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Love Over Ego For Extraordinary Life

Love over ego has never been so needed in our world of multi-dimensional complexities and chaos.
Love sign.

If we were able to act in love in every one of our situations and everyone did the same, then our planet would be a place of peace.

And in our smaller world we live in, it’s easier to find daily love amid our joy that we get with peaceful and feel good micro moments. Like when we have chocolate dipped strawberries. 🍓

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Enjoyable moments help us get through our challenging situations.

…That can happen daily and  in everyday moments.

One big reason is because the ego strikes for no rhyme or reason, and shuts out love. But we’re equipped to override this from happening.

In my journey, I discovered this phenomenon from my office working life situations where I was tested and I sometimes saw two sides in people… almost like a head and a tail side of a coin.

…One minute, a person could be acting pleasant and then the next minute, not.

You probably know what I mean…

Someone is triggered or irritated by something someone else says or does.

At the time of witnessing this, I thought these types of recurring scenarios with different people and situations were because of personality differences… or if it happened often with the same person, a personality clash.

💡But then later got revelation: that was only part of the problem.

The root problem is that all of us have a built in brain ego-feature that doesn’t act when we want. And can act up in our minds.

And we have the choice to choose self-awareness and to find love over ego.

Those are the two sides of the coin.

Love is love and ego represents fear.

Love is more obvious to us, and ego and fear are not. So that makes ego super dangerous.

Fear can be triggered in anyone at any time. Fear can show up as subtly as insecurities that cause irrational decisions to be made.

But if we replace fear with joy inside us or in our spirit, then we can revert to love that’s in us.

Either way, it’s no one’s fault as we’re all damaged goods in an imperfect world.

No one living is perfect, but our damaging ego in us wants us to believe we are in some way.

So getting that deeper love message into our core is our ticket out of fear-based living… that’s all the things we’re scared and worried about in this world.

But first we want to heal what’s broken inside us.

If we never get through our pain and suffering that still needs healing from the past, then we have wounds that show up as resentment and unforgiveness that’s not love.

In my life, I didn’t even know early on that I needed past healing until I did self-help reflection and shadow work inviting in love.

I could’ve let clouds hang over because that’s how the ego thrives.

I didn’t know there was another way.

And anyone who you come across who hasn’t declared healing from their past is living in some form of their ego cloud when clear blue skies ahead are available. 🩵

My early goals in life was to come out unscathed. Or I should say that was my naive ego goals.

…But I didn’t even get past my early 20’s before I knew every bucket area of my life was off… nothing was as I thought it should be as an adult. I measured myself against those around me, my culture’s shoulds, and what my ego led me to think.

The biggest problem is the ego voice and personality is usually the loudest in the room in us and around us. Ego blocks out quieter spirit whispers and ideas of what would be best and most loving.

…So back to my past office work situations, I did not understand what was happening to the person sitting in front of me.

It felt surreal what I was experiencing as unpleasantries and the tone coming from their mouths.

And I found this could occur in personal situations with immediate family. So it wasn’t just work bosses.

Ego infected moments were all over this world… and destructive.

And even the most unaware affected are aware they are not happy and causing destruction in relationships. It’s a sad way to be.

A way to stay clear from being run by your ego and causing damage is asking: what did I do to contribute to this? How can I change the future from repeating?

How can I bring back love into this situation?

Another way is to get informed such as from an article like this.

This shines light and responsibility to making a positive change and seeking personal growth in an imperfect world.

Otherwise the past never gets healed and no healing growth happens.

Then the ego continues to deeper infect and spin perception of reality for a lifetime if allowed.

🌟Good news is, anyone can end this destructive ego pattern in them if they also choose to be better internal listeners, and let in love over ego no matter what siutuational triggers they receive.

Committing to be a better person is one good motivator.

You can’t change others, but you can positively affect your life one situation and moment at a time.

The Seeking Love Over Ego Opportunity (Or Challenge) For You…

🌱Commit to evolve quicker and embrace change.

🌱Identify with your loving self because you are loved.

With those loving mindsets, you move your sails toward a greater future destiny, even when you don’t know what that is.

