Category: Book review posts

Learn about some of the best books I have read lately.

Book review posts, Uncategorized

The Power of Habit

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“The Power of Habit” written by Charles Duhigg is among my favorite books I’ve read this year and among the most helpful books I have ever read. This book focused on the process of creating and modifying habits, habitual cues and rewards, and contained many interesting marketing examples shaped by habits: Pepsodent, Febreze, Target, foaming shampoo/toothpaste/laundry detergent, the response to Rosa Parks, AA, etc.

The habit cycle consists of the cue➡️routine➡️reward. If you use the same cue and provide the same reward, you can shift the routine and change the habit. Almost any behavior can be transformed if the cue and reward stay the same.

The basal ganglia (part of your brain) stores hundreds of habits we rely on every day. If the basal ganglia gets damaged, such as in those with Parkinson’s or Huntington’s disease, you may lose your habits.

If you want to change a habit, you must find an alternative routine, and your odds of success go up dramatically when you commit to changing as part of a group.

To modify a habit, you must decide to change it. You must consciously accept the hard work of identifying the cues and rewards that drive the habit’s routines and find alternatives. You must know you have control and be self-conscious enough to use it.”

Charles Duhigg

Almost all of the patterns that exist in our lives – how we eat, sleep, talk to people, spend our time, spend our money – are habits. You have the freedom and responsibility to change these habits.

Once you understand that habits can be rebuilt, the power of habit becomes easier to grasp, and the only option left is to get to work.

Charles Duhigg

Almost all habitual cues fit into one of five categories: location, time, emotional state, other people, and the immediately preceding action.

Here are some common habits (related to eating) that I can think of that fall into these categories:

Location: eating popcorn at a movie theater, drinking at a bar, eating cake at a birthday party

Time: eating breakfast, lunch, or supper around the same time each day, even if you aren’t actually hungry

Emotional state: feeling stressed or sad can result in binge-eating junk food

Other people: being surrounded by people at parties and social events may urge you to eat or drink

Immediately preceding action: eating dessert or something sweet after a meal because it is your way of ending the meal

❗❗One of the most interesting stories was about the history of Febreze, which was initially manufactured to destroy odors. Researchers provided free bottles to households with pets, and upon following up with them months later, found that people couldn’t detect most of the bad smells in their homes because they became desensitized. The product’s cue was hidden from those who needed it most, so Febreze ended up in the back of a closet. Febreze then changed to a distinct scent and was positioned as a reward: the nice smell that occurs at the end of a cleaning routine. The irony is that a product manufactured to destroy odors was transformed into the opposite: an air freshener used as the finishing touch when things are already clean!❗❗

Pepsodent increased awareness of tooth film as a cue to become the best-selling toothpaste for more than 30 years. The reward was marketed as beautiful teeth. Mint oil and other chemicals were used to create a cool, tingling sensation on the tongue and gums. People craved that irritation, and although it doesn’t make the product work any better, it convinces people that it’s doing the job.

Later, Crest became the top seller by featuring fluoride, which was the first ingredient in toothpaste that actually made it effective at fighting cavities.

Foaming is a huge reward. Shampoo, toothpaste, and laundry detergent often contain foaming agents. Although there’s no cleaning benefit, once the customer starts expecting that foam, the habit starts growing.

Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is a method for attacking the habits that surround alcohol use. AA forces people to identify the cues and rewards that encourage their alcoholic habits and then helps them find new behaviors.

It’s not obvious from the way the 12 steps are written, but to complete those steps, someone has to create a list of all the triggers for their alcoholic urges.

J. Scott Tonigan

Then, AA asks alcoholics to search for the rewards they get from alcohol: escape, relaxation, companionship, the blunting of anxieties, and an opportunity for emotional release.

If order to offer alcoholics the same rewards they get at a bar, AA has built a system of meetings and companionship – “the sponsor” each member works with along with frequent meetings.

“Hey Ya!” by Outkast was a flop at first. Many people changed the radio station when it came on. It needed to become part of an established listening habit to become a hit, so it was sandwiched between songs that were already popular, and it grew in popularity.

The author discussed that the response to Rosa Parks and societal change was the result of social ties across dozens of groups.

Movements don’t emerge because everyone suddenly decides to face the same direction at once. They rely on social patterns that begin as the habits of friendship, grow through the habits of communities, and are sustained by new habits that change participants’ sense of self.

Charles Duhigg

Target extensively tracks customers’ buying habits. Every person has a permanent Guest ID #, and Target analyzes shopping habits, demographics, age, marital status, kids, how far from the store the customer lives, websites visited, etc.

To read more about habits and my habits journey, check out:

All About Atomic Habits + My Habits Journey

A podcast I highly recommend that focuses on habits is Sad to Savage with Shelby Sacco.

