Living The Fullest Life

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Are you living the fullest life possible?

I know I’m not. But I want to.

When I am a much older gal, sitting on my front porch with my cats drinking my umpteenth glass of lemonade, I want to be able to reflect on all the twists and turns my life took. I want to be able to smile at all the times I fully stepped out of my comfort zone and experienced something remarkable. I want to remember all the times the wind whipped through my hair and felt the sun kiss my face. I want to reminisce on sunsets setting into the ocean, cobblestones beneath my wobbly feet, sidewalks beckoning me into their quaint coffee shops.

I don’t want predictability. I want extraordinary. Extra. Ordinary.

I want what the world has to offer. I want to walk beneath the Eiffel Tower. I want to ride the London Eye. I want to spend Christmas in a cabin in the mountains and truly wake up to a white Christmas. I want to help. I want to do. I want to truly live.

I want to someday be on my porch and smile a small smile to myself and know that my life was everything I thought it could be and more. I want to know that I focused on the promise of never-ending tomorrows and felt the grass beneath my bare feet and flowers graze my tender fingertips.

Someday I will be on my porch and I will know that I truly lived life.

Monday Meanderings: The 11 Pound Edition

Hey Everyone! Hope you guys had a great weekend 🙂 We are just steam-rolling through March, aren’t we? And to everyone who will have problems adjusting this week to the lost hour of sleep from last night, solidarity my friends. This week will be tough for all of us 😉

So, I’ve mentioned that I am making changes with my eating habits to feel better. I have also started exercising. Not as often as I would like, but something is always better than nothing right? Well suffice to say, I’ve lost weight! 🙂 Since the last time I weighed myself which was back in the middle of January, I have lost 11 pounds!!! Woo hoo! Heck yeah, baby! I totally am not someone who weighs themselves on a religious basis and I also do not think a scale tells the full story. I always judge my weight loss by how my clothes fit, and I noticed that they have become looser and I can finally fit into a pair of jeans I haven’t worn in over a year. *cue all the happiness emojis you can think of* I am still not at an ideal weight that I would personally like, but that’s okay.  I am just going to keep doing what I have been doing and take it day by day. Slow and steady wins the race, right? 🙂

Easter is this month and I need to figure out what we are doing. At least I got my daughter’s Easter basket taken care of, so that’s good. No last-minute runs to the store to get overpriced stuff!

Speaking of the kiddo, we’ve been playing Chutes and Ladders. One of those weird time warp things that happen when you become a parent and are playing board games with your kid that you yourself played as a child.

On the book front, I am currently reading W is For Wasted by the talented Sue Grafton. This book is the latest in the alphabet mystery series which I really enjoy reading. I am hooked so far!

Super glad that baseball season is back, even if it is only the spring training pre-season games 🙂 I plan on making it to an actual game this summer now that I am back in California. Go Angels!!!

What is going on in your world? I want to know!

Amaze Yourself

There are many sweet moments to parenting and some not-so-sweet moments. But one of the things I am in awe of about my daughter is her self-confidence. At five years-old, there is nothing she can’t do, or so she says to herself. “Mommy, I can help you with that”. “Mommy, I can do this”. “Mommy, I can do that”. She is confident she can do whatever she puts her mind to, because no one has ever told her different.

No one has ever told her different, not even herself.

Because that’s what happens as we get older, right? We are our own worst critic. We tell ourselves that we can’t do something, we tell ourselves that we are incapable of doing something, we tell ourselves that we’ll never be good enough. Why are we so negative to ourselves? Why do we treat ourselves so shabbily, in ways that we would never treat another human being?

Self-confidence is not overrated; it is a necessity.

If you don’t believe in yourself, who will? If you don’t believe you can do it, how can someone else believe you can? If you don’t believe you can be amazing, how can someone else know that amazing person lurking underneath?

If you knew how capable you are, you’d stop worrying and start amazing yourself. -Shannon Kaiser

You, yes you, are an amazing individual. You’ve got it going on and don’t even realize it.

Somehow after childhood ends, and we enter those awkward teenage years, our self-worth begins to take a hit. Maybe somebody made fun of you or you didn’t have the right clothes or you did not have good grades. And then adulthood beams its unrelenting gaze on you, and your self-confidence goes on its epic roller coaster of highs and lows.

