My journey into letting go of who I *should* be to blossom into who I am

Good morning, friends!

It’s a beautiful and bright Sunday morning here in WA. I've got my homemade sourdough bread in the oven and i’m currently sipping on a matcha latte and thought I would start writing this post i’ve been thinking about for awhile. The last few weeks have been so joy filled here in WA as we’ve been settling in and making Tacoma home. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on why exactly the move and transition has gone so smooth and easy and I think it has a lot to do with the pressure and expectations i’ve taken off of myself.

For the past 3-4 years, i’ve put immense pressure on myself to be a certain way. For some reason I had It in my head that I needed to be this ‘susie homemaker’ type of woman that cooked and cleaned all day and wore an apron, maintained a spotless house and hot dinner on the table when her husband got home. I also put a ton of pressure on myself to be constantly growing my businesses. I never took breaks. I had it in my head that I needed to be able to thrive in business, be a perfect mother, spend time with my friends, take care of my health, and be this ‘perfect’ housewife all at the same time. I didn’t realize for years how this impacted my perception of myself and my self worth. I would constantly complain about never having enough time or enough energy to go all the things i felt that I needed to accomplish in a day. Looking back on it, I realize that It was physically impossible to do EVERYTHING I wanted to accomplish in any given day. I was setting myself up for failure day in and day out and was constantly frustrated with myself.

I want to quickly address that my husband truly had no part in the pressure I was putting on myself. He could care less if he ate frozen pizza every night. I was putting pressure on myself because I was constantly comparing myself to others. In an effort to learn how to be a better ‘wife’, I would observe people around me, books, mentors, etc and I would combine everything they were doing and put the pressure on myself to do all of that and more.

The truth that I was afraid to address in all of this is that being a ‘housewife’ or traditional ‘stay at home mom’ does not come easy to me and it doesn’t necessarily fit in with my personality. I’m not a homebody. I like to be out and about. I am a social butterfly and like to spend time with friends or be around people. Staying home all day ‘tending to the house’ sounds like my worst nightmare when I think about it. My ideal day includes gym classes and coffee dates and working in a public place. For years though, I suppressed who I was for this idea of who I felt I needed to be. I lost myself.

It may seem like a silly thing. but this idea of who I felt I needed to be, took me down a spiral quickly and my mental health really suffered. All of this got so much worse when I had my daughter because I was forced to stay home much more that I was used to. Since I was home with a baby all day, I tried to busy myself with all the tasks I felt like I needed to be doing but I lived in constant chaos. Believe it or not, trying so hard to be the perfect housewife and stay-at-home mom actually made me more disorganized, messy, and dissastisfied. I was also completely overwhelmed and let that paralyze me from moving forward in any area of my life. I was endlessly dissapointed in myself which led to being dissatisfied in pretty much every aspect of my life.

Since I was so dissatisfied in my own circumstances, I began to project that out on others around me. I started projecting my self-hatred and constant comparison onto my husband and became very critical of him as well. I’m so grateful for his immense patience for me during this season while I had to figure out my, excuse my language, shit. haha... Looking back on all of this, it’s so easy to see what was truly going on at the time but as they say, hindsight is 20/20.

the constant comparison I had going on inside my head just further fed a self-hated for myself. to say I was lost is truly an understatement. I was completely oblivious to my problem and how to find a way out of it until I started meeting with a therapist twice a week. in therapy, we went deep. like real deep. slowly but surely, layers of my self-hatred and all the pressures and expectations I had put on myself started to rise to the surface. I realized that I had put myself in a prison and hid the key. I was in a constant state of comparison, measuring my success to others, and running on a hamster wheel which completely depleted me of energy and I never actually got anywhere.

During one particular counseling session, I had a major breakthrough. It was as though the blinders came off and I was finally able to see the prison walls around me. I saw how enslaved I was living in these fears, expectations, and pressures and how they were all completely self-fabricated and not in alignment with my personality. I began asking questions like, ‘why am I trying to act in a way that is not in alignment with my personality? Why am I trying to force myself to be introverted when I am very much extroverted? Why am I so bothered by this person’s success? Why do I feel like there is only one ‘right’ way to do motherhood and i’m always doing it wrong?’ ‘Why do I feel like i’ll never be good enough to meet my own standards?’ These important questions allowed me to view the mental perspective I had been seeing everything in. I learned quickly that this was not the mindset I wanted to live my life in and I began to pivot immediately.

