I’m Going on a Journey to Change My Life, and I’m Bringing You With Me.

Some of the links below are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. You can read my full disclosure here.

I’ve been absent from this blog for several months. So, before I get into what the heck I’m talking about when I say I am going to change my life, I’m going to talk a little bit about where I’ve been and what’s been going on. Just a little catch-up, if you will.

I believe it was January, the last post I wrote. Since then, I have closed out one business and expanded another. This has been mega time consuming. In fact, I’m still not 100% rid of my old stock. With my new company, I quickly grew a team, so I have been trying to work with them as well.

I have kept up a bit with business blogging, as you can see over on my Origami Owl Blog page, and have dealt with a crazy end-of-school year/beginning of summer schedule.

All of this is to say, that it has been a bit non-stop. When I did stop, at SassyCon- a social media marketing conference, I realized it is time to get focused. After a lot of real-talk at the conference, I concluded that it’s time to become the me that I have always pictured. This means some big changes, and some hard personal work. It’s time to change my life.

That’s where this blog comes in.

I’m starting in on some big changes, and I want you to come with me. I want to show the progress I am making as I am making it. To complain about the hard and uncomfortable times as they are happening. I want anyone who wants to change their life, to be able to come along on this journey to see what’s possible, and to see that it’s not always easy. In fact, it’s usually not. I want to prove that if you don’t give up on yourself, if you keep showing up and keep every promise you make yourself, that you can change your whole life into what you want it to be.

I have no idea how this journey is going to end. I have my thoughts and visions and dreams about what comes from it, but life has a funny way of taking you on winding paths vs a straight highway. It’s also really scary to exclaim to the world (or however many people wind up reading this blog), that I am going on this journey. There is a voice in my head that is repeatedly telling me to shut up.

“Write it down, publish it later. You don’t know what’s going to happen. If you fail now, you will look like a fool. What if nothing changes? What if you give up, like always?”

Here’s the thing. I don’t always give up. (I gave birth to my son without an epidural. That was the plan and I didn’t give up, even when he wound up being 9lbs, 21oz. I sat in a damn hospital room for a month, to give my daughter as long as she would take in the womb. I didn’t say I’m too lonely, or too bored… I didn’t give up.) Yet, I keep coming back to that, that I am going to give up, or fail, or nothing will change and everyone will know I haven’t done it. That’s because my brain is conditioned to protect itself. To protect me from what it perceives as danger. “If I put myself out there, I will look like a fool.” The ironic thing, is that is the exact thinking that has kept me where I am.

It stops here.

I will be chronicling this journey in almost real-time, through weekly blog posts. My promise to my readers is that I will be honest, no matter how hard or uncomfortable it gets. My goal is to show how an average woman can change her life to what she wants it to be. Not to show some super-person easily succeeding at everything; that’s boring, uninspiring and absolutely not me, I don’t think I could even fake it. Along that line, this will not be an overnight journey (so if your looking for a story with an ending, it’s not here.. but bookmark this page and check back in 2 years to see what’s happened!)

So, who am I now?

I am an overweight mom of two. I am a small business owner, struggling monthly to pay myself and grow my business, instead of just sustain it. Out of shape, unhealthy, I spend most of my day at home in front of an iPad working. There is a mountain of ever-growing mom-guilt about not being present when I am with my kids.

Everything is not super dreary, I promise. I have a supportive husband who has not only helped me start my weight loss journey, but is on it with me. There are times that I am present with my kids, and we have fun as a family. I love my job, I love working from home and being able to take Alice to almost all of her doctors appointments, and go to all of Quinn’s school activities. I just know I can have more. Not only that, but I am meant for more.

My first steps to my new life include mindset and weight loss.

Mindset is actually exactly what lead me to this place. The place of knowing I can change my life, and actually taking action. The place of deciding to share that with the world, instead of keeping it in my head. I will have future posts all about mindset, but to start I want to share that mindset has been the biggest contributor to the spark inside of me at this moment. There is a shift in thinking that happens, when you are working on yourself, searching out knowledge and wisdom from those who have done what you want to do, that allows you to start to believe you can do it too. Then the more you believe it, and feed the positive thoughts and learn more and discover more, the easier it is to start to work towards what you really want in life.

Mindset is something that will be ever evolving as you work on it. It’s something you should be ever working on. At the end of this post is a list of books that I’ve read and recommend to help you, if you would like to hop on this journey with me.

Weight loss will be my first series of posts. I am currently in a challenge to lose 58 pounds in six months. Side by side with this challenge is my personal goal of running the Disney half-marathon in 19 months. I have never been a runner, I have never been one to exercise regularly and I live a pretty sedentary life. So, this will be quite a challenge for me.

I really hope that if you are someone looking to make positive changes in your life but have been too stuck in familiarity, or someone who has a dream but has been to scared to declare it, or someone who has always felt a calling towards more but aren’t sure how or where to start, that you will follow me on my journey. I hope that you will be inspired to start a journey of your own, and I would love for you to share that journey with me as well. I’m so excited to see where we end up.