🌱Let down your guard sometimes.

What If you let yourself be vulnerable?

Let in new better ways… remember, you can always go back to the old ways that weren’t working well. 😉

Show up as the lovely person that people refer to as kind or doing good. They’re the ones that attract others and have a happy life because they live aligned.

With lovely attitudes, there’s no room for ego plays.

🌱Find your love over ego in situations.

This bypasses unproductive anxiety, fear, and worry that rob joy.

Reset by going to bed early could be the remedy for a bad day. A good night’s rest is known cure for getting more loving thoughts.

🌱We can openly talk about more adding love (and less ego) in everyday life instead of making it an “elephant in the room” because it’s not exciting to talk about and ego conceals itself.

If we brush aside our ego fears but let those eat at us, then we pay the price and the people around us suffer too.

“Love” spelled backward is “evol” and when we add more love with “ve”, we get evolve. And we shut out fears.

And, these are loving life goals we can consider:

Seek meaningful work for a satisfied life.

That can be easier to find and do if we disconnect weekly from our noisy surroundings, so we can listen to what our inner self is trying to tell us is best for us.

When we re-strategize and are willing to pivot with a little risk, we get to live out our best life and the world around us gets the best of us.

Choose to live love on purpose.

We can focus on love that is healthy.

For ladies, think of yourself as a ladybug. There are 5,000 species despite similar appearance.

Our destiny was there even if we couldn’t see it fully. We had a few red ladybug stripes.

Before we became our ladybug selves, we went through a caterpillar metamorphosis.

Through younger struggle and experiences, we became our full potential selves. We saved plants on our journey as our loving work on our planet. 🪴

We also showed up lovely and cutely clothed with ladybug matching black polka dots. We’re admired and even called good luck. 🐞We added more love tho this world.

That’s what our life legacy and relationships can be like. 🧡

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Beet Smoothie With Blueberry and Ginger

Beet berry smoothie is one inviting drink that’s vibrant pretty to look at… and pretty gut healthy. Plus, tasty good!

Like a painting in creation, the Alizarin crimson hues in this beet red smoothie are deep saturated in color 🎨 and filled with rainbow polyphenol anti-inflammatory goodness.

More on this below…

Jump to Recipe

A beet smoothie drink with blueberry and ginger made at home.

Ginger as a punchy spice ingredient is good for digestion and calming bloating symptoms.

It’s one of the power spices for digestive health. And even recommended for IBS patients.

Plus, adding ginger to a beet smoothie gives it a flavor pairing knock-out punch…  that I’m all about coming from my catering days.

…And this one knocks you off your seat!

Ginger takes this beet drink from good to POW-WOW. 🤩

You may even skip a caffeine jolt as the flavors are awakening strong.

And if ginger is not a flavor vibe you’ve gotten accustomed to… (or maybe even detest today), I can totally relate.

…When I was a kid, my mom cooked ginger in meals. Not just hints of ginger spice, but actual whole chunks of ginger.

And that’s when I made a face ☹️ and didn’t want to eat food or anything that came within millimeters of the infected ginger taste.

But as our bodies change, our tastes also change.

Little did I know that ginger is Vata balancing.

And it’s surprising I started to like the taste of ginger decades later… it grew on me with ginger and cookies and gingerbread cookies. 😊

…And ginger chocolate.

…So, maybe those are the sweeter ginger tastes needed for you to see the value and bring ginger alive in your life. 😉

Crystallized ginger goes well with chocolate and is one of the happy foods (as it has a little bit of sugar). Sugar and spice is balancing.

You can even make a puzzle game out of it if that’ll bring in the likability factor.

And slowly your tide can change one ginger taste at a time and you find yourself one day drinking ginger water.

And graduate to a smoothie like this one where ginger is one of the star ingredients that gives this beet smoothie some good stars! 🌟

Along with a red apple, this is one anti-inflammatory beet smoothie.

Apples are high in quercetin that daily help us keep the doctor away. 🍎

…And finally, another star ingredient is the blended in super berries, like blueberries (and you can substitute or mix in with strawberries if you prefer).

