Mantra Monday: The Person Behind the Sweaty Selfie

Ever notice the increase in these things called "sweaty selfies?" You know the sweaty pictures after a workout, the pre-workout post with the motivational quotes or the workout stat pics with updates? It's easy to look at them, scowl, make a comment... but do you realize that you do it too?

I know right...you're thinking "no I don't." But you're on social media too, you're sharing your life, your sharing pictures of your children, your job, your trips ect. When you're on social media, there is always the possibility of what some call "over-sharing." What I started to realize when I was sharing my daily sweaty selfies, there were always two sides to the comments.

One side supporting, encouraging and being motivated but there was always the other side, the one where people felt the need to judge, ridicule and even openly post about how stupid we are for sharing.

But....honestly, there is something so much deeper than sharing my fitness results, there is something more important then just flexing muscles, there is a story behind the sweaty selfie.

Two and a half years ago, I wasn't the fit person posting the selfies. Instead, I was the person judging the fit person posting the selfies. I was the person overweight, unhappy with myself, disappointed in the journey my life was taking. But instead, I was overly judgmental.

Then life happened.
A pivotal point in my life honestly.
A choice.
To succeed and overcome or fall behind and fail.

My life now has everything to do with my life then.
I'm no longer overcome with depression and anxiety.
I no longer feel alone in this world.
But it's because of fitness that I am on this mission.

My mission to inspire hope and strength in others through a healthier lifestyle comes from a difficult past and unexpected losses. My mission to help others establish a healthy foundation to elicit strength mentally and physically.

Over the last year, there have been moments where the need to dig deeper than I thought humanly possible became necessary. I haven't always been this strong, inspiring person. I was actually quite different honestly. My entire life I have been a perfectionist, I have fought to do things according to the way they were meant to be and anything short of that was considered failure to me.

When I started to lose control of my life, I knew I had to do something about it.

For me, that was sweat, that was fitness, that was pushing myself beyond my comfort zone and doing the things I couldn't before from poor choices and lack of activity.

On the morning of my grandfather's funeral, I took to the mat.
When my father passed away unexpectedly from heart failure, I took to the weight room.
When my best friend passed away, I took to my fitness community.

Every day, I posted my sweaty selfie to my health and fitness accountability group.
Of course there are the benefits we all know, more self confidence, improved strength.
But those wonderful endorphins...those babies brought down my anxiety.

As my body grew stronger and more powerful, so did my mind. I went from being down and out depressed to motivated and inspired to help others struggling with depression and anxiety to overcome life's limiting factors.

Sweating became the reason for getting out of bed.
My fitness goals became my life goals and enabled me to push outside of my comfort zone.
It enabled me to appreciate life.
And forced me to realize, I get one shot at this, I have to take it seriously

Today, I am stronger than ever. My health is in it's prime. But the biggest transformation fitness gave me was mental. I went from questioning my worth, my actions and my abilities to owning my past and creating my own future.

I went from comparing myself and my body to others, to accepting that some days required rest and other days required a push. We can only control the controllable and for me fitness and health were in my control.

Now, I make my mind and my body one of my top priorities. It works for me. It's what's kept my sanity through this last year and gave me the platform to reach others struggling with similar issues.

You don't have to find strength through a workout.
Maybe it's faith, or baking or gardening.
But we all have to find the thing that motivates us to push past adversity.

For me that just comes in the form of sweating.

Mantra Monday: What To Do When You Realize You Didn't Believe In Yourself

Are you someone with that voice in your head...


You know the one that tells you can't do something... The one that says you're not good enough... The one that continually tells you that you're going to fail.

This voice never leaves you, it taunts you and makes you question your actions and worth on a daily basis.  It criticizes your judgment, it makes simple decision making difficult. It breaks you down when you think you can't break any more. It's full of endless negative commentary.

Self-doubt can be your biggest set back when you strive to achieve the greater desires in life. There are times when you can block it out but more often than not if you are like me there are more times that it consumes your being and establishes a barrier to your goals.

Self-doubt isn't kind and it steals your joy. It can devour your happiness and strip you of every ounce of confidence you once built. It can take your logical reasoning skills and establish craziness. Yet, instead of building you up, it leaves you empty full of fear and insecurity.

You try to do the right thing. You read the right books. You go to church. You pray. You celebrate other's success. You set out every day to be a good person. You force yourself into thinking positively when underneath the surface you hate yourself.

