Do You Feel Like This In The Morning?

Hi guys,

Yesterday I decided to get reconnected to my roots and I listened to this class from The Institute for Integrative Nutrition (IIN). I listened to all of the classes in there yesterday, so now I can’t remember specifically which one it was, but either way — IIN’s founder, Joshua Rosenthal, asked something that stuck with me:

 

“When you wake up in the morning, do you feel like who you are in your heart & soul matches who you are in your day to day life?”

 

This question hit me like crazy because I’ve been thinking about this topic a LOT recently – much more than usual.

I’ve been doing a lot of exploration inside myself recently (what else is new?) about whether I’m living my day to day life in a way that matches with what I know to be true on the inside. 

And the truth is, some days, only a portion of who I am on the inside is reflected in my daily life.

Some days, everything feels aligned – from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep. Usually those days, I’m buzzing with energy, radiating, feeling good, and creating.

What happens when my internal values and inner light force aren’t expressed? Or when I make choices that I know aren’t aligned with who I really want to show up as in the world? Well, that feels painful. 

Can you relate?

What I remind myself on the regular, is that it’s all an experiment, and I can hug myself knowing that my values are SO MUCH MORE ALIGNED today with my outer actions than they were 7 years go. And compared to 10 years ago? Well, no contest. I don’t even recognize who I was then. So there’s progress, always progress.

Back in 2010, before I enrolled at IIN and was working at a full-time job in advertising, I remember starting to feel that way, and it was really intense. To be more specific, I felt like my inner values were NOT being expressed through my outer life, particularly my career – the career that I spent 8 hours per day, every day, putting my energy into.

This began to feel sickening to me. At the same time that I was going through a holistic nutrition program, I was also working on advertising campaigns for pharmaceutical drugs (which, by the way, I’m not “against,” but I think they’re WAY WAY WAY overused), and processed, packaged, artificially flavored snack foods.

I remember, at the time, going to an IIN lecture about Food Politics, taught by Marion Nestle. She was putting up PowerPoint slides about how artificially colored cereals were making children sick, and how much money the cereal companies were making off of marketing these cereals.

Some of the cereals shown on the slides were my biggest clients at my advertising job. I was making money from them. I was making money, specifically, from making sure the cereal advertisements got to the eyes of as many parents as possible who were buying cereal for their kids.

And then the kids were getting sick.

I cried, silently, through the rest of the lecture. I couldn’t go on like that anymore. I felt like every time I stepped into my cubicle, I had to turn off who I really was in order to make money. And it began to feel disgusting to me.

I had to go, and I did.

It was one of my absolute biggest triumphs in honoring myself and my values.

Do you have a story like that? I love to hear them…please share in the comments! 

Years later, I come across situations all the time where I have to check in with my values, and see if my actions are matching what I know to be true for myself. After all, OUR ACTIONS reflect our priorities. 

Reflecting your own values through your actions can be as simple as exercising or eating a healthy meal or reacting to someone with kindness, or as huge as changing careers or moving to a new city.

So….

“When you wake up in the morning, do you feel like who you are in your heart & soul matches who you are in your day to day life?”

This is something I am noticing, experimenting with, and recalibrating daily.

I’d love to know-

When you read that question, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Is there an area of your life where you know your heart and soul doesn’t match your actions? 

Share. :)

By the way, I just created a new Wellness Career & Health Coaching FAQ guide that I’m pretty excited about. I created it based on the questions I get most frequently over email, so I can easily send people all the answers they’re looking for in one place. But if there’s something I left out, please email me at jenny@healthycrush.com and let me know.