self care

Quotes for days

You wanna know what lights me up? What gets to my heart strings and gets me right in my soul? Quotes. I am a quote junky. Pinterest doesn’t help my addiction. A good soulful quote, I am a blob on the floor. A hilariously accurate quote about parenting, laughing for days. It’s the little things in life right? If I could plaster quotes all over my house I would (wait I think I might have already started doing that). I believe that certain quotes have the ability to put situations into words when we can’t find them ourselves. Along with song lyrics, it’s amazing how someone else’s words can resonate with us so much. I’ve compiled a list of some sayings, quotes, whatever you want to call them, that have helped me at one time or another. Sometimes you just need that catch phrase to help you through something or keep you focused on your end goal. Enjoy and feel free to steal them if need be. . . I have no idea who said them in the first place.

1) STAY IN YOUR LANE- I put this one in caps simply because it is short and sweet and ohso true!!!! This is something I have to remind myself to do when I am interfering too much or a gentle (not always so gentle) reminder I may have to give to someone else. It’s simple and doesn’t really need a lot of explanation. Focus on you and just like when you’re driving on the road, stay in your lane. That’s all you have to worry about and all that should concern you. You aren’t a traffic cop of life. What everyone else is doing is none of your business and isn’t something you need to control or worry about. Eyes looking forward, that’s where you’re going afterall.

2) What other people think of you is none of your business- I used to have a really hard time with this one. What do you mean it’s none of my business? If someone has an opinion of me I have a right to know what their thoughts are about me. Nope. You don’t need to know any of it. They aren’t your thoughts, or your words, or your opinions, so they don’t concern you. Chances are you probably don’t want to hear it anyways if it hasn’t been said to your face in the first place. Do yourself a favour and let this one go.

3) Not everything that weighs you down, is yours to carry- Oh my goodness!!!! This one has definitely resonated with me especially during the past few months when I have taken more time to ground myself and work on finding more inner peace. This quote is for all you fixers out there who feel like you HAVE to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders and fix everyone else’s problems. Guess what? You don’t. Yes it is very hard to watch someone you love make the same mistakes over and over again, but at some point you have to step back and understand that at some point people have to put their big kid panties on and start owning their own shit. This is still something I struggle with especially when it comes to family, but at the end of the day not everything has to involve you. You can’t fix EVERYTHING for EVERYONE.

4) You are responsible for your own happiness- This is a major one. It’s not hard to understand but it seems to be something we all struggle with. You shouldn’t rely on anyone or anything to make you happy. It’s a choice. It’s action. It’s putting one foot in front of the other and self talking yourself through the hard times. You need to take responsibility and do it for you. Make happiness happen for you.

5) When someone shows you who they really are, believe them- Actions speak louder than words right? We really need to start believing people when they act a certain way over and over again. We all want to believe there is good in people and there probably is BUT in some people I think it’s wayyyyyy deep down. At the end of the day life is too short to be making the same mistakes over and over again and dragging yourself through the mud. You can’t be mad at someone for being a jerk to you if they have shown you that they are in fact that jerk about ten times before that. (Remember that other quote- You are responsible for your own happiness).  Let them go and wish them well. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic curtain closing or anything, just wish them well and go your own way.

I could go on and on and on forever. These are just a few that I think are basic and everyone can relate to. If anything they can act as simple reminders or cues to you to keep the good energy flowing and in the end do what’s best for you. If you are a quote junkie such as myself, may I recommend DEFINITELY having a wisdom or positivity board on Pinterest. Somewhere you can view all of the cheesiness and gooeyness on the days that are difficult.

Create your own sunshine when needed 🙂

Mama Hil.xo

World of Worry

Those who know me well, know that I am a chronic worrier. I’ve been like this as long as I can remember. Uncertainty, fear, and lack of control are what fuel my worry fire. Even as a kid I would worry about certain situations, friendships, skating tests. Anything and everything. As an adult, the worrying by no means has gone away. If anything there is a broader spectrum of things for me to worry about. What used to be a joke and something that I “just was” has now turned into something that has the ability to be debilitating and negatively affect my health and well being. Not so funny now right? My thoughts exactly.

It’s easier for me to compartmentalize my worries by putting them into different sections of life. Lists are very comforting to me (in case my blog setup hasn’t given that away) and it helps me to narrow in on the good and bad of what’s going on in my life at any given time.  Below you will find my specific different areas of worry based on my life and what’s going on in my little world. Everyone is different so if you choose to make a list yours probably won’t look the exact same to mine.

1) Mom Worry- For most mom’s this one comes naturally as soon as we find out we’re pregnant. When your choices don’t just affect you anymore. . .well that’s parenting for you. Becoming a mom definitely intensified my worrying capabilities. I mean I worry about the future more than the now for them. Will they make friends at school? Will they be bullied? Will they be the bully? Will they make the right choices? Will they be kind? I can teach them my values and share my wisdom, but at the end of the day they will be whoever they want and they will make the choices they think are the best for them.

2) Health Worry- This is probably the biggest one for me. Hands up if you like to Google symptoms? It’s something that I do more often than I should for sure and at the end of the day it definitely doesn’t help my worrying. If anything my worrying has affected my health the most. When I worry my body basically screams at me in many different ways. I get tension headaches from clenching my jaw, stomach aches with the most excruciating pain ever (and I’m no wimp in the pain department), and not sleeping resulting in me being incredibly tired. Wanna know the most irritating thing about all of this? It’s completely self inflicted by yours truly. I worry about bigger illnesses and not being here for my kids and my family. It’s a vicious cycle and I can tell you that I rarely come out on top.

