Taking the Toxic Out of Your Life
Evaluating your life to figure out what works and what’s been outgrown is an essential part of being human. Not everything will make the cut but that’s more than okay, it’s essential to your happiness.
When anything life-changing happens, as humans we typically use the time as an opportunity to take stock. Carrying out a life audit is often the result of anything from becoming a parent for the first time, to moving to a new City.
Here, I share with you the four key areas I made changes to in my life and the overwhelming benefits these have had post becoming a new Mom in 2017.
Until I became a Mom, thinking about the products used in my home was simply not a priority. My shopping habits saw me buying brand names synonymous with whatever was advertised most frequently. Cleaning products were always bleach-heavy, (which I associated with better cleaning power) and most likely part of a store promotional offer.
The wake-up call came thanks to living in a small apartment when my daughter was first born and noticing the strong, overwhelming smell of chemicals every time I cleaned. I figured that if the chemical smell was so noticeable to me, then how strong and overpowering must it have been for my tiny baby, with her infant’s lungs?
Taking Action
I decided to explore more environmentally friendly, plant-based and none toxic cleaning products. Admittedly it took some getting used to the uplifted price points, with many products in the eco’ category being made by smaller, often independent producers and not so frequently part of special sale offers. But the result was a clean home, safe in the comfort of knowing that kitchen worktops and bathroom fittings weren’t coated in toxic chemicals and the air wasn’t laden with them either.
The products switched to have the added advantage of being certified cruelty free and made with 100% recycled plastic packaging. Good karma being felt all around.
2. Food
Pre-motherhood my relationship with food was far from ideal. My diet was solely focused on the premise of being on a never-ending diet. With calorie counting serving as my ultimate consideration, and food quality coming in last.
During my teens, I briefly explored the idea of becoming a vegetarian. The phase lasted six months, thanks largely to the motivations being focused on ‘skinniness’, not on animal welfare. Back then, I equated eating vegetables with lower calories and therefore better for my quest of skinny body perfection.
The real change to my thinking occurred when my daughter reached ten months old. Reading storybooks that showed and taught her about different animals, I felt like such a hypocrite. One minute teaching her about farm animals, followed by serving up the very same animals on our plates at family mealtime.
I started to question how I could articulate the differences to her? How could a cute Lamb, running around in a field or the character in her storybook, be the same as the one accompanying her mashed potatoes? How could the stuffed animals, quickly becoming her tiny friends, be of the same variety as the food on our plates?
Taking Action
Reaching the decision to move to a largely plant-based diet felt like an easy one. Researching articles and cookbooks filled with quick, easy plant-based recipes ideas, as a family, we moved to become largely vegetarian. We do occasionally eat poultry and fish. And we still regularly eat eggs and cheese with milk continuing to be soya bean. But the food we now eat is all organic and it’s essential that animal products have a food history that can be traced and understood.
We apply the same approach to all our food groceries, setting out to know where the food has come from and its environmental impact. The key shift in thinking has taken me far beyond considerations that solely focus on weight to include a more well rounded, holistic approach.
3. Relationships
Reaching my mid 30’s and becoming a Mom, really saw me take stock of the relationships I have in my life. The realisation that the interactions I have will contribute to the energy surrounding my daughter as she grows up and will determine what she comes to understand as being normal.
Through doing some deep soul work, evaluating the connections I have in my life, I came to realise that I’ve had huge difficulty with letting people in and allowing them to get close to the real me. I’ve also spent a great deal of time focusing on friendships that made me feel negative about myself.
The same considerations have been applied to my family. Where regretfully, thanks to a largely dysfunctional upbringing, operating in the realm of emotional abuse, anger and fear. The interactions over the years have continued to be abusive and manipulative, resulting in me taking steps to change the standards of treatment and interaction I am prepared to accept.
Taking Action
Making the decision to stand up for myself as a Woman and Mother, has seen me cut ties with those unable to share in the warmth, encouragement and joy that friendship and family are supposed to bring. Taking this step was preceded by seeking to move the dynamics beyond their abusive foundations, which sadly, was futile in its endeavour. The result has left me free to focus my energy in the direction of those who understand the values of behaving from a place of empathy, vulnerability, love and integrity.
4. Technology
My pre Mom career saw me working in Fin-Tech, as head of HR. I was the woman eternally glued to a smartphone. From the moment I opened my eyes thanks to my cell phone alarm, the drill would include checking emails, scrolling news, running through Twitter updates and hopping onto Instagram.
Pre 8 am I had a view on the world powered by technology and had ingested more information than the average person would consume in a week. I prided myself in being ‘always on’, a practice developed in the several years spent working as an Executive Assistant in my early career. No email was too late, no request was too demanding.
Something changed post my maternity return. I was in ‘prove it Mom mode’, striving desperately to prove that nothing had changed and I was still the same highly competent, capable and available employee, just with a baby.
But something had changed! My fundamental first priority was no longer my job, it was my daughter. And it slowly dawned on me that this frazzled, tech wired, distracted version of myself was doing a huge disservice to everybody, myself included.
Taking Action
I needed to detox and break away from technology to recalibrate and rebalance. The nature of running my business meant that I couldn’t switch off all-together, but I could take steps to evaluate my technology use in a bid to make some serious changes.
Starting small, I uninstalled my social media app’s, meaning that I could no longer mindlessly pop on and scroll whenever I had a spare moment. I made the decision to uninstall my email apps too. Meaning that I had to schedule check-ins and follows ups, no more than three times a day.
The most significant change made, was to my early morning and late night phone check-ins. Introducing a firm rule of turning my phone into flight mode, no later than 9 pm and not checking again until after I had eaten breakfast. This shift has been truly game-changing and has successfully eliminated the frazzled sense of being wired, always available and has finally removed my need to be always on, for everyone other than myself.
Bringing it all together
Making changes in your life isn’t always easy. But in my experience, by making a summary of what feels like it’s no longer working for you is the starting point. Writing it down, bringing it to life and then breaking these things down into chunks or groups.
Once you have a visual map of where the changes are needed, you can plan the simple steps that will help you reach what looks and feels good for you.
None toxic living has been a truly great change and I hope this offers some inspiration for you too.
Jade is a Mother, writer and coach in the UK. She left her corporate career in Fin-Tech behind to start a small consultancy enabling greater work-life balance, more time with her family and an opportunity to help others find happiness in their lives.
Taking the Toxic Out of Your Life
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