This voice is strong, it's resilient and it will fight back. It has the deepest knowledge of your true desires and it's fueled by your fear.

For years, I spent my life giving my all but falling short, or so I thought. I have never been the overly popular one, the pretty one, or the smartest one. I came from a world that until I openly shared about it, made me feel like I was an outcast and alone. For the majority of my life, I compared myself to others, wanted what others had and tried to be something I am not. For years, I stopped myself before I even got started because I never thought I was good enough.

I am the product of a world full of negativity, I grew up in a different world and I have the long term memory loss that forever leaves me feeling afraid to share the truth. I have been afraid all of my life about what other's think, when people whisper by me I wonder if they are judging me. I was afraid to share my artwork, my love of fitness, my desire to do more with my life through charity work and honestly my desire to not be alone.

Fear is like self-doubt, it grabs you, it's cold hand wraps around your throat and makes it impossible for you to speak the truth you want to express. It takes the things you love and diminishes them to the lowest levels making you feel unworthy. This infectious hold can consume you to the point you unconsciously question your daily actions, intelligence and abilities. If you're like me, you strive for the strength to release the grasp to breathe again.

One day, life took everything that brought me stability and forced me to establish a footing to stand on that only I could define. This road was broken, it had many dead ends and was dark but there was a small light...it was dim but it was there.

If I wanted to reach it, I had to believe in myself. I needed to crush my self-doubt, build my strength to not only speak from the heart but speak with the passion that I so desperately knew I had in me. It was time that I pushed past all of my fears, all of the ridicule to thrive in my own light.

Fast forward to now. Gina post Summit. What's different?

I now understand that it was my lack of belief in myself that's prevented me from truly succeeding in the world I desire to thrive in. I now realize that being critical is a beautiful thing because it makes me strive to present to the best of my abilities. Most importantly I realize that my self-doubt is my soul crying out for help.

I've accepted doubt as part of the human system. It's a regular emotion just like happiness, love and anger. Instead of trying to define it and then defy it, I have accepted it so that I can understand it. Thus enabling me to improve myself and realize you cannot fight with fear instead you must establish a strength that in times of criticism can openly view all sides without bias.

No longer will I allow myself to be limited by the fear of others thoughts, no longer will I allow myself to be limited by my own self-doubt. Now I will pay attention to the voice that initially starts with a whisper before it eventually begins to yell. Each day I choose to set out to be my best, with my blinders on, not comparing myself to those around me.

Perfection is not my sole goal anymore. Instead I strive to achieve my personal goals in life, love and business to live a more fulfilled life. I will do this by checking off my boxes daily on what's important to me, I will trust and love myself, I will stop listening to those who are toxic and tell me I cannot do something I love and I will identify self doubt in a way to establish success.

If you're like me, give yourself permission to fail. But fail forward.
If you're like me, give yourself permission to share your passion daily.
If you're like me, give yourself permission to rest when you are weary.
If you're like me, give yourself permission to go after your dreams.
If you're like me, give yourself permission to breathe.
If you're like me, give yourself permission to try...and try again.

What Losing My World Taught Me About Depression and Anxiety

"Depression and anxiety are so much more than a response to life happening."

 Throughout my life, I have been trained to act a certain way, to behave according to specific religious and morale values. Throughout my life, I've overcome multiple adversities and my brain has taught me to block out a significant amount of time with horrible memories. Throughout life, I have been trained on how to handle what is physically wrong with my patients from amputees to burn victims.

Because of my training, I know how to act, I know what caliber of a person I should be and can be. Because of my adversities, I know what it's like to go without basic needs at times, to know what it's like to question where we will be staying after being evicted and I know what it's like to fear being loved because inside those awful years of abuse are still lurking.

Because of my professional training, I know what to do if a patient codes and stops breathing, I know the code of conduct if a patient completely becomes unresponsive and I know what to do if a patient is being neglected. Most of what I know has become second nature, I know how to motivate others, how to fix situations and how to block out anything I do not want to remember. Throughout my life, I've done everything I can to be a light, to be the person I want to see more of in the world and to lend as many helping hands as my world allows me to.

Thus, I've established a rapport with my patients, they know they can rely on me and trust me. Those who know me on a personal level know they can come to me with problems, they are able to trust me and know that my actions are always of a genuine, kind hearted nature.

