for personal hygiene. Let’s be honest, no one wants to be known as the smelly one. But I do think it is extremely important to do some research and find out which products are doing more harm than good. Especially if you are a woman with hormonal issues or you want to have children.

One of the biggest changes I’ve made in my life to deal with my PCOS is to try to avoid some of the worst chemicals in my daily life. I started using honey to wash my face. To be honest, it feels nice, it’s cheaper than face wash, and I have gotten a lot of compliments on my skin lately. Instead of deodorant I can grab at Target, I started using a version that is free of aluminum and parabens that I found at the health food store. I switched over to safer nail polish brands and I’m more careful about the makeup I use. I only spray perfume onto my clothes instead of onto my skin.

I’m definitely not perfect with it, but I try to eat fewer processed foods than I used to eat and I hardly ever drink soda. These small changes have made a noticeable difference with my hormones and I don’t suffer from things like cystic acne and excessive hair shedding like I once did. Being more diligent about the things I’m putting into my body also makes me feel like I have more control over my health.

The Case of Colliding Time

Time is a funny thing.

The other day I sat with my computer on the shopping street near my Alma matter. It was a beautiful day and sitting out there transported me back in time to when I was a student.

I felt the same exact way I felt when I was 21 and temporarily forgot the last eleven years had even happened. It was almost like I was living in an apartment right off campus and taking advantage of the fact that I could walk with my computer to a coffee shop and change up my scenery.

Until I heard a group of girls who are actually in college talking at the next table. They punctuated every sentence with the word “like,” all had matching processed blonde hair, and talked loudly about their plans for Valentine’s Day.

Their conversation burst my reverie bubble and left me feeling out of sorts. Suddenly I was hyper aware of the fact that I haven’t had time to dye my roots and there were quite a few grey hairs dotting the top of my head. (To be fair, I also had them when I was in college, but at that moment they made me feel old).

The girls kept stopping their conversations to check their phones and I had another surreal moment of feeling without time. The street still looked, felt, and sounded the same, but these foreign elements were changing it. I barely figured out that my phone had texting capabilities when I was a freshman in college. Nowadays people can do literally everything from their phones.

How different would college have been if things like online dating and Netflix took up most of our time? Would I have had the same kind of experience I actually did have? Thinking about the difference in time was disconcerting.

The area around campus has always felt like a safe haven to me. It still did that day, it also made me feel like an imposter being there. Like everyone could glance at me and tell that I was out of place.

That’s silly, I know, and it wasn’t actually happening, but the collision of past, present, and future was almost too much to handle. It was like the past and the future met head on and the impact was so intense it completely knocked me off balance.

I couldn’t help but think about my college self and whether or not she would be happy with the way my life has turned out. Or if she were a college student today, would that significantly change the course of her life?

They say only time will tell, but I’m not so sure that’s true. I think it’s more up to us to decide what to do with time.

Don’t Think

I have a problem. It is a problem that affects every area of my life. I think too much.

I’ll admit, in certain circumstances, this can be a good thing. I usually think through my route before I drive somewhere so I know where I’m going. I plan out my outfit in my mind before I even open my closet so I don’t have to try on eight different outfits (most days). In many other cases, though, this is a giant pain in my ass.

Thinking too much often makes me worry needlessly about things that do not need any attention. And might be why I have so many grey hairs on top of my head.

Anyway, one of the areas of my life that has gotten already way too much brainpower is my body. I’ve talked about my struggles with working out and eating healthy and not seeing any real results a few times in this blog, so I won’t bore you with the gory details on that one. Let’s just say, it was something that crossed my mind at least once a day.

But something amazing has happened recently. I stopped giving a shit about this stuff and I actually started to LOSE WEIGHT. Okay, that maybe simplifies it a little too much, but it kind of sums it up.

I got tired of working out so hard and not seeing anything happen to my body. In between bouts of frustration, I had a nagging feeling that I was eating something else that my body was not tolerating (I already had to give up dairy because it started giving me hives). I tried to quiet my mind and really listen to myself to decide what food was causing me problems and the answer I heard was: bread.

Like Oprah, I have always loved bread. Subconsciously I might have had an inkling that my body didn’t like it, but I never wanted to make the leap and fully give it up. And now that I have to live a dairy-free life, I didn’t want to become one of those obnoxious people who is dairy free and gluten free and literally can’t eat anything. Ever.