However you got here, it is time to get off the worry/self-worth raucous ride, and realize that you are capable of anything that you put your mind to. You have the capacity to be all kinds of awesome. You have the capacity to amaze yourself.

Isn’t that exciting?

You can rewrite this next chapter of your life and start BEING AMAZING.

Lest you think that this girl typing furiously on her keyboard has it all together, know that I don’t. But I desperately want to amaze myself. I know that I am capable of so much more and I know that you are too 🙂

Spend Now Or Spend Later

Over the course of any given day, I read maybe 5 or 6 health related posts. And they run the gamut of all topics, whether it is relating to how your hormones being out of whack can affect you day-to-day, or how adding hemp seeds to your smoothie adds extra protein. Every day I read articles, not because I have too, but because I want to. Health and wellness are very important topics to me and I want to soak up as much information as possible.

One little nugget of information that I have heard over and over again is “Spend Now or Spend Later”. You are probably wondering how this relates to health. Well, it’s easy:

Spend the money now on good, healthy, unprocessed food, or spend the money later on doctor’s bills.

I realize the statement can be seen as simplistic but I like the simplicity of it. Everyone knows that whole foods are better for you than processed foods and yet… we’ve all been guilty of not eating as healthfully as we should. But here’s the thing: I want to live a long and healthy life and I can’t do that if I am eating bad foods. And honestly, I don’t feel good when I don’t eat what’s good for my body. I mean, have you ever gone through the drive-thru of a fast food restaurant, ate the food, and then thought “Yeah, that was a bad idea”. Yup, we all have 🙂 More times than I care to remember… #roadtrips

I have noticed that as I have gotten older, I want to eat more healthfully. I actually crave fruits and vegetables. I do not crave junk food. Sure, I am not immune to cookies or chips and salsa, but if I want cookies, I make them at home so I know what’s in it. If I am buying store-bought salsa, I double-check the ingredients on the label, so that I know exactly what it is I am buying. I am more mindful than ever, of what I am putting into my body, especially since I have had to go gluten-free. I spend a lot of time in the produce section, more than any middle aisles where the processed food is.

My grocery bill may hover at amounts that could be seen as shocking, but our family chooses to invest in its health. We are choosing to “spend now” on quality food and quality ingredients. We do not want to “spend later” on doctor bills and the like.

Health and all of its lovely gifts is not something that I take for granted.

How are you guys doing with your grocery bills? Do you purchase organic foods? Let me know in the comments! 🙂

Five Things

I like “getting to know you” posts from bloggers because it’s fun to find out some things you may not know about the person who authors the posts you read. So, here we go!

5 things you may not know about me:

1) I am really good at Jeopardy. See, I retain useless information and it rattles around in my brain and then Jeopardy comes on, and finally the useless info has an outlet! I may not be able to remember what I wore yesterday, but I can tell you what year The Way We Were with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford came out at the movie theater: 1973. Who carries that kind of random info in their head? This girl…

2) I have never been to another country. Although I definitely, definitely want to travel outside the US, it just has never been in the budget. But one day when I can afford it, my passport will get some serious wear and tear.

3) Bethenny Frankel did a signing years ago at a supermarket near me around the time when she first came out with her signature Skinnygirl Margaritas. She is on The Real Housewives of New York, if you aren’t familiar with who she is. My daughter and I got to take a picture with her. She is a cool chick. And her margaritas are the bomb 🙂

4) If I could go to Disneyland every day, I would. It’s not called “the happiest place on earth” for nothing!

5) I was seriously into Madonna when I was a kid which appropriately, was in the 1980’s. I may have received the plastic stretchy bracelets she always wore during the Material Girl phase, as a birthday present. And I may or may not have worn out my True Blue cassette tape. That may have happened…

5 things I know nothing about:

1) I don’t know how to change a tire.

2) I am not a technological person. Seriously, if someone starts talking about code or updating this or that, my brain turns to mush. *does not compute*

3) I know nothing about investing. See above comment about brain mush.

4) I know nothing about people’s fanatical interest in The Walking Dead. I don’t get it, but to each their own.

5) I do not know how to sew. There, I said it.

 

5 things that I believe:

1) Everything happens for a reason.