Then, one day, I got a wake-up call. My grandfather who had a massive stroke, was not going to make that full recovery the doctors thought he would. Instead of having the three months together for him to recover, I made the most unexpected drive of my life rushing home to be by my family's side as he passed away. Looking back, I don't think I handled his loss in the best manner. I focused a lot on my personal pain... shut the world out from anger. Slowly started to change without even realizing that it was happening.

Then, a few weeks later, I got a second wake-up call. This time the police. I had been sick all day. Awful sick. It got worse as the day went on. As soon as I laid down to nap, the phone rang. The officer explained to me my father was dead, someone needed to come over and identify him because he was gone. I screamed. I swore. I denied his words. But he knew me. He knew my family. He was just trying to do the right thing because my father deserved peace. It was in that moment that I realized I had a connection with my father far greater than I ever understood. So I made another hurried drive home, calling my family along the way explaining the awful news to them...I made it home that night and  realized this wasn't a nightmare. This was life.

It wasn't long before my third and final wake-up call, the passing of a person who turned from being a friend to my rock. As I watched her battle cancer over the years, I never in a million years thought this would be the outcome. Throughout our friendship, she taught me more life lessons than anyone I know. It wasn't until I met her, watched her battle while still giving her all to her family and friends, that I realized what a blessing each moment of life is.

There is no sugar coating necessary. My anxiety, my depression, it was raging fiercer than ever and that fake smile I put on daily was eating me alive. I was completely lost for several months. I did things. Said things. Yelled...a lot at God and honestly stopped going to church because it was too painful to go alone. I never thought this was possible. I had done everything right I thought up until that point. I lived my life by the book. I attended church every week. I made trips home as often as I thought possible. I give 110% to every single job I had ever taken.

All of my training both professional and personal did nothing for me to minimize the problems and reactions I was having. Anytime someone came to me with a problem, I could give them the best advice and help them find the right solution. I'm an expert at working hard at life, but I was only ever focusing on what was expected. After enduring these few months with my family, I began to realize how important mindset and mental health truly are to successfully holding it together in the darkest of times. It became increasingly obvious that this mental health battle was underway and I hadn't even suited up. Portraying strength for others when you are broken is not an easy task. My experiences lead me to learning the importance of establishing a positive mindset to cultivate true happiness and safely handle my issues.

Of course I was skeptical about reading personal development, sharing openly on social media about my family life and importantly respecting those who are no longer with us. I had been taught that praying and trusting in God made all things possible. That living by the book enables success. That being a good person is the foundation to happiness. But my approach to life wasn't enough. You cannot quickly problem solve death, especially when it is unexpected or tragic.

By exclusively focusing on my anger and everything I no longer had, I missed opportunities of growth, development and relationship building with those who still surrounded and supported me. I had failed as a friend, daughter and person. Depression and anxiety are so much more than a response to life happening. It's the reality that you are human, that you bleed just like everyone else but also that you care whole heartedly about everything and everyone around you.

Learning how to recover from tragedy is essential to successfully handling mental illness because there is no quick fix. It's easy to get upset when we spill our coffee, it's easy to shout at the person who cuts us off and it's easy to blame God for our pain when "he took them away." I've learned that when you possess more negative thoughts and emotions than positive ones, you are more likely to respond to life in a negative manner. Too many of us underestimate mental illness, we feel like talking about our struggles is taboo, not justified. We think we should "just get over it." "Get it together." We underestimate the importance of mental health. We focus on the physical but forget our mind and our hearts need strength too. There is no absolute in this.

Mental health is not an all or nothing, one word summed up phrase. It's something we have to tend on a daily basis. Establish positive affirmations and visualize our dream lives in order to properly focus our attention. This can be established by focusing our attentions on the areas of our life that bring light. The areas that brought happiness before the loss and realize that it's going to take time, trial and error to overcome the times in our lives that break us to the core. These moments are true opportunities for us to establish ourselves in this world.

Understand that we are not in control at all times like we would like. However, we are in control of our mindset and the way we react to situations. At first are hearts are broken, we say and do things out of character because we are lost and just need guidance. That's okay. But denying we need help, pretending we don't hurt just like everyone else only hinders are ability to heal in a healthy manner. Realize you matter. Your anxiety and depression do not make you any less of a person. Mental health is not a destination, it's a process. Focus on how you drive, not where you are going and you will enjoy the journey.