So, that’s 4-anti-inflammatory ingredients in the smoothie if you’re counting. Anti-inflammatory is good for all ages, as you can never start too soon.

That makes this a super healthy berry beet smoothie slushie ride!

This is one punchy medley of a drink that you just can’t get in a regular fruit punch.

Are you ready to jump in?

And if you like blueberry smoothies, a Blueberry Cheesecake Smoothie or Blueberry Pina Colada smoothie are others to try.

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Beet Berry Ginger Smoothie

It's gonna be hard to beat this berry punchy smoothie drink.
Course beverage
Cuisine American
Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Equipment

  • blender

Ingredients

  • beet, canned (or chopped beetroot and water)
  • berry mix (blueberries and/or strawberries)
  • 1-2 tsp ginger powder
  • 1 medium apple

Instructions

  • Use a can of beets with juice.
  • Add berry mix (1:1 ratio) and chopped apples.
  • Add ginger powder. Tip: use fresh ginger powder that hasn't expired.
  • Blend. Enjoy!

 

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How to Be Humble Lesson For More Happiness

How to be humble in our lives is a key to our success and leads to more of our happiness.

In climbing mountains, I realized how small I am in the elements and that teaches how to be humble lessons.
Climbing mountains is a humbling experience each time. You get to appreciate your existence and what you have as blessings.

We know the feelings of how to be humble when we know we’ve been given a second chance as the blessed feeling and gravity of meaning permeates every fiber of our being inside us.

If we can carry that temporary feeling along our life’s journey that helps us grow and be successful (in how we define success).

Reachable daily micro doses of success bring more happiness to our lives because we feel good about ourselves.

That’s healthy balance.

It doesn’t matter what level of success or even what the success is as long as we feel good about it and inside us.

Success is relative to our lives.

Some examples:

You complete a task you’ve been dreading… that’s success.

You get a success check mark ✅ that means something to you… success is confirmed on your screen.

You successfully complete a class or learn a new skill you’re proud of.

You figure out something you thought you didn’t have the ability to, prior to now.

You organize something and feel accomplished success.

You get a new revelation about a past situation where you didn’t have clarity before.

You find a new better way to react… that’s super success because often those lead to more personal success.

All these examples give you the you got this feeling. And when free from any pride attachment to what we accomplished, we feel joy of accomplishment.

I made these sweet dessert shells that turned out flat, like potato chips. But in the process, I learned a new method of what not to do.

By staying humble in spirit believing every experience is a learning experience, I redefined success that kept my joy. Plus, I got a sweet bite.

And in your daily experiences you’re learning something new and new about yourself that helps you.

From that lens, you feel good and stay positive in your situations.

Finding our positive “feel goods” keep us grounded and lets us keep going and growing.

When grounded, we stay humble.

That little switch in approach helps our life…

It slows down our knee-jerk reactions and makes us think about what the aftermaths could be.

Humility as outer clothing and inner way desire brings out our best.

Defaulting to humility and learning how to be humble is a form of our self-control… and not one that’s easy to master.

We live in a world where our patience and self-control is daily tested.

But by acting humble, we exercise better self-control.

Exercising self-control is an evolved skill that grows us, but learning can be humbling to say the least.

Wanting to be a better person can be a good motivator as we’re equipped and when we reach the point where we want to grow.

When our motivations are humble ones, we’ve reached a deeper level of ability and usefulness in our lives.

Acting humble is a good starting point. It’s the opposite of acting in pride that can come off as arrogance to others.

Adding more humility keeps our healthy blood pressure, improves our relationships, and adds to our happy lives.

Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it’s thinking of yourself less. – C.S. Lewis

…And thinking of others more.

Each of us matter here and everyone else matter too. When we celebrate our wins quietly or with humble brags and brag on others too, we know we’re on the better track.

Humility attracts others while boastful pride pushes people away.

But, humility is often against our modern culture’s ways.

We’re not usually encouraged to be selfless, and all along were probably subtly taught to be selfish and to think of ourselves first…

But somehow we also learned to give credit to others.