2) Not everyone is meant to stay in your life. Sometimes it is just for a season.

3) There are such things as soul mates.

4) A trip to the beach can cure a bad mood.

5) That I was right when I (nicely) told my high school science teacher that dissecting a frog, especially first thing in the morning, was not going to benefit me in any way shape or form, in my adult life. That knowledge of the inner workings of a frog is still information I have yet to use.

What is something that we may not know about you? Are there things in life that you don’t know that you wish you did? 🙂

Monday Meanderings: Last Week of February Edition

Happy Monday to everyone! Time for another edition of Monday Meanderings with yours truly.

Anyone else in denial that it is the last full week of February? Anyone else in denial that Downton Abbey is ending for good? *cue all the feelings* I love this show, like seriously love this show and have been enthralled since the very first season. I don’t want the saga of the Crawley family to end and I want to know when they will be back on my screen. Movie theatre or television screen, it doesn’t matter. I want to know what happens!

My family and I made our way to Huntington Beach recently for some lunch and general amusement.

My view from the restaurant where we ate lunch:

My view from the pier:

Huntington Beach is my favorite SoCal beach and I am definitely going to make it a priority to get out there more often 🙂

I know many of you have probably heard Adele’s “Hello” more times than you care to remember. But I still love the song and my daughter and I sing the song together every time it comes on the radio. You should hear us belt out “Hello from the other siiiiiiide. At least I can say that I triiiiiied” 🙂 As I said, I know the song came out months ago and I still love it, but the problem is now I cannot say the word “hello” properly on the phone. When my husband calls me on the phone and I answer and say “hello”, it is hard for me to not continue with “it’s me. I was wondering if after all these years you’d like to meet”. No really, it’s a problem. If I just say “hi” when I answer, than the song can’t immediately leap into my head, so that’s what I’ve been doing. Sigh… #adelefanproblems

Anybody else had it up to here with politics? I think at this point, November can’t come fast enough for this to all be over. Wait, depends on who gets the nomination. And now we’ve come full circle…

Glad that baseball season is around the corner (Go Angels!) But glad my hockey team is currently doing well in the standings (Go Ducks! )

Have a great week ♥

Choose Today

The past can be a nasty creature that holds on to you, squeezing you quite literally to death until you are grasping for a breath, any breath that will get air in your lungs and a grasp on reality. But why do we let the past grapple with us so? Why do we give the past life? Why do we give it so much power over us?

The past makes us replicate certain behaviors, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. Our mind says the past is a good barometer for what is going to happen, right? “Well, if XYZ happened in the past, it is probably going to happen again so put those walls up, put those defenses up, protect, run, hide!”

Some sort of conversation like that happens from time to time, right? But what if that conversation happens more often? What if it is a weekly or daily occurrence? What if you are caught in a cyclical cyclone of anxiety and you don’t want to be tethered to your past?

This feeling is something that I am familiar with, being tethered to my past. And I am working on untangling myself from the tentacles of yesteryear. And although it is going to be a long process, I carry with me the thought that every day is a new day. Every day is a day to start anew. We get a fresh slate when we wake up every morning.

A clean fresh slate.

I am working on not choosing yesterday.

I am working on choosing today.

Because today is what matters. The here and now. Being present and mindful is harder, it is harder than one would think. But it something that I am striving for. To be healthy and well is important to me and I don’t want to retreat into the hollowness of yesterday, of the past that wants to welcome me back into its bosom and suffocate me.

No, it is not going to happen again. Not this time. What happened is not me. What happened does not define me. What happened is the past.

And I am choosing today over what happened.

And so should we all.

The Smallest Step

You know me and quotes. Or if you don’t know me and this is your first time here, I love quotes. Words speak to me and when I read a quote that resonates, I have to share it. Like this one:

Sometimes the smallest step in the right direction ends up being the biggest step of your life.

To whomever wrote these prophetic words, bless you!

How true is this one sentence? How many times have you been stuck at a crossroads not knowing which direction to take? When you finally make a decision you take a very small step onto that road that you need to take. But didn’t that one small step just completely change your life?

Everyone has ebbs and flows in their life; after all we are only human. And some people are able to bounce back accordingly.

