My husband and I just got back from some time away in Thailand and Bali, and I came back with 5 important takeaways to share:
1. Good rest is important. Before I left for vacation, I was working 6-day work weeks. I know some of you will be able to relate, whether you work full-time with a side hustle, run your own business, go to school and work, or are at the office during the day and running a household at night. It’s sustainable for a little while, but long-term it’ll seriously deplete your physical, mental and emotional health.
While away, I got to really tune back in to my body and follow its natural flow instead of pushing the boundaries. And now that I’m back? I’m committing to a 5-day week, because even though I’m doing what I love, it doesn’t mean I should be doing it all the time.
If you’re overworked and running on fumes, I encourage you to take a close look at your schedule and find time to carve out for real rest. It may mean becoming more efficient at completing the tasks you have, delegating, or dropping some tasks that aren’t actually essential.
2. Only YOU can capture your experiences in the moment. When I was last in Bali, selfies weren’t a thing. This time, I observed people visiting beautiful sites who were more concerned with striking the right pose than enjoying the moment and taking it all in. Here’s the thing: You live in the present and when you’re fully connected with your surroundings, your experiences will create a more vivid memory than any photo could ever capture. So there are no flawless action shots from my time away. No glamourous gazing off into rice paddies, because I was busy taking it all in in real-time, experiencing the beauty, heat and humidity: sweat, sunscreen and all!
3. Nature is magical. Being in the moment allowed me to slow down, really connect with the earth and find awe in my surroundings. Whether it was spending a day with elephants, or falling asleep to frogs and cicadas and waking to roosters, watching waves crash in slow motion along the shore near Uluwatu temple: being in nature allows your mind to zoom out and see the bigger picture. The Japanese have a ritual called forest bathing, where they spend time in forests to reset. So thinking about your everyday surroundings, is there a park or garden nearby that you can go to slow yourself down?
4. Gratitude daily for my health. No matter how long it’s been since my IBS/GERD days, I still feel gratitude for my digestive health and especially when traveling, being able to try new and different foods without giving ingredients a second thought! I ate so many new dishes and tried SO many new tropical fruits, and only one caused any issues at all (FYI IBS-Cers, avoid snakefruit like the plague!).
5. Synchronicities happen. Throughout our vacation some crazy interesting things showed up for us: things that appeared as we spoke about them. In one beautiful villa where we were staying, I made an offhand comment that the only thing that would make it more perfect would be to have fruit trees in the yard. The very next day when we arrived at our new home away from home, what did I see but a tiny pineapple tree in the outdoor space! And later, we were looking for the perfect souvenir for someone who’s helping my husband build a cat sofa: not a minute after we started to look did a wooden trinket of two cats sitting on a couch appear before our eyes!
If you’ve ever held the notion of divine timing, right place right time, that things happen for a reason, and that the universe is listening, you might relate to those little experiences we had.
And, if you’ve just been thinking to yourself that you’re at the end of your rope and you’re sick and tired of your IBS and you’re ready to get rid of it NOW… here’s that moment of synchronicity for you:
I’m about to launch something that will completely change your IBS journey just in time for the holidays!
But here’s the best part: if you join the waitlist, you’ll have access to special pricing with some MAJOR bonuses that will NEVER be offered again. So get on the waitlist to claim special pricing and bonuses!
The waitlist won’t stay open long and I’ll be launching very soon so we can get you on track to healing right away. And don’t worry, you aren’t committing to anything other than the waitlist discount and bonus reveal: I’ll be sharing the launch with everyone everywhere soon, but only the waitlisters will have access to the full discount and all the best bonuses. So take that action and get on the list and you’ll hear more very soon!