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

Out of Office- Reflecting on How We Work

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“Out of Office” was published in 2021 and written by Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen. This book was among my top 20 favorite books I read in 2022 and focused on the transition to white-collar remote work during the pandemic, particularly on HOW we will work.

“We worship work. We remain faithful to it because we want to support ourselves and our families, but it’s become more than a simple means of providing needs. Work has taken on such a place of primacy in our lives that it has subsumed our identities, diluted our friendships, and disconnected us from our communities.”

This is increasingly evident in our society. Upon first meeting someone, the most common question asked is “What do you do?” as in, “What do you do for work?” Your identity is whittled down to what you do for work, and someone’s opinion of your work often impacts whether or not the conversation continues and friendship ensues. This is dangerous, especially when people lose their jobs or retire and don’t have an identity outside of work.

Who would you be if work ceased to be the axis of your life? How would your relationships with friends and family change? What role would you serve within your community at large? What hobbies would you pursue? We are so conditioned to approach our lives as something to squeeze in around work.

Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen

I once worked for a boss who planned his work day around his desire to sleep longer, have a productive morning before work, and leave in the late afternoon for yoga or rock climbing. Although I thought it was odd, it became clear to me that he truly had a balance and planned work around his life, not life around his work.

The authors recommended auditing how we spend our time working and whether things need to be done during the standard work hours, getting rid of meetings that aren’t necessary and exploring asynchronous ways of communicating, considering four-day work weeks, setting boundaries to protect time away from work, dismantling any organizational monoculture, leveling the hybrid work playing field, and giving yourself space to explore hobbies and interests and commit to them.

The authors identified and expanded upon four areas critical to achieving ideal work-life balance: flexibility, culture, technology, and community and provided examples of other companies’ approaches to remote work, flexible scheduling, and company culture. This book was particularly appealing to me because, during the pandemic, I have had different jobs and made transitions. One job turned fully remote for a time, one job was in person every day, and one job was a hybrid environment, which appeals to me the most.

The pandemic taught employees and businesses about flexibility. Employees who were told that positions couldn’t be done remotely prior to the pandemic suddenly were required or able to be done remotely. Businesses and employees were challenged to maintain the culture or build a culture outside of the office environment, using technology and community.

“This example from the retail world should be instructive: if you have only enough employees to barely get the work done as is, you’ve engineered a scenario in which employees may have theoretical permission to take time off, but understand that they’ll shoulder the burden of that time off in some way. Either they try to keep doing part of their work while on leave, a colleague takes on an even larger work burden, or a portion of essential work goes undone, slowing everyone on a team.”

I have witnessed this in different roles. At its worst, due to the workload and demands, I worked part-time during a medical leave and regularly made up for time that I was sick. I felt discouraged from taking time off due to the stress of coming back to a fuller plate. I am grateful to have found collaboration and cross-training on a team.

Management is used as a way to reward workers who distinguish themselves for their productivity. As a recent study by Harvard Business Review pointed out, the skills associated with high productivity- including knowledge and expertise, driving for results, taking initiative- are almost all indications of INDIVIDUAL-ORIENTED competencies. Management requires skills that are OTHER-ORIENTED: being open to feedback, supporting colleagues’ development, communicating well, and having good interpersonal skills.

Charlie Warzel and Anne Helen Petersen

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals + All About Productivity

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“Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals” was written by Oliver Burkeman, published in 2021, was named after the concept of an average lifetime being just 4000 weeks, and is one of the most useful books I have ever read.

If you succeed in getting things done on your to-do list, more things will inevitably seem important, meaningful, or obligatory. Getting things done won’t generally result in the feeling of having “enough time” – the demands will increase to offset any benefits. You’ll be creating more things to do.

Oliver Burkemann

The more you believe you might succeed in “fitting everything in,” the more commitments you naturally take on, and the less you feel the need to ask whether each new commitment is truly worthy of a portion of your time – and so your days inevitably fill with more activities you don’t especially value. This is why it is SO important to learn how to say NO to obligations without feeling guilt, pressure, or obligation.

People complain that they no longer have “time to read,” but the reality, as the novelist Tim Parks has pointed out, is rarely that they can’t locate an empty half hour in the course of the day. What they mean is that when they do find time and use it to try to read, they’re impatient to give themselves to the task because they’re inclined to interruption. Social media and what we think of as “distractions” aren’t the ultimate cause of our being distracted. They’re just the places we go to seek relief from the discomfort of confronting limitation.

Tim Parks

When you get tremendously efficient at answering e-mail, all that happens is you get more e-mail.

“Nobody ever really gets four thousand weeks in which to live – not only because you might end up with fewer than that, but because in reality you never GET a single week, in the sense of being able to guarantee that it will arrive, or that you’ll be in a position to use it precisely as you wish.”