But for those of us for whom the struggle is a bit more difficult, just even taking the first small step is a huge accomplishment.

That first step. That first small step.

If you are looking to make changes in your life but feel overwhelmed by all of your proverbial steps, know that it is okay. You don’t have to take all the steps all at once. Just take a small step. And then another. And when you are ready…simply take another step.

That is what I am doing. Taking one small step at a time. One small step in the right direction.

We can do this together 🙂

Quinoa Tabbouleh

Part of my recovery and also a 2016 goal, is to get healthy head to toe, inside and out. And although I’ve made the fun chocolaty recipes from Deliciously Ella and boy were they delicious, it was time to step out of the cacao box and make some fun and healthy veggie fun stuff! Ella’s book is chock full of healthy plant-based meals so if you have not purchased her book, you definitely should 🙂

This recipe is so good, that I seriously can’t believe how healthy it is! And it has cilantro which I absolutely lurrrrrrve… Nom, nom. Go ahead and make this recipe and tell me you don’t seriously fall in love with it 🙂

Ingredients:

• 2 ¹⁄³ cups quinoa
• 7 ounces fresh cilantro
• 8 tomatoes
• ¾ cup pine nuts (3½ ounces) **
• 2 tablespoons tahini
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• juice of 2 lemons
• salt and pepper

Directions:

• Place the quinoa in a sieve and rinse with cold water until the water that comes through is totally clear.
• Place the quinoa in a saucepan with 4 cups boiling water. Let the quinoa boil for a minute or so; then let it simmer for another 10-15 minutes covered, until all the water has been absorbed and the quinoa is fluffy.
• While the quinoa cooks, finely chop the cilantro. Then chop the tomatoes into small salsa-like squares.
• Toast the pine nuts in a dry frying pan; this should take just a couple of minutes.
• Once the quinoa has finished cooking, allow it to cool.
• Mix in the cilantro, chopped tomato, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice and toasted pine nuts before sprinkling it all with salt and pepper.

The dish is meant to be served cold and let me tell you, this dish tasted even better the next day! ♥

**Regarding the pine nuts… I made this recipe exactly as Ella listed it in her book with the roasted pine nuts, but I have to tell you, I prefer the dish without them. Roasted pine nuts have a strong flavor for me, so if you don’t think you are on the pine nut bandwagon either, don’t worry, the dish tastes just fine without them 🙂

Moving Forward

Hi Guys…

I know it has been awhile since you have heard my voice here on The Random Path and I apologize for that. I hadn’t meant to take such an extended break from the blog, in fact I hadn’t planned to take any sort of break at all from the blog. I like my blog to have positive vibes so I am not going to go into too long of a detail, but as I have mentioned in past posts, I suffer from depression. January just was not a healthy month for me but I am making my way back and that is definitely a good thing.

So let’s move forward, shall we?

So back in December, I had worked on a post I was going to share about my goals for 2016. It was over a thousand words and I had really put my all into the goals I had mapped out and how I was going to accomplish them. But than January happened…

And I realized that not one of these goals that I had written down seemed as meaningful as I first thought. In fact, one of them I knew right away would never get accomplished by the end of the calendar year. So I said screw it, and deleted my thousand word post.

I had an epiphany.

I didn’t want to have several goals just for the sake of having goals and feeling like I needed to have something on paper showing I was accomplishing something just for the sake of accomplishing something.

I wanted something BIGGER than that.

I realized that all I really want to do is move forward.

Move forward with my life, move forward with my health, and ultimately move forward with my blog.

The past is an evil entity that latches on to you, deteriorating your well-being, trying to break you, memory by little memory.

And I am truly fed up with it. I am fed up with the past and I just want to break free from it. I want to live in positivity and just live my life the best way I can. I know that life is not all unicorns and rainbows; believe me, I know that better than most. But I am tired of the past lurking in my shadows and I am tired of being sick and tired.

Enough is enough.

I also want to move forward with getting my body healthy. Start eating more good stuff and less bad stuff, and meditating and exercising. Stop making excuses and just do the damn thing already.

Blogging is important to me and I want to do more with my blog. I want to stop talking about someday doing something about it and just move forward on it and DO IT.

Move forward.

I am breaking free from the past and moving forward.

Who’s with me? 🙂