In each different situation, we’re faced with new considerations like: should we keep our thoughts to ourselves to not offend anyone with what we say, or should we speak our mind?

There’s no definitive yes or no right answer.

…The right is in how we do express ourselves that matters most in our best outcomes.

We give our imperfect best, and there’s nothing better than best.

Others are different than us… and thank God for that.

How we react to others’ imperfection moments is on us.

We can be humble even if the act we feel upon us wasn’t good… even if initially or deep down we want to give some humble pie lessons.

Finding our humble way is easier if we consider others first, and then we’ll naturally be humble.

…We can’t please everyone and we shouldn’t try, but we can pause and consider other people’s feelings before we act.

Then we’ve done our best and taken the first responsible step.

We can always come back and apologize or give a humble explanation like not seeing another’s perspective but appreciating them.

If we’re humble, it shows up in our comebacks. And then we don’t have to be perfect or scared to say something we’re 80% sure we should say.

I remember when one of my former bosses said to me: if you don’t know what to say, just say thank you.

…and that left an indelible impression on me.

In those work getting-off-the-ground years, I had a habit of talking too much and that grew in my sales roles where I was supposed to talk if I wanted to have a sales career.

…New salespeople often talk more than they listen. It’s a rookie mistake and one I had.

Saying whatever was on my mind was a young habit I had to grow out of, so that I could be more focused and have a focused message.

Slowly, I learned to listen more (two ears, one mouth).

This helped my work performance and also my life personally as I stopped partaking in gossip culture that I grew up around.

Gossip wasn’t aligned with what and who I wanted to become.

And those positive changes helped me to grow more of a humble heart.

I needed to go through the lessons and my immature ways to get the old ways out of my system.

And that led me to slow down, pause in speaking, and learn how to be more humble.

When we pause to speaking or acting, we have a better chance to embrace our humble moments.

Maybe that’s you too.

…Or maybe you’re on the opposite extreme from where I was… where you’re the quiet person in the room absorbing everything everyone is saying… pausing maybe too often when taking a fearless step is what would help you.

Throwing out a humble brag once in a while could be the nudge you need to build up your confidence and healthy pride.

If so, hopefully this article is the awareness or reminder message for you to take action on.

Maybe… you can grow from some humble moments with yourself about what you need.

And for any of us in our humble journey, purposefully being a little vulnerable to step out in change is what we need.  

When we’re vulnerable, we’re more tentative that makes us humble acting as the first step.

So then finding our vulnerable ways, like opportunities to purposefully be an underdog in new territory can get us out of our comfort zone.

Challenges, changes, and newness feelings keep us interested and invested to keep going and sensitized to our surroundings.

Feeling vulnerable again, we’re naturally growing humility.

There we can find our small successes again that keep us growing and deeper learning how to be humble consistently at our core and attracting more of what and who we want in our lives.

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Fresh Peach Healthy Drink Ideas

Fresh peach healthy drink ideas are a great way to celebrate summer like the Peach Sunrise drink recipe below.

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And get special sunrise effects when you add water that brightens the day. Looks like a summer glow or sunrise effect. 🌅

A morning sunrise fresh peach juice drink.
A morning sunrise fresh peach juice drink.🌅

Peach juice drinks are great summertime-vibe drinks as peaches are traditionally summer fruits. They’re bright, juicy, and high in both Vitamin A and C antioxidants.

You can also make one other summertime fresh peach healthy drink: old-fashioned porch peach sun tea…  that’s a great way to celebrate a summer break! ☀️

But before that… I have a peach drink that’s surprisingly good: peach cold brew coffee. 🍑

…You may find that an odd sounding pairing, but give it a try and tell me if isn’t da-bomb! 

All you do is add 1 tablespoon peach juice (squeezed from fresh peaches) to 1/2 cup of coffee. This will let the sweet peach flavor punch through the bitter coffee and produce a mellow fine semi-sweet coffee.

You can also add milk of choice to smooth and enhance the flavor. And you can pair with a healthy gluten-free peach cobbler.

