Why Courage is the Foundation to a Better Life

by The Lovely Refinement Team | Jul 20, 2019 | Dealing With Emotions, Finding Motivation, Happiness Tips, Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem & Self-Love, Self-Improvement

Why Courage is the Foundation to a Better Life. Once you establish courage, you begin to better your life.

Constructing courage will help you take risks to a brighter future that you usually wouldn’t take. When you establish courage, you put fear behind you.

Bravery is the process of admitting that you have dreads, yet you’re willing to determine a way to defeat those fears and not let these fears take charge of you. It’s ok to experience your fears at suitable times.

When you establish courage, you’ll learn to self-direct yourself in life.

You’ll learn to accept punishment and rewards graciously.

A courageous individual will frequently feel motivated to accept blame and responsibility while critiquing their actions and utilizing what they learn to move forward.

Brave individuals will step to the front, instead of stepping back when opportunities come their way.

At the same time, a brave individual will step back and take a view at his or her errors gracefully. They are willing to see their mistakes and grow from these things.

An individual willing to better their life will relax.

This individual will relax even when plans fail. For example, if it stormed the next day the individual will find something else to occupy his or her time and feel just as happy about joining this adventure.

You learn to take things as they come to you. And don’t get me wrong, it’s great to plan for things.

But, to be courageous means to walk into the unknown and believe you will make it through. And you know how unpredictable life can be no matter how much you plan for it.

Courage teaches you to be ok with the what-ifs in life and allows you to relax and enjoy your life more.

To be successful and better your life you’ll need to learn how to trust yourself.

When you trust yourself, you are able to trust others too. Regrettably, we live in a world where trust is difficult to find, yet when you trust yourself, you can’t blame other people when things go wrong.

It’s not easy believing in yourself 100% of the time. Life gets really freaking hard sometimes and it shakes you up.

Things happen to you that make you question yourself and the people around you, and it’s so easy for trust to be broken.

But, I believe that in order to really love yourself and feel confident in your own skin you have to build up that trust from within. Do things that push you out of your comfort zone and make it a positive experience.

Write down mini-wins in your notebook about how you made it through a tough day, or about a moment in your life when you weren’t sure of yourself but did it anyway.

Take note of these things and encourage yourself to grow, because this is how you build courage and how you build trust.

Related: How to Love Yourself More and Develop a Positive Mindset

Bettering your life includes utilizing your creative and critical mind.

When you can produce fresh ideas, you’re off on the road to success. You’ve many options in this world; it takes you to pull up resources to find those choices.

Occasionally in life, we feel uncomfortable. In fact, this is common.

Are you willing to accept your irritations?

Maybe at an interview, you feel lost. Are you willing to accept this irritation and discover a way to deliver a great speech to impress the interviewer? Alternatively, are you willing to allow negative energies to cost you the job?

Acceptance is your key to happiness.

When you are able to learn to accept the good with the bad, you are able to learn how to live happier and better your life.

If you can’t accept, however, well, reread this material again.

Have more fun adding more happiness to your life by trying this Smoothie Revolution Recipe!

SMOOTHIE REVOLUTION RECIPE

• 1 ½ cups dairy-free milk
• 1 cup kale
• ½ cup parsley leaves (flat-leaf)
• 1 green apple, chopped
• 1 tablespoon flax meal or chia seeds
• 1 teaspoon maca powder

How to Cleanse Your Mind of Negative Thoughts

by The Lovely Refinement Team | Jul 20, 2019 | Dealing With Emotions, Finding Motivation, Happiness Tips, Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem & Self-Love, Self-Improvement

Often times, negative thoughts can creep into our day-to-day life and cause a little bump in our lives. Negative thoughts can affect our drive and ability to navigate through life’s tasks as fluidly as we’d like.

A negative mindset can also affect sleep, motivation, productivity, emotional strength, and stability.

Negative energy can pull you down, and the unconscious mind works in such powerful ways, to diminish our happiness and make us feel poorly about certain things in our life.

If you’re feeling down or overrun by negative thoughts, read on for some guidance on overcoming this obstacle.

How to Cleanse Your Mind of Negative Thoughts

The most effective way to cleanse your mind of negative energy is to find the source of your unhappiness;

The root of what is directly causing these negative thoughts to surface. Ask yourself, what is causing me to have these negative thoughts?

Is it another person putting these thoughts into your head? Is it how you view yourself personally?

Start by finding the root of the problem and then you can work from there. This can be an eye-opening experience for a lot of people because we are often too afraid to dig any deeper.

We don’t want to reveal why it is we think so negatively all the time, for fear of making it worse. When in reality once you identify the poisonous source you can then work on removing it from your life.

