The 40% Rule

If you have never heard of the 40% Rule do yourself a favor and watch this video.

The first time I watched that video I was experiencing a pretty difficult life event. I was extremely upset over the way things were going and felt as if nothing was going right. I hadn’t been in that dark of a place in years and I honestly just felt like giving up.

Coming across this video was the best thing to happen to me. I am such a, ‘It’s a sign’ type of person, so of course, I watched the video and thought, ‘This is a sign.’. I realized I had so much more in me than I was letting myself think.

This was back in October. All I wanted to do was give up. No part of me wanted to continue with my job, school, really anything. Let me remind you, I hadn’t felt this way in a long time, so it was honestly quite frightening.

After spending days in bed and weeks becoming more and more miserable I began my journey to who I am now.

Here’s the thing, I didn’t just wake up one morning and I was automatically fixed. I feel so inclined to share this because I did struggle with my self-improvement for some time. I still do. 

It started with my decision to start working out. When people hear that you started working out they assume your goal is to lose weight and look fit. A majority of individuals start their fitness journey with this goal in mind. Very few stick with their fitness plan if this is their ultimate goal.

In the past that was me. I would spend four weeks working out, intermittently I should add, and after not seeing physical results I would become discouraged. Well, surprise surprise, you do not just lose weight and gain muscle in four weeks.

Because I had struggled with my physical appearance and weight for so long all I wanted to see were results. It took me time to realize until I was doing this for myself, I would not be happy.

Back in October, when I started yoga, I was practicing about only 15 minutes a day maybe five days a week. Once again, I did not stick with this. I did have a routine for about six weeks, but once the holidays came up, I lost track of my routine.

When the new year rolled around I remembered the 40% rule. I wanted, and have, made this my motto of 2017. I began a six-week program doing yoga, but this time I was doing it an hour a day seven days a week, no exceptions.

I never weighed myself. Never took measurements. Never used numbers. I focused on pushing myself to become a stronger person. Let me tell you, nothing feels better than being able to hold a yoga position that you used to shake and struggle to keep.

During these six weeks, I decided to start running. Honestly, I had hardly run since high school. With the 40% rule in mind, I ran a 9-minute mile. Although this may not be impressive to some, let’s keep in mind my fastest mile prior had been well over 10 minutes.

I have continued to use this 40% rule in my daily life. In school when I don’t want to keep working hard, I keep in mind there is still 60% of me that is entirely capable. When feeling discouraged I remember that I am the reason for that doubt more than anything else.

Since applying this rule to so much of what I do every day I have honestly never been happier. Obviously, it’s not the rule directly that has caused this happiness, but it has been a tool I’ve used to achieve this happiness.

I can honestly and whole-heartedly say that I am the happiest I have ever been. I love the life I am living and know that it’s only going to get better. I have only continued to better myself through focusing on my health, self-love, and emotional being.

I have just started one of my favorite adventures thus far. This past week I began cross fit and I cannot wait to see how far I can push myself. I have grown to love and crave the feeling after a good workout. I cannot wait to see where this journey will take me and how it will change me mentally and physically.

 

 

Have Courage and Be Kind

‘Do you think it’s possible that some people are born to give more love than they will ever get back in return?’

I came across this the other day and very few things I come across resonate with me the way this did. It truly and honestly got me thinking. It resonated with me so much because I love so much.

I love to love. I sincerely and wholeheartedly believe that if more of us surrounded ourselves with love and light, we could fix the world’s problems.

100% of me also believes love is the strongest force on our planet. Now I may sound just absolutely insane but think about the stories of a mother lifting a car just to save her child. Love is such a strong force we grow to love inanimate things; children’s teddy bears or blankets they can’t live without.

Love draws people together. Think about families that haven’t spoken in years, but come together when a loved one passes away. It may all sound like a movie script, but the thing about fiction, part of it is a reality from somewhere.

Love isn’t learned. Love is an innate emotion that we learn how to share. We develop this sense of existence among the world. Due to experiences some of us either lose that sense or have that sense grow greater. Some learn to become guarded, learn to avoid love. Others have so much love to give. More love to give than they can possibly receive back in return.

