Shakila Balkhi

Grateful 💙

Got to celebrate and watch this guy get his Master’s today with our loved ones. So grateful and blessed. 💙

Grief is one of the most unreal and painful experiences we go through as humans. These intense feelings and trauma can shape and mold SO much of our lives.

Yet, we hardly speak about it. We avoid the subject. Maybe because of that pain, I’m not really sure.

But what I do know is that we need to normalize having feelings in general and having feelings that aren’t always happy, rainbowy butterflies.

It’s okay and actually quite normal to not be okay.

When we start learning how to feel our feelings and acknowledge when we are sad or hurting, we actually make space for the happiness to come in.

I spent a lot of time suppressing my grief. A lot of time avoiding and not talking about how much I missed my mom and her light. That when I finally admitted to myself I wasn’t okay, it felt like freedom.

Freedom that I want to share with anyone going through anything.

Life is 50/50 good and bad. That perfect fairy tale we have in our heads and pretend to be sometimes makes for a lot more suppressed pain.

May is one of the hardest months for me and I’ve worked so hard to come to a point to just admit that. To take the pressure off for me and to not pretend to be anything I don’t want to be.

Free yourself from that pressure so you can give yourself a chance to heal through it. 💙



❤️

All smiles for beautiful green hills and all of our blessings 🍀✨

A series of Instagram vs reality, for anyone wondering. 😂

Our human brains can be such jerks.

Seriously, even as someone who has dove into heavy mindset work, studied it, works with clients on this, has taught workshops and is coach certified my brain still offers me tons of negative feedback. It’s a default survival mode that needs constant recalibration. Our brains just simply LOVE to fit in and stay comfortable.

My brain did it this morning as I begin to start to run again. I haven’t ran a mile in well, a very long time and I went with a small group. My brain dreaded this for me, the fear of being last, of being slow, of not being perfect, of not feeling as good as I used to be and even resorted to thinking eh why push myself and cause myself possible discomfort. It told me that I’m older now and not as athletic as my college self was. It fed me thoughts that said I’m not in the shape I was and I’m not a runner.

I finished the run and walked into the gym and someone told me I looked like a runner. 😂

THIS, this is how silly and untruthful our brains can be to us. We are our toughest critic and we can be so mean to ourselves.

I’m telling this story to remind you that you have a human brain, it will offer you ugly thoughts and that they are most certainly not true.

Be kinder to yourself, push back with that human brain and start to think what you want to become AKA the runner. 😉

I’ve entered a new season of life and it’s so intimidating right now. 😅

It’s a season where I learn to slow down, put myself and the small moments first. I spent my 20s GRINDING, I mean grinding.

Processing grief and keeping myself as busy as possible. College athlete, bachelors degree, working full time during my masters degree, commuting, 5AM work outs, new jobs, moving and you name it, I hustled in my 20s.

I’m super proud of that hard work, how I pushed myself but that behavior isn’t meant to last forever, HELLO burn out. 🙋‍♀️

That grinding mentality kept me constantly thinking about what’s next and it can really take away from the present moment. While I’m grateful for that season, I’m learning to ease and transition into the next. This means learning to listen to my body, not just chugging coffee and going to an early workout when my body is screaming for rest. It means learning to be really freaking proud of what I’ve created (hard enough!) and to still grow but let go of this need to grow at exponential rates.

It’s weird and it’s hard because my brain is absolutely addicted to those growth hits. I love this quality in myself but I’m learning to embrace a new way too.

Some of the things that have helped me (for all my high achiever friends) is to take a moment to reflect and be proud of myself, stop and look around at all I have created and thank my past self for all that hard work because it’s time to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

Life is meant for more than just growth and what’s the point if you are tired and feeling all grindy during this?!

There is something magical in the ability to surrender to things around you and take a moment to just love on where you’re at.

If you are transitioning in a season of life, let’s connect! I’d love to hear your story and what this feels like for you!

Your job doesn’t exist to make you happy.

Your relationships don’t exist to make you happy.

Happiness comes from the inside and the rest of these factors just amplify it.

It’s so much easier to chase external things for happiness because it doesn’t require us to sit down and get to know ourself.

I loved filling my calendar with all the things and looking for the next best company to work for because it meant I didn’t have to sit with my own thoughts. It meant that I could get validation from everyone else, instead of myself.

The true work isn’t being happy when, it’s creating your happy now.

Happy Friday friends, hope you spend sometime with you this weekend!

My little walking and WFH buddy is out of commission for quite sometime.

I feel like I am in an office of 2 people and the other one tells you they are going out on leave. 😂

I will press on and cannot guarantee my in between zoom walks will be as long without the sniffy breaks. But in all reality, I’m just happy he’s okay and know there are other outcomes that could be a lot worse. Well, because I’ve lived them first hand.

Our human brains work very hard to either focus so much on the future or so much in the past, that if we don’t constantly work on enjoying the present we can fall into the trap and just let it slip by.

This is the reminder to focus on everything beautiful right now in your life. Yes, I love goals and creating your future self. But let’s make that journey enjoyable by learning to live and appreciate the now.

So I want to know, what are the things that you find most beautiful in your life today?

Enjoyed helping my dad out today and seeing all the wonderful booths that set up in the community.

There was a young girl selling cupcakes and I didn’t even want one. But I bought one anyways because of her entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to sell what she had to offer.

There’s something so fun about being around the people pursuing their passions and selling their craft.

We all have so many gifts to give to the world, cheers and thank you to those brave enough to share them. 🥂 ✨

Such a fun day !

If you look for all of the reasons you don’t belong in this world, you will find them.

If you look for all of the reasons why you cannot start the business, apply for the job, make more money or be the better partner you will find them.

This is your brain. This is your completely normal human brain doing its thing.

Your brain is SO good at backing up the stories you create in your head. When you feed it a statement it starts looking and searching for all of the evidence to back it up.

This is why the phrase “think positive” became such a thing. But when you feel like 💩, thinking positive just feels fake. It feels like you’re lying to yourself.

So I want to offer you something that might be a little more realistic when you are in the spiral and hurting.

Get to neutral and use the facts.

This helped me so, SO much with my grief. Getting to neutral looked like: alright, there other people out there who had to live through a loved one passing away from a terminal illness. There are others that lost their moms early in life and they survived. This felt semi-calming and true but never required me to pretend I was okay with losing my mom in my early twenties.

Sometimes life is about sifting through the 💩, getting really in it, letting it get all over you and filthy so that you can figure out how to actually clean it up instead of pretending it’s all good.

If you are feeling it this week or in a phase of something. I want to offer you to skip the think positive media BS and just get to neutral.

Neutral is an effective way to help you make the micro shifts that will help your brain.

Need help doing this? I’ve got you every step of the way. I’ve been there, lived it and have the tools for you. I’m a quick message away.

Keep going for YOU.

People are always going to have something to say, whether you are chasing your wildest dreams or you are doing everything according to the life formula that someone made you think was right.

People will always have opinions of what you should be doing or what they think is best for you.

Most of the time it comes out of love and concern but only you know you.

Only you have that special gift inside of you that the world needs.

Some people won’t get it and they don’t have to. You have to keep going for you. ✨

Have that itch to share more of your gifts but feeling overwhelmed of where to start? I can help you figure that out and get you where you want to be. Message me if you are feeling called for more. 💙