Through lots of prayer, counseling, journaling, and sharing with loved ones, I began to find my footing again. I began to learn who I was again and silenced the nagging voice of who I thought I should be. I began to do things that brought me joy and peace. I took a long break from work, creating content, and ‘being productive’ to simply find myself again. I deleted the Instagram app from my phone many times and took long breaks to spend time in the real world. I let my world get really small and simply focused on my mental health and my family. i’ve learned so much about myself through this season of a lot of hardship and pain. I feel like i’ve shed off my old skin and am growing a new one. Through this journey i’ve really learned who I am and who I am meant to be. And i’m meant to be, simply me.

They say comparison is the thief of joy and that couldn’t be more true. Comparison stole my joy for too many precious days and even years. I’m sharing my story with the hope that it may resonate with someone who is also going through a similar experience. It’s so easy to look at how someone portrays their life online and think that they have it all together. Well, this is me publicly announcing that I definitely don’t have it all together and i’ve gone through some really tough seasons recently. I want this blog and my instagram to be a place where you can come as your true authentic self and get real life stories, experiences, and maybe even some advice or encouragement for your own journey.

& in case you need to hear this today, you are perfect just the way you are. Keep being yourself and shining your own unique light. The world needs YOU to be exactly who you are.

How Setting Goals Will Change Your Life

Many of you may know this but I lead a team of over 200 skincare consultations for a living. It is the best job I could have ever picked for myself and I am honored to be able to grow such an amazing team of micro-entrepreneurs! One of the biggest topics we talk about as a team is setting GOALS and so I thought I would share my philosophy on goal-setting here and how it can truly change your life. 

Let’s start with at the beginning. 

A goal is a dream or wish you PLAN to attain. Notice my verbiage there. A goal is not something you WISH to attain, it’s something you PLAN for. A goal is something that takes planning and preparation. I think a lot of times we get our aspirations and our goals mixed up. For example, stating that you would like to run a marathon is an aspiration; actually training for that marathon, is a goal. 

I think a lot of people think that they have goals, but they really just have aspirations. Dreaming and aspiring to do great things really is awesome… until those things never happen because you lack preparation and planning. Through owning a business and building a lifestyle brand, I have learned the power of goal-setting. There truly is so much power in writing out your goals and working hard to achieve them! 

I explain goals to my team in this way: If you don’t have goals, you are like a fish swimming in a fish bowl. You may swim round and round and round but you will never really get anywhere. When you have goals for yourself/business/family/ etc. you are like a fish in the ocean. You have SO much more opportunity ahead of you because you have a road map. 

Setting goals for your life can be simple, they don’t have to be extreme. Simply setting a goal to drink more water is a great place to start… And then actually come up with a game plan on how you are going to drink more water. ;)

Below I have my fool-proof goal-setting strategy. If you set these parameters around your goals, I truly believe you are setting yourself up for future success! 

MY GOAL-SETTING STRATEGY

This is my system on how I effectively set goals: 

1.    Write out what you would like to achieve, get better at, accomplish, or excel at in life

2.    Write out what you are already doing to achieve your goal

3.    Write out what you could be doing BETTER to achieve, accomplish, or excel at your goal

4.    Plan out specific times in your calendar that you will be working towards achieving your goal

5.    Lastly, give yourself a time limit on how long it should take for you to achieve your goal 

When you set goals this way, you are planning for success. You aren’t leaving your goals up to chance or luck, you are MAKING THEM HAPPEN with your action! This is how goals can be truly life-changing!

Obviously, things don’t always go as planned and so if you don’t reach out goal at your allotted time, don’t beat yourself up about it! The most important thing is that you are working towards what you want to achieve in life. If your goals are worth it enough to you, you will do what it takes to achieve them! Remember, effective goal planning is only the first step. After you make your goals, it’s time to turn your plans into ACTION! 

It’s time to RUN after your dreams! I truly believe that you can create massive change in your life by setting goals & working hard to achieve them! 