Your happiness lies in the solution to your answer.

Related: How to Get Rid of Negative Thinking and Live a Better Life

1. Find a quiet place to sit and reflect.

Close your eyes and identify the root of your unhappiness. Allow your thoughts and feelings to reflect on how this thought is affecting you. How does it make you feel?

Any time a negative thought floats into your mind try to pay attention to it. What is it about this thought that’s making you feel bad?

Let’s say you neglect to take care of your own needs and wants. When you ignore your own needs it becomes harder to set boundaries with other people. The end result is people taking advantage of your kindness and you’re left feeling empty and depleted.

Your mind can then turn to negative thoughts like “No one cares about me, all I do is care for other people. What is it about me that is so meaningless?”

That’s a negative thought right there, so now it’s time to dissect it a little more. Reflect on why it is you don’t feel good enough. Why is it hard for you to set boundaries with other people? Is it a fear of wanting to be liked, of not being there for someone when they really need you?

This is just an example for someone struggling to set boundaries, but this is the same process you can work through no matter what thoughts you are having. This way you can identify the negativity and really begin to understand why it is you feel this way.

2. At this point, decide what you would like to replace your negative thoughts with.

Perhaps a word or phrase, an action, or a happy memory.

Feel yourself releasing the tension and negative thoughts from your head to your toes. Visualizing the tension exiting your body and replacing that space with positivity is the key to permanently ridding yourself of these negative thoughts.

Soak it in and let it absorb the empty space of negativity that has left your body.

This takes time, perhaps as short as 3 minutes, or as long as 8-10 minutes. However long it takes, ensuring you have completely detached from the negative thoughts is important. Any stranded thoughts can resurface into the negative energy you are working at resolving.

Replacing a negative thought with a positive one is an easy practice that shouldn’t have much weight attached to it. You are just trying to retrain your brain into thinking better about yourself.

There will be days where your negativity takes over your mind and that’s ok, don’t force positive thoughts if they aren’t coming to you.

Related: How to Love Yourself More and Develop a Positive Mindset

3. Go slow and be patient with yourself

Like I said, telling yourself to just be more positive won’t work. Filling your mind with affirmations that you don’t fully believe won’t work.

There is stuff that does work, and it’s the most realistic thing you can do. Affirmations sound great in theory, but they don’t make much sense in the real world. When you are struggling mentally and just want the bad thoughts to disappear.

What does help, is going easy on yourself and taking it slow Just like with anything else, cleansing your negative thoughts takes time.

It involves being patient and kind with yourself, and not giving up when you have setbacks.

How to Cleanse Your Mind of Negative Thoughts – Conclusion

Truthfully, I still have days where my mind is FULL of negative toxic thoughts. Even when I try everything in the book to feel better, I just can’t.

That’s when I just tell myself “Ok, today is not my day. Things will get better because it all balances out. But, today I am not going to force myself to work on this when clearly my brain just wants to be negative.”

When I tell myself this, I then do something that takes very little brainpower.

Like watching Netflix or silly YouTube videos. Do something where you don’t have to think too much and try to take that pressure off.

Print out this post and leave it on your refrigerator. Anytime you feel negative energy creeping your way, commit to this quick yet effective guideline to cleanse your mind!

How To Love Yourself More – Develop A Positive Mindset

by The Lovely Refinement Team | Jul 20, 2019 | Dealing With Emotions, Finding Motivation, Happiness Tips, Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem & Self-Love, Self-Improvement

Learning how to love yourself more takes time… and truthfully it’s a process that you go through for the rest of your life.

We often have to unlearn a lot of things we were taught growing up. And separate our own beliefs from the ones others put into our brains at an early age.

If you grew up feeling unsure of yourself and not knowing how to properly love yourself, you are definitely not alone! As children, we have to frequently be nurtured and encouraged, but it’s all too easy for adults to ignore these things.

Not by any fault of their own… we are human after all.

That just means as you grow up and learn to do things on your own, like live on your own, cook your own food, and provide for yourself, you also have to learn how to love yourself.

No matter what age you are it’s never too late to learn. I wish loving yourself was something we were taught in high school, but it’s not. It’s something you learn as you grow up and develop into the person you’re supposed to be.

How To Love Yourself More – Develop A Positive Mindset

So how do we get there? What steps need to be taken to fully love yourself more?

1. Be More Mindful

It first starts with becoming more mindful of how you react to things. Whether that’s being triggered by something bad or when something makes you feel happy.

You have to start being more mindful of what your body is telling you. By listening to yourself more and your internal cues, you can begin to understand what your needs and wants are.

