What I Wore // 8 Ways To Be Happier Right Now - Natural hairstyle for mens and womens

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wearing: 

hat  ||  coat  ||  shirt  ||  jeans  ||  booties (out of stock, but I found similar loves here, here, and here)

        Tonight I felt like I needed to write a bit about being happy and positive, even when life is extremely difficult. One recurring theme in questions from you guys is how I'm so positive all of the time and how can I help you to be. Before I get started with a few tips, I want to stress as strongly as I can is that I am not positive all of the time. I have always prided myself on my ability to spin any negative situation into something I can learn from or use to better myself, but I am currently (and have been for some time now) fighting against severe anxiety, panic, depression, and other strong mental blocks that make constant happiness impossible. I don't believe that positivity is something that comes naturally to anyone, especially not in the world we live in today with social media constantly telling us that we're not good enough. I believe that the default attitude for all of us, in general, is to constantly see the things in ourselves and around us that need fixing or changing, to see the broken things, the struggles, the pain, and the setbacks. Seeing the bright-side is something that you have to work at constantly.

     So, here are a few ways to be happier right now:

       #1: Spend as little time as possible in the past. Don't dwell on situations that happened years or months or even weeks ago unless it is positively beneficial in some way. It's easy sometimes to look back on our mistakes and forget all of our victories, and the past can easily put us in a big funk. Someone once said something along the lines of ‘No amount of time spent dwelling on the past can change the past, and no amount of anxiety for the future will change the future’, or something like that.haha It’s true though. Put your efforts into TODAY.

       #2: Nurture your relations with those friends and family who truly support you. Those people who give encouragement and love (and accept it from you), and who leave you feeling better about yourself and your potential and about the world around you. They are your tribe, and there's no reason to waste time or valuable energy on people who hurt you or make you feel crappy, or who have ever selfishly and purposely brought you to a dark place. Life is too short to spend your efforts trying to ‘help’ negative people be more positive. That’s not on you. Move forward.

       #3: Along with #2, getting rid of all unnecessary negativity will instantly increase your happiness and peace of mind. If you have control over it, lose it. Unfollow pages and people who complain constantly or pull others down. Anyone who is focused on the negativity around them or go out of their way to find it in the world will never uplift or inspire you to be happy. Spending your precious time around them will only bring negativity to your life. Even if it's not directed at you it can have a huge effect on your mood, and consistently being exposed to that can have lasting effects.

       #4: If you feel the urge to have a good cry, find a quiet spot and make it happen. It'll work wonders. Pushing emotions away will not make them disappear, it’s only putting off the inevitable. I know from experience that letting yourself sit with your emotions and try to learn from them is healthy and necessary. Yes it’s hard and vulnerable and scary, and yes it can hurt like hell, but I promise it’s for the best.

       #5: The person who is probably putting the most pressure on you is yourself. We are our own worst critics, and you’re always doing at least a little better than you think you are. So take a deep breath and give yourself some credit for being where you are, accomplishing what you have, and think about how far you've already come.

       #6: Don't let social media and the internet get in your head too much, it's a beautiful world full of filters and clean corners, and there's no possible way that anyone can share their entire life online, so if they have to pick and choose doesn't it make sense that most of social media are the highlights of people's lives? That means that you miss out on most of the normal messy stuff, and it's so so easy for our brains to believe that those things don't exist to them at all. I promise, they absolutely do. Never compare your story to someone else's page 82.

       #7: Create something or exercise a talent that you've left dormant for a while. It's a lot easier for us to gain a little more self-love and to feel happier when we see that we do have skills and can hold something concrete to be proud of. I believe that Mother’s especially cannot expect to feel fulfilled every single day from motherhood. Being a parent is mostly thankless and monotonous, constantly doing the same chores over and over again, and it can be difficult on the tough days to feel like you have anything to show for all your efforts. Don’t give up, go pluck at the piano keys a bit or pull out your brushes, etc, it’ll do wonders.

       #8: Get on the floor and start stretching. Nothing has helped me find stillness and calm as much as starting yoga has, and I recommend it to anyone and everyone as the greatest physical act of self-love and self-care that I know of. I am not very good at it, and because I took too long of a break I can’t even touch my toes right now when I lean over, which is why I say just to ‘stretch’, instead of telling you to take a yoga class. Don’t wait till you’re wearing the right clothes or till you have the right equipment, just look up a simple yoga flow or sequence on Pinterest and do it in your jeans on the rug for all I care.lol Just watch your posture, take slow and deep breaths (stretch on the exhale) and don’t push yourself into any position that causes pain. It’s amazing.

        Well, I want to keep going with these, but I need to run and help Ellie with a posterboard project for school tomorrow and the timer is beeping that the bread is done.haha If you enjoyed these tips though or found them useful and would like a ‘part 2’ of this post, let me know! Also please share any additional thoughts or tips of your own in the comments for the rest of us to benefit from:)

          Take care gang,

from The Freckled Fox https://ift.tt/2tZ5SPu
What I Wore // 8 Ways To Be Happier Right Now - Natural hairstyle for mens and womens

We have some exciting news! - Natural hairstyle for mens and womens

       We have a little announcement we'd like to make…. our little family is moving to Utah!

       This feels like big huge news for our family in some ways, but also like pretty small news in others. On one hand, I’ve lived in Idaho for the last thirteen years or so and have so many dear friends and special places that are close to my heart. On the other hand, Utah has been like our second home all this time, not to mention that Richard lived here on and off since about 2005 until he left everything to come to Idaho, so the move isn’t completely full of change and newness like it might be under other circumstances.

