How I Found My Way, Kicking & Screaming, to Sounder Sleep

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I was never a couch potato. Nor was I ever a jock. From my university days and onward, three days a week of lacing up my Nikes to pound the pavement, or three aerobics classes weekly, were enough of a workout for me.

I also had a serious problem with insomnia. It started out as trouble falling asleep. A bad day at work or excitement about an upcoming event kept me wound up at night and much too aroused to sleep.

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Redefining Beauty

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In today’s media driven society, we are constantly confronted with constructed notions of what it is to be Beautiful. Technology has enabled re-touching and digitalisation to such a point that beauty, as defined by movie stars and models in magazines, is an almost impossible target for most women because it simply isn’t REAL. Yesterday I saw Dove’s latest marketing campaign, where they used the concept of “selfies” to help teenage girls and their mothers re-define their notions of beauty and it made me think about myself, and what I think beauty is.

I’m a 21 year old Australian woman with thick, long brown hair, hazel eyes, a slightly olive complexion and a face full of freckles. I happen to be quite content with how I look, but this wasn’t always the case. Even now I wouldn’t rush to call myself “beautiful”; But why not? I love to hear it from someone else as much as the next person, yet I seem to think that there is some taboo against thinking it of ourselves; as if this instantly makes us vain when in all honesty, thinking of ourselves as beautiful is one of the most empowering things we can do.

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8 Lessons in Change from Exercise

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I have spent the last two weeks recuperating from a shoulder surgery after being injured for half the year. The time away from exercising, a hobby which in the past four years has turned from a distant source of woe to something I look forward to on a daily basis, has given me ample time to think about the benefits of exercising.

These benefits extend far beyond getting a Hot Bod or Rock Hard Six Pack Abs. The stigmatized cultural approach to the exercise obsession is that it’s an aesthetic practice, and will make you look like a celebrity or instantly become a Better Person. We’re sometimes told to exercise for the wrong reasons, to use physical discipline as an ends to something other than itself. The truth is that imposing a culturally-defined idea of vanity on something as basely beneficial as physical activity is outrageous.

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Two Steps to Living the Life of Your Dreams

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“How do you do it?” He asked.

I was at a party and this guy had just heard I was a stand-up comedian. Like a lot of people I meet he wanted to know how I’m able to make a living in a notoriously difficult field like stand-up comedy.

A lot of people have a passion – something they’d love to do with their life. They want to be a painter, or a musician, or travel the world. But they put off these dreams because they seem impractical.

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4 Simple Principles I Used To Lose 80 Pounds

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When I was 18 years old I was overweight. Not incredibly, but very noticeably overweight. I had grown complacent. I had decided it was genetic, and that there was nothing I could do. But after realizing where I was headed, I decided to change.

At first these changes were not very visible. But with time, it seemed like I was simply losing weight without doing anything. Unknowingly, I had tapped into four great principles for long-term self improvement.

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A Life Changing Experience on an Icy Highway

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There has been black ice all over the roads in Connecticut this week. Even as I type these words onto my laptop, I’m looking out the window and seeing another fresh coat of snow. I know it’s going to turn to ice before the sun goes down.

It started with coming back last Sunday from Ken MacArthur’s jvAlert in Philadelphia. Two hours to get out of the city limits with all the accidents and construction. I didn’t love it, but I didn’t fear it either. Traffic was moving slowly enough so that it was an inconvenience, but not a danger.

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Planning for the Life You Want

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I haven’t always been as intentional about the life I want to live as I am now. And I haven’t always been as successful at getting what I want. Now I know that simple old-fashioned formal planning about my life makes getting what I want much more of a sure thing.

Earlier in my life I probably could not have easily identified what I wanted. For instance when I had been married 17 years the first time, and I had three teen-age children, I was depressed, confused, and adrift with no vision or strategies for my life.

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How I Went from Fear to Freedom

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If I could go back in time to meet myself five years ago, he wouldn’t be able to believe what I would tell him. My self from five years ago was hopeless and couldn’t see any way out of the depths of suffering.

So he wouldn’t have been able to believe it when I would tell him that in just a few years time he would be truly happy and truly free from all the anguish that had been with him for the preceding twenty years…and it would be far simpler than he had ever imagined. The trouble was just that my self from five years ago was still looking in the wrong direction.

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