3) Relationships- I know that when I am worried and distracted my relationships suffer and I’m not giving my best self to the people I love. I’m too concerned with worrying about circumstances out of my control that I sometimes fail to focus on the here and now. This isn’t fair to my kids, my husband, or to my family and friends. It’s so incredibly important to be present with the people in your life especially your children. Our society makes it harder and harder, but without relationships we are just one lonely person. The grass isn’t greener on the other side, it’s green where you water it.

4) My self image/purpose- I’m happy to say that as I get older, my sense of needing to be accepted by others has decreased immensely. I have a thicker skin and have more important things in my life than people who don’t care for me. On the flip side, I am always fighting an uphill battle with myself. I’ve previously said that I am extremely hard on myself and if anything that accelerates the worry in the department of my self worth. I worry a lot about not being good enough. Not being fit enough. Not feeling good enough. Not contributing enough. I worry about not achieving enough or being enough for the people who matter most. They may see me as exactly what they need and that I am 100% perfect in their eyes. . .BUT my negative self talk wins everytime. It wins the battle of trying to conquer my worrying and seems to trump the opinions of those that matter most to me.

I get it. This may seem extreme and believe me I know it is. Writing it makes it seem ridiculous and if I had a loved one going through this I would be the first person to say you’re going to kill yourself by worrying so much. I suppose the silver lining (it seems really small), is that I am more aware now than ever  what this is doing to my life. I am stuck in my world of worry and robbing myself of joy and happiness and precious moments in my life and the lives of those I love. Worrying truly brings nothing positive to the table. It brings other negative emotions to the surface. It’s almost like the emotional equivalent to the key to Pandora’s box. Inside are all the bad emotions and worrying just opens all that up again and again.

If you’re reading this and you can relate to it, I hope you decide to take charge in whatever way you need to. I don’t want to be controlled my fear or worry, or uncertainty. I want happiness and joy to lead the way. That is what I would want for those I love so why shouldn’t I want that for myself. Don’t let what ifs take that away from you. Live in the now and everything else will fall into place as it should.

“Worrying does not take away tomorrow’s troubles. It takes away today’s peace.”

Mama Hil.xo

3 Emotions We’ve ALL Felt

As we get older and experience more in life our emotions get deeper and more complex. Events happen, life changes us, and our emotions are no different. Over time we accumulate what some may call “emotional baggage” Some of us have more than others depending on our different experiences and how we reacted (or didn’t react to them).

Some of us wear our emotions on the outside as well as feeling them on the inside. Whereas some people choose to hide them. They know that they’re there, but they have no intentions of letting anyone else see that. No matter what side of the coin you are on, one thing remains the same: WE ALL FEEL EMOTIONS.

There is a lot going on in day to day life. We clearly no longer live in a world of rotary phones and simpler times. There’s a lot of vocabulary, information, and opinions thrown at us every day. In an attempt to simplify things and show similarity I’ve narrowed it down to three emotions that I think we have all felt and could even be feeling at this very moment. You may not have felt all of these things but I am 99.9% sure that you have at least felt one of these emotions at some point in your life.

LONELINESS-  I know that seems so weird because we have so many resources available to us to connect with people. Any day, anywhere, anytime. What we are lacking is the face to face connection. The one on one and deep conversations. You can text a friend for hours, but it ends up getting more irritating waiting for a response and we’ve all been guilty of reading into the tone of a text more than we should. In a time when we are constantly connected we find ourselves feeling more lonely than ever before. If anything it should teach us that we did survive before social networking and when it comes to our relationships with people, it’s okay to go back to basics. In fact, it’s much better for our health.

EXHAUSTION- I’m not just talking about being tired. I’m talking about ache in your bones, brain fog, not enough hours or coffee in the day to keep you going. How awful is it that we run ourselves ragged just to try and keep up or not miss out on something (some of us have a mad case of FOMO). Your brain is tired, you feel like you could cry at the drop of the hat, and it’s a struggle to move your body. Let me say something about this. THIS IS NOT OKAY AND IT CERTAINLY IS NOT HEALTHY. We all say we wish we could slow down but we don’t. Soooo we go on to run ourselves into the ground and then wonder why we feel exhausted? I do it too, but I can also admit that sometimes my exhaustion is self inflicted.

STRESS/ANXIETY- I may get some backlash for saying this, but I do feel as though the word anxiety is thrown around A LOT. That having been said, seeing how busy, and chaotic that life has become, it is no wonder that words such as anxiety have become more common. Stress is something I feel quite often. If I’m not stressing about getting my kids to activities or appointments, than it’s internal stress I put on myself like am I doing enough, am I enough? It’s crummy to think that this is the new normal and we’ve come to a point in time where if you aren’t questioning yourself or stressed out, than you must be doing something wrong. We’re always trying to keep up with something or someone, and stress is just the accomplice that goes along with that.

So yes we definitely have a lot thrown at us on the daily, BUT we have the ability to control how it affects us. Like any great skill, this takes practice, awareness, and wanting to make a change. We need to stop complaining about feeling these emotions which aren’t healthy or beneficial, and make a change. I definitely know I need too not only for my health but also for my sanity. Complaining is the new action. It’s easier to complain than to make a change. What we seem to forget is that what’s happening on social media isn’t as important as what is passing us by in the real world.

So together let’s make a change. Step back and focus on what’s really important. If you’re looking for a sign than here it is. I give you permission (not that you need it by any means), to simplify your life, and actually take your life back.

Mama Hil. xoxoxo