This is one of my natural flavored summertime sipping coffees. Another is watermelon coffee that I love also with easy to make organic cold brew.


Peach healthy coffee drink.

Then with coffee and/or peaches, you can add cinnamon too.

And speaking of cinnamon… c’mon, if you want to make your peachy drink taste like a peach pie without the fat calories, you can also do that. And drink your few calories with more fresh peach healthy drink ideas below.

Or you can pair your drink with an actual peach pie  or peach dessert 🥧 like an open faced galette.

peach galette to go with fresh peach juice.
A whole wheat peach galette is a whole way to get your peach-fill. 🍑

Either way, cinnamon is an Ayurvedic balancing spice for Vata that’s calming and sweet. That’s what I’m talkin’ about!

There are two common types of cinnamon in stores I see: Cassia and Ceylon.

For this drink, you’ll want to use the Cassia cinnamon that’s most cinnamon spice abundant on shelves.

 

 

 

 

The Vietnamese cinnamon is also Cassia.

I think Cassia types are the tastier cinnamon version that is great for baking.

Ceylon is the anti-inflammatory one good to add to daily drinks like tea or coffee.

Both or either work for special drinks like the ones here and Cassia cinnamon is added to make this taste like an old fashioned apple pie

The key note is don’t be shy with the cinnamon. Think dollop, not dust.

To get the peach juice (for your fresh peach healthy drink): it’s easy to make with a blender when peaches are ripe and super soft.

That usually takes time (or some days) from when you buy your peaches from the market that’s intentionally set at colder temps.

And that can be a good thing

For a later date future juice you want to make, you can ripen peaches in a time controlled environment.

How?

Two ways:

Either place your peaches in your fridge fruit (or crisper) drawer that’s lower humidity than other parts of the fridge, where fruit will ripen faster and stay fresh.

You can preserve your peaches there for weeks.

When you’re ready to make your fresh peach juice drink, it will already be ready to serve cold because the peaches are cold.

Quicker Peach Ripening Method:

…Or if you keep peaches out at room temperature in a fruit bowl, they’ll ripen even faster if you’re ready to make your drink.

At room temps, peaches are sensitive and can go from ripe-to-rot pretty quickly.

…Maybe that’s where the saying “bruise like a peach” comes from. 😊

And when you get past ripening, you can make your fresh peach healthy drink ideas.

You can also turn your juice into a refreshing sweet peach-ade with a little lemon juice or make a sweet tea.

Old Fashioned Summer Porch Tea from Fresh Peach Juice

You can take a large glass jar and brew old-fashioned summer tea that’s super easy to make. I’m pretty sure that comes from my adult southern roots living in the Carolinas. 😉

You would basically pour fresh water into a glass jar that has a lid. Then set the tea bags in the jar, using about 4 tea bags for a  6-cup or 3-pint jar.

A classic brisk tea like Lipton gives a super crisp or brisk tea taste.

The bags conveniently have strings, so you can easily tie the bag strings together and hang the labels over the top opening and then secure the lid.

Then set the jar outdoors on a patio that gets sun for at least part of the day. You don’t have to boil water.

And like magic 🪄, you have sun tea in about a day or two. You can leave outside longer for an even more raw, brisk tea taste.

When it’s done, refrigerate or add ice cubes and enjoy!

And finally, with peaches you can use also add fresh diced peaches  into your drink or daytime Sangria mocktail for some zhugh and sunny hues.

…How fun in the sun, right? 

And if you’re peach inspired and don’t want to stop there (or still have extra peaches you don’t know what to do with), you can make or pair with a peach profiterole dessert that could take the summer peach vibes to a whole ‘nother (baking) level! 🍑

I’d love to know your fave peachy ways that maybe turn your peachy days!

Print

Fresh Peach Juice Sunrise

Course beverage
Cuisine American
Author Brandy @ Healthy Happy Life Secrets

Equipment

  • blender

Ingredients

  • ½ cup diced peaches
  • ½ cup water
  • Cassia cinnamon spice to taste

Instructions

  • Blend softened ripe peaches leaving about 1/3" or 1 cm to top of glass. You can add a little water if you prefer less concentrated juice. For peach pie drink: blend in cinnamon spice to taste.
  • For the sunrise effect, add fresh cold water to fill up to the top of the glass. Bottoms up!
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Mind the Gap For Happiness Today

Mind the gap as a metaphor helps us in our lives.

