These tips might seem obvious but when going through the motions of life, you don’t always consider them (not so secret) secrets as everyday impacts in our life.

We’ve all been through our fair share of challenges and setbacks. I had a lot happen to me in my 20s that really tested my limits and made me question my existence. What could have been a destructive toll on my life became a story of resilience once I learned to healthily overcome it… even with all the heartbreak in between.

We all have a choice but many things in life fail us – our family, friends, our job – that we sometimes surrender and struggle to rise above when it gets too hard. 

I found out I was pregnant when I was 20 years old to a guy I was only dating for 6 months. I felt the constant pressure and loneliness of being someone that was in no place ready for a child. The stress ultimately amounted to a premature birth where my daughters first 2 years of life was to learn how to breathe and survive in the hospital. Shortly after, I experienced a tragic loss and during that grief, I felt like I was slowly losing hope as adversity kept occurring, one after the other.

What is your story? And how did we get here? Sometimes we have to look at our trials from the scope of what we would tell our children if they were going through it. You would say all the right things but when you physically, emotionally and mentally go through it yourself, it’s easier said than done. How about rather imagining your child, what would you say to your inner child? The little, innocent person you were when you were a small being. When everyone else failed you or shrugged you off in childhood; how would you have nurtured yourself back then? What would you have wished someone said to you?

I want to share the top 7 secrets I discovered on my own path to understanding what wasn’t good for me and how to better achieve a healthy personal development journey. Let’s start with #1.

This is a big one. I’ve learned very early on from my experience how debilitating a toxic environment can be. I worked at my part-time job for many years and I remember having extremely bad headaches where I would even throw up. THIS was just out of pure stress. It was the people, the low energy, and the negativity in the air that made the work environment so dreadful. 

When you evaluate all of your environments, think about all the stressors that are in it. What holds you back? We become a product of this.

My home environment was just as bad at times. My parents and I were butting heads and it was difficult to get along with my mom. I was miserable in the two main environments I was constantly in and what came out of it was my lack of motivation and productivity to feel my optimal best. I just surrendered, gave up and didn’t care about doing better. I was a mess.

Places like your living or your work space are the driving forces of your success. Your workplace is meant to give you inspiration and help feed off of your passion. We want to be in a high vibrational atmosphere when we make money and your living space is meant to be your sanctuary in order to regenerate and recharge. 

A lecturer named Karyn Callaghan suggested that “the environment is a teacher”. If you are in a negative work space or if your room is a mess, then what does that teach you? Or better yet, what is not coming in abundance in terms of ideas, motivations or manifestations when it is being blocked from a place of congestion.

Think about the clutter in your mind that contributes to this too.

Do you remember your days in Kindergarten? If not, try to imagine a preschool or kindergarten setting. Educators design their room for children in a way for them to thrive in spaces that invite them to imagine, think, create, solve problems and make meaning. We need to enrich ourselves again in environments where we feel the most nourished and positively stimulated like how our inner child remembers it in our early years. 

Actionable Tip: We were not meant to thrive off congested and saturated environments, so we need to reclaim our main spaces. We need to be part of better environments and step away from settings that deplete us. You deserve a healing and positive environment for your mental state and if you are working with an environment that is not so ideal, it is time to envision a new space and get rid of things that no longer serve you. If you cannot change your work environment, it is crucial to get back to nature and have a change of scenery during breaks or lunch periods. It is even more crucial to revamp places that you have control of like your bedroom or office. Vision boards or Pinterest boards are great ways to envision more for yourself and what you can have in order to manifest your future. Talk to positive and driven people about goals and how to motivate yourself in being in a better place. Speak with strong words and it can come to fruition!

I can’t recall the influencer who said this but there was a quote that said “show me your friends and I will show you your future. 

I can definitely see what a bad friend group can do when you involve yourself with the wrong set of people. Just think about all the movies where the main character gets into crappy situations just by who they surrounded themselves with. For example, the movie Mean Girls. It’s like you alter how you think and act once you become associated with those who enjoy unhealthy habits like gossiping, complaining and toxic entitlement.

The words you say are extremely strong and the universe is always listening. When you have a social group that carries on negative conversations, you hear it, you conform to it and your brain programs it to your whole being. Step away from this and avoid certain people that drain you or aren’t good for your mental health. 

I had to limit my time with a lot of people during stages of my life but have also chosen to join groups of individuals that were entrepreneurs or like-minded.

Think about your friends, acquaintances, family members, coworkers, or any other social groups. What do you usually talk about? 

Even when I was feeling my happiest, I had to limit my energy around those who always had something bad to say. When I was my most productive, I had to stay away from those who wasted time talking about how badly things never work out. Your mind is your engine and you won’t get moving with words and conversations that feed your mind with crap. Especially during a time of healing and growth; whatever that may look like in your life right now, should be focused on those who actively listen and empathize. 

I was listening to one of Gary Vaynerchuk’s Instagram videos where he says it best: “be around people who are better than you”. This is in the sense that those who you see that use their highest potential, set good examples and have a joy for life are those whom we should learn from. 