“We treat our plans as though they are a lasso, thrown from the present around the future, in order to bring it under our command. A plan is an expression of your current thoughts about how you’d ideally like to deploy your modest influence over the future. The future, of course, is under no obligation to comply.”

Oliver Burkemann

“The day will never arrive when you finally have everything under control—when the flood of emails has been contained; when your to-do lists have stopped getting longer; when you’re meeting all your obligations at work and in your home life; when nobody’s angry with you for missing a deadline or dropping the ball; and when the fully optimized person you’ve become can turn, at long last, to the things life is really supposed to be about. Let’s start by admitting defeat: none of this is ever going to happen.”

Oliver Burkemann

Spending at least some of your time “wastefully,” focused solely on the pleasure of the experience, is the only way NOT to waste it – to be truly at leisure, rather than covertly engaged in future-focused self-improvement. In order to most fully inhabit the only life you ever get, you have to refrain from using every spare hour for personal growth.

Tips: focus on one big project at a time, keep an open and closed to-do list with a fixed # of entries to have on your current to-do list, establish predetermined time boundaries for your daily work, accept that you can’t dedicate as much time as you want to everything and decide in advance what to not give as much effort to in your life, seek out novelty in the mundane and pay more attention in every moment, and practice doing nothing.

When in doubt, do the next most necessary thing.

Five questions to consider:

1. Where in your life or your work are you currently pursuing comfort, when what’s called for is a little discomfort? We naturally tend to make decisions about our daily use of time that prioritize anxiety-avoidance.

2. Are you holding yourself to, and judging yourself by, standards of productivity or performance that are impossible to meet?

3. In what ways have you yet to accept the fact that you are who you are, not the person you think you ought to be? Once you no longer feel the stifling pressure to become a particular kind of person, you can confront the personality/strengths, weaknesses/talents, and enthusiasm you find yourself with and follow where they lead.

4. In which areas of your life are you still holding back until you feel like you know what you’re doing?

5. How would you spend your days differently if you didn’t care so much about seeing your actions reach fruition?

If you want to learn or hear more, Oliver Burkemann has been featured on many podcasts on Spotify! I highly recommend listening to this link to a Talks at Google YouTube video with Oliver Burkemann:

This book is one of the best books I have read and I highly recommend it!

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

All About Sleep – Why We Sleep

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“Why We Sleep” written by Matthew Walker, PhD was one of my top 20 books I read in 2022. Matthew Walker, PhD is a professor of neuroscience and psychology at UC Berkeley and director of its Sleep and Imaging Lab. He has published more than a hundred scientific studies. This book was PACKED with information, and I will share some of the research I found most fascinating.

Contrary to what most people believe, you cannot “catch up” on sleep by sleeping in on the weekends. It takes much longer, and consistent sleep is vital. Getting too little sleep across the adult life span significantly increases your risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease and increases the risk of cancer development. Also, the less you sleep, the more you are likely to eat, and you increase your probability of gaining weight and developing Type 2 diabetes.

Poor sleep quality increases the risk of cancer development, and, if cancer is established, provides a virulent fertilizer for its rapid and more rampant growth.

Matthew Walker, PhD

Dolphins, whales, and some birds can sleep with half a brain at a time and remain alert with the other half! In flocks of birds, with the exception of the birds at the end of the line, the rest of the group will allow both halves of the brain to indulge in sleep, while the end of the line has 1/2 brain sleeping and 1/2 alert for threat detection! Wow!

We use the term “half-life” when discussing a drug’s efficacy (length of time it takes for the body to remove 50% of a drug’s concentration). Caffeine has an average half-life of 5-7 hours, so any caffeine after noon will impact your sleep!

Decaffeinated does NOT mean uncaffeinated. One cup of decaf usually contains 15-30% of the dose of a regular cup of coffee!

The different sleep stages play different roles in information processing. The wake state is focused on reception – experiencing and constantly learning the world around you. The NREM sleep state is focused on reflection – storing and strengthening those raw ingredients of new facts and skills. The REM state is focused on integration – interconnecting these raw ingredients with each other and with past experiences, resulting in innovative insights and problem-solving abilities.

Some signs of insufficient sleep include not being able to get up on time without an alarm, having to read and reread sentences at your computer, and having standard ADHD symptoms of irritableness, moodiness, being more distractable and unfocused during the day, and having mental health instability.

Vehicle accidents caused by drowsy driving exceed those caused by alcohol and drugs combined! Driving drowsy is worse than driving drunk in that being drunk results in late response times in braking and maneuvering, whereas falling asleep results in not reacting altogether.