It started out as a carved out message reminder in the London Underground waiting platform to pay attention to the gap getting on the train.

London "Look" message painted on the pavement are like "mind the gap" messages in the Underground.
A London Look painted message is helpful for some who stop to look. 🛑

And all around London you find painted “Look” signs 👀 and messages that can be helpful or at least interesting to look at.

For a brief moment then, we look down at our feet so we don’t misstep.

Most of us have seen these type of signs… or have had the experience of riding a bus, subway, or metro train where for a gap moment we were mindful seeing or not seeing a sign.

The mind the gap written sign is a metaphor for our unscripted happy lives…  putting mindful focus on what’s actually in front of us, and putting emphasis on the love and productive sides of our lives.

Mind the gap metaphors are opportunities for more awareness in our lives (and what they’re becoming).

…Because if we’re living in daily awareness knowing what we’re doing, observing what’s happening around us and how we react, then we’re less likely to slip into the gap in our conscious lives.

The gap could be fear, darkness, or what we don’t want.

In our unconscious sleeping lives or altered state of consciousness in meditation, we intentionally look for falling into the gap calm and silencing the mind moments, so we experience better health and stress calming benefits.

It’s our awake subconscious mind that often adds complication to our lives as we’re moving and taking action, but only partial conscious of what we’re thinking.

To bypass our awake subconscious from derailing our happy outcomes and thoughts, we can ask revealing questions to ourselves:

Are we inconsistent?

Is what we say different than what we actually do in certain areas (because rarely is it all the time)? Or are we projecting onto others when we’re the ones that are going through the projected experience?

Is there a misalignment in our life?

Do we feel disconnected in some way?

Do we lack purpose and meaning and a reason to wake up on time?

These are all opportunities to make internal life shifts that will change our outer habits and happiness to bring more on!

We can look around for signs to get more in tune with our mind, will, and emotion alignment that is our entire soul being.

We can also check in with our our external influenced-internal deeper desires coming from our spirit, Universe, and higher source greater than ourselves.

Our spirit in us never dies as our essence being.

And our thoughts come from higher sources other than our current, past, and future dream thoughts.

We get clues and hints from those around us on our planet and what’s happening to us in our daily lives.

But hints are usually subtle and missed… they’re in the daily miracles and we witness them if we better mind the gap.

I can’t tell you the number of times a day I have a random thought that pops up, and in awareness I notice the external noise in my life repeats the same message or exact words seconds later.

This could come from a television screen, audio on my device, or something I read.

Those aren’t coincidences without meaning.

I use those daily miracle opportunities to mind the gap for a moment to reconnect with my spiritual self and tune out culture.

That helps to connect us to our deeper, higher, and loving selves that block out the fear and unrest sides.

Zooming out, our loving lives are not happenstance and chaos. There’s a productive plan and order. And we’re not alone. Ever.

If we navigate toward our love, then we don’t have to go down dark side trails that lead to rabbit holes that then lead us back to light.

Observe thoughts…

There’s no better way to empower our happiness than changing our thoughts to the better ones we want. It’s also the quickest way to our happiness if we know how to exercise this higher power we possess.

We start by observing or witnessing our thoughts as though we’re an objective third-party to our thoughts.

We’re our own mentor and coach.

This is on top of all the other roles we carry out in our day. So we’re juggling life in the real world and the greater Universe.

And it pays in reward with growth, better life clarity, and alignment.

Then, we can separate ourselves from our negative thoughts holding us back… and non-serving beliefs we could’ve picked up while growing up or along our journey.

To serve us better, we may want to pause and look into those and do shadow work to better understand ourselves while the idea is fresh in mind and so we don’t have to back track.

Then, we can start to take the old beliefs that shaped us and transform them in our happy and evolving better lives when we mind the gap.

