THETINYLIFTER

I’m sure we all know Mondays aren’t the happiest of all days of the week. I’ve been struggling with my eating habits as I worry I’m not getting enough of the correct nutrients to feed me and my plus one. Naturally, pregnancy makes you physically weaker because the body is becoming heavier rapidly - your belly is growing in the front & your back is adjusting to the weight.

In the past 3 years, I focused on building the strongest relationship I had ever had with myself and my body. I built myself to be physically strong working with fitness and maintaining a nutritious & healthy diet from different angles. Feeling weak & exhausted has definitely been so difficult for me with the time constraints of transitioning into a 40 hour work week schedule.

Last night, Rasmey & I had our nightly discussion about how excited we are for our baby’s arrival. I’ve been eager for time to go by fast to meet our tiny human being - find out its gender and what s/he looks like. Our plans are to keep the whole meeting experience til the day he or she arrives.

To which Rasmey’s response was,

“I want time to by fast, but I don’t, because I want to you to stay like this (pregnant) as long as possible.”

Despite my daily struggles, nothing warms our hearts knowing how much our baby is growing everyday. I miss going hard in the gym without exhausting myself, but there are no words to describe how amazing pregnancy truly is, especially with the perfect partner to share it with.

by Brianna Wiest via Thought Catalog

1. Be friends with different types of people. Don’t insulate your worldview by only socializing with those who are fundamentally the same as you.

2. Read. Do you know how few people are reading anything other than a few lines of an article here and there? Few. Do you know why it matters? Because a book you read in a few days this week can change the way you think about something for decades to come.

3. Question yourself, and honor your doubt. People who aren’t secure enough to do this stagnate.

4. Be willing to live the way other people won’t, so you can live the way other people can’t.

5. Learn how to cook things you enjoy more than you enjoy ordering out.

6. Learn how to budget your money in a way that makes you feel responsible and liberated, not restricted.

7. Put away a bit of money each month, however much you can afford (and don’t worry if there are setbacks along the way). Compounded interest is no joke.

8. Take on a side gig exclusively for the sake of that savings account. It will be exhausting for a while, but you’ll come out with new skills and the peace of mind that comes from having a fiscal cushion.

9. Get addicted to healthy pain. The kind that comes from clocking in hours of practice or maneuvering through the discomfort of training your mind to focus on one task until it’s complete. The more you channel your pain into something productive, the less you’ll be tempted to ruminate.

10. Get comfortable admitting when you’re wrong. There is no failure in making mistakes. There is failure in making mistakes and having too much pride to fix them.

11. Clean out your space, then work on adopting an attitude of “enough.” Do you really want to spend the next 10 years accumulating things? No, you don’t. Imagine what else all of that money and time and worry could have gone toward.

12. Only put things on your credit card that you will be able to remember in 3 months from now. If you look at how much is due and can’t remember what you spent it on, it was nothing worthwhile.

13. Do your soul-searching. Make lists of what you like and what you dislike; what you value and what you don’t; what you’re skilled at and what you’re not. Start cohering an idea of who you fundamentally are, but allow yourself to be open to that idea changing over time.

14. Reflect on your life, and ask yourself what your single most compelling motive is. Construct your narrative about it carefully – the way you justify your past actions will become your philosophy for future ones.

15. If you commit to nothing else, commit to a daily routine that consists of actions that, over time, will lead you to where you want to be.

16. Do things intentionally. Date intentionally. Work intentionally. Don’t let your life be a series of mindless, random actions that just seemed nice at the time, but are ultimately meaningless.

17. Take yourself as seriously as you want the world to. Behave accordingly.

18. Scrap it all and start over as many times as you need to. There’s no shame in not getting it right, there is, however, a lot of self-loathing that comes from knowing better, but not having the courage to do better.

and also, the way you make people feel about themselves speaks louder than words.