Progress is never linear. Life is rarely easy. Nothing is permanent; the one thing you can always count on is change. And while it matters what you do on the good days, it matters even more what you do on the hard days.

Is it easy (to get up at 4:45 am)? No.

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Do I like it (getting up at 4:45am)? No, I don't.

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But do I do it? Yes, I do. 😂

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It's not easy and it takes more sacrifice than most people realize. It doesn't just mean that I get up earlier in the morning, it also means I have to go to bed earlier so I can actually get up. I have to reverse engineer my life. If I don't go to bed on time, I can't wake up in the morning.

Why do I do it?

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​Because the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Mindset is everything! It can be what makes or breaks a new habit. It can be the thing that inspires you to start a new habit or it can prevent you from even considering it altogether.

When I watch my client’s transform, the main reason they are so successful is because they had a complete mindset shift. The mindset shift didn’t come immediately, they had already begun to be successful with making changes, but it was key to making those habits / changes stick.

I have certain things I do everyday that are non-negotiables for me. They’re like brushing my teeth, I don’t have to think about them, I just do them.

Life is full of ups and downs. Ask anyone and they will tell you they experience them regularly. It’s what you do when things are not going your way that can help you tap into your resilience.

At the beginning of my journey, if someone had started talking to me about creating sustainable habits my eyes would have probably glazed over and I wouldn’t have been able to hear a word they were saying.

I may not have been thinking about creating sustainable habits, but I did know I didn’t want to live this way anymore. Things absolutely had to change.

One of the questions that comes up for my clients most often is, how do you actually create a sustainable habit?

The short answer is, you figure out what you’re willing to do and then you do the thing.

It sounds simple. And, essentially, it is. But we are human beings and so we tend to complicate things. 😂

As Harry S Truman says, “Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.”

When I first started learning to manage my stress I don’t think I really even knew how stressed out, overwhelmed and burnt out I was. I just knew I felt like shit. I was angry, resentful, exhausted, and didn’t want to feel this way anymore.

It wasn’t until I started peeling back layer after layer that I could see what was going on and how bad things really were. It has taken me years and is still a work in progress. I’ve failed many times while constructing new sustainable habits. But those failures have helped me figure out how to structure my habits to be successful.

No matter where you go, you can't get away from that familiar coating of yellow that is everywhere right now. Just in case you didn't notice, allergy season is here. 🤧😂

I never suffered from allergies until I moved to the South. Spring in Atlanta meant constant congestion, sore throat, runny nose, sneezing, and coughing. As the season progressed, I would gradually get worse until I ended up with a sinus infection, bronchitis, and sometimes even walking pneumonia.

It made me dread one of the most beautiful seasons; I just wanted to hide inside.

I got a big response from last week's blog. So many people were noticing the fear starting to lift from their lives; like a heavy fog or blanket is being lifted off of you.

People were wondering what to do now that they noticed what an impact the pandemic and the last two years had on their nervous systems.

I can still recall how scary it was when Covid first entered our lives. For me, there was this level of fear and uncertainty that I hadn't known before. We were all under so much stress, from having to make major pivots at work, (if you still had a job), wanting your family to be safe and healthy, homeschooling if you had kids, lockdowns, supply chain issues; the list goes on and on.

What most of us didn't have the time or bandwidth to deal with was the stress, fear, and anxiety that we were under. We just had to make sure that we, and our families, made it through the basics each day, safely.

The underlying stress, fear, and anxiety took a toll on us all. We just weren't always able to see it for what it was right away. For me, it sometimes meant sleepless nights, eating more sweets, fatigue, and fear popping up in unusual places.

Playful energy wasn't always something that I could access. I was so stressed out all the time that I couldn't even comprehend the word play.

What I wanted more than anything was to be able to play. But why isn't play emphasized in life unless you are a kid? When did we forget how important it is to have play be a part of our life?

Play is important for us to be able to balance out the stress of our lives. It releases endorphins, improves the functionality of our brains, and stimulates creativity. It helps us to find more enjoyment in our lives while it also helps us relax. It reinvigorates your relationships and yourself!

When you think of rest what does it mean to you?

A lot of times when I ask clients this they respond by talking about getting plenty of sleep at night. What they don't often think about is the idea of slowing down, doing nothing, having no commitments, etc.

Society places great importance on being busy. Just take a look at current advertising. We see people who are accomplishing all the things, while raising a family, cooking gourmet meals, and pretty much anything else you can think of. They are the epitome of work/life balance, right?

One thing to remember is: resistance always comes up. I have been practicing yoga for 20 years and I still have days where I have to talk myself into getting started. There will always be resistance, it's what you do when the resistance comes up.

We all know it’s easy to show up on the days we feel good. But it’s a whole heck of a lot harder to show up on the days that we don’t.

That is where the magic is; in meeting yourself where you are each day. Showing up no matter what. It helps to build confidence in your body which in turn opens doors in your mind. You are creating opportunities for yourself that weren’t there before.

Gratitude is a powerful form of medicine. It can help you take a negative situation and put a positive spin on it.

When we express gratitude, what we appreciate grows and increases in value making the practice easier and easier.

You know that feeling when you are totally exhausted but you can’t sleep? That’s was me. I tried every trick in my arsenal to quiet my mind so I could get back to sleep; breathing exercises, body scan meditation, and a brain dump (writing what's on my mind to get it out of my head). Nothing was working; I just couldn't get my mind to quiet down.

At first I couldn’t figure out why I wasn’t sleeping. But then it hit me like a Mac truck; I had overextended myself.

It's so important when you want a change to actually be able to believe it can happen. You have to visualize what you want so you can move forward.

A client of mine wanted to lose weight. When we first started working on this change my client didn’t really believe she could lose the weight. She had been trying on and off to lose weight for years and had been unsuccessful. We had to address her mindset first so she could start to see the person she wanted to be. Once she saw herself in a new light the weight began to melt off.

Breathing is incredible because it is both a voluntary and an involuntary process. When we begin to pay attention to our breathing, and learn how to control it, we can begin to tap into our nervous system.

Slowing our breathing taps directly into our parasympathetic nervous system, also know as our rest, digest, and restore, which helps our body relax. Through the breath, we stimulate our vagus nerve, the nerve that runs from the brain down to the pelvic floor, which controls our heart, lungs, and digestive tract. Stimulation of the vagus nerve can help lower stress and anxiety in the body.

It is hard to get uncomfortable. It is easier to stay comfortable and do what we know. But the easy road isn't what will take us to new heights and allow us to grow.

Research actually shows that most people walk away from their resolutions sometime between January 12 and 17th. This is usually the time period when our willpower starts to wane. We are uncomfortable in our new habit and the old way, the easier way, starts to sound like it wasn't so bad after all.

While having a vision of who we want to be in the future can help inspire us and head us in the right direction, we have to get crystal clear on the small steps it will take us to get there.