       I also know there are tons of you that will be surprised only because you thought my family already lived in Utah! haha Everytime I would meet one of you in Idaho you thought I was visiting, and I would explain that it was because we’ve spent SO much of our lives here(Utah) between all the work/blogging events and collaborations, visits to all of my family and friends that live here, Martin’s old school friends, and now many of Richard’s friends (and family too) since he lived here for so long. We just know that after years of commuting here oftentimes week-after-week that it’s time to make it official, and we really couldn’t be more excited!

        It’s been nearly 10 years now since my late-husband Martin and I started our lives together, and after we were married and moved into our first house we felt pretty fortunate to be able to stay in southern Idaho right near both his and my parents, mostly because that’s a pretty rare thing for new young couples, especially when I was just starting college.

        We’ve always felt very led in our decision making, and as much as we loved our friends and neighbors in Idaho, we loved talking often about all of the fun new places our lives might take us. It was just a few years later when what had begun as my little online journal started becoming a bigger source of income that he and I started talking seriously about the different areas of Utah that would make work and adventure so much easier.

After he was diagnosed with terminal cancer in 2015 and it looked like we were going to pursue chemotherapy at The Huntsman Cancer Center in Salt Lake, we were once again looking for homes there and trying to decide if it was the right time to move. We were given a prognosis of just a few months left for him to live, and he wanted to make sure I was near my closest family and also many supportive friends that would be able to help me move forward with our five young children once he was gone. We ultimately decided that he should start immunotherapy in Mexico and that we should stay in Idaho for the time being, but we still knew that we needed to at least leave the neighborhood where we were living. 

        We very quickly found the house that we’ve lived in for the last 3 ½ years or so, and that home has been good to us, so leaving it has been bitter-sweet. Leaving the house where he passed away is bitter-sweet. I received a lot of advice after he passed away that I should move away from the home we'd shared and the place where he'd died, but I'm glad we stayed for as long as we did.

These photos were taken by our wonderful friend Adrianna Webb and don't really have 

much to do with us moving, but I figured that there's still plenty of snow on the 

ground and Harry Potter pajamas are always appropriate, so why not?! haha

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       We feel so much excitement for the bright future ahead, but Idaho will always be such a special place to our family and to me especially. It’s where all my sweetest years with Martin were spent as well as the hardest years of my life. It’s where our three homes are, where our children were all born, and the bench where Martin proposed to me. It’ll always have my favorite sushi restaurant and the Thai place where the owner knows our order. It’s also where I held his hand and watched him pass away, and it’s where his body is buried.

          

        Richard and I plan on taking the family back often to visit the landmarks that are so special to us, the relatives that we’re close to there, and of course to see all of our friends and neighbors that are so much a part of our family. All of the people that carried us during those impossible years especially will always stay in our hearts. All of the adopted grandparents that read the kids stories before bed and that brought us dinner over and over again. The friends that drove across town at 2am to sit with me while I broke completely, that held my hand when the coroner came to take his body, that sat on the roof on the fourth of July and cried with me, and on and on. I love feeling like that whole life from beginning to now is all secure and safe in a little town in Idaho, and that now we have a wonderful chance for a fresh start.

The kids were elated and then jumping with joy at the mention of a move to Utah, and they started rattling off people and places that we love visiting here and how we could see them all the time! They have nearly 20 little cousins here that they love to visit, and the idea of living right near them was mind blowing I think.haha Ellie especially was thrilled, because before we’d made the decision official, she had suggested that a move might be really good for our family and good for her in particular. Naturally, she thought Richard and I had just taken her advice and she was elated at the prospect that she was responsible for all the fresh new excitement.haha 

        Overall we've been pretty caught up in unpacking and painting and such since our first trip down and have sort of lost track of time, but every day has been filled with fun experiences and family scooter rides and already SO many visits with people we love and have missed. It feels like a dream to be so close to so much, living in a such a populated area, while also living right in the mountains with gorgeous scenery all around and so many trails to explore, etc. Richard actually found our home on a solo visit, and we both knew it was the one almost immediately. He's been so excited about the potential we have here and has already taken the kids out on so many little adventures. He has always loved being as active as possible outdoors, and that lifestyle will be able to be much more fulfilled here. 

Well, I’ve gone into way more detail than I thought I would in this post, but feel free to ask any questions you may still have in the comments and I’ll get to them in the next post! All-in-all it’s just pretty incredible how things work out sometimes, and already we’re amazed to see how our family is thriving in our new home. We’re still just a reasonably short drive away from our old stomping grounds, and we’re back and forth quite a bit still as we wrap up affairs and such there, but it’s already making such a difference with work and family time, and the kids especially are making so many friends(and getting more party invites than they know what to do with) and doing so well in school, it’s so sweet to see.

A big thank you to everyone who has been so supportive and encouraging, and helpful in the packing and moving so far, it means the world to us! We feel like we’re taking all the best things and relationships with us, while also being able to leave everything negative behind, and I have to smile a little to know that Martin’s close by constantly and is excited to see that our family is moving along the path that he and I dreamed about all those years ago. 

        Thanks so much for reading, and cheers to the future!

from The Freckled Fox https://ift.tt/2BYAPb8
We have some exciting news! - Natural hairstyle for mens and womens