Note from Jessica: Even though this mail was written at year-end 2017, many of the things I talk about are timeless and utilize to our lives no matter what time of year it is. Here's to your wellness, with dear!

As I write this, 2018 is simply a few days away. I've been spending a lot of fourth dimension reflecting on 2017 as the new year approaches. As I wrote in concluding year'due south reflection post, we can't know where we're going until we've taken a expect at where we've been. We have to have fourth dimension to wait back before we can get clarity about where we want to go moving forward.

I know a lot of the gurus say that information technology'southward important to reflect on the past year before yous enter a new one, but that is not something I take washed consistently until the terminal couple of years. I accept establish this procedure of reflection to be very therapeutic and enlightening. It helps with regaining the clarity near my goals and mission that sometimes starts to go muddied upwards by the time the last quarter of the year rolls effectually.

Every bit I retrieve dorsum on 2017, I have to stop and give myself a big hug. I accept to breathe into the experiences that came at me. I accept to requite myself permission to cry and feel ALL of the feelings that take gotten stirred up. 2017 was ane of the most intense years of my life. I feel similar it was a roller coaster of emotion, filled with more than lessons in ane twelvemonth than I have experienced in my entire life.

Nov and December have felt very hard, emotionally, for me. I slipped into some depression and felt a heavy sense of grief and overwhelm that was actually unexpected. I feel like I am pulling out of it and I am then hopeful and excited most 2018. It's going to exist a great twelvemonth and I feel equally though things are lining upwardly in the perfect manner for the adjacent chapter of my life to begin.

The quote that keeps coming to heed as I reflect is from Richard Bach, who once said: " Nosotros teach best what we most need to learn."That is and then truthful in my case, so I took some time to write almost 2017, the grief, the joy, the difficult decisions, and the struggles today.

The Toughest Year of My Life

I'chiliad not going to lie. This has been 1 of the nigh emotionally, physically, and mentally exhausting years of my life. What started off as a new yr filled with new promise quickly became overshadowed by the sudden passing of my brother. With that, it was similar my world stopped for a while. You can read my intimate await at life and grief here. The first half of the twelvemonth is pretty much a mistiness…

In add-on to that sudden life change and all that decease brings with it, I had as well enrolled in two unlike practitioner training programs (later to become iii with the addition of my yoga teacher training). I was trying to manage my current business and so I could help contribute to my family unit, also as abound my beginning-upwardly company (which I had fallen out of love with). And, I was also working on self-publishing my kickoff print book.

The year quickly became a cyclone of emotion and busy-ness. I moved from mean solar day to twenty-four hours feeling a bit overwhelmed and intimidated, but at the same fourth dimension, in that location was even so a good dose of joy and excitement sprinkled into each day. Considering here I was doing new things and moving towards new goals. So even amidst the darkness, in that location was so much calorie-free.

I completed my Nutritional Therapist certification in June. Then, I decided to get out the startup company that I had co-founded in Baronial. In September, I completed my Listen-Body Nutrition Coach certification. And now here at the start of December, nosotros are *this shut* to sending my beginning book to the printer! Actually, by the time you lot read this (depending on when that is), it may already be on the printing printing!

It was far from a bad year. In some ways, it might be considered i of the all-time years of my life considering the lessons that I learned and the growth that took place for me was more than all of my other years combined.

Yes, the year was trying. I felt like I was riding an emotional roller-coaster at times. There was enough going on that I did non always take care of myself as best I could or put my needs on the front end burner. Thankfully my chronic illnesses are mostly in management mode, merely I did still accept some flares from time to time when I wasn't getting enough slumber, movement, vegetables, or self-care.

(I'm pretty sure those flares are there as reminders to Irksome Downwardly when life gets besides crazy.)

And now, here we are, just a mere few days away from 2018. The end of one of the craziest years I've always gone through. A twelvemonth for the history books for sure. Now is the perfect time for reflection on where I've been, what I've learned, and where I'chiliad going.

I'll exist honest…I'm tired. More than tired actually. I am exhausted.

Which is why I am allowing myself to take fourth dimension off this month so I can do lots of resting, reflecting, and playing for the remainder of 2017. Simply something came in the mail that made me desire to get on here and write a web log post today. I actually had just planned on writing a quick Instagram postal service, just plain, Instagram thinks I am WAY too wordy, and then I had to move over here in club to communicate everything that I wanted. 🙂

We Teach Best What Nosotros Most Need to Larn

I simply received my certificate of completion every bit a Heed-Body Nutrition Motorcoach from the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. I was technically finished with my certification in September, simply we just received our official printed certificates this calendar week.

We Teach Best What We Most Need to Learn // DeliciousObsessions.com and JessicaEspinoza.com

I feel and then proud to hold this document in my hand. Enrolling in this program was a big bound for me. It stretched me personally, professionally, and financially. It made me take a run a risk that just a couple years dorsum I would have never done. It gave me the opportunity to proceed healing and transforming my own life. It gave me the courage to step out and show up powerfully for women who are looking for their ain personal healing and transformation.

Richard Bach once said: " Nosotros teach best what we most need to learn."That is then truthful in my case. Receiving this document made me pause and reverberate on my past today.