Actionable Tip: Since the pandemic, we’ve seen less of our friends and colleagues which made social media more prominent in our everyday lives. Pay attention to your algorithm and who you follow. What and who you follow has the ability to either help you learn and build wider perspectives or do the complete opposite. Go through your following list and protect your psyche. You don’t have to cut people off completely but know a balance of how to cut conversations short and be mindful of what topics to entertain. Instead, building healthy relationships and restating boundaries may work better.

Also keep in mind, quality over quantity. Don’t let Instagram or other people’s social media fool you. They’re almost always fabricated to a certain degree.

A protective factor is what pushes you to a positive outcome and pulls you away from a negative outcome. It cushions your fall. I can just remember that period in my life where everything kept crumbling down and I was pretty much in survival mode at that point. I ate because I had to and I woke up because I had a toddler who needed breakfast.

When we think of protective factors, we envision all that we had that kept us going from all that was stressful and challenging. They can be people or characteristics that can reduce the outcome of risk factors as well. For example, do you have social support or do you generally possess good conflict resolution?

I was at a point where I was running low on every aspect of my being but my daughter needed me like how every child needed their mom. I wasn’t my healthiest but I had to get better for her. Even my awareness of wanting better for my daughter is a protective factor of being an honest, loving parent.

Now that I can look back at my experiences with a better mindset I can say there were many protective factors that I had. They were possibly the reason why I’ve managed to create a better life for us.

Think about where you are currently at in your life and pinpoint all of the attributes you have as positive influences around yourself, family and community. While you think about that, here is a list of mine:

• My family extended and all. Despite instances of dysfunctionality, I had my mom who always took my daughters best interest at heart. Even though we didn’t meet eye to eye on a lot of things, we always did our best for her. My dad was always on the back burner of support I did not realize I needed. He drove me everywhere whether it was 5am for work or at the grocery store. He followed my parenting with full respect and wanted the best for us.
• My boyfriend, distant and all. It took a lot of getting to know what worked and what didn’t, and what it was that made us better towards each other. Our efforts for each other was what helped us become the strongest unit yet to this day. For 8 years, we were living in separate households and I always resented the freedom he had. However, we had goals for our family and our sacrifices led to outcomes that ended up being 101% worth it.
• My boyfriend’s family was always a good help as if I was part of the family. They were kind enough to accommodate us, like picking up our daughter from school on Friday’s and buying things for her. We got to stay in their home on the weekends so we can enjoy the end of the week together and would cook us food.
• Our community has always been a safe area to play and have access to a lot of resources and and services
• My work ethic at my job was what helped me continue my education and helped us move out. I knew I had to work and save so that I can live independently with my family and encouraged Daniel to do the same. 

Your protective factors are what you have that are built in strengths already within you. This becomes more prominent especially during challenging times, so let’s bring gratitude to all that you currently have. 

Actionable Tip: When you go through difficult moments in your life, it’s really hard to see things in a lighter perspective until you go over those hurdles and remember what supported you along the way. Remain compassionate and always pay it forward to those who need a hand and be their protective factor if it’s necessary. Once you build yourself up, you are likely to get back on your feet without depending on those “crutches” because of the confidence you built along the way. 

Are there any positive factors that you can add?

Risk factors can be prevented and intervention is most effective when strategies are in place to strengthen the many areas of your life. Think about triggers that you have and challenges that you are currently trying to overcome. Let’s say someone who is getting treatment for an addiction problem. They would be at risk of relapse if they associated with people who go to the bar every Saturday for a drink.

Risk factors are the likelihoods of any downfalls that you can be susceptible to. Also, what may push you to a negative outcome or pull you away from a positive outcome. For example, the year I was going through the stages of grief, was shortly after my daughter transitioned to living at home from 2 years at the hospital. I was mentally incapable of calming my anxiety or panic attacks because I was already in such a delicate and fragile state. A tragic loss was cracking the tip of the iceberg. My perception of life was dwindling and felt like there was no hope for me. There was a lack of trust I had with the universe, God, and my thinking that this hump would be extremely difficult to recover from. These were all risk factors for me.

When someone is going through tremendous amounts of stress in their daily life, it becomes more of living in a state of survival. When I was caring for my daughter who had just overcome liver disease and a liver transplant, the death of a loved one was triggering for me. This could have been ample opportunities to regress to numbing agents like an addiction.

Call to Action: Fortunately, I was able to seek help and would like to take this opportunity to address the importance of seeking interventions. Seeing your doctor and considering therapy or prescription medication are highly stigmatized and can be negatively viewed. We must remember that these are healthier alternatives than what can be done if we choose self-destruction. 

Tony Robbins said it best that “emotion is created by motion” and that “whatever you’re feeling right now is related to how you’re using your body”. 

So often do we stay stagnant or have that limiting belief that it is due to our age, or circumstance, that we no longer do what we desire to do or are deserving of what we want out of life. Whether it’s love, a new career path or a better lifestyle change, we all have the ability to move forward and that is only if we truly feel it and want it in our gut. 

