Rediscover Your Zest for Life

We all have mountains to climb in life. For me over the past few years, they happened to be literal physical mountains. For this week’s podcast guest, Nikki Sharp, it has been years of eating disorders and the self-sabotaging voice in her head that crushed her joy. As a former model, Nikki was constantly being told she just wasn’t quite “right” – depending on the country she was working in, she was either too big or too small. She ultimately embarked on a journey of self-discovery and unlearned all the things she had been taught to believe were wrong with her.

There’s this tendency to think that you need to go through big, “capital T” Trauma to give you the push to make a change in your life. Sometimes that is the case – my car accident was one such example. But remember that you have the ultimate authority to step up and choose to live differently at any moment in your life. Nikki shared some tips that she uses with her own clients for how to do this. 

Try it yourself: 

• Draw a picture of your dual selves. When Nikki was in the throes of her eating disorder, she journaled about the voice she would hear in her head. “She’s a bloody egomaniac. She is so, so mean.” Nikki eventually made peace with that voice, recognizing that it also provides the drive to get up and do things. She now just focuses on keeping it smaller. One of her exercises with clients is to take out a sheet of paper and draw a figure on it (stick is fine; this doesn’t have to be art class) with two heads. Make a line right down the middle of the figure. One of the sides is your Siamese twin that says all the nasty things. Write down her qualities. Maybe she’s sabotaging, unhappy, or always angry. The other side is your true self. Note down all those qualities. We all have voices that pop up at different times of the day. This exercise allows you to recognize whether it is your authentic voice speaking or your twin’s. 

• Create pockets of joy and gratitude. Nikki acknowledged that the goal is not to be living at a 10 out of 10 on the joy scale in every moment of every day. That’s not realistic. Instead, she assesses how she’s feeling and asks herself what would elevate her experience even just one notch on the scale. If she’s working on the computer, maybe she lights incense. If one of her clients claims they don’t have time to exercise, she asks them to set a timer for just ten minutes and feel the rush of gratitude that comes from getting physical and achieving a realistic goal. This practice of intentionally working to experience joy helps you stay present in the moment.

• Bask in failure. When Nikki was 27 years old, her star was rising rapidly. Her Instagram followers were expanding by the day, and she had the #1 app on iTunes. When she landed a half a million dollar book deal, she was so certain that the New York Times bestseller list was in her future. But it wasn’t. She didn’t achieve the outcome she had just expected would happen. Rather than hide from the world and pretend everything was just as sparkly as it looked from the outside, she chose to share her experience on her blog. Try sharing something you deem a “failure” with someone else in your life. You may be surprised at the opportunity it presents for connection.