Transcript: hello lovelies welcome I'm Aja Vancica, founder and CEO of melanatedmornings.com a holistic Lifestyle brand for melanin Rich humans who are ready to step into this world as their fullest expression

So, today I'm going to be answering some questions that came up when I was providing support in a private Mastermind group and these were such juicy questions and answers that I had to to bring them to you so before we dive in I want to to remind you to please go ahead and subscribe if you haven't already and also turn on your notifications and if you have questions that you'd like to have answered then feel free to leave all the questions that you have down in the comment section and I will answer them in a video.

all right so got to take my glasses off because I can't even see so let's see what the first question is

So what's your take on holistic living what does it really mean to you?

yeah I got to put my glasses back on to think uh for me holistic living is all about feeling the way that I wa nt to feel experiencing the feelings that I want to feel and living by my values not everyone's values or the way that they want to feel is going to be the same so you have to take that in consideration for yourself for me I'm going to give you an example of my word of the year it is relaxed I want to feel relaxed I want everything that I do to be simple and easy I want it to be Stressless I want to bring in more softness in my world so holistic living for me is going to be focused around being relaxed this year what kind of things can I do that will allow me to experience the feeling of relax and also what kind of things can I take out of my world that lead to more stress and unfulfilled situations and experiences so holistic living for me is uh bringing in things like being a little bit more of a good Steward of the Earth by seeing what kind of things in my world can I actually take out that are not being so very great for the Earth

so for example I replaced my Dyer sheets with drier balls if you've not heard of them please go look it up they're amazing I really really am enjoying them and I replaced my water bottles with a big water bottle instead of buying the individual water bottles then I buy a gallon and I will use the that to fill up my water bottle okay and my son does this as well and so it was really hard for me to get the family on board with that it took us a couple years to actually get going with that so don't think that just because you make the decision that it's going to happen that way you have to make make the decision over and over and over again and one of the other things that I did this this is not for everyone but we've been doing this for maybe about five five months now and that is I've stopped using paper towels and I use it's a it's it's a funny name but it's like uh reusable paper towels cuz they're not paper at all it's actually just like cloths and they actually tear off like a paper towel and but you wash them and you can roll them back up onto the paper towel holder that comes with it and it's a little bit more sturdier than a regular paper towel holder and so you roll it up on there and you stick it onto whatever paper towel device that you have that you whether it's one of those that stand up on the counter or one that is um uh that you've installed under the cabinet or or under a cabinet or something like that so um that's what we're doing doing and it does take a little bit more work because you do have to wash them a nd what I do now is I don't put them back on the little paper towel thing I fill them up and they I have a basket for uh for the clean ones that are um on a holder on the inside of the cabinet under the sink and then on the other side is the little basket for the dirty ones so um and I wash them once a week There's plenty of them um so that's part of me wanting to have a more holistic living practices in my my world so I brought that in the other thing is that I brought in is to actually start u sing more clean um skin care products if you don't know melanated mornings we've come out with the skincare line we have an amazing Cualoa face cleanser Cualoa is short for cucumber aloe vera and oatmeal and it is amazing and I love it so much and as well as other um lip scrubs and and face masks and I am a client I use all of my products and I absolutely love them so that's another thing it was important for me to bring those aspects into my world for my holistic Journey it may not be so important to you but it was important to me and you again values holistic living is IND is an individual pathway you have to look at what it is that's important to you so um that's what my holistic Journey looks like next question is

Have you always been have you always been into this holistic these holistic things or is this a recent discovery?

well I think that a lot of us do a lot of holistic things but we don't actually recognize that that's what it is or that's what we would call it right so like w hen I started to use clean skincare products vegan skincare products on my face and and um even some of the cleaning products that I started making on my own I didn't really think of that as holistic living I just thought you know what I just want this this changes in my world and I want to have this type of a lifestyle I don't want to have all the chemicals and things like that I get enough of that walking outside I don't want to bring all of that into my home even like we don't wear our shoes in a house and things like that I I never really think of those things being holistic practices but they are because they are attached to my values they are attached to who I am who I'm working on being how I want to live the lifestyle that I want to propagate and bring to my family so I would say that the answer to that question is yes I've always been into the holistic stuff as the person who asked the question called it have you always been into this holistic stuff these holistic things I've always been into it I wouldn't necessarily have called it that so I would say as far as it being like a recent discovery yes it's a recent discovery as the words having the words now like the word holistic hasn't always been in my vocabulary it's been something like Soul Led you know having a being Soul Led have a soul aligned lifestyle it's been those types of words but that I never really kind of um put together that oh this is like holistic it's the same thing um so because everybody has their different definitions as to what those look like so um hope that answers your question all right so the next question is uh