5 key factors have powerfully changed how much and how well we sleep: constant electric light/LED light, regularized temperature, caffeine, alcohol, and a legacy of punching time cards. This book mentioned that Edina, MN schools were one of the first to experiment with shifting the start time and reported much higher scores on SATs. Other schools have reported better GPAs.

This book also briefly discussed some sleep disorders such as insomnia and narcolepsy. Fatal familial insomnia is a rare sleep disorder caused by a mutation on chromosome 20, which makes the protein insoluble. When it converts, the protein causes plaque to form in the thalamus, which is the region responsible for the regulation of sleep. Fatal familial insomnia has no treatments or cures! I did find it interesting that Prazosin, a medication used to treat high blood pressure, is used in the treatment of repetitive trauma nightmares.

Tips for better sleep:

  1. Stick to a sleep schedule. Wake up and go to bed at the same time each day, including weekends.
  2. Try to exercise at least 30 minutes on most days but not later than 2 or 3 hours before your bedtime.
  3. Avoid caffeine in the afternoons/evenings and avoid nicotine.
  4. Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed. Heavy alcohol ingestion robs you of REM sleep and disrupts your breathing at night.
  5. Avoid large meals and beverages late at night.
  6. If possible, avoid medications that delay or disrupt your sleep. Some commonly prescribed heart, blood pressure, and asthma medications, as well as some over-the-counter and herbal remedies for coughs, colds, and allergies can disrupt sleep patterns. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist if you are having trouble sleeping to see if any of your medications may be contributing.
  7. Don’t take naps after 3 p.m.
  8. Relax and unwind before bed. A relaxing routine, such as reading or listening to music, should be part of your nightly routine.
  9. Take a hot bath before bed. The drop in body temperature after getting out of the bath may help you feel sleepy.
  10. Your bedroom should be dark, cool, and gadget-free.
  11. Get sunlight exposure during the day. Daylight is key to regulating daily sleep patterns.
  12. Don’t lie in bed awake. If you can’t fall asleep after 20 minutes, get up and do a relaxing activity until you feel sleepy. The anxiety of not being able to sleep can make it harder to fall asleep.

More information at: https://www.nia.nih.gov/health/good-nights-sleep

I learned SO much from this book, and I am just covering the tip of the iceberg. I definitely don’t currently practice all of the tips mentioned in this book, but I look forward to implementing some of them for better sleep and more energy!

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

No Such Thing As Normal

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“No Such Thing As Normal” was written by Bryony Gordon, founder of Mental Health Mates in the UK, an organization that hosts walking meet-ups to talk about mental health. I am grateful that I generally don’t struggle with mental health, but I still gained insights from this book.

**WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK OF YOU IS NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS. WHAT OTHER PEOPLE DO IS NOT YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.**

Bryony Gordon

I wish I had read this sooner! Also, if someone tells you or shows you who they are, and you don’t like it, do NOT waste time and energy trying to make them like you. The single most important factor for your well-being is not what other people think of you; it is what you think of yourself.

Worrying about the thing is almost always worse than the thing itself. This is SO true!

Instead of asking yourself “What if it all goes wrong?” ask yourself “What if it all goes right?”

Put your own mask on before attempting to help anyone else with theirs. Take care of yourself. However, if you have time to help others, it’s very hard to feel useless when you are being useful.

Things will get better when you do the work. Exercise can be one of the most important tools for helping mental illness. How to get through bad days: make a plan for each day, contact at least one person, go outside, be patient, and think about what you CAN control.

Never say anything to yourself you would not say to someone else.

Tips for better sleep: get into a routine, read before bed, and do breathing exercises.

Most people with mental health issues have to jump through hoops to get anywhere near treatment. So perhaps we should stop marginalizing and stereotyping them as weak and instead recognize them for their absolutely mind-bending strength.

There is no such thing as normal.

There were SO many resources provided in this book. However, they were all in the UK since the author lives in the UK.

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

All About High Performance Habits

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I recently read “High Performance Habits” written by Brendon Burchard, the world’s leading high performance coach and one of the most watched, quoted, and followed personal development trainers in history. I highly recommend this book!

The gist of this book is that, to become a high performer, you must seek clarity, generate energy, raise necessity, increase productivity, develop influence, and demonstrate courage.

Seek clarity on who you want to be, how you want to interact with others, what you want, and what will bring you the greatest meaning. As every project begins, ask yourself: “What kind of person do I want to be while I’m doing this? How should I treat others? What are my intentions and objectives? What can I focus on that will bring me a sense of connection and fulfillment? Consistently seek clarity.”

Generate energy so that you can maintain focus, effort, and well-being.

If you want to feel more energized, creative, and effective at work – and still leave work with enough oomph for the ‘life’ part, the ideal breakpoint is to stop your work and give your mind and body a break every 45-60 minutes.”

Brendon Burchard

Get up, walk around, and fill up your water.