I like to say that becoming more mindful is the same as basically resetting your brain because you have gone your whole life up to this point thinking a certain way. And if you don’t know how to love yourself then you have to change that thought process.

You have to take a step back and pay attention to what your mind and body is doing. Then, learn how to listen to what you need because chances are you have ignored your own needs and wants for a long time.

Long enough to completely forget what it is that you enjoy.

2. Identify Your Surroundings

So as you are becoming more mindful and aware, you then have to pay attention to your surroundings. What are the people you spend your time with like? Are they generally pretty positive or do you have some people in your life who only see the negative?

If you have struggled to love yourself growing up, was there anyone in your family that made you question your worth? Sometimes parents, intentionally or not, can make their children feel like they aren’t good enough. We value our parents’ opinions as we grow up and if they disapprove this can have a direct effect on your own self-worth.

Allowing others to decide how worthy you are means you don’t love yourself very much. It means you don’t matter as much.

And this is totally normal, but I want to point it out to you. If you place your value in other people’s hands then you have to start identifying when you do this, with whom you do this, and why. What is it that makes you compare yourself to others, to not feel as good as you should?

Think about these questions as you continue reading through.

Related: 15 Important Things to Do When You Don’t Feel Good Enough

4. Set Boundaries and Limits

I think setting boundaries is a difficult thing to do. You want other people to like you, so you ignore warning signs and allow people to walk all over you.

I do this, too. In the past, I have let others completely take advantage of me just because I wanted to be nice and wanted people to like me. For the longest time, I cared wayyy too much about what people thought of me.

And if you’re an empath then setting boundaries will be a little more difficult for you. Because you can give and give and give until your cup is depleted. Until you have absolutely nothing else left to give.

But, you need to protect yourself from certain people in the world who just take and take. It would be so amazing if everyone could sense when they are taking advantage of someone, but it’s just not the case.

That’s why setting boundaries is so necessary for your own growth. For you to love yourself you have to take a stand for yourself. You need to say no and draw a line at the moments you don’t feel comfortable.

If you need a night to yourself to recharge, cancel your plans and do what YOU need to reset. If you ignore your wants and needs, then you will not feel mentally strong enough to stick to the boundaries you set.

5. Loving yourself is a process and you will have setbacks.

You’ll have moments that you will self-sabotage and not feel so great. But, then you can get right back up and keep going on the journey of loving yourself.

Self-sabotage is a habit that we create. That’s all it is… a habit, which can be changed with some effort.

When we get triggered, we self-sabotage. Even if you are feeling amazing you might have this fear inside you that takes over and says “Oh no, you’re happy… that means things are about to get really bad soon.” so you somehow end up ruining the good things in your life.

But, I’m happy to say that you can break this cycle. It’s just ingrained into your brain, but you can learn to break those bad habits that you’re in and move forward.

As long as you don’t give up, you will start to love and believe in yourself over time.

How to Develop a Positive Mindset

1. Energy Attracts Energy

Energy tends to attract similar energy, whether it is good or bad energy.

If you are sending out negative thoughts constantly, you are probably going to get that negative energy back.

On the other hand, if you can put all the most positive energy out, then you will get positive energy back. This is the core of why positive thinking works in your favor and why you should start embracing it more in your regular life.

2. Support Others More

Positive thinking isn’t just good for your own life, but for others as well!

If misery loves company, then doesn’t happiness?

By being a happier, more fulfilled person, you can spread that positive energy around and help others feel better as well.

Try to remain positive and uplifted when talking to other people in your daily life, and you will be amazed by what a more peaceful place the world becomes. Positive energy truly spreads around just as quickly as negative energy.

3. Improve Your Physical Health

Many people look at positive thinking and self-improvement as something that helps their mental health, which is true, but that’s not all. It can also have a positive impact on your mental health.

Whether you have mental conditions like anxiety and stress or just want to improve your mental clarity and focus, it can be really useful.

Positive thinking helps you to feel better, which can then create better motivation, and higher energy, and help you find more inspiration.

Related: 10 Ways Exercise Improves Your Mental Health

4. Get into Meditation

Positive thinking, mindfulness, and meditation, all go hand-in-hand. When you are working on one of them, the rest tend to follow.

Start meditating and practicing mindfulness while you are focusing on more positive thoughts, and it will make all the other benefits even better.

Suddenly you feel like you can take on anything and the positive energy will surround you.

Mindful Eating Tips and Tricks for Long Term Weight Loss

by The Lovely Refinement Team | Jul 7, 2019 | Dealing With Emotions, Finding Motivation, Happiness Tips, Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem & Self-Love, Self-Improvement

Mindful eating is the key to maintaining a healthy weight, feeling amazing and keeping off any weight you’ve lost. Learn these top 6 tricks that will send you towards more mindful eating. Let go of the dieting mindset and take over the mindful eating practice instead.