I was pulled into this work from a highly personal identify. I had no idea that this work would call to me. I had no intention of becoming a autobus. But it all unfolded before me so naturally that I knew this was where I needed to go.

I take struggled with food and body for almost my entire life. There was a pivotal moment when I was around vii or 8 and from that point on, my body became the enemy. I began to feel equally though my worth as a person was tied to how much I weighed.

I await back now on how many opportunities I passed on because I was not the right weight. I was scared that people would estimate me for how I looked. Regardless of how fit and trim I was at any given time in my life, I always felt fatty. Always since I was a child and well into my 30s. I tin see now how my view of myself was then dang distorted by the toxic spectacles I saw myself through.

I await back on how broken I felt. How disempowered I felt. How the number on the scale and in my clothes were dictating my worth equally a person. My inability to manage stress and work through hard emotions led to binging on my favorite foods for condolement…which led to deeply painful shame and embarrassment. And then I would punish myself with periods of restriction in gild to brand up for my "bad" beliefs.

The restrict-binge-restrict-binge wheel plagued my life.

Do y'all know what the worst part of it was? It was that I kept all of this hidden.

All of this struggle and inner misery was hidden from the world, from my family unit, from my husband. I was then ashamed. No one would sympathise, and why should they? I was certain I was the but weirdo who had these issues.

I was in constant internal desperation wondering why could I not "figure it all out?!" What was wrong with me? Why was this SO. DAMN. Difficult???????? Why couldn't I be stock-still? I missed out on a big clamper of my life considering of these struggles.

We Teach Best What We Most Need to Learn // DeliciousObsessions.com and JessicaEspinoza.com

Turns out nothing was wrong with me. I was not broken. I had just gotten lost on my way through life. The roadmap for navigating life that I had been given was incomplete and caused me to become off-target. There were no rest stops or off ramps along the fashion to help me become re-centered either.

I was only drifting around through life trying to make information technology all piece of work without knowing what tools I really needed.

I've written about information technology before, only one solar day I literally woke upwardly and had an epiphany. I finally realized I didn't have the tools and awareness I needed to move forward and then something shifted. I started seeing some light at the end of the tunnel. I started seeing things in a new way. I started understanding things I had never understood earlier.

I realized that all these years I had been trying to fix myself…which was leading to an awful lot of wasted time and energy. In the months that followed, I realized that I didn't need fixing. I needed a new perspective.

I needed to re-discover myself, my dreams, my faith, and my spirituality. I had to be brave. I had to be potent. I had to take faith and hope.

I had to larn to believe (in the deepest part of me) that my constant stress around food and my body were there for a bigger reason. They were in that location and then that I could acquire some powerful lessons that I could then pass along to other women.

The women of our world need a lot of healing. The damage has been done to the states by diet culture runs deep. It is perpetuated with every new generation and every new advertisement campaign. Healing won't take identify overnight. It won't be fast. It will be hard. But it will exist worth it.

I feel honored that I get to practice this important piece of work (because I believe it IS important). I get the privilege of helping women shift their relationships to food, torso, and health then they tin fully show up and cover their life.

I want aught more than than the difficult lessons I've learned to be an inspiration to someone else. And I wait frontwards to walking the path with all of the women who are gear up to break the cycle and step out into something bigger and more amazing than they ever imagined.

On a side notation, the question, "What would life be like if yous stopped trying to fix yourself?" was presented to me by Geneen Roth many years ago. It's a question that has stuck with me and ended upward as the inspiration for one of my multimedia collage pieces earlier this year. I now go along information technology hanging next to my desk as a reminder of how far I've come up and how excited I am near where I am going.

We Teach Best What We Most Need to Learn // DeliciousObsessions.com and JessicaEspinoza.com

Now information technology's Your Plow – Action Questions

Transformation doesn't come from having more knowledge. It comes from putting into Activeness what it is you've learned. And so today, I want to ask you to practise merely that. Grab a notebook, your periodical, or your phone and reflect on these questions:

  • What are y'all struggling with right now?
  • What near information technology feels overwhelming and hopeless?
  • What near it feels comfortable and safe?
  • If your struggle could speak to you, what would information technology say?
  • What are the deeper lessons that these challenges are presenting?
  • What is it that you really need to larn right now?
  • Could today's challenges be preparing yous for groovy things tomorrow?

Thanks for reading. I hope that you lot are able to accept some time off this calendar month, relax, reset, reflect, and play before the new year arrives. I would likewise beloved to hear from you. Have yous been spending time reflecting on 2017? How did this year go for you lot? What lessons did you lot larn? Where exercise you lot want to go in 2018? Go out me a comment below!

P.S. If yous're ready to say goodbye to the years of feeling out of command and compulsive around food (resulting in body shame) and shift into a place of peace and freedom then I can aid.Come join my 7-day Food & Body Freedom eCourse (it's free!) here. This eCourse came from my passion for helping women transform their relationships to nutrient and body. What you lot want IS truly possible if yous are ready, open, and willing. Information technology is fourth dimension to say goodbye to the years of command, compulsive behaviors, limiting beliefs, scarcity of joy, and actions driven from a place of fear and feelings of unworthiness, once and for all.Larn more and sign up here.

P.P.S. For more than about "fixing" read this web log post: What Would Life be Like if We Stopped Trying to Fix Ourselves?