Raw, Real & Uncovered — The Sunch Spot

Hello loves! You get a double blast of me this month. I was feeling so inspired from a film screening I saw of Briana and Vunzai's of "Love in Progress" that sent a powerful message about self love and self acceptance.

You may not know this but for so many years I have struggled with self acceptance and self love, and sometimes I still struggle with it. I had graduated from Purdue in 2009 with a GPA that was near distinction in business and couldn't get a job at a top tier firm, because of the recession and not believing in myself.

I experienced years and years of self doubt and struggle. I doubted my decision to go into business, and thought maybe I should switch careers. I tried medical school in the Bahamas, and I failed terribly at it. Being away from my support system and learning about the body and blood was not my favorite thing. I wanted to be perfect, get that high paying job at the best firm, or be that doctor that society expects me to be.

After medical school, I started my first full time job in Wisconsin. There, I struggled with my own self worth. I always felt that I was behind the curve in terms of pay, and couldn't make enough to support myself the way I wanted to live. I continued to go back and forth with my weight gain and loss. I finally got a break and got a full time job in Chicago, but I felt like it was enough pay and I wasn't living up to societal expectations of what I should.

In the meantime, I kept trying to do higher education, something I went back forth on wanting to do. For years, I kept failing at the GMAT, and then I finally entered a graduate program that to appease those around me, hoping to appease myself. I graduated in Analytics, but not exactly what I was planning.

During these time periods, I was struggling professionally, but also with relationships. Somehow, I always felt that any relationship I entered into wasn't good enough for people around me or myself. I went through dating multiple guys, and I felt always that I wasn't good enough. Each one would break, and I would find myself trying to justify why each person wasn't good enough due to some emotional reason or another.

At one point, throughout the years, I truly questioned myself to figure out if I was really good enough. I could never get it perfect with my relationship and with my career. That sadness kept me a bit low in life, thinking less of myself than I already had been.

I think we've all been there right? Living in the shadow of what we hope to be, or what our society and people around us hope for us to be? It's tough. This year, I invested in myself. I told myself, I need to grow as a person and really find out who I AM. What do I want from a partner and from my career? When really writing down those ideal desires, I have become much much happier.

I've also worked to evaluate relationships and career decisions from a combination of my own gut, and through objectively working with a therapist. This has really helped me become truly a better version of me. My concerns about who I wanted to be were so muddled with other influences that I didn't even know what I wanted as a person long term. Once I cleared those thoughts, I felt like a better version of myself. Now, I'm focusing on renewed long term goals that are important to me.

So my message out there to people is, if you are struggling with your identify, take a step back, meditate, and write down all the things that you want DEEP down. Record it, and set goals against them and evaluate them objectively. Then own those goals, and work up to them. Real success on the inside takes time. Don't evaluate yourself against everyone else. Seek help with a mental health counselor or a mentor and really learn about the things that you want. This is not an overnight thing. You really need to dig deep.

Don't live for someone else's expectation for who you are or who you want to be. Again, dig deep & find the raw and real part of you.

That's it for my first post about being raw and real. Next blog post, I will write about 10 lessons I've learned this year from growing as a person with my relationship and who I am.

Also, I want to note, expressing the tough parts of your life takes courage and it's EXTREMELY tough to do. To all the women out there, please share your story, and please be raw and real. Let's all encourage people to share their stories, and not let it be an aching burden inside, especially women. Briana and Vunzai thank you for bringing out something in me that I wanted to write down for a while.