Mindful Eating Tips and Tricks for Long-Term Weight Loss

Do you want to lose some extra pounds? Ever wondered what strategies may help you lose weight quickly?

Namely, according to research, adopting a more thoughtful way of eating can help you solve your weight loss issues and apply a healthy diet without processed food and unhealthy choices.

That is, mindful eating is a new alternative method used to help people lose weight. The Buddhist concept of mindfulness is used as the basis of this approach.

This concept implies that one should be completely aware of everything that’s happening within and around at a specific moment.

But that’s not all! The Buddhist concept of mindfulness and its techniques are also extremely beneficial for relieving stress and some health issues like chronic gastrointestinal problems or high blood pressure.

Related: 8 Things Foodies Want As A Gift

What is Mindful Eating?

When it comes to eating, mindfulness refers to being aware and noticing food flavors, smells, colors, and textures. Plus, mindful eating suggests that one should chew slowly and solely focus on eating.

In other words, you should eliminate any distractions when eating such as TV, speaking, reading, or listening.

Also, if you want to enjoy the benefits mindful eating has to offer, you should learn to deal with the guilt and anxiety caused by food.

How are the Mind and Gut Connected?

Surprisingly but true, there’s a robust mind-gut connection. To be more specific, digestion isn’t such a simple process and consists of many different and connected parts.

It involves a complex chain of hormonal signals sent between the gut and the brain, i.e., the nervous systems.

And, the brain will note satiety only after 20 minutes. So, if one eats too quickly, the brain will record fullness only after the person has overeaten because the brain didn’t convey the message before that.

Plus, as we already mentioned, you should get rid of distractions when eating. But why? The answer is quite simple scientifically speaking.

If we eat while we are distracted by another activity, digestion will slow down or stop, and as a result, our bodies won’t get all the nutrients from the food we’re consuming.

Mindful Eating as a Treatment for Binge Eating

According to several studies, mindful eating is quite helpful and beneficial when treating certain eating disorders like binge eating, or trying to meet weight loss goals.

One study on 150 binge eaters, conducted by researchers from Indiana State and Duke University, compared two treatments (mindfulness-based therapy and a standard psychoeducational treatment) and a control group.

Both therapies resulted in reduced binge eating and depression. However, the treatment based on mindfulness suggested that people enjoy food more and stress less about controlling their diet.

The participants who practiced meditation at mealtimes and during the day got more benefits from the study.

Basic Mindful Eating Tips and Tricks

It may really seem that mindful eating is something difficult and challenging. But, on the contrary, you can get started and apply mindfulness to your diet by following some quite simple tips and tricks.

If you don’t want to get overwhelmed, you can start gradually applying mindful eating. For example, in the beginning, practice mindfulness at one meal a day for a week. Then, you can gradually add more mindful meals to your daily diet.

So, here’s a starter kit for mindful eating:

• Before you sit down to eat your meal (a normal-sized one) set a timer to 20 minutes. It will tell you when to stop and wait for the brain to record satiety.
• Try eating with your left hand (this applies to the right-handed people), or with your right if you are left-handed. In other words, eat with your non-dominant hand.
• If you don’t usually use chopsticks, try using them to eat slower and allow more time for the food to digest and for the brain to notice fullness.
• Dedicate the first five minutes of eating to silence. All you should think of is about the food, from what it took to produce it to the farmer, the grocer, or the cook.
• Think about your bites and their size. Try taking as small bites as possible. And, of course, focus on chewing well and slowly.
• And, last but not least, think about whether you’re really hungry before going to the kitchen and grabbing some food. Even better, occupy your brain with some other activity apart from eating.

How to Start Living a Healthier Lifestyle

by The Lovely Refinement Team | May 4, 2019 | Dealing With Emotions, Finding Motivation, Happiness Tips, Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem & Self-Love, Self-Improvement

You may be wondering how to live a healthier life. Whether that’s through eating better, exercising more, or even improving your mindset and feeling better about yourself.

The relationship we have with ourselves and our bodies has a big influence on our behaviors. If you self-sabotage yourself, it can make it really difficult to see the value you have.

Which can lead to unhealthy behaviors, like drinking more alcohol or overeating. And any time you are under a large amount of stress this can trigger these unhealthy behaviors.

So, what I want to talk more about is how to start living a healthier lifestyle.

And this sounds like an overwhelming thought, right? If you think that you have to completely change your life within a day, then you might not even want to start.

