The Healthy Cookie

I can’t believe that my time here is half way past already. Of course I can also say that I still have half left, but the last three weeks have gone by far too quickly. When guests tell me they’re leaving, I am always so surprised. Seems to me that they, and myself, have only just arrived.

I have settled in well and am loving my little life here. I wake up every morning and walk out onto my little patio to brush my teeth and enjoy how good it smells and how wonderfully warm it is even first thing in the morning. Every morning, the gratitude is ever present.

The best part of all of this- and this is likely the part that would have come no matter where I was working- is that I love what I do. I love my job and am loving my work. When you hear people say that they love their job so much they would do it for free- I can tell you that I do, and as an intern I am working for free but working no less than I would otherwise.

In addition to loving the work that I am doing here- the people I come in contact with are so appreciative, so respectful, so open to the information being imparted and both guests and my colleagues continually praise my efforts.

I mentioned in a post about how just because you’re good at something doesn’t necessarily mean you should do it. I wrote about this in the context as it related to my job-hopping in advertising and how I kept being told I was good at my job, and should stick with it despite hating it.

My fear at the time I wrote that post, and as I entered nutrition school was that I had at last found something that I truly loved and was passionate about, but worried that I wouldn’t be any good at it. I was afraid that I would be the nutritionist equivalent of the American Idol auditions- those people who think they were born to sing but sound like suffocating squirrels.

The feedback I am getting in regards to my consults, my hotel meal planning, my detox and weight loss program plans, my whole foods and cholesterol lectures, my meditation classes, my giggle, and my white outfits have been so overwhelmingly positive that at the end of everyday when I get into bed, I can’t help but smile- feeling incredibly excited about what I have accomplished that day and the challenges that will come my way.

Though working at a resort is very different from my idea of a regular nutrition practice, there are definitely advantages- the main one being that I get to come in to contact with so many people on a daily basis. This means that I get to answer that many more questions, address that many more concerns and hopefully positively influence that many more people.

I have often praised those who played an important role in my own healing- Dr. Ha and Ping who were my acupuncturists, my meditation and yoga teachers in LA, the instructors I had in Nutrition school… I can only hope that in my passing along the gifts of knowledge these brilliant individuals bestowed upon me, that I might have earned the honour of becoming one of those people in someone else’s journey to health and wholeness.

In one of my nutrition classes, the instructor spoke to us about staying in our area of brilliance. She was speaking in relation to hiring an accountant if we weren’t so up on our tax laws and spending the better part of time actually working as nutritionists. The thinking was that the more we stay in our area of brilliance, the more successful we will be in our careers.

I believe that this is vital in all careers- or perhaps in all facets of life. We must figure out the parts of our jobs, or the areas in our lives where we feel the happiest, the most fulfilled, the most satisfied, the most nourished and the most alive and be with that. Make that which makes us feel full and energized dominate how we spend most of our time.

Why on earth would we want to focus our energy and our lives on tasks, roles, people, or relationships that deplete us, drain us, and exhaust us? A simple question but so many of us do. I did for a long time. I still spend more time than I would like in an office on a computer but I spend more time outside meeting with people and that is what I love the most. That is the role, the task, the position in which I feel energized and nourished by the work that I am doing.

I had lunch today with my manager and as we were walking back up to the spa we ran into a group of returning guests who all warmly greeted him. As we passed them he said to me- ‘That is why I love my job’.

The parts of our lives that afford us such feeling of fulfillment and purpose are ultimately our area of brilliance. For when we are at our best, we will also get the best of others. Why would we want to exist in any other way?

Once in a while, ask yourself these questions:

1. Of the things I do, what nourishes me, what increases my sense of actually being alive and present rather than merely existing?

2. Of the things that I do, what drains me, what decreases my sense of actually being alive and present?\

3. Accepting that there are aspects of my life that I simply cannot change, am I consciously choosing to increase time and effort in activities that bring me up and to decrease the time and effort I give to activities that bring me down?