You are all meant for something that is uniquely for you and only you. There is no need to be jealous of others because what is meant for them is not meant for you. 

The manifestation community has gotten a lot of attention for it’s “wishful thinking” but it’s not only about feeding our brains with positive possibilities, but we must be aligned to what we want. We need to follow those vibrational frequencies to those goals that we are eyeing so we can truly manifest greatness. 

Our bodies are the engines to our unique and abundant path. You can lose your house in a second but your body is all you have and honestly, we don’t do enough for the greatest entity that we have. It’s also like whatever is good for the body, is good for the mind. Just think about the nature of “power posing” like superman. There’s like a gush of testosterone when you do that kind of stance or fixing your posture before a work interview or…confronting someone.

I always tell my daughter that her body is the most expensive and one of a kind investment that she has in this world and it is up to her to take care of it. If we are not treating our bodies well, then we succumb to a low vibrational realm of unhealthy habits leading to a malnourished mindset.

Actionable Tip: Inadequate nutrition and sleep along with low levels of physical activity and persistent stress, will continue to carry on and bleed into many areas of your life. We need to perform optimally for our family, children, work, and ourselves and so we need to scan our lifestyle and see what needs improvement. Move your body and think about what you fuel yourself with on a daily basis.

A lot of what makes us who we are is from what we were able to overcome, and these life experiences build up character. How we choose to look at our adversities can either be shifted into a mindset of empowerment or lifelong setbacks… 

Think about a movie where character A reacted extremely rashly about something and character B was all like “what the heck is wrong with you?” It is not until both characters are walking near a ravine where character A talks about something that happened in the past that still lingers within him.

The biggest triggers for stress according to research said by psychiatrist Dr. Gabor Mate, is “control, uncertainty, lack of information and conflict”. Sometimes when we have past traumas to situations that we were not educated about or intervened with, those traumas follow you in adulthood. Those become ongoing stressors that we have to deal with on a daily basis whether it is in the form of anxiety or particularism. 

I know trauma is a very heavy word but regardless of the degree, we as human beings all have it locked within us. We can definitely heal and rewire ourselves but it is ongoing work. If we do not understand or unlock our traumas, we will bring it into our relationships or intergenerationally to our children. 

Would it be wrong if I said that the things that give you the most anger or sensitivity is what was not aided in childhood? As millennials, we may have unresolved feelings and issues that were suppressed internally, maybe because we were given tough love or at the time, mental health topics were taboo. 

I used to be horrible with communication. I hated asking for help and didn’t have the proper skills to explain how I felt. This was a major issue when it came to intimate relationships with Daniel and setting boundaries. When I was growing up, it would be disrespectful to speak back so whenever an issue arose in my adult life, I suppressed a lot of my anger and was extremely passive aggressive. I realized that no one in my life were mind readers and there was a lot of deconditioning that I had to do from what I conformed to in the past.

While we go through the motions of life, those traumas can come up. We can have sensations like being guarded or lack of trust in people or the world. What it also looks like are unexplained and strong reactions to something that we can’t fully grasp or talk to someone about because it goes so deep within. If we don’t open up to our traumas, our inner child becomes a huge part of why we long for things that aren’t good for us or expect someone or something to save us. And let me tell you… there is great disappointment when we expect others to save us because only you can do that for yourself.

Actionable Tip: Everything in my life was crumbling down at one point and I started to lose control. I knew that I had to take it upon myself to work through my inner traumas and make better strategies in communicating and asking for help. I read a lot of books and listened to amazing psychiatrists to educate myself about child development and trauma. 

Never believe you are a failure because had you not gone through the hardships in your life, you would have never known the other side of what you didn’t want in your life. The trouble I had in my childhood happened for a reason so that I can be the best parent for my children and set better goals for a life I didn’t want to get back to.

We are not perfect human beings but the biggest lesson out of all of this is paying attention to how YOU contribute to your own setbacks. 

What do you feed your brain? What do you say to yourself? How do you treat others? What conversations do you start?

A big part of growth is identifying how you were toxic and became the actual problem. I’m sorry! I have to say it. There are many times where I hear people’s story, and growth only developed once they took accountability for their own faults or stubbornness to having an open mind. 

It can be extremely hard for us to point fingers at ourselves but if you can be honest, can you think of any issues that were actually because of your own doing? We can often get stuck in our own conditioned ways, which takes time to break but that’s where we need to work on. It starts with acknowledging and being truthful.

A lot of my personal growth came from being personal. I had to see what bad habits I had and what I kept avoiding that restrained me from growing. My relationship with Daniel wasn’t the healthiest in the past and I had to say to myself that I can not change him. We cannot change anyone, but we can definitely change how we respond and think about issues from an empathetic perspective. We need to work on ourselves to get to where WE want and what WE expect for ourselves. If we wait for anyone or anything to complete us, then we’re only sabotaging ourselves.
Actionable Tip: Find the warrior within you. We all have one. Once we dive deeper and apply these 7 secrets to our life, you can you open yourself to a better and more improved life.