I’ve been super excited to bring you Life Uncorked: Inspiring Truths from Everyday People, a series highlighting awesome people and their personal truths about life, love, travel, and more. If I’ve learned anything in life & travel, it’s that no one way is the right way, that we all have something to teach and we could learn something from everyone. Today, I bring you, Sarah Binde, a nutrionist from Carob Cherub. What I love about her message for living a healthy life is that she gives casual ways that all of us can be healthier physically, mentally, and emotionally without going overboard.  I hope this series can be a place for you to take something away, feel inspired, and uncork life. To contribute, read our guidelines. We’d ❤️ to hear from you. Without further ado, Sara Binde.

Sara, a 22-year old health and travel enthusiast, who ironically learned about living a healthier life while working at Subway – on learning to “wing” it, eating your veggies, and the importance of setting goals.   

LIFE UNCORKED: INSPIRING TRUTHS FROM EVERYDAY PEOPLE

I admit it. I’m young. I still have a lot of life to live and lessons to learn. Despite my age, I’ve experienced much. I gained weight over my childhood and adolescence and become obese. And then I lost the weight by learning how to be healthy. I’ve fallen in love and traveled the globe. I’ve even experienced homelessness for a short period.

From my experiences, there are five lessons that have been most prominent. These lessons are essential to me living healthy and living a full and happy life, a life uncorked.

 Life doesn’t go according to plan. Like, ever.

“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail,” says Benjamin Franklin. I love to plan things out. It’s satisfying to plan and then see everything go according to them. Life hardly ever does that though. Don’t get me wrong. Planning is the road map to success, but when paper plans meet the real world, sometimes they get torched. I used to (and still do) get stressed when events didn’t play out how I imagined. I fixated on mistakes. I obsessed over my plan, trying to make reality more like my dreams. In the end, doing so caused me to be uptight and stress out. Now, I try to be more flexible. If I’m not, it will cause distress. Which leads me to my next lesson…

Be prepared to wing it.

So, what happens when life doesn’t go as planned? Wing it! Detach yourself from your plans and learn to make the best of a situation. It can be frightening to live life by the seat of your pants but once you have more experience with it, you’ll find it’s exhilarating. When you take a chance with the unknown, you open up to experiences you’d never have otherwise. That’s how I befriended a spice merchant in Marrakech, Morocco; met the love of my life and discovered how to be healthy.

Never stop learning.

This lesson is a lesson I learned when I was quite young and it’s only been reinforced throughout my travels and the older I get. Constantly learning, regardless of age, keeps you relevant.

Set goals and work towards them

Admittedly, this is a lesson I’m still learning. I’m getting there, though. Setting goals and working towards them is essential for success because without goals, the line of success is unclear. I had trouble with setting goals in the past. Despite being a planner, I set vague goals. Or I’d start without setting a goal at all. After a while, I’d be disappointed because I wasn’t where I thought I would be. I had set myself up for disappointment and failure because, silly me, I didn’t define my goals clearly. Or at all. I would have avoided a lot of frustration had I been more clear.

Take care of yourself.

Being a nutritionist, health is an important aspect of my life and I’m not only talking about physical health. Mental, spiritual and financial health are also crucial. This is one lesson I learned the hard way. I didn’t know what true health was until I experienced the opposite: obesity. Knowing quality of life as an obese person versus a healthy person, I strive to stay as healthy as possible.

I find mental, spiritual and financial health follow when I focus on physical health in the present and future. You don’t have to diet or work out for hours to be healthy. Staying active and eating wholesome foods will do. Taking your mother’s advice and eating your veggies helps too! Being active can mean hiking on the weekends, playing outside with your kids and taking a 30-minute stroll after dinner every night. Simple things.

You only have one body. Treat it right so you can live life to the fullest.

Now, over to you: what lessons have you learned to help you live a life uncorked?

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