Isn’t love grand and amazing! It makes us feel warm inside and as if we matter in this world. But when we are lacking love we feel out of sorts, lonely, sad, and even bitter. Today I am going to talk about ways you can create more love in your life, so those moments of warmth and amazingness are a daily occurrence. BUT, there is a catch. I’m not talking about just any type of love here. Hmm. Did you think I meant romantic love? Were you hoping I was going to share ways to get more love out of your current relationship or how to get more love from a future relationship? You are right…sort of. I AM talking about getting more love out of a relationship….specifically, the relationship you have from yourself.

Yes, loving your self is sooooooo important and no, loving yourself does not mean you are selfish or have an inflated ego. It means that you value yourself. It means you only allow stellar people into your life. It means you createboundaries. It means you go after the things that matter to you and don’t put them on the back burner for someone else. I could go on and on. If your life is straight crazy and one shitty event after the other is occurring you gotta look inside. How are your treating yourself? As women, it can be even more difficult to love ourselves. We have been conditioned in so many ways to think we have to be self-sacrificing and put others ahead of our own needs. I have been there and I am still working on this myself. I have come very far from the extreme people pleaser I used to be, but changing patterns takes time!

If this is sounding all too familiar I got you covered! Below are 5 really easy ways to bring more self-love into your world. Once you start demanding love for yourself those negative people and situations will start to fall away. We will always have to deal with difficult life situations to some extent, but you will have a better support system, you will have a better outlook, and you will have better resources to help handle anything that comes your way…just because you love and care about yourself. Oh and let me not forget to mention that if you love yourself then you will ATTRACT a more suitable and fulfilling relationship into your life. You will stop going for those “bad boys.” Already in a relationship? When you focus on taking care of you and not on what the other person is lacking your relationship will naturally improve or you will realize that it is not the relationship for you after all.

Use these tips below how you see fit. Some you will love….some not so much. I challenge you to use each of these five tips over the next 14 days and then at the end reflect on how your life has changed and decide to keep them all or keep the ones you like the most.

Five ways to develop a deeper & more loving relationship with yourself:

1. Begin using a Daily Mantra. This is my personal favorite! Use any word or phrase you want. One I use often: I am not the struggle. I state this in the morning when I wake up before my day even begins, because it shifts my brain out of a negative energy. Through all of my inner work I came to realize that my brain feeds off of being someone that struggles and overcomes it. This is NOT who I want to be anymore, which is how that mantra came to be. Maybe struggle isn’t your thing. Your mantra can be anything that fits where you are now. Here are a few more: Today I will hustle. I will listen to my intuition. Negative energy and people will be repelled from my life. Pick anything that fits and then repeat upon rising and throughout the day as a reminder. It is easy to get off course when we are forming a new pattern.
   
2. Be careful who you hang with. Remember the phrase: Misery loves company? If you are spending all your time surrounded by people filled with drama and negativity you are going to fall into those same thought patterns. Remove yourself from that situation by limiting the amount of time you spend with them. Seek out new people already where you want to be. Look for and become friends with people that stay mostly positive (I say mostly, because we all have our hard days). Not sure how to do this? See tip number 5!
   
3. Exercise in a way you enjoy. Exercising may suck to you (it definitely does for me), but it is still really good for you. Not only is it helpful for your body, but it is also awesome for your mental state. That being said, don’t run just to get exercise if you hate running. Seek out the sort of exercise you enjoy….dancing, bike riding, walking. It doesn’t have to be intense, and it doesn’t have to be long. 5-10 minutes of being active will have an uplifting benefit. Any sort of exercising is going to help you and release those happy feel good endorphins. I enjoy exercising in the morning after waking up the most. It really sets my day off right. I’m in a good mood and I make better food choices throughout the day. My favorite exercise option in the morning is anything by Casey from blogilates.com. She’s amazing!
   
4. Spend time….alone. By yourself. All. Alone. Being alone is the best way to sort through your feelings, clear your mind, and get refreshed. It is the best way to figure out what aspects of your life you want to change and how to go about changing it. When we spend all our time with other people, it never forces us to deal with ourselves. Take a day and just be by yourself without any distractions. Over time you will find this quiet is refreshing and not as terrible as it may seem to you now.
   
5. Go after a long forgotten goal or seek out a new hobby. We all are passionate about something. As we get older and have to work that 9-5, pay bills, and take care of families, it is easy to forget about that passion. What is a goal or dream of yours that still lingers in the back of your mind?   I challenge you to break it out again. Seeking out new opportunities and working on long forgotten goals are an easy way to bring more positive people into your life. If you enjoy traveling and start to do that again you will meet awesome people in your adventures. Whitney loves Crossfit and takes part in those classes several times per week. Through Crossfit, she has met many wonderful like-minded people! Whitney enjoys spending her time with them even outside of the gym. Whatever it is that you love and enjoy, bring it back out and seek out opportunities to meet people with those same interests and passions as you. Sound scary? Walking into a new situation where you do not know anyone is only scary the first time, because you don’t know what to expect. Be brave. Be bold. You won’t regret it!
   

Now it is your turn, Comment below or on Whitney’s FB page when you try these out. We want to hear from you!! If you heart these tips and want to hear more, head on over to my Facebook page and click on the Like button!