If the demands of your job or life require you to learn fast, deal with stress, be alert, pay attention, remember important things, and keep a positive mood, then you must take exercise more seriously. If you care about your contribution to the world, you’ll care about yourself.”

Brendon Burchard

Raise necessity. For exceptional performance, know your whys – internal and external. Internal whys may include your identity, your standards, and your obsessions. External whys may include real deadlines, your social duty, and your sense of obligation and purpose. To raise necessity:

  • High necessity= “I feel a deep emotional drive and commitment to succeeding, and it consistently forces me to work hard, stay disciplined, and push myself.”
  • Know who needs your A game. With multiple priorities, consider “Who needs me on my A game the most right now?”
  • “Have I associated the important activities of my day with my identity and my sense of obligation?”

Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

Pablo Picasso

Increase productivity in your primary field of interest. Slow down, be more strategic, and say no more often. Take ownership of your day.

Develop influence with those around you. Develop a positive support network. People support what they create. Ask people what they want, how they’d like to work together, and what outcomes they care about.

To gain influence with others, teach them how to think about themselves, others, and the world; challenge them to develop their character, connections, and contributions; and role model the values you wish to see them embody. High performers have discovered that it is by connecting with others that they learn more about themselves and the world.

Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.

Amy Poehler

Demonstrate courage by expressing your ideas and taking action despite uncertainty. You are capable of remarkable things that you could never foretell and will never discover without taking action.” What leaps could you take now?

Passion + Growth + Contribution = Personal Satisfaction

Enthusiasm + Connection + Satisfaction + Coherence = Meaning

If you want to be a high performer, show up and bring the joy. High performers cultivate joy by how they think, what they focus on, and how they engage in and reflect on their days.

When people say “I can’t,” it usually means “I am unwilling to do the long-term training and conditioning necessary to achieve that.” Everything is trainable.

High performers are learners, and their belief that they can learn what is necessary to win in the future gives them as much confidence as their current skillsets.”

Brendon Burchard

Between each task in your day, remember this: *RELEASE TENSION, SET INTENTION*

Don’t bring tension to all future aspects of your day. How many times have we been guilty of having a rough morning and carrying it into all aspects of our day? Have you had a conversation or meeting that didn’t pan out the way you wanted it to and resulted in you carrying frustration or resentment toward those involved? Have you had a rough day at work and carried it into your relationships at home?

High performers have shaped their identity by conscious will and have aligned their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to support that identity.

Brendon Burchard

Superior-minded people are certain they are better, more capable, and more deserving, and it’s that certainty that closes their minds to learning, connection with others, and growth. Stay humble. If you’re going to maintain high performance, you need to avoid the traps of superiority, dissatisfaction, and neglect.

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

The Burnout Epidemic + What Can Be Done

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“The Burnout Epidemic: The Rise of Chronic Stress and How We Can Fix It” by Jennifer Moss was among my top 20 favorite books I read in 2022. Jennifer Moss is an award-winning journalist, author and international public speaker.

Packed with insightful research and data, this book examined what causes burnout and what organizations can do to prevent it, how companies can build an anti-burnout strategy, and how leaders can measure burnout in their own organizations. I will note that this book surprisingly focused more on organizations and leaders instead of the typical self-care ideas.

  • There are 6 causes of burnout:
    • Workload
    • Perceived lack of control
    • Lack of reward or recognition
    • Poor work relationships
    • Lack of fairness
    • Values mismatch

Leaders should ask themselves “How do we create a better, healthier workplace for people so they don’t burn out?” “Empathy drives great leadership. If that tenet is at the root of our decision making, we are more likely to prevent burnout because the pro-social payoffs are plenty.”

Jennifer Moss

MOTIVATION factors include challenging work, recognition for one’s achievements, responsibility, the opportunity to do something meaningful, involvement in decision making, and a sense of importance to the organization.

HYGIENE factors include salary, work conditions, company policy and administration, supervision, working relationships, and status and security.

“Often, employees don’t recognize when an organization has good hygiene, but bad hygiene can cause a major distraction.”

Jennifer Moss

Tips for leaders to help avoid burnout: focus on strengths, increase training, provide resources and support, give everyone a voice to share concerns or ideas, recognize hard work, and check in frequently but don’t micromanage.

Perfectionists (me!): stop trying to control everything, understand the difference between self-knowledge and self-awareness, accept help, and take care of yourselves so that you can take care of others.

In cases of workload burnout, ask yourself: “Is what I’m doing helping or harming me? Do I continue to raise my hand even though I know I should focus on accomplishing my current workload? Do I communicate to others when I feel like it’s too much? Do I delegate well? Have I identified what gives me energy and what drains me? Do I manage my distractions? Do I have outside interests or do I give my life to work? Do I have a close friend at work I can lean on for support?”