It’s like this. We all have love to give, and like I said, some more than others. Those that give lots of love sometimes don’t recive any or all of that love back. Still, I think it’s important to give those lacking love the most love ever. They are deprived of this necessary resource.

We can’t expect everyone to love the way we do. Just like we can’t expect everyone to have all of the same talents as us. Two people could have the same love to give but could express that love in completely opposite ways. It is so important to recognize how we express our love, how we share our love. You will never meet two people exactly alike. Remember this.

Some of us are meant to give more love, but don’t let that discourage you. Don’t ever let someone discourage you from loving the way you do. One day you will meet someone that needs that love. You will meet someone that is more than happy to accept your love. One day you will meet someone that learns from your love. They’ll learn from your love and love just as much, if not more than you do.

Regardless of how the world reacts to your care and affection, you must keep your heart open. You must continue to have courage and be kind ❤︎

 

An Open Letter to the People I’ve Lost

I miss you.

I miss you so much more than I’ll ever let on.

I never thought I could ever miss someone, anyone, like this. My head is filled with constant reminders that things are no longer the way they were. I stay up crying; crying to the point where I don’t even know what I’m crying about anymore. I feel absolutely pathetic for letting anything have this affect on me.

This isn’t your fault. Nothing is your fault. I could never blame you for this. People only place blame to justify why things happen. Blaming you would be the easiest way to justify this, but it’s not your fault. You are one of the most amazing people I have had the honor of knowing.

I miss you and I don’t know why.

I mean, I do know why, but I don’t want to miss you the way I do. Every inch of me misses you. I find myself in crippling fits of tears when I think about the memories. When I think about how things have changed. Honestly, it’s ridiculous, I feel absolutely ridiculous.

Some nights I wish you were still around. I spend far too much time reminiscing about our greatest joys. I regret not embracing more of those moments together. I miss so many of our memories. If I could have just pick one to have back…

I miss you.

Why did I have to lose you? Why? Just why? I’m desiring so many answers, to so many questions I don’t even know. I just want to be told that everything is back to how it was. I want to be told it’s all good again. I want it all back.

I miss you.

I miss you so much more than I want to.

Achieve Your Goals

If you sat down and had a conversation with me for more than an hour you would quickly learn that I love to have a grip on everything I do with my life. I plan just about every single thing I do. Although lately, I have backed off this idea, when I was going to school full time and working about 60 hours a week, my need to plan out every breath I took was a necessity (granted, I do still plan quite a bit).

Obviously, I have about a million things going through my head on a daily basis. There is no way I could possibly remember all of the things I have to get done if I didn’t write things down. Many people today just use their phones for all of this, but I love using a tangible planner. Using an actual paper planner gives me the ability to create not only a calendar but a journal as well.

I have always enjoyed using my planners as a journal. I write in fun things that happened during any given day, paste in ticket stubs, write in details I never want to forget. It helps me create something memorable and creative.

I honestly feel so at peace after planning out what I’m going to be doing with my week and how I’m going to achieve all of those goals. It makes me feel like my day is going to have a purpose.

Up until I found out about this company called Passion Planner, I would have such a hard time hunting down the perfect planner. Passion Planners are great because it helps you lay out goals within your life. The weekly layout gives you adequate space to plan out each day and room to write good things that happen. Being a more visual person I love being able to SEE what my day is going to look like.

These planners are not only highly personable but are sold by a self-started company. Angelia Trinidad is a young CEO that started Passion Planner in her garage. This company is all about self-improvement. They want you to become the best you, you can be.

Their efforts with this are to help individuals achieve their goals. Inside each Passion Planner, there is a passion road map.

As you can see it helps you layout your goals and breaks them down into smaller efforts to help you achieve them. My passion roadmap has helped me break down lifetime goals into smaller ones. It’s helped me see my goals are easy to achieve.

Among the descriptive weekly and monthly layouts, and the monthly reflections, I can visually see my goals in reasonable chunks. It’s honestly become the planner I never knew I needed.