But my body had different ideas and literally a week after I gave up wheat, my sinuses instantly cleared up. I never realized just how stuffed they were on a daily basis until I no longer had a problem with them. I also felt like I had fluid in my left ear for years. YEARS. It was so bad that I had to sleep on my left side basically every night.

Isn’t it crazy the kinds of things we just put up with to avoid changing our daily habits?

As I was finally giving up wheat, I took a step back from my daily exercise routine of two hardcore workouts. Like a big break. I didn’t work out at all for a few weeks. And for the first time in a long time, I lost a noticeable amount of weight.

I know there were a lot of factors that went into finally being able to lose weight, but this whole situation taught me that I do not have to think everything to death. I can only do the best that I can do and make as much effort as I can make. Once I do that, thinking myself into a tizzy is not going to help me. With anything….except being able to use the word tizzy in a real sentence.

So, I could go on eating dairy and bread and build up another tolerance that allows me to kind of forget about the hives and the sinus problems. But I would rather feel good than just deal with feeling uncomfortable all the time. And that is something I do not have to think about for days to know is true.

Why Rory in the Reboot of Gilmore Girls is Basically Me at This Moment

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There are few characters in television or movies to which I relate to as much as 32-year-old Rory Gilmore. It’s like we live the same life (except I wish I had dated Jess. Just sayin’).

Like Rory, my father has been absent for much of my life. I am a writer by trade, but am currently going through a bit of a transition in that area of my life. While I do know where all of my underwear is, most of my stuff is sitting in boxes in the storage closet at my mom’s house and I had to get rid of most of my furniture. I have lived in five different apartments or houses in three different cities and two different states since 2012. Although I have not been there in a while, there are quite a few stamps from the UK in my passport. And I’m back home but not “back.” And I’m still coming to terms with the loss of my grandfather.

Oh, and I am also bilingual in English and sarcasm.

It’s a hard thing when you see your life going in a certain direction and you suddenly get jerked in a completely different one. I think as humans, we too often let superficial things define us. Jobs, boyfriends, cars. And when one of those things is gone, it takes a minute to steady yourself and realize who you are without it.

Rory and I have our own struggles, but I feel like I’m in that moment sitting at a desk across from Jess (again, I wish) and spewing how lost and adrift I feel at this time in my life. How, at 32, I really saw things going differently for me. The moment *right before* Jess says “you should write a book” and suddenly Rory’s wheels start turning and she finally feels like she has some kind of purpose again. Something to work toward. I don’t know what that thing will be for me. Maybe it will be a book. Maybe it’ll be something I have not yet considered. But I’m excited to find it.

I think for much of our lives, other people have looked at Rory (yes, I realize she’s fictional) and I as the people who will succeed. We both did well in school. We both made all the “right” choices. But that does not mean we are automatically on our right paths.

Rory and I have to be kind enough to ourselves to realize that we have not failed everyone just because we are not yet at a current stage in our lives. Or that things aren’t going to turn out okay just because we aren’t there yet.

There’s still time.

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On Healing

Today I was studying about injury and inflammation. When one of your cells is injured, your body sends chemicals like plasma proteins, white blood cells, and fluids to the site of injury to repair the cell.

The damaged cells themselves even release something called kinins to help the inflammation process. ouch-1434056-639x424 The body is truly amazing. It can heal itself to an incredible level. But it got me thinking, why can’t we heal ourselves emotionally as efficiently as the body takes care of injury and illness?

The thing is, we can. But it takes hard work. And acknowledgement of the issues, which is not easy.

I broke my elbow when I was a child and my body healed itself. Every once in a while the area gets tight and I have to stretch it out, but on the whole I almost never think about this injury that disrupted my life for an entire summer.

I wish I could say the same about seemingly small incidents that have left a permanent imprint on my psyche. One bad grade or one confrontation with a friend now serves as a trigger. When something in my daily life reminds me of these memories, the feelings of not being good enough come rushing back to the surface and it is hard to shake myself free from them.

Besides the occasional stiffness, there is no physical evidence of a bone I broke so many years ago. There is no physical evidence of any of my emotional injuries, either, but they still survive there just beneath the surface, waiting for a memory to bring them back to the forefront of my mind.

Talking about healing these emotional issues is one thing…I realize that. But I think the first step to actually doing it is acknowledging it. And hopefully the next time I let something from my past make me sad in the present, I can picture myself fixing my emotional cells just like my body heals my physical ones.

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The Fight that Might Never Stop

PCOS is a jerk. I’m pretty sure I’ve said that before—but it’s no less true now than it was then.