Imagine I'm a total newbie to holistic living what are some easy things I can start doing in my day-to-day life?

well again this is going to go back to what your values are and so you really have to get clear on what your values are so I would tell you you to start there and be realistic you don't look at the values of what other other people are having because those are the ir values that's what they're basing their goals and their lifestyle and everything on what is important to you I would say break out a pen and a paper and ask yourself this question the question is if I wasn't afraid if I if I wasn't going to make anyone mad if no one was going to be mad at me if I wasn't going to hurt anybody then what would I want and then so that's the first question and the second question is what do I stand for what do I stand against those two questions are really going t o help you to start forming the foundation of what your values are and from there then you can start looking at where am I not living in in these the these words these feelings based desires these goals where am I not living in them you can literally get a life will I talk about this a lot you can just download you can Google life will and you can go through all of the areas in your life to see where you're not matching what you say that you want what you stand for and what you want to propagate in your life what you want to build in your life and literally start from there what are some of the things that you can get rid of what are the things you can start saying no to that is one of the biggest things I think that we don't recognize that no is a tool yes is a tool but no is also a tool and so getting used to looking at the things that are NOS in your life that you that are going on right now is really going to start helping you with the yeses no I don't want this anymore no I don't want that anymore it's so easy for us to see the problems and the the undesirable situations in our life more than it is easy for us to see what it is that we want sometimes it's just like that it's the way our human brains work so what is it that is happening right now in your world that you're really not interested in having anymore more start with those NOS little bit by little bit you don't have to change everything all at once as a matter of fact I would please implore you to please do not try to change everything all at once please start small the Little Steps it's these little changes these little tiny little actions that are going to lead to the huge results the one of the reasons why is because when you try to make big big changes your brain literally feels like you are hurting yourself and it's going to tell you no I don't think so and it's not going to get on board with a a complete overhaul of things you're going to start feeling overwhelmed it's going to you start feeling fear you'll start to see bring in all of the excuses as to why this isn't going to work and then you don't do it so start small when you have those small wins you're getting your brain on board it's like yeah we can do this let's keep going oh I can do this I won with this let's keep doing you want to declutter your whole house don't don't say that I'm going to declutter my whole house you can probably start with a junk drawer in your kitchen something small get yourself a small win so start the re start with what your values are what you stand for what it is that you're wanting to build a foundation around in your in your life who you want to be how you want to show up as be in your fullest expression how do you get there what does that look like and then you can start bringing in all the practices from there start small okay let's see the next question is

Do you have any cool stories about the first time you tried a holistic practice and thought hey this is actually pretty awesome?

I did was the the one where you kind of like write out like I have a whole notebook that I have just written out um the words uh I am open open and ready to receive and I wrote that out like so many times and I was a little skeptical I was just like there's a lot of writing here but the I think that the the strategy and the mentality behind it is that it's about repetition and that repetition is helping to create a whole new DNA chain chain within you it's it's unlinking the DNA that s lot of clarity there was a lot of of clarity around what was coming next and how I was going to get to do things and I think it even started to set the foundation for my word of the year which is relaxed there's a lot of things that happened around that time of me manifesting me being open and ready to receive so that's a story for you okay last question is about mindfulness and meditation mindfulness and meditation are those things you actually do how do you even fit that into a regular day oka ve myself my the the myself to my job and give them all the good time and all the good parts of me and then I have nothing left for myself well what I found is that I was looking at the my time in the wrong way so instead of me like doing meditation and and mindfulness and things like that practices when I get home when I've got to so many other things to do I got food to cook house to clean kids to you know take care of whatever that wasn't the time I'm an early bird I get up very early in the the moments that I take to be mindful those are the moments that I take for my affirmations those are the moments where I look at what's really happening with my thoughts what are you really thinking today what's happening what is the goal that you like to have and what are your thoughts about that goal what are you thinking uh that your in your ability to create that goal your inability to create that goal like what is it what is what are you thinking sometimes I will stop and I will write down 're brushing your teeth you're cleansing your face if you are present in that moment of taking care of your skin that is the most excellent time for you to look at your thoughts mindfulness for me is all about looking at at my thoughts it's about checking my emotions it's about creating the energy that I want to be in that's the perfect time for that now when it comes to meditation I'm not I'm not I don't really meditate what I do do though is when I go to bed at night right on over there is I s oice note or write down some notes that came up for me while I was just laying down and by that time I've also popped a couple of melatonin and so it's a it's a great time for me to relax sometimes I'll I'll go to sleep listening to something positive a podcast something in an audio book maybe something on YouTube you know something that's going to actually help me to re not just relax but also this is a great time to have the the binari beats that or whatever that helped to change your brain waves.

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Life is happening now live well lovelies bye