Not only is this planner everything I have ever looked for in a planner, but they are a get one, give one company. This means with every planner sold, there is a planner given away. On top of that, each of their various 2017 planners supports a different cause. Depending on the style, when you purchase a planner, a portion of those proceeds are donated to either: breast cancer awareness, organizations that help our youth succeed, or Veterans assistance.

The thing is, this planner is amazing, as well as the company. I honestly have no problem supporting this company because they are so amazing! If you are at all interested in finding out more about them I strongly urge you to head over to the Passion Planner website to find out more information. While you’re over there, if you decide you would love to buy one put in the code TORI10 when you checkout to get 10% off your purchase! I hope you this planner helps you achieve the goals you set for yourself. Achieving a goal doesn’t have to make you miserable, if it does, you’re doing it wrong.

Inside Out

As we know, I speak very highly of the movie Inside Out. My love for that movie is undying. I would be able to quit my job if I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen it. It’s honestly hard for me to put into words my adoration for this movie, but I’m going to try my best.

* If you have never seen this film, and plan to enjoy watching it without any spoilers, then I advise to watch it before reading this. 

I think the reason I love this movie so much is because I myself am extremely in touch with my emotions. I feel highly emotional about any situation. This movie does an amazing job of breaking down our general, most impactful emotions, into characters. I like to say they map out the primary colors of emotions.

In case you don’t remember what primary colors are, here’s a little refresher. There are both primary and secondary colors. Primary colors are blue, green, yellow, and red. Secondary colors are any colors that come from these primary colors mixing.

So, I see Riley’s five emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear, as the emotional primary colors. These are primary emotions that can be mixed in order to achieve a more complex feeling. I feel like this is why we see Riley’s emotional memories become mixed by the end of the film; she is experiencing more complex emotions.

At age 11, almost 12, Riley is facing a major change in her life. At that point in your life, no matter who you are, you are undergoing phycological changes. Not only is Riley going through this, but she is moving across the country.

Now I don’t know about you, but nothing about middle school was fun for me. As Riley is growing up and experiencing the world in a different way, she is experiencing these complex emotions. As we age we begin to feel things in a complex manner, not only feel, but think in a complex manner.

Because I feel so strongly about embracing the way you feel, I love that this film breaks down our emotions. Obviously, this is such a small sliver of our emotions and an extremely simple way of explaining them, but keeping it simple is important. Keeping it simple helps people, especially children, understand what they’re feeling. I think it’s important to know how to decipher your emotions from a young age.

Being able to decipher your emotions gives you the ability to hold on to whatever emotion that makes you, you. Joy is the emotion that makes Riley, Riley. Recognize the way you’re feeling and don’t lose yourself in the emotion that’s not you. Let’s Root for Each Other and root for ourselves to keep hold of who we are.

20/80

You can’t live your life waiting for the moment to be perfect. The moment is never going to be 100% perfect. That’s just a fact. The reality is, is that nothing is ever going to be completely perfect.

If you continue to put something off for the sake of perfection, you’re waiting for a moment that may never come around. If you want something, go for it. If you keep waiting  around you’re letting yourself waste your time. Life is just happening around you and you’re going to miss out.

I was once told about this 20/80 philosophy.

Although I had this philosophy originally explained with the perspective of love in mind, I think it’s application to life is very simple.

Life can be broken down into moments of 20/80. You will encounter moments where 80% of that moment will be perfect. Then there will be 20% percent of that moment that is not nearly as perfect. Would you not enjoy that moment in its entirety just because of the 20%?

For example, I love Disneyland. I love Disneyland more than anything else in the world, but I don’t necessarily love having to stand in long lines at Disneyland. The 80% is Disneyland, the 20% are the lines. Because my love for Disneyland dominates this discomfort, I don’t worry about that 20%.

This is how I like to live my life. I hear people putting things off in life because the time just doesn’t feel right. Then I ask, when will the time be right? When will you know if the time is right? If you have that 80%, why not just go for it? You will spend much less time watching life pass you by and much more time experiencing it.

I have explained this to people and I’ve had people say that you’d be settling. I strongly disagree with this idea. It’s in no way settling if the 80% is there. Like I’ve said, the reality is nothing in life is ever going to be 100%.