Working from home at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was tough. I was suddenly working and quarantining in my small one-bedroom apartment at the time, and it was hard to separate work life from my home life since I was always home. The couch I sat on to read or watch tv was the same seat I sat on to work all day. As client demands increased, and training a colleague from home was not an option, my workload continued to pile up. There were many times I worked all day, took a break for supper, and then worked at night to keep up with the new demands. Without a social life or many hobbies, and with businesses closed, my work was my life. Some days I felt like I didn’t do anything exciting or anything for MYSELF; when I reflected on my day, all I could think about was work. My perception of my day was solely focused on my reflection of work that day.

I knew I needed a change, so eventually, I started focusing on daily habits or doing something for myself each day. I started with reading every day, later added listening to a podcast each day, and eventually added exercising each day. With businesses closed, I started walking on a walking path near my apartment to exercise each day, and on the walking path, I made a nearby friend who happened to work at the same company as I did! We were able to meet and go on walks for 3-5 miles most evenings. Getting out in nature while socializing quickly became the best part of my days and the best form of stress relief.

In 2022, I had focused extensively on forming daily habits. It was a life-changing year, and it helped me to cultivate passions outside of work. Sure, work was very stressful at times, but I took pride in looking back on my days knowing that I had done several things for ME. Through some career changes, I am also grateful to have found an organization that is invested in preventing employee burnout.

Some things are out of your control, but YOU can and should take action on the things that ARE in your control to prevent burnout.

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

Embrace Your Almost + You Are On Time for Your Own Life

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“Embrace Your Almost” written by Jordan Lee Dooley was one of my top 20 books of 2022.  Jordan is the host of the SHE podcast and owner of SoulScripts, a words company known for its phrase “Your brokenness is welcome here.” Using examples such as growing a garden, pregnancy loss, closing a business, moving, and a change in career, this book contained helpful perspectives about the almost-but-not-quite experiences we face.

“Every struggle and setback along the way made me the woman I am today. Without almost-but-not-quite experiences, I might never have slowed down, reconsidered what matters to me, developed deeper empathy, and refocused on my priorities.”

Jordan Lee Dooley

Years ago, I was in an extensive hiring process for over seven months for a career I was very excited about. I spent seven months envisioning this new life moving across the country, working long hours, and being in an honorable position. The role didn’t come to fruition, and I was heartbroken and frustrated. After having read and learned more about it, I frequently reflect about my experience and am grateful that it didn’t work out. The setback allowed me to slow down, reconsider my priorities, and prioritize what is best for me and my family. I now have a job I have wanted for years, a great work-life balance, and was able to stay in Minnesota with my husband and family.

Sometimes when we find ourselves stuck between where we started and where we want to be, we focus so much on the life we WANT to have that we fail to appreciate the one we DO have. We can be successful and create beautiful lives EVEN when a specific goal or dream takes longer to achieve or doesn’t work out exactly how we planned. We just have to look at success differently.

Life is more like a garden to tend than a game to win. One of my favorite quotes is “Bloom where you are planted.” In the face of disappointment, ask yourself: “What do I truly want? Why do I want it? How am I going to steward it?” If you’re letting go of a dream, identify what matters most and why, evaluate and seek counsel, and make a plan for the open space on your plate. Are there things you’ve always wanted to do but never had time for?

Maybe the secret to contentment isn’t found when we get something we want easily and on the first try. Instead, maybe contentment grows in all the hard moments that break us down along the way.

Jordan Lee Dooley

Unexpected gains come out of difficult experiences:

  1. empathy
  2. patience
  3. clarity (pause and reconsider what matters)
  4. discernment (what’s worth your time/which options align with your values/who you’re willing to trust or listen to)
  5. intentionality

Do you ever believe the lie that when you get “here” or “there,” you’ll finally be successful – only to realize you’re chasing a moving target? Do you ever have a hard time discerning which dreams are truly yours, which just sound fun, and which are the result of pressure that society or someone else has put on you? We often only get clarity through adversity. Sometimes what looks like a setback can actually be a setup.

It’s easy to fall into the comparison trap. We see people are “ahead” of us in terms of marriage, children, home ownership, careers, finances, health, etc. The author discussed with her friends and found “just as I felt behind in one area of life, women all around me felt behind in another area.” This is eye-opening. Plus, the sense of having it all and having it all together can shatter in the blink of an eye.

The comparison trap reminded me of a podcast episode I recently listened to, Your Mind Matters. The episode was titled “You are on time for your own life.”

“Just because your life doesn’t look like someone else’s doesn’t mean that you are falling behind, doesn’t mean that you aren’t accomplishing enough, doesn’t mean that you are doomed, doesn’t mean that you are setting yourself up for failure. It just means that someone else’s journey doesn’t look like yours and that’s okay.”

