Positive Girlfriends

This post is mostly for girls--but it's a good read for guys too, to understand and gain perspective on the opposite sex.

This weekend, I've been inspired by four of my girlfriends, all for different reasons and all because of different opportunities. And now I am inspired to share with you why girlfriends, for us chicas, are so important.

Five years ago, I would never have written this. Maybe not even three years ago, and most definitely not ten years ago.

Girls--we need girlfriends.

We need ladies who will uplift us, understand us, spread joy with us, experience pain with us, and who are real with us.

As ladies, we are emotional creatures. I think by nature we crave and desire closeness with other women, but we deny it, because we've had bad experiences (at least this is true for me).

I do want to talk about why us girls need other girls in our lives who are positive, uplifting influences. We need friends who will listen to us when we meet the guy of our dreams, or when he breaks our hearts, or when we succeed, when we fail, when we put our foot in our mouths, or when we get a promotion, a raise, lose those last 5 pounds, whatever!

Whatever time frame ago, I would have told you that:
"I get along better with guys"
"Men are less dramatic"
"Guys say what they mean and there's no backstabbing"
Etc, etc, ladies do you relate? Have you ever questioned why you need to have girlfriends?

I'm was once with you. But...we do. We need good girls in our lives. Not the backstabbing ones (and yes, they are out there), not the ones who create drama every single day (and there are those). But we need girls in our lives that will accept us, ask us good questions, listen to our answers, correct us when needed, and praise us even more when we do something right.

 Ladies, we are meant to live abundant lives. We are meant to have significance. We are meant to do great things.

Yes, you.

Sometimes we need mentorship/coaching/a helpful eye to help us move forward. Sometimes we need to be the one who lends those gifts to another. We need each other.

I just got off the phone with my best friend from college. I live in MD, she lives in PA. We see each other about once a year (and it takes effort). We have what we jokingly call a voicemail relationship. We leave each other voicemails at least every other week and it's rare that we actually catch each other on the phone. Today we did! She said she was going to call at random times, until we got on the phone. It worked! We talked for 18-minutes, catching up on life. Nothing dramatic, nothing outlandish, just life. I was uplifted just by talking with my friend who knows more about me than most, and still loves me (and vice versa).

Yesterday, I met two wonderful friends for lunch. We sat, talked, and ate for over two-and-a-half hours....it was wonderful. We talked about every part of life you could think of: dreams, goals, family, kids, the future, the present. They both asked me questions, and didn't judge the answers (and vice versa). We talked, and we accepted each other. I was struck at the end of our time together how precious this is. We all three comes from different backgrounds and have different life experiences, but we loved on each other and want the best for each other.  All of us need friends like this.

On Friday and Saturday, I got to spend time with my mentor and one of my best friends. On Friday night, we were waiting on some other people to show up at the house for a movie and so we decided to dye our hair (put 2 spontaneous chicks together and that's what happens!)

We had fun just living free and both dying our hair "raspberry creme." Our results turned out totally different (she's blond and I'm dark brunette). Let's just say one of us is burgundy and the other is bright bright red :-) We had so much fun just playing and watching each others hair get redder and redder as the night went on (and into the next day!) We laughed a lot.

The next day we had the privledge to get behind some closed doors to hear teaching from a life coach and entrepreneurial powerhouse, who has positively impacted us both, related to the business & life we both pursue (we are in the business of making people's lives better through opportunity).

My girlfriend has been married over 20 years and has 4 amazing kids. I'm single with no kids. Yet, we are kindred spirits. We have different circumstances, but our hearts and passions for people and the impact we can make are similar.

We both were impacted and experienced a level of peace that was specific to our circumstances and goals. My brothers were there too, and they were peacefully & positively impacted.

But, I was able to have an understanding with my coach and closest friend, because we understand each others heartbeat. Because we were there together, experiencing the same thing (with a different perspective) our relationship grows. Everytime. Sometimes you don't have to even speak about it. You can look at your closest friends and see their heart. It's beautiful; and women, trust me, we all need to experience it.

