Stress: It’s part of life and while we would love to live a “stress-free” life, it’s highly unlikely, if not impossible that you’ll ever get there. So, what we need to do is learn how to effectively manage the stress we do experience so that it doesn’t cause adverse effects on our health and well-being. This is possible.

What Exactly is Stress?

Is there such a thing as good stress or is it all bad and harmful? Stress is a state of mental or emotional strain resulting from demanding circumstances. It is a burst of energy that can create a lot of tension if not managed in a healthy way. 

Believe it or not, not all stress is necessarily bad. You likely have experienced stressful moments that have motivated you to meet specific goals or to rise to challenges. When we feel a certain level of stress, we often feel motivated to get tasks accomplished. Stress actually boosts memory and keeps us safe. 

Not all stress is necessarily bad.

Our body...

When we refer to “the self,” all sorts of terms may come up, words like self-identity, self-concept, self-image, self-esteem, and self-love. What’s the difference and how can we move towards becoming our best selves?

Self Identity

Let’s start with self-identity- this is who you are. Self-identity is the awareness of and identification with oneself as a separate individual, how you identify and define yourself. You would describe your identity with specific and selective traits, qualities, abilities, and characteristics that represent you. 

An example of a self-identity is perhaps a role that you play, such as mother or doctor, or perhaps a certain trait that encompasses who you are, such as reliable or lazy. You can identify as a particular sexual orientation like as bisexual or pansexual or as a gender like or unlike the one given to you at birth.

A person’s self-identity is not formed from birth but rather it is shaped through life. Family,...

With a new year just around the corner, we’ve been focusing on creating goals that will help us become better versions of ourselves, but let’s widen the view a bit more and talk about designing your life.

Yes, you can in fact be the designer of your life. You are the one in the driver’s seat, the author of your book, the creator of your future. 

You are the one in the driver’s seat, the author of your book, the creator of your future. 

Now, you may be thinking, but life is so unpredictable. How can you possibly plan for your future life when there are so many things you can’t control? What about those events that throw a curveball at your life and cause more than just a wrinkle in the best laid plans?

You’re right. Life is unpredictable and you cannot possibly plan for every curveball that life throws at you. In fact, that would be a pretty boring life, if you ask me! The greatest memories that I have happened when I hadn’t planned...

When we are feeling motivated, watch out! We are driven towards our goals, taking action, and doing what we need to to make sh*t happen. It usually happens when our creativity is sparked or we begin a new project. We have all these ideas and are excited to move towards the goal. It’s why New Year’s Resolutions are a thing. It’s that fresh start, where we have almost this blank slate ready to fill. 

We feel inspired and then we begin to take action and as the project wears on, we tend to not feel so inspired anymore. We step back, waiting for that feeling to return and when it doesn’t, we say we have lost motivation. It leads us to procrastination as we are just “waiting” to feel motivated again. We get hung up on what's blocking our way instead of finding solutions. Then, we are no longer driven to complete or meet the goal we set out to accomplish in the first place.

 Right now, you may be mulling over some resolutions that you’d...

Let’s talk about setting goals for personal development. Working towards specific goals will allow you to live your life with intention and these days, given all the unpredictability and the unknown of the world, it is imperative that you know where you are heading. Personal goals provide you with a compass because as they say, if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time!

We’ve talked before about becoming your best self and even if you are struggling with any number of mental health issues, your best self is who you are despite or perhaps because of your struggles. You see, you are unique, one-of-a-kind, and so your goals should be too. The direction you are going will be different from any of those people around you. 

Your goals are as unique as you are.

Which is exactly why it’s important to identify and set goals specific to your life and the life you want to be living. As humans, we naturally want our life to hold meaning, we need purpose and...

Being fully present is something that most of us moms seek to be but the fast-paced, do-more world we live in along with our own expectations of what it means to be “good enough” keeps us from actually being completely engaged in a single task at a time. We feel forced to multitask just to keep up and to feel any sort of accomplishment yet this often leaves us feeling disconnected and even more overwhelmed. Not being present moves us away from the sense of happiness we seek to feel.

Being present requires a focused engagement of every aspect of our being including the physical, mental, emotional and even the spiritual. This is not easy to do in these modern times, especially when we are up against the hustle culture that permeates our society. We are bombarded 24/7 with distractions and demands for our presence.

We owe it to ourselves and to those we love to learn how to be fully present in the here and now.

We resort to multitasking as a way to check off our to-do list...

Back in the day when I was filling out job applications as a teenager, I would get to the question about skills and qualifications, and I would freeze. I would ask my mom, who seemed to know me best at that time, “hey mom, what am I good at?” She’d ramble off a list and I’d dispute each one, and add maybe one or two that I agreed with to the application.

Later, as Google came around and my confidence grew a bit, I would google “strengths” when I got to that question, and readily have available a long list of skills and character traits to choose from I would write down which I think I bring to the table.

This past summer, I was reading a book called “Your Message Matters” by Jonathan Milligan. It’s all about identifying what you have to share with the world and finding your voice. In it, Milligan suggests to email ten people closest to you and ask them each for three words that describe you.

Are you showing up as your authentic...

Confidence is an attitude, a way of feeling and our feelings are influenced by the thoughts we think and the beliefs we hold but can we just think “I want to feel confident” and wish it into existence? Even though it would be nice, the short answer is “no.”  

So how exactly do you feel more confident? How do you increase the belief you have in yourself? The answer is you take action. You take action against that which you feel unconfident.

When I was starting my business, I had no idea what I needed to do. I had the education, the experience, and the background that would support building a successful business but frankly, I was at a loss. It all seemed way too overwhelming and because of that, I had no idea where to even begin.

I started following coaches on YouTube and on social media and they made it look so easy yet the doubts were rampant in my mind. The inner mean girl was loving that I stayed inside my comfort zone. I yearned for the...

If I asked you what habits you currently have, you may say that you brush your teeth every day, you park in the same spot at the office, you take the same route to the bank, you always have a salad with your dinner. 

Habits are the things you do without thinking because the actions have become so much part of you, you no longer question whether they are serving you. They just happen on auto-pilot.

Have you heard of such a thing as decision fatigue? That’s when you have made so many decisions, that you are actually fatigued. I’m not referring to big, life changing decisions, but rather decisions like what you are going to wear, which bowl you will eat your oatmeal from, whether you should pull out of the driveway before or after that car coming down the street passes you. 

These little, minute decisions add up to a point where we are actually tired from thinking so much. It’s why at the end of the day, despite having committed (for the hundredth time) to...

Every February, my husband and I fly off together to escape the Montana winter and to spend some days in the Floridian sunshine. But this year, I am taking this vacation solo.

My family thinks I'm having a mid-life crisis since I've never taken a vacation all by myself, aside from traveling back to the Philly area to visit my parents. My sister-in-law asked me if I was cheating on her brother, because why else would I want to go alone?!

Everyone is wondering why I decided to take this trip by myself this year and so let me give a bit of an explanation.

First, I am totally landlocked in Montana and spent every summer of my youth at the Jersey shore. I love the salty air and the feel of my feet in the sand. Not having this in at least 6 months has been hard on my spirit. I've gone longer without it in the past, but with the restrictions of COVID and extra anxiety that arose this past year, I NEEDED it!

Second, Jason was totally against travelling since we had our house on the market...