I will admit, it is sometimes hard to see past the 20%. When you recognize that 80%, though, when it’s right in front of you, embrace it. Take it and run with it. Live your life wholeheartedly through that 80%. I believe if you continue to live your life taking in the 80% you will experience your life the way you should be experienced.

Root for Each Other

Since when did life become all about tearing someone down and telling them they aren’t good enough?

Why is everyone out to get each other, trying to be better than the person next to them?

I get it. I totally believe in the contest paradigm. I understand that we need to try to be better than the person next to us to: get the job, get the better grade, get the promotion, but at what expense? I am not going to try to be better than the person next to me if it means pushing them down on my way up.

Maybe I’m just trying too hard to change the world. Maybe it’s just the fact that I care so much about everyone I come in contact with. Maybe it is just a personality trait.

This increasing need for competition in our simple everyday life has given us a lack of empathy for one another. Some of us live too much in our bubble. We look at the world through our eyes and our eyes only.

One time I had driving explained to me as a team effort. If we all drove as if we were part of a team we wouldn’t have the same issues we have now. People would be more considerate to let others through. We would move out of the way of faster traffic in the fast lane. Working as a team is far more beneficial than working as an individual.

Of course working in a team only works if everyone has a compelling interest to participate. Each and every individual needs to be prepared to participate. Unfortunately, not each and every individual wants to participate, or they don’t know how to. This is when we run into the issue of hindering an individual’s growth.

When someone doesn’t understand something, the worst thing you can do is make them feel bad for it. No one can grow then they’re being put down. Plants thrive with sunlight, water, and nutrients. How is a person expected to thrive without this environment as well? You can’t constantly put down your colleague, classmate, or whomever, and still expect them to grow. That’s like placing a tree in a dark room and expecting it to flourish.

‘Everybody is a genius, but if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live it’s whole life believing that it is stupid.’

I have always loved this quote. I love it because we all are different. Some of us are better at one thing and worse at another. See I’ve never been good at math. I’ve had teachers and professors make me feel like I wasn’t good enough because I couldn’t grasp a concept.

Here’s the thing, we need to root for each other. We need to encourage the person next to us. Find the joy is seeing another person grow; once you do, rooting for the person next to you will just make sense.

Laughter is the Best Medicine

My favorite clichè.

It’s my favorite clichè because I love being happy. I’ve discovered this increasingly these past two weeks. These past two weeks have really forced me to prove to myself that I am as strong as I tell myself I am.

Throughout these past two weeks, I forced myself to remember my lowest points. Those low points where I was lost, vulnerable, and isolated. Those low points taught me, though, that isolation will never help me. Reaching out and seeking love and light will always benefit me.

It has caused me to embrace the fact that I deserve joy. We all deserve to find our joy. This is why you must Find Your Voice. And not just finding your voice, but sharing your voice. I have only received joy and happiness since I’ve begun to share my voice, and these past two weeks, I’ve needed that.

Now back to the clichè I spoke so short and so fond of.

Sharing your voice surrounds you with love and light.

Reaching out surrounds you with love and light.

Laughter surrounds you with love and light.

Even when I’m feeling down, if I am genuinely laughing, I no longer feel upset. It’s just physically impossible to feel sad when you are feeling genuine joy. Your joy is part of who you are. Without your joy, you are not you.

maybe that’s just my love for the movie Inside Out, characterizing an emotion like that, but your joy is yours to keep. 

Likewise, you can help someone else’s joy thrive. If someone reaches out to you in search of help, help them. Laugh with them. Make them feel like they’re worth something. The worst feeling in the world is when you seek out support, and it’s not received.

Laughter is the best medicine.

Nothing has ever helped me feel better than the times when I’m feeling genuine joy with the people I love. Surround yourself with good people and be a good person so people want to be surrounded by you. In times of heartbreak, sadness, and hardships, being around these joyful people will make all of that hurt less.

And when someone next to you is heartbroken, sad, or has fallen on heard times, be there to pick them right back up. Be there for one another and we will all really see that laughter is the best medicine.