Friday we played and had fun. Saturday we seeked out information; found it and,  we experienced it together. Ladies, there's no greater journey than to lock arms with other women who believe in what you do, who seek the peace, understanding and knowledge that you do, and who want to move forward with you, through life--whether in joy or in pain.

Bottom line--girls--seek out other women who have similar goals to you--or who love you no matter how many successes you have or mistakes you make.  Find the real ones. Find other women who have a passion for making others lives better.

Girls, truly, we need each other.

In health & prosperity,
Monica

Clean Your Apartment & Workout Too Part 1

This post was supposed to simply be a workout that you can do at home, while you clean your place. Harmless, right? As I started writing, my heart opened up to another issue and that is really sticking with something, even if day by day the results seem small. I've seen so many examples of this with people I know recently, and apparently my heart needed to release it. Part 2, is an actual workout you can put into practice to make cleaning your house/apartment/whatever, fun and workout beneficial!

Often, I hear the excuse, "I don't have time to exercise." I myself often find myself thinking, "I don't have time, energy, etc to clean my space."

The truth is, we all have time. Maybe we don't all have 90-minutes a day, but we all can find 10-20-30 minutes a day to exercise and on somedays longer, if needed to hit your goals.

We can find the time.

But, you have to want it. You see I want to keep my car, purse, apartment, kitchen, bathroom, closet (need I go on?) clean, but the truth is, if I don't set this as a priority or treat it with importance, it happens infrequently. Yesterday, I dumped out my purse on my bedroom floor (in the middle--because ideally this means I'll pick it up faster). For me, this is how I force myself to clean, create an even bigger mess that has to be taken care of. Today I pulled out all the change and put it in a cute box and stacked up the dozens of receipts that had given my purse the resemblance of a trash bag....change needed!

So the above is a funny example, but how often do we treat our bodies and health this way?

"I'll start tomorrow." (no--tomorrow doesn't exist now--today is it)

"I ate a banana today (and kept all my other crappy eating habits). I was healthy today!" (be sure not to kid yourself)

Is your health/weight/food choices/workout decisions/stress management techniques/etc/etc/whatever you need to make yourself better, a priority? Or is it something you only handle when it becomes so severe, like the receipts flying out of my purse, that you only take action at crisis?

No matter what it is: moving your body more, stopping your ice cream binge, halting an addiction, speaking up for yourself more, believing in yourself, training for that half marathon you've always wanted to run, taking that dance class you've been terrified to sign up for....

Whatever it is for you, you CAN do it. You CAN step up and say, I'm all in to hit my goal.

You may need support.

I believe as humans we are designed to be in community and help each other.

Let someone step into your life and encourage you, challenge you and uplift you.

Do you need to dump so trash (old receipts) on your bedroom floor and day by day pick up the pieces? The trash represents past failures, negative people, your situation if you are unhappy with it.

Dump it all out and start fresh today, even if the changes seem insignificant right now. In my opinion, any change that you make for the better, is significant. I don't care how small it is (or how small you think it is). If you are trying to save up money and you put away $5 a day for 30 days, does it look significant? Not really. But if you weren't doing that last month and you continued to do this for 90 days, you'd have $450 (the cost of an iPad mini and some accessories!)

What if you did the same for your health? Just using exercise as an example, let's say you ran for 15-minutes a day (literally just a random example kind of/sort of equivalent to putting away $5 a day!). Let's say in 15-minutes, you expend 125 calories. In 90-days, you would have run 10,800 calories or 3 pounds. Maybe that's not a huge deal and maybe your goal is bigger. But look back 90 days, did you hit your goal of losing weight?

This example can be applied to any goal you have. Let's say you want to be able to do a pullup. If you start from zero and practice several times per week, over time you'll get to your goal--but it may take time.

Stick it out and know that the other side is positive and empowering!

By the way, this is soo not what I was about to post about, but it was on my heart. Part 2 is a workout that you can do, at home, while cleaning up your space!

In health & prosperity,

Monica