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Posts by Alexander Heyne

Alexander Heyne is the founder of Modern Health Monk, an integrative health site that shows parents and professionals how to lose weight in a healthy way and feel amazing by using the power of tiny habits. You can get his free guide on 5 daily habits to look and feel amazing right here.

Alexander Heyne's Website

How to Start Dreaming Again When Others Have Discouraged You

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“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.” ~Wolfgang von Goethe

I was one of the lucky few people that always knew what I wanted to do with my life when I was young.

Unfortunately, when the time came to pull the trigger and go full steam ahead toward my passion, I got talked out of the dream.

When I brought up what I wanted to do (Chinese Medicine) to people I knew, I saw them raise their eyebrows:

“Chinese medicine? How much will you make when you graduate …

Let Go of Who You Think Should Be and Become Who You Want to Be

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“Do not become a stranger to yourself by blending in with everyone else.” ~Dodinsky

I spent many decades of my life trying to be person I was expected to be.

It was partly the kind of expectations our parents impose on us, but also those from society, combined with the worst ones of all: the expectations I had put on myself.

For example, the story of who “I should be” had told me that:

  • I had to be a hard worker, a great student, and an overachiever.
  • I had to be responsible.
  • I had to be serious.
  • I had to
…

3 Things I Did to Relax When I Was Stressing About Reaching My Goals

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“Every day brings a choice: to practice stress or to practice peace.” ~Joan Borysenko

Stress and my own expectations were killing me. I was taking care of my physical health with exercise four to five days a week, eating right with lots of plants and vegetables, and sleeping enough, but my health was getting bad.

I had IBS that was getting worse, and I wasn’t sleeping well (even though I spent enough hours in bed). In other words, I was doing everything right, or rather, all the external physical stuff right.

I was doing something that virtually everyone agreed was …

How to Be Happier Without Really Trying

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“Happiness is the absence of trying to strive for happiness.” ~Chuang Zi 

I sat in the café wondering why I wasn’t happy.

I had been listening to all the happiness and self-help gurus. I was meditating every morning. I ate a healthy diet. I exercised four times a week. I was working hard on projects I was passionate about. I wasn’t wasting time and watching my life tick away.

Yet somehow, as I sat in the café, I wondered how I could have been “doing it all right” and yet everything felt incredibly wrong.

There is no mistaking the feeling …

How Your Mind Sabotages Your Life and How to Stop It

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“What we see is mainly what we look for.” ~Anonymous

A few weeks ago, my aunt was visiting for a family holiday. I hadn’t seen her in a few years so we were catching up, talking about life, and talking about the projects we were each working on.

“So I’m still working on my PhD dissertation,” she said. “It’s really exhausting, you know, having five kids and doing my PhD all while working. It’s just exhausting.”

“And the problem is that these professors are constantly approving or denying my thesis subjects, so I’ll begin to research it and then they …

What Are You Worth?

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Have you ever worked a job where you were grossly overqualified or underpaid?

I once had a job where I was getting paid $12/hour for doing stuff that I thought I liked.

I was working in a field very closely aligned with what I wanted to do in the future, and I had access to all kinds of experts that I could talk with.

At the start, I thought it was great; I was young, the pay was tax free, and it was my first job after a long absence from the United States.

But as time wore on, I …

When You Keep Learning Instead of Taking Action

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“Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise.” ~Horace 

It was day five without food, meditating in a cave in the Sahara desert.

In 2009, I skipped out on two weeks of my senior year of college to go to the desert.

Ever since I was a young I had been into exploring the boundaries of the self. I had always wanted a period of time when I could totally be alone for days—not a word spoken to me, where I could go deeper into my mind than ever before until I simply evaporated.

So there I was.

Just the …