My concept of “Hannah Approved” covers a lot of things: beauty, fitness, fun, and most importantly health and well-being. So I figured since my life is changing a lot, I might as well share with you so that I can inspire you guys to listen to your gut and follow your dreams. Im not going to do much more than give you an overview of what’s going on with me, since I don’t want to bore you. But, I do want to cover this because it could help many people.

So If you read my About page, you will come to find that I used to be a state champion in my early high school years. Although, however many people say “Stick with it” or “Wow, how amazing”, none of it will make me change my decision. Basically, I have been pondering the thought for the past 7 or so months of not continuing to run competitively. Why you ask? “But Hannah, you could get scholarships and keep getting state titles, who in the right mind would give something up like that?” If you’re thinking that, I first off want to let you know how my life was outside of running and winning competitions. IT SUCKED! You might not understand how thats even possible it you have never been in a situation like this, but the ONLY reason I started to run in the first place was because of a developing an eating disorder that turned running into my meaning for life. I couldn’t do anything else with my life other than focus on running and being as thin as possible. Thats all I’m going to say about the disorder since it’s such a sensitive topic to many people, but I will say how it negatively effected my life. So being thin brought up running in ways I would have never imagined causing me to think this was the way my life should be going, until I had a year long injury which shifted everything. Basically being gone for that long made all my obsessive thoughts and actions GO AWAY, and my happiness skyrocketed which had never happened since running began. Long story short, if you can see were this is going, not running competitively made my overall health/well-being 100% better. So of course I had to make that life switch for the better, even though it was hard to tell my coach and teammates. But I knew it was the right choice.

What does this have to do with helping you? Well, you can learn from this! If you are in a situation that is slowly “killing your health” but looks good on the outside and to your peers, GET OUT! I guarantee you it will only benefit your life! So all I’m saying is if you are hating your job, hobbies, or are depressed and angry, look around you and see if you need a change or a fresh start. Sorry for this deep Friday talk but its so important to me and I want it to help you! Hope this helps give some thought in to yo0ur life so you can make 2015 a great year!

I thought this picture (I took in HI about a year ago) really represents, to me at least, a clean and fresh start.