As the beginning of 2020 unfolds my social media feed, magazine subscriptions, pop up ads, and commercials are filled with healthy living goals. I’ve been sold on diets, exercise regimes, wrinkle removers, juicers, meal plans, workout clothes, tennis shoes, books, coaching sessions, and you name it to help me “feel my best” in 2020. Everyone promises that they have the answers for me.

With all of these great programs and resources it’s confusing why rates of anxiety, depression, obesity, and certain diseases triggered by stress are all on the rise. Wouldn’t you think that with our advanced research and billion dollar health and wellness industry that we should be feeling healthy and well? Sadly, that’s just not the case.

For starters, we live in an all or nothing culture. Sometimes it feels like if you don’t go full keto, drink celery juice, sign up to run a marathon, remove the last teeny grain of flour from your existence, and meditate for 3 hours every day you might as well just eat donuts while shooting tequila.

Next, there are so many “experts” on diet, nutrition, mental health, and physical health that we have completely forgotten to trust the one and only expert who truly knows best-ourselves. We’ve put our eggs into the basket of someone else’s dream and when our own life issues come up (that the expert couldn’t have possibly prepared us for) we feel like we’ve failed and that we must not be worthy of having a healthy life full of vitality.

Finally, we’re completely screwed when it comes to alcohol. We restrict ourselves in every way by removing all chemicals, gluten, sugar, and grain. We shame fast food and anything that isn’t local and organic. We pay for health memberships, buy probiotics, have vitamin subscriptions mailed right to our door, and refuse to heat anything in the microwave that is covered plastic. Then Friday night, girls night, work functions, 5pm, and weekends come along and we pour actual poison down our throats throwing off every single process in our body and making it work in overdrive to save our lives (which will kill any diet plan or progress made from eating celery).

Overwhelmed? Yes, me too. But I believe there is a better way to feel good. (And spoiler alert, it has nothing to do with restriction). We don’t feel good because we are not aligned with what we want. When I was drinking all I ever wanted was to be “happy.” I said that I would literally do anything if I could just feel joy again. Meanwhile, I took in a daily dose of a depressant. Yes, for me, drinking alcohol was the equivalent of taking a pill that would make me depressed.

It was true that I did want to feel happy but not really at any cost to myself. Not at the cost of feeling deprived or having to give up something or having to stand out from my friends. Because I am female and I grew up in this culture, I believed that feeling healthy in my body must mean deprivation, restriction, and willpower.

It never occured to me that if I loved myself whole heartedly that I would want to treat my body and mind with great care. It didn’t cross my mind that I might know what to do without having to follow along on someone else’s plan. And failure, screw ups, and errs were thought of as a stop sign and not a speed bump.

So this year, my wish is that we continue to gather information (because we are so lucky to have all of this) but only take what serves us and leave the rest. I hope that we learn to shut out the noise and listen to our hearts instead of our whacked out, tired, overstimulated, minds to see what our souls need. I hope that instead of trying to get great at all of our weaknesses we can focus on building on our strengths. And I hope that we understand that we are on a long journey with our body, mind, and soul and we can ebb and flow and tweak our behaviors all the time to fit in with what serves us best.

To do that we don’t need more restrictions, hustle, or willpower. Instead we need humility, gratitude, love, and acceptance of exactly who we are. We need to decide how we want to feel and then make the intention to feel that way out loud. Then, we need to align our actions with the things that will support that feeling. For me, that meant maybe not taking in depression in the form of a fizzy amber liquid.

I believe the path to feeling good begins with the words written on my favorite tank top “Love is the bridge between you and everything.”

Ready to make a change? Please join me for a Wellness Conference where I will go over how I finally learned to use self love and acceptance to learn skills to make sustainable change that changed my life. Get your tickets here.