My evening wind-down routine is one that I choose to keep very consistent. After a long day at work, I’m typically ready to get home and turn my brain off for a while. After I pick up my kids and give them all the snuggles, I enjoy watching them play for a while before doing anything else.

Meditation is an activity that I’ve incorporated into my daily routine with great  success. I’ve been incorporating this practice into my daily routine for several  months now. I’ve seen big changes in that time.  

What does it mean to properly meditate? Well for me, I view meditation as intentional pockets of peace throughout my day or week. I think I can speak for many people when I sayour lives are so busy and that we just do not have the time to sit and meditate.

When they said that college would be a whole lot of work and strain, they were serious. This is the lesson I learned this semester. Between making new friendships, adjusting to a new state and city, developing a stronger sense of independence, maintaining four different jobs/side hustles, and just doing my assignments, I found myself stumbling to my dorm each night with a sense of exhaustion,nly to realize that I still needed to eat dinner, take a shower, study for a test, read five chapters of a textbook, and do two loads of laundry. 

Did you know that sleep can heal trauma? I found this amazing podcast by Dr. Bernardo Huberman called the Huberman Lab. One of the shows was titled, “Essentials: Understand and Use Dreams to Learn and Forget”.

Something meaningful I’ve learned about my body recently is how it is constantly in a state of communication with me, especially regarding emotions and stress. For a long time, I had been experiencing tension in my shoulders and neck without really thinking about it.

Throughout my childhood, I was plagued by minute physical issues. Mild allergies to fruit, medication allergies, eczema, and small sprains or broken fingers. Then, in my senior year of high school, right when I needed my body the most, it gave out on me. 

Do you ever feel like you are just worn down? Like you don't know how to get through the day or even the week? You just feel like there isn't enough time or energy in the day to get the things done that you want to.

This month with the Hey I’m Here Squad, we talked about transitioning, such as from one activity to the next, with awareness by bringing attention to what we called the “ABCs.” The idea of the ABC practice is to bring Awareness to the five Bs (body, base, breath, brain, and boundary)in order to make an emotionally informed Choice. 

We all have instances where we feel fed up and simply burned out with daily life demands. Contrary to popular opinion, burnout can actually be a good thing when its power is harnessed productively. It is important for us to not put ourselves under fire intentionally or unnecessarily. Life has its way of putting us through the fire, but that does not mean we need to be burned out each day of our lives. 

Sitting in my personal finance class, I felt like my heart dropped to my toes. It was time for a very hard, very uncomfortable assignment: Making a personal budget.

Sitting in my personal finance class, I felt like my heart dropped to my toes. It was time for a very hard, very uncomfortable assignment: Making a personal budget.