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On top of all of the regular issues like messing with your weight and your cycle, studies have shown that PCOS also increases a woman’s risk for anxiety and depression. So this condition is basically bullying women who probably already have health issues and low self-esteem with the inability to remain calm and happy? Great…

Jerk.

Another thing I’ve mentioned before is that my PCOS is not nearly as severe as most and for that I am grateful. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t hard. Exercising and eating healthy usually help me keep my mind pretty in check. I’ll have the occasional bad day, but I can talk myself out of it pretty quickly.

Unfortunately, I have to always work out and eat healthy to see any kind of results—whether they’re physical or mental. My life is a constant fight to keep my body and my mind in check.

And it. Is. Exhausting.

I was pretty motivated this last month and I went to the gym almost every day to do a workout with heavy weights. For most people, that is the extent of their workout for the day. Not for me, though. Once I got home and took a little time off, I popped in Insanity Max 30 or Jillian Michaels’ Body Revolution.

This is a lot of physical activity for one day and these workouts are hard. I tried to listen to my body and rest when I needed it. The exertion, the daily stress of life, and the fact that it is still 90 degrees outside and arctic inside most buildings, though, eventually wore me down and I caught a bad cold that lasted for about a week.

Again, in the life of most people, taking a week off of working out is no big deal. Sure, you might not be as strong as you were the first time you go back to the gym, but you’ll build your stamina up pretty quickly. That’s not the case for me, though, and it’s not for most women who have PCOS.

Even one week off can throw my entire body off whack. Which makes me feel bad about myself. Which makes it harder to get back into the gym. Which leaves room for anxious or depressed thoughts to fill my mind. Vicious cycle much?

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I really try not to be so hard on myself. Friends and family yell at me about that all the time.

“You’re working so hard! It’s okay to take a day off.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t be working out so hard.”

“Give yourself a break. You’re only human.”

I get what they’re saying. I really do. And I understand that life is about balance, which I am trying to work on.

But the fact of the matter is that until I find out exactly what works for me and my PCOS, I do have to work this hard. I have to keep fighting. Because I have no other choice.

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I should…Shouldn’t I?

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“Stop using the word should!” My friend said as we sat talking on her couch. I had just gotten off work and my dislike for my job had me feeling defeated, deflated, and depleted. It was only my second week there, but I already found myself dreading the fact that I had to return.

“You can’t do things just because you feel like you should do them,” she said.

I stayed at her house for a few hours so we could have one of our long in-depth conversations that always made both of us feel better about life.

The “should” part of the conversation really stuck with me, though. I started thinking about how much that stupid word dictates my life.

Any time I feel bad about myself, it is because I start thinking about what I “should” be doing. But what scale am I using to measure this? Whose standards am I using to judge myself?

The truth of the matter is that I use that word too. Damn. Much. I constantly have internal battles with myself because I feel like I’m not measuring up in some area of my life.

I should look a certain way. I should be at a certain place in my life. I should be making a certain amount of money. I should be married with kids at my age.

There’s definitely a small part of me that rebels against this word—otherwise I probably would be settled down with a house and kids. I am 32, after all.

But the rebellious side of me somehow managed to overtake these toxic thoughts. That’s how I was able to go to Italy with a friend after watching Under the Tuscan Sun when I was 19. That’s how I took a trip to Israel at 23 without knowing anyone else in my group. That’s how I moved to Scotland by myself for a year and to Boston for two years after that.

I think my intuition helps me bypass the “should” speed bump in a lot of ways. But it also makes me question myself when I do not have an immediate answer. When I am really ready to do something, I feel like it’s right in my gut and I just do it (i.e. move across the world to a country I had never even visited).

When I am unsure of my next move, though, the “should” train comes blazing down the tracks. It’s almost like I start thinking about what I should have done throughout every phase of my life…even the times when I felt so sure about my decision. And let me tell you, questioning decisions you have already made is a good way to add more grey hairs to your head without accomplishing much else.

I’m not expecting this to change overnight, but now that I realize I spend so much time agonizing over what other people think, I can hopefully start to care more about what I think and live my life accordingly.

Because being a prisoner to the word “should” is no way to live. This stupid word has made me judge myself and my decisions for too long. It has also taken a lot of the joy out of my day-to-day experiences. But life is too short and I am too tired of second-guessing myself to keep feeling down when I can just live the life I want to live and smile like I mean it.