A gap question example to ask ourselves:

Do we dislike something in our daily life that we wish were different?

We have better control of our outcome when we mind the gap.

Real Life Example: Why is there a window in our bathroom that we have to clean and make sure that it’s covered so no one peeks in?

Instead we re-write the thought and think: thank you window for being there to give us natural light.

The more daily examples we can flip to the positive, the more we bring light and happiness into our life.

Are we living in joy?

Our subconscious minds, the side that agitates problems, get nourished by feeling bad or pity, so we can end up doing the unhealthy things.

But when we’re lifted up and feeling good, we do the healthy things. And we enjoy more too.

So it’s a double win to find more joy.

That comes about from shutting down bad thoughts in awareness. We’ve saved ourselves wasted time and energy.

Joy is internal and in our control and can be experienced in this moment.

If we find in our free time we’re thinking, I wish I had more time to enjoy… then we’ve missed it because we can focus on enjoying now.

Now is what we have to enjoy.

The glass half or almost full pulls us out of our own misery (that’s our choice).

Doing what it takes to get ourselves to enjoy and feel good again is a healthy priority and can be our goal so we look forward to the rest of our day where we get more than one.

Using our 5 body senses is a good, easy way that we like:

…Maybe we read a good book, watch a feel-good movie, listen to happy music, or do a healthy activity to get there. But we purposefully get there. 👉👈

Then we’re able to forget about time and unproductive thoughts in our happy distraction.

Maybe we do that in quiet moments or in yoga to re-center.

And maybe we go to bed early to start a new day that changes our mood. Or we enjoy a no-butter guiltless snack bite like this honey-glazed matcha lemon coconut cookie.

Honey glazed matcha cream lemon coconut cookie bites.

Those healthy moves turn the tide moment by moment to bounce us back to our productive, happy self.

Then our happy outlook follows and improves, and that helps us to grow our lives, healthy ambitions, and selves.

And we also look forward to creating new ways where we look up and out to make us feel good and accomplished.

New way examples include:

-learn a new skill

-contribute to a new group

-volunteer

-develop our better daily habits

-write out our good intentions for the week/year to come

-strive to become the best we can be or a better person

And in our growth, we can pause to check-in and see where we stand in our pride snapshot that can get in the way of our happy, productive lives at any time even if we’re well on our way.

It’s part of the subconscious mind and ego that never shuts down as long as we’re breathing.

Are we free of pride and selfishness?

We know by the relationships we have with others and ourselves whether it’s going well deep down in us.

We feel good or we get a pit in our stomach when a name or thought arises.

People serve as reflections to our lives. At any time we can mess up with them by not trying or being considerate and doing the best we can.

And more easily we can tell if we’ve created barriers over better communication that may be all we need to provide in better thought re-writes in us.

Pride can show up as many flavors… like this mixed bowl of homemade soft ice cream with avocado ice cream.

Bowl of homemade avocado ice cream with mango and chocolate.

Pride can show up in some situations, and not others. It’s gray to us unless we make it black and white.

But, when we’re observant of ourselves and our lives, we authentically know if we’ve crossed our lines.

We can also ask ourselves these revealing questions:

Do we always have to be right?

Do we feel superior in certain areas or do we gladly welcome in new ideas and continually willing to learn?

Do we feel we’re entitled to certain things?

Do we dishonor people’s time by showing up when or if we show up?

Do we assume what others think or would say before they’ve spoken? Do we jump to conclusions?

Those are all signs that we have layers of unhealthy pride running our show that are hurting us and our relationships.

One improvement way is if we approach our relationships as though we’re a team.

There’s no “I” in team and that helps with our pride checks.

When we do our part independently, and consider interdependence on the team, then we’re on a balanced, healthy track that builds more healthy pride.

We want to do more for ourselves and others.

If we’re willing to compromise, make adjustments, and re-route while letting go of the outcomes, those help us bypass problems and allow in our happy lives.

Letting go of what’s not working is a good mind the gap example.

We gain more clarity and our lives get easier. We don’t get in our own way.

Staying clear keeps us aligned to our best life in our choosing. 🎉

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