XO, Christina

I hope you have an amazing Wednesday (it is hump day, ya know!)! And enjoy your 4th of July holiday weekend! I’m heading to Charleston, SC to visit family and the beautiful city I call home!

With love and wellness (and always in need of more self-love!!),

Whitney

So I moved today…again….for the third time in less than a year.  Yes, you read that right.  In that year, I’ve determined that I absolutely hate moving. But I guess you could say I’ve become somewhat of an expert on this whole packing and moving thing.  Maybe I should buy stock in the moving company!  I mean, it’s pretty bad when you call them to schedule your move and the lady says, “Oh, we just moved you last year!”  Yup – they’re getting to know me well!

So last May, I bought a house in Virginia Beach and moved into it.  I told everyone that I wasn’t moving again anytime in the near future (I’d moved from Fairfax to Suffolk in 2012, from Suffolk to Virginia Beach in 2013, and bought my house in Virginia Beach in 2014).  Needless to say, I was sick and tired of moving!  I was ready to be settled into one place for awhile!

But famous last words, right?!  Because fast forward to December 2014 and I was moving in with my boyfriend and his kids!  Here we were, thinking we’d found “forever” and that we were starting our forever together!

Fast forward AGAIN to March 2015 and we are broken up.  We grew apart in a very short period of time and some things that neither of us could get past came between us.  The week following our break-up was hard…it was so awkward and weird.  I knew I couldn’t stay there until I could move back into my house (I rented it out through the end of December 2015).  But I also knew that finding a short-term lease through the end of December wouldn’t be fun…plus, that whole packing and moving thing twice in 9 months didn’t make me very happy.

But I caught a lucky break…one of my friends from the gym had just deployed and was going to be gone through roughly the end of the year.  She had left her house empty, but had been interested in having someone stay there.  We worked out a great deal from afar (she was on a ship somewhere out there!!), and needless to say, I moved again today…for the third time in a year, LOL.

I’m still in awe that I’ve already moved again.  And I’m not looking forward to doing it again in December/January, but the good part is that my furniture and other belongings are in storage, so I only had to pack and will only have to unpack once.  So at least there’s that, right?!  I look for the small victories :P

Anyways – I’m happy to report that moving day went well.  My stuff is in storage, safe and sound, and I can begin the process of moving on and healing.  I know we both played a huge part in our relationship ending, so now it’s time for me to learn from this and become a better person for the next lucky man who gets to call me his girlfriend :P  For now, I know I need to focus on myself and readjust to single life (living on my own again is so STRANGE!!!  I’m used to being surrounded by noise and people and a big, furry dog!!!).

I hope you all have an AMAZING weekend!

With love and wellness,
Whitney

Have you ever had one of those weeks where you cram so much in that your head seems to spin because you’re running from one thing to the next? Yeah, that was me during the last week of February (but in a good way), and really into the first week of March. And now, here we are, mid-March and I’m finally getting back to writing my blog. I kept telling myself to sit down and write, but something else always gets in the way. I know you know what I’m talking about!

And the thing is, my schedule hasn’t gotten any less busy. If anything, I continue to schedule things back to back and over-extend myself. I have gotten a *little* better about it recently, but that is definitely something I need to work on, because all it does is run me ragged and then I’m no good to anybody, including myself.

But that’s life, right? We go and go and go until we physically or mentally can’t go anymore. I wake up one morning and just think, “Nope. I can’t today.” And go right back to sleep. Those mornings are the worst. My whole body hurts, my head is pounding, and I can’t think straight. And it’s not because I’m sick or coming down with anything. It’s literally because I have used up every last reserve of energy and my body is telling me to SLOW DOWN!!! I spend those days in PJs, in bed, sleeping and relaxing. And I’m better by the next day.

But wouldn’t it be nice if I listened to my body before then? You know, actually do that whole self-care thing that everybody’s always talking about. And I’ll be good about it for a while, whether it’s taking a hot bath, reading a pleasure book (instead of for school), or meditating, but then I go right back to my busy schedule of going, going, going until I fall in bed for the night.

So my goal for this spring is to set aside 30 minutes every evening for myself..not for my business or for school or for anything but me. I don’t know if I’m going to meditate or stretch or foam roll out my muscles, but it’s going to be a set 30 minutes of something just for me. I challenge you to do the same if you’re like me, rushing from one event to the next (especially for you moms with kids’ sports and parties and school functions, etc).

I especially need this now that my life has and will be drastically changing in the next few weeks. I recently went through a break-up, one that I wasn’t expecting. It also means a move is in the works since we lived together. I’ll admit, when it first ended, I was shocked and angry and hurt (aren’t we all?!). But I took a couple days to think about it and I realized, just like with every relationship, it takes two people to get to where we were. I also realized that the break-up was one of the best things that could’ve happened for both of us.

I’m still healing from this and plan on doing some soul-searching for a while, but I know that good things are in store for me. I could sit back and be angry and depressed and negative about the whole situation, but the truth is that I learned a lot about myself in this relationship. I also learned a lot in general, and know that I will take those lessons with me into future relationships and situations. I know I’ll have my sad moments, but I want to keep my head up and be positive about it, because that’swhat’s going to get me through this.

What are some good tips that you’ve found have helped you get through a break-up? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!

With love and wellness,
Whitney