“Your Mind Matters podcast”

How boring would it be if your life looked exactly like everyone else’s? How boring would it be if you got exactly what you wanted when you wanted it? You would get bored so quickly! You are on time for your own life. Someone else’s life timeline and accomplishments have nothing to do with you.

This resonates with me. Growing up, I had determined timelines in mind for when I would get married, when I would have an established long-term career, when I would have kids, etc. I didn’t meet any of those timelines and fell into the comparison trap because others I grew up with or graduated with had accomplished those things. I felt behind in life. After reflecting, I am grateful for the timing I have experienced. I had different priorities than my preset timelines and experienced exponential learning and personal growth along the way.

This was an eye-opening Christian book that caused me to reflect on some of my almost-but-not-quite experiences and how they shaped who I am and brought clarity to my life and priorities.

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

Brilliant Insights From “Tribe of Mentors” by Timothy Ferriss + My Mentor

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One of my favorite books from 2022 was Tribe of Mentors by Timothy Ferriss. Tim tracked down more than 100 experts to navigate life and included nearly 600 pages of their recommendations. I have always tried to take away at least one thing from one person (the author) with each book I’ve read, so having over 100 people offer input in this book was amazing!

One piece of advice that SO many mentors gave that changed their lives was to learn how to say NO without guilt, pressure, or obligation. This is relevant to work, social outings, opportunities, and every other aspect of life.

This is a lesson that so many people could find useful. In the past, I had often felt overwhelmed with obligations, and now I am more careful with how I spend my time and energy and whom I spend my time with.

“Busy is a decision. You don’t find the time to do something. You make the time to do things.”

Debbie Millman

This was a lesson increasingly evident with the COVID-19 pandemic. Finding ourselves with extra time due to the lack of social events, commute, and, for some, their jobs, did not always result in doing the things we had been procrastinating on that we had always said we would do “if we had more time.” I think COVID-19 really taught us what our priorities are with our time.

from Debbie Millman- Career questions to ask yourself: Am I spending enough time on looking for, finding, and working toward a great job? Am I constantly refining and improving my skills? What can I continue to get better and more competitive at? Do I believe that I am working harder than everyone else? If not, what else can I be doing? What are the people who are competing with me doing that I’m not doing?

from Arianna Huffington- “Burnout is not the price you have to pay for success.” When we prioritize our well-being, our performance goes up across the board.

When you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, ask yourself these questions: Sleep? Exercise? Healthy food? Am I resentful because I’m not setting or holding a boundary?

Brene Brown

from Leo Babauta- “Don’t try to find your passion… if you continue to optimize your mastery, you’ll eventually arrive at your passion.” “Make yourself proud.” We spend too much time trying to please everyone and we forget that it’s all already within.

from Jerome Jarre- “Promoting unethical or unhealthy companies for $ is not success. It’s corruption of your belief system and legacy.” He turned down a $1 million Snapchat series contract to promote Sour Patch Kids!

This is admirable. It bothers me when I see influencers promote items that they likely don’t personally use. Going against your belief system and promoting products you don’t use but are paid to promote is not influencing; it is dishonest and inauthentic.

“Don’t let the weight of fear weigh down the joy of curiosity.”

Jerome Jarre

from Mark Bell- “Either you’re in, or you’re in the way.” Often, we chase after people who aren’t “in” and don’t fit into our lives or business. We waste time with these people when our focus should be on the people who are in.”

“Think of your time like a jar, your priorities as rocks, and everything else as pebbles or sand.” Are you going to fill it with your rocks or let others fill it with theirs? Schedule specific blocks of time in advance for your rocks. Learn to say no. You don’t owe anyone lengthy explanations.

David Houston

from Scott Belsky- “I am always surprised by how lazy people are when making serious decisions about their careers. Join a team not for what it is, but for what you think you can help it become. You must seize the opportunities when they present themselves, not when they are convenient or obvious. The only way to cultivate your own luck is to be more flexible (you’ll need to give up something for the right opportunity), humble (timing is out of your control), and gracious (when you see it, seize it!). Life’s greatest opportunities run on their schedule, not yours.”

This really resonated with me. We often wait for the “perfect” time to make a change: the perfect time to change jobs, the perfect time to have kids, the perfect time to start a hobby or start working out… The perfect time will never arrive. We need to make sacrifices and take opportunities as they come.

from Dr. Gabor Mate- “Just say no” is the least helpful advice one can say to a person caught up in any addiction. If you want to help people, ask why they are in so much pain that they are driven to escape it through ultimately self-harming habits or substances. Then support them in healing the trauma, a process that starts with non-judgmental curiosity and compassion.”

I highly recommend this book! The best outcome is that everyone will find different things that speak to them!

