Let’s talk a little bit about loneliness.

 
We live in this world where we’re super “connected.” People are staring at their phones all day long, but I think that we’re truly lonelier than ever. We may feel more connected, but we actually experience less connection. So I want to address this idea of loneliness, and give you some tips to feel more connected with the people that you love, your friends, coworkers, and anyone else.
Tip one: look up, look around, put down your screen, make eye contact with strangers, and smile, especially if you’re dating, especially if you’re single. If you want to find somebody, look up. You can’t connect with people if you’re not noticing them and seeing them.
Tip two: don’t compare your insides to other people’s outsides. When we’re all in the social media world, we’re only seeing what people are putting up, and it’s all filtered. You have no idea how much makeup people have on and how long it took to do the hair. That is not what we look like in reality. It is not our reality. And what we do is we compare our insides and our inner experience to people’s outer experience, and then we feel bad. So it’s really important, not only to stop comparing, but if you’re going to compare, to do it accurately, and realize that you have no idea if a person on social media is fighting with their husband at night, or how they feel when they wake up in the morning, and how much makeup they put on for that picture. You have no idea. One of the blessings of being a therapist is that I do. I hear all the stories all day long of what goes on behind the scenes, and nobody is what they appear on social media. Zero. What you see on social media is just one small part.
Tip three: call not text. So important. If you have something that you want to say to somebody that includes feelings, do not text it. Pick up the phone, call, and check how they’ve been doing. Just because you see them on social media doesn’t mean you really have a clue.

Hugette Montesinos-Rodriguez is the CEO of Disfunkshion Magazine & Soul Academy, a women’s international movement dedicated to highlight and educate on the power of resilience and radical joy. As a university educator for over 5 years and a life/business coach, Hugette has worked with thousands of women worldwide as well as spoken at numerous conferences, retreats and summits spreading her message on the importance of the inner life and building a life around JOY.
I sat down with this inspiring woman for a 12-minute talk that gave me goosebumps, and I hope that it will do the same for you. We begin our conversation with an overview of her Disfunkshion Magazine, which she explains as a nomadic women’s movement in print pages that has been around for 7 years and is distributed nationally. Hugette explains what it means to run a successful magazine in today’s online world, and emphasizes the importance of having a loyal, niche audience.
She continues by sharing a little bit about her journey to where she is now, describes the concept of “unqualified thriving,” and tells why she decided to “do it afraid” and do it even though she thought she wasn’t ready.
We wrap up our conversation with Hugette’s vision about her future, and her incredible nuggets of wisdom!

 
Follow Hugette and the colorful world of Disfunkshion Magazine on DFSmag.com, as well as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

Today I’m gonna give you some tips on becoming a parent for the first time.

 
Tip number one is to embrace change. This is going to be a completely new experience. You’ve never done it before, the kid has never done it before, maybe they have but that’s another conversation. It’s really important to see this as something that you’re not supposed to be good at.
We’re often confident in different realms of our lives and we’re used to feeling confident, but then all of a sudden we’re in this new realm of our life that we haven’t done before, we feel insecure about it, or we don’t know what to do, and that’s okay. So just think of it as traveling to a new city. You wouldn’t expect to know your way around, and you wouldn’t get angry at yourself or your spouse, or whoever, for not knowing where the subway is, or how to go to the grocery store. You’d see it as an adventure, as trying to learn something new, and experience something new.
It’s really important to see parenthood in the same way. This is a new adventure, you’re not supposed to know your way around yet, and you’re supposed to embrace the change of it, so that you don’t feel frustrated, and annoyed at it, but that you can actually enjoy the ups and downs and lefts and rights of all the newness, and all the new adventures to come.

Today, I’m going to talk a little bit about the value of investing in yourself.

 
When you think about your life and all of the circumstances in it, you have your career, your home life, your health, your social life, all of these different domains. But what it really all comes down to is that they’re all directly connected to you. A lot of times we focus so much energy outwards, on the things that we need to do, and we don’t realize that who we are is what influences everything in life.
So if you think of what’s going on inside of you as the blueprint, all of the areas of your life are going to be constructed from that blueprint. The areas in your life that need improvement can improve if you look within and change your blueprint, and that’s what makes investing in yourself so valuable.
When you take care of yourself from the inside out, when you understand what it is that’s going on, what it is that’s holding you back, what it is that you’re feeling, how to deal with the stress, how to deal with the anxiety, how to deal with the frustration, or the self-doubt, or the lack of sleep, or feeling down, or whatever it is that’s going on, things are going to get better. Learning to deal with yourself and investing in you, is the best investment that you can make in your life.