Don’t Sweat the Change: Be the Change You Wish to See

You’ve probably noticed some of my more passionate posts lately on behalf of women. As an American Heart Association spokesperson, I want to help increase awareness that heart disease is the #1 killer of women. One out of three women will die from heart disease and it’s because we don’t listen to the early signs of detection. Why is that?

My mom recently had a minor heart attack. She woke up in the middle of the night feeling like an elephant was sitting on her chest. She didn’t go back to sleep, but she didn’t go to the hospital right away either. At about 2 p.m. the next day, she spoke to my niece who is in medical school studying to be a naturopath. My niece told her to check herself into emergency immediately. She did and her enzymes were elevated. My mom is low risk without any heart disease indicators: no blockage, low blood pressure, and low cholesterol. However, she had a heart spasm. She was fortunate and we are lucky because it was minor, but many women have this stoic nature that comes from a habit of not really listening to their bodies, powering through discomfort and being tolerant of a high level of stress. So much so, many women tolerate the warning signs of a heart attack until it’s too late.

Please watch this American Heart Association video “Just A Little Heart Attack.”

You may laugh out loud at the absurdity here but I’ll bet you see some characteristics of yourself or a woman in your life. Please take the message seriously and notice how “perfectionism” runs women. I know because I’ve been there too. We are trying to do too much, putting too much pressure on ourselves to be the “perfect” everything for everyone—all the time: perfect daughter, perfect wife, perfect mother and the perfect career. We are wearing our Wonder Woman capes without realizing that wonder woman was a figment of someone’s imagination and isn’t real. I’m sure the pioneering women who wanted more for us and gave us so much opportunity didn’t want us to die young because we couldn’t make choices that matter to our health. Tolerating and managing stress is not the answer. Perfectionism is unrealistic and drives us to live with a mountain of pressure that becomes a wall around our heart and keeps us from hearing the wisdom that whispers, “You are striving too hard. You are simply surviving.” The answer for women today is to stand up and say: No way! I’m not here to survive my life. I’m here to thrive! Learning to listen to our bodies and our stress level and make minor adjustments to our lifestyle, practicing a new way to live, is how to be the change for women. It’s a way that allows for spaciousness and pause and heart guidance and wisdom. Sometimes, a golden pause is all you need to slow down from the inside.

The heart is a beautiful thing. It’s the very beginning of life as in every embryo – it begins to beat within itself starting to form all the major organs of a fetus. At our birth, we have a genetic allotment of heart beats. Your heart begins to beat and every time it does you use up that number of beats you’ve been given for your lifetime. How you use your heartbeats matters to your longevity because one day, just as it began, your heart will just stop beating. That’s why I talk so much about slowing life down from the inside-out. There’s no way your life is going to slow down, but you can be more peaceful and calm in the midst of your busy times.

If you want to be the change for women this summer and take the stand to slow down from the inside and practice with us, I invite you to join me in a summer of self-love. You will learn how to stress less, listen to your heart, and receive more. Your heart is worthy of your attentions and letting go of perfection. I hope you join us here. Program starts on June 25th.

Register today!