One of my mentors is my former college professor/advisor/work study supervisor, Dr. DeWitt. He helped guide me through many challenges of college and helped me in my career discernment process. He really shaped who I am today.

Wit from Dr. DeWitt: Dr. DeWitt ended every class with “Any questions, concerns, or editorial comments?”

Although many of us found this ending to be solely entertaining, I also found it to be a sign of a great leader. With this ending, he showed that he was open to questions, he was open to feedback, and he was open to learning or being corrected with editorial comments. We should all strive to be open to questions, feedback, learning, and being corrected, and this remark has resonated with me since I first heard it.

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!

Book review posts, Uncategorized

All About Atomic Habits + My Habits Journey

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Year after year, I set lofty new year’s resolutions, such as going to the gym 6 times each week, even if I hadn’t been going regularly prior to January. I was often feeling disappointed and ashamed by March. In 2022, I decided to focus on forming daily habits and use a habit tracker (I used the habit tracker found in the Silk&Sonder monthly planners).

Each month, I tracked habits, reflected on which habits were no longer serving me, and sometimes added more habits to strive for. By the end of the year, I was focusing on several daily habits: taking my temperature at 5 a.m. every day for future fertility tracking purposes, reading 22+ minutes each day, listening to a podcast each day, playing brain cognition games on the Lumosity and Elevate apps each day, doing a 10-minute ab workout + 10 pushups each day, 22+ minutes walking/running each day, doing dishes before bed each day, writing in my One Line A Day journal each day, and completing my Silk&Sonder daily affirmation/writing prompt.

Honestly, it was a life-changing year, and although I wasn’t perfect every single month, I managed to complete some habits every single day of 2022: reading 22+ minutes each day, walking/running 22+ minutes each day, listening to a podcast each day, Silk&Sonder daily affirmations, doing dishes before bed each day, and writing in my One Line A Day journal each day. Here is a sample of my habit tracker:

I surprisingly didn’t read Atomic Habits by James Clear until November, and it was very educational and helpful! James Clear is an author and speaker focused on habits, decision-making, and continuous improvement. His website (www.jamesclear.com) receives millions of visitors each month, hundreds of thousands subscribe to his newsletter, and he speaks at Fortune 500 companies and is the creator of The Habits Academy.

Your habits can compound for or against you. Productivity compounds. Stress compounds. Knowledge compounds. Negative thoughts compound. Relationships compound. Outrage compounds.

Ultimately, it is your commitment to the PROCESS that will determine your PROGRESS. The process of building a habit can be divided into simple steps: cue, craving, response, and reward. The 4 laws of behavior change are: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. One effective way to build a habit is to try habit stacking: after I (current habit), I will (new habit) OR get two things done at once.

Ex: listen to a podcast while driving/cooking/getting ready for the day/cleaning/working out.

Many people begin the process of changing their habits by focusing on WHAT they want to achieve, which leads to outcome-based habits. The alternative is to build identity-based habits, which focus on WHO we wish to become.

Ex: The goal is not to read a book; it is to become a reader. The goal is not to run a marathon; it is to become a runner.

Your behaviors are usually a reflection of your identity. What you do is an indication of the type of person you believe that you are – either consciously or unconsciously. You have the power to change your beliefs about yourself and change the identity you want to reinforce today with the habits you choose today. You become your habits.

Consider this: “Does the behavior help me become the type of person I wish to be? Does this habit cast a vote for or against my identity?”

The greatest threat to success is not failure but boredom. We get bored with habits because they stop delighting us. There will be days when you feel like quitting. Professionals stick to the schedule. Amateurs let life get in the way. Professionals know what is important to them and work toward it with purpose. Amateurs get pulled off course by the urgencies of life.

I have found habit tracking to be useful. It creates a visual cue that reminds me to act, it is motivating to see my progress, and I don’t want to break the streak. There were many days in 2022 that I didn’t feel like walking, reading, etc., but I knew that I had a perfect streak with those habits and did not want to ruin it.

I also periodically check in to see if my habits are still serving me and consider which habits to add. For example, one month, my goal was to get 10,000 steps each day. I achieved that goal, but after reflecting, I felt that I was so focused on achieving a random number and did not dedicate as much time or energy to other areas of my life, so I decided that habit was no longer serving me. Life is constantly changing, so you need to periodically check in to see if your old habits and beliefs are still serving you.

Your actions reveal how badly you want something. Actions establish priorities. Reward is on the other side of sacrifice. The secret to getting results is to never stop making improvements.

***If you want to learn more and are an auditory learner, I highly recommend the following podcast episodes:

How to Improve Your Life with Atomic Habits with James Clear (Part 1)
How to Improve Your Life with Atomic Habits with James Clear (Part 2)

I look forward to reading, learning, and sharing more with you soon!