This episode is for anyone who has struggled with their body, but especially those of you who are living with chronic illness, scarring, disease, gut issues or adverse health problems.

Amy interviews Bryony Hopkins, a Senior Journalist at the BBC, blogger and TV/radio news commentator, who has lived with Crohn's Disease for over 20 years. We dive deep and intimately into 'taboo' topics around what it's really like living with a chronic illness that affects you every day and living in a body that is scarred. Bryony is a well-known body positivity advocate in the UK who uses her social media platforms to encourage awareness around chronic illness, scarring, and evidence-based health research.

We talk about everything from: 

• How to ride the emotional rollercoaster of living with a chronic illness
• How Bryony's body confidence has evolved alongside her illness, surgeries, and scars
• How to stay positive and confident when you're facing health challenges 
• The emotional aspects of living in a scarred body and learning to love it
• How Bryony's illness has affected her romantic relationship
• How Bryony has used a healthy lifestyle to manage her symptoms
• Insights around how to communicate your health needs with people in your life

... and so much more!

DISCOVER MORE FROM AMY RUSHWORTH

• CONFIDENCE tools & training: https://amyrushworth.com/freebies 
• AMY'S Instagram: http://instagram.com/thisisamyrushworth
• AMY'S website: http://www.amyrushworth.com
• AMY'S Confidence Academy:  Make Your Magic Academy

Discover Bryony Hopkins

• Bryony's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bryonyehopkins/
• Bryony's blog: https://abellyfullof.com/

Why is it so hard to let ourselves ‘be loved’ especially during the times we need to feel loved the most - when we feel unlovable; when we feel worthless; when we feel like an absolute failure.

Why is it so hard to let ourselves be loved unconditionally?

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A few years ago I wrote about how taking a leap of faith in myself was the biggest and most rewarding thing I’ve ever done in my life. A reader made a comment about how that act of taking a leap of faith requires a ton of self-reflection, meditation, and self-inquiry and she would like me to expand on that. So here you go …

Every few years, most of us go through a period in our lives where we start questioning the path we are on. We may end up changing jobs, leaving relationships, moving cities, embarking on solo travels, and going through an extensive period of soul-searching.

I am just like you. I might seem like I’ve got it all together but if you are close to me, you’d know that I get confused as much and as often as you do. From wanting to move away from home, moving to a new country, one university after another, one city after another, one job after another, one man after another, one group of close friends after another, I am just one fickle, indecisive human being who seems to float through life like a bird.

To my mom’s eyes - someone who has been in the same job for the past 30 years, lives in the same place, and does the same routine - I am like a balloon. Literally, this is what she said the last time I was back home. She said,

“You’re like a balloon. You’re floating around up in the air with no anchor. One day you’re going to pop.”

I laughed when she said that. We can’t be any more different. To her, the scariest thing is to be a balloon that pops and lands in an unfamiliar land full of unfamiliar faces. To me, that’s probably the most exciting adventure of all.

I don’t need an anchor. I am my own anchor.

But this is how self-awareness, self-reflection, and self-inquiry come in. You need to know yourself well enough to know what matters to you. You need to know yourself well enough to know what would make you feel fulfilled.

Sometimes I feel that my search for freedom is a testament to that - to the fact that I grew up with a mom who wants to control everything in her life so much; who craves stability and certainty so much that everything she grabbed ran away from her. But she is happy now, with a man who shares that exact same value - having extreme stability and certainty in life. They are now two peas in a pod, and I couldn’t be happier she found someone compatible to grow old with.  

Back to pondering upon life choices, I don’t believe there are right or wrong choices. But the choices you make end up leading you to different things in life. 

At the end of the day, it’s a question of “are you happy with the choices you make” or “do you regret making those choices”.

If you’re trying to make a decision between two choices, I’d encourage you to map out the paths.

I’m sure the choices are different and present different values. Therefore, you’d end up living different lives, taking different actions, and feeling differently about yourself and your life.

If you can’t make a decision, it’s probably because you value the values both of the choices embrace. However, sometimes the two or three values you embrace can’t co-exist. So you end up having to make a decision and sacrifice one thing in order to have the other.

For me, it always comes back to the question: what will make me happiest and most fulfilled at the end of my life?

Even then, it’s still hard. Here's what you can do:

1. Write down what the choices are and what the life paths would look like.
2. Give each of them a score. How happy would I be on path A? How happy would I be on path B?
3. Prioritize the values. Out of all the values I value, which one is most important to me? Arrange your values in order and go with the choice that embraces the value you cherish the most. Sometimes it’s hard to know what will make us happier. So you have to come back to your values. The things you do that embrace your core values the most will make you happiest and most fulfilled in the long run.
4. Make a decision and stick to it. Be happy with the life you choose to live. Forget the other path because otherwise, you’ll always be wondering 'what if'.

Use these worksheets to help you figure it out. 

One thing I’ve learned up to this point in life is that the mind has a memory. And it’s damn smart; it “subconsciously” recognizes patterns.

Once the pattern become a habit, it’s hard for you to stop doing it. It requires extra mental strength to break the habit.

“Starting from a small act, but if you do it repeatedly, one day it will become big." 

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If there’s one thing in life I continuously look for and cannot live without, it’s “inspiration”.

Nothing is worse than being demotivated, discouraged, and misunderstood by the one you love. Seeing several couples getting divorced and carrying emotional baggage from that, I believe it’s important to be with someone who has similar attitude and perspective of the world as you. It is not right to...

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“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
-  Marie Curie

Over the past year I have been on my own a lot. Traveling from one place to another, embracing the freedom that I created for myself, I got so deeply in touch with myself like I never did before. I’ve become much more aware of my own consciousness. My ‘me’ time has been a sanctuary for me to process my thoughts and feelings. I’ve really gotten back to genuinely enjoy my own solitude again. As the oldest child with a strict mother, I used to really enjoy my own solitude. I would escape from the negative outside noise into my own little world of art, music, thoughts, and dreams. My imagination and dreams were my sanctuary, my therapy, my meditation, and my best friend. Since I’ve been on the road a lot, I have had to deal with my emotions alone with my own internal voice. Below is what life has taught me over the years.

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People don’t truly change unless they change their patterns.

Believe it or not, but how you do one thing is how you do everything.

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Just before I fell asleep, I started thinking about something someone said years ago and realized how true it is as I have lived through it.

You will not attract the person you want to be with until you’re where you want to be in life.

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1. Identify the negative experience.

2. Identify the beliefs that you adopted as a result of having gone through that negative experience.

3. Journal - write out how each of those beliefs hurts you.

4. Take some time alone to heal and sit through those pains. Journal through your pains.

5. Pay attention to your unconscious choices and actions. Are your choices and actions trying to re-affirm your destructive beliefs?

6. Challenge those beliefs by changing your actions. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got. Change your method and your approach.

7. Create a new set of positive, healthy beliefs even though you might not be ready to believe them yet.

8. Start believing the new beliefs. Repeat them to yourself over and over against your fears. Resist the urge to self-sabotage your situation by subconsciously falling back into the old, negative beliefs.

9. Practice stopping yourself from self-sabotaging an otherwise good situation with self-doubt and fear.

10. Live the new beliefs and start seeing different outcomes that happen as a result of changed beliefs.

-  Christopher Morley

If people ask me what success means, this is what I’d say. But time has proven to me now, that I would not be able to achieve the kind of success I define as success without this one thing - ‘purpose’.

Purpose is knowing the meaning of your life, knowing your core values, knowing what makes your heart...

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