Comment on this post and share one of your goals with the community! Let’s all help motivate each other to effectively plan and reach our goals!!

Your friend,

 

Lauren

The Power of Positivity

This blogpost is a little more on the serious side but it is very near and dear to my heart. I wrote this post while on my flight from Hawaii to LAX and I spent a lot of time reflecting on my journey and how positivity played a huge part in that. It's a self-love letter from me to you. xo, Lo

For the past 3 years, I have had the privilege to lead a team of skincare consultants that has grown to be in the hundreds now. What started out as a team of just me has grown into a large and diverse organization of virtual franchise owners all across the US, Canada, and Australia. I am constantly learning how to be a better leader and better mentor and there are many lessons I have learned throughout the years that has made me the woman I am today. I truly believe that these past few years have primed me for the new ventures I’m embarking on now. Since diving into wellness, studying holistic nutrition, and sharing my passion for health and wellness with the world, I have realized that many of the lessons I have learned in my R+F business applies to wellness and how we create a positive mindset for yourself.

Positivity.

Positivity isn’t something that’s taught in school but I truly believe it needs to be. I truly believe that the power of a positive mindset is a force to be reckoned with. In leading my team, I have seen people’s skincare businesses completely explode and I have also seen businesses fall apart. What makes the two scenarios different? Mindset.

A positive mindset is like a golden ticket for life. Have you ever seen someone who just seems like they are gliding through life without a care in the world? The type of person that always see’s the world as providing limitless opportunities and never frets a roadblock because they know the best that is to come? That’s a positive mindset. On the flip side, I’m sure we have all experienced people who always have something to complain about, someone to blame for their failures, and they are never able to get ahead because they aren’t noticing any roses in their life, only thorns. What you think is what you become. Your mindset defines your life. Let that sink in.

I have seen that changing your mindset can drastically change the outcome of a situation. I will use myself as an example for this. I used to have a horrible mindset when it came to my health. As someone who has suffered many chronic health issues, there were many years where I felt like I could not get ahead. I let these trials jade my mindset. Instead of being my positive and encouraging self, I became bitter, fearful of everything that could harm me, and my health suffered further because of it. My thoughts became my reality. My fears became true. It was almost like I kept manifesting bad health to plague me because that was what I was focusing on. My focus was on what could go wrong, not on how I could heal my body. 

When I finally realized how I was self-sabotaging myself, I knew I needed to make a drastic change in my life. I began by investing into my health. Instead of being fearful of my health, I began to nurture it and speak positive affirmations over myself. I began to take added stressors out of my life, learn to say no to things that didn’t serve my body well (eh hem, gluten) I put blinders on. I had health goals, and I had the faith and the hope that I could heal my body. Instead of complaining about what I couldn’t eat or do because of my health, I rejoiced in what I could do. I began to focus on gratitude for the smallest of the things. I can walk, I can run, I have a brain that can think and a heart that can love. I am blessed beyond measure. It was these small changes that I intentionally focused on that began to heal me. Not only was I feeling healthier and more energized, but I kept making healthy lifestyle choices because I began to value the amazing body I was given, not ridicule it. I truly believe that health is a life-long journey and I know that there are ebbs and flows and good days and bad days but the reason I am able to handle the setbacks when they come, is because I have a mindset that supports me and doesn’t destroy me. 

This is the truth: If you are constantly filling your mind with negative self-talk, you are setting yourself for disaster. Reframing your mindset could be one of the most powerful things you ever do for yourself, and your future. 

I want you to think about something in your life that you have a negative mindset about. What is one thing you are always cursing about yourself or your circumstances? What do you wish you could change? Maybe you wish you were farther along professionally. Maybe you wish you had a six pack. Maybe you wish you could pregnant. Maybe you wish that you had better friends. Whatever the case may be, I challenge you to focus on what you DO have, not what you don’t. I challenge you to look at the roses and don’t get thrown off by the thorns. There will be pain in this life, I am very familiar with it. There is hardship, and trials, and hard times. I am not telling you to avoid those situations or those emotions. Rather, I am encouraging you to not let those hardships define you. You can rise past them. You can change your mindset, and in turn, change your life.