But, this is a part of the self-sabotage. Believing you don’t deserve to live a healthier and happier life, or thinking you don’t have the power within you to achieve these goals.

And as I go into this list I just want to remind you that you right now have the power within you to make a change. To live whatever life you’re currently dreaming of.

All you have to do is just believe this and then we can move forward on the HOW to do this.

How to Start Living a Healthier Lifestyle

Bring in New Habits Slowly

Whatever changes that you want to make, it first starts with breaking up with the bad ones, and creating new better habits.

And honestly, it takes a bit of time for your mind and body to adjust to a new habit. So let’s say you want to start working out more and everything you read on the internet says “workout at least 5 times a week for 45 minutes.”.

This is a BIG commitment to start making out of the blue. And I know for me personally, dealing with anxiety and depression makes it really hard to randomly pick up a new habit like this.

Instead what you want to do is start adding in a work-out routine slowly. Begin by setting aside 5 minutes a day for a week or two. You can even do the same workout, the point of this is to start changing your habits.

Once your mind and body are more in the habit of working out you can then begin to make it more challenging for yourself, and increase the time until you reach your end goal.

Drink More Water

This is so obvious but SO important. Especially as a health coach, I see people often who do not drink enough water.

It just doesn’t feel all that important, right? But, water regulates a lot of what is going on in your body. It helps with digestion and it balances out your blood sugar levels.

Aim for half of your body weight in ounces. So, if you weigh 150 pounds, you’ll aim to drink 75 ounces of water a day.

I used to be terrible about drinking water and only drank Diet Coke. But, I completely curbed this habit by buying 40oz water and always having ice-cold, clean water by my side wherever I go.

Now I crave water over any other drink! In the US water is the second most popular drink, behind soda. Obviously, this isn’t good and if you find that you aren’t drinking enough water, start turning this into a habit!

Set reminders on your phone and make water easily accessible to you. You can even add a fresh-squeezed lemon or lime to add a little flavor.

But if you find it difficult to drink enough water, you can also consider taking an IV hydration in Atlanta area, which is a quick and effective way of hydrating your body.

Spend Time Outside

I like to focus on a mind-body balance. When you benefit both, you will become the healthiest version of yourself.

Making sure to get time outside in the sun will help to improve your mood. If you suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder), then you know how important it is to get sunshine.

On top of improving your mood, your body needs movement every day. If you work at a desk all day then it’s even more important for you to get up frequently and get outside.

If you have a dog, get into the habit of taking them out twice a day so you can both get some exercise and fresh air.

Again, start with just 5 minutes of being outside and work your way up to 15 minutes twice a day. It feels small, but it will make a huge difference!

Reduce Sugar

Now I know how amazing sugar is and how good it tastes. Honestly, for a while as a teenager I would only eat sweets. And I became so hooked on candy and cookies that if there was any of it in the house, I would only eat that.

I had to cut back on buying the stuff because I knew that I wouldn’t eat anything else besides sugar. I’m not saying to completely stop eating sugar, because again I want you to improve your mood as well as your body.

Sometimes we need some ice cream or want to enjoy cake at a birthday party. And it should be enjoyed! The tricky part is it’s so easy to overdo it. Sugar and highly processed foods begin to taste way better than fruits and vegetables. But, they also cause heart disease, weight gain, fatigue, and a whole list of other problems.

So, work on reducing your sugar intake. White sugar has zero vitamins or minerals and when you consume it, your body has to find those vitamins and minerals elsewhere in your body.

But, if your body is lacking in those vitamins and minerals, then you fall into a deficit. Making your body and mind struggle and causing unnecessary issues.

This just starts by making better choices. If you’re craving sweets, go for a banana or some berries instead. Look for items that are reduced in sugar.

And if you can get into the habit of replacing sugary drinks and food with fruits and vegetables, you won’t crave sugar nearly as much. You’ll also be able to have sugar on occasion without overindulging in it.

Limit Your Social Media Time

Technology is a great thing while also kind of a terrible thing at the same time. It allows us to connect to anyone in the world within seconds, and yet we are becoming more and more lonely because of social media and technology.

If you’re in the habit of checking your phone often throughout the day, posting to social media and feel more confident when other people like your posts, or just like to use technology because you often feel bored then it’s time for a social media cleanse.

There are plenty of apps out there that can track your phone usage and alert you when it’s time to put your phone away.

When you put your phone down and instead learn to be more in the moment, you will feel better mentally. And feelings of anxiety and depression will reduce over time.

At first, you may feel anxious not checking your phone but as time goes on you will become more used to it. And then you will begin to feel much better because you won’t have to compare yourself so much to other people’s lives.