How to eliminate distractions + be productive Being busy, and being productive are two different things. Aren’t they? Being productive means working smarter, not harder. It’s something that I’ve struggled with for the longest time. You could always hear me say “I’m soooo busy” but at the end of the day, I’d do a quick recap and realize that I really didn’t get as much done as I thought. I’d feel exhausted, but in reality, I really haven’t done anything very productive. I’m sure you know that feeling. You’re sitting down to work, or plan on doing something. Then you get that notification on your phone. Is it an email? A text message? You pick up your phone (oh..you know…”real quick“) and boom. You’re distracted. You can say that when you procrastinate and put things off to be done at a later time, you’re stealing. You’re taking something away from yourself. Something you can never get back. Time. Think about it. If you were to spend only 20% of your time really focusing on those most important tasks and give 100%, you’d have more time. More time to do things you enjoy, more time to set new, bigger goals, and more […]

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Do you ever tell yourself “stop!” wishing that little voice in your head would just listen and bring those racing thoughts to a halt? Yeah.. that doesn’t work. There are so many things to stress and worry about these days, aren’t there? Work, relationships, family …and if you watch the news on regular basis, you probably find yourself feeling anxious all the time. Sometimes, you might find yourself feeling anxious for no reason. I’ve been crazy busy at work lately, and you probably noticed that at the beginning of April I wasn’t as active here on the blog as I usually am and that’s because I’ve been feeling extremely anxious. And I have no idea why. Yesterday, as I got home from work I felt my hands sweat, my heart started beating faster and I felt a panic attack coming. I just felt this disabling anxiety, and couldn’t understand why- because as there are many things to stress about, I think there are even more things to be happy and excited for. After freaking out for a few minutes, I took a few deep breaths, went for a run and prayed that I have some ripe bananas at home. BE STILL One of the ways I’ve always dealt […]

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Are you the don’t-talk-to-me-until-I-have-my-morning-coffee-or-else-I-might-hurt-you type of person? Or maybe you’re the grumpy kind, who can’t wait to get home after work so that you can sneak in a little nap? I used to be both. Here are a few tips that will help you feel energized, all day long. STAY HYDRATED This seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised at how many of us walk around dehydrated. Dehydration can cause tiredness, sleepiness and even dizziness, so make sure you drink a huge glass of H2O, first thing in the morning. As I already mentioned in this post, as you wake up, you need to realize that your body just went hours without water, so it’s very important to replenish your fluids. Nearly every single biochemical reaction that occurs in our bodies, needs water. Drinking water on an empty stomach first thing in the morning gets your digestive system going, which will also help to energize your entire body. I also traded in my energy drinks for cold sparkling lime water. I always keep a few bottles in my office fridge- it’s a perfect little pick-me-up, without the jitters. GET OUTSIDE Even if it’s only a 10 minute run in the morning, a walk with […]

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Over the last couple of months, I’ve written more “How-To” posts than I realized. I think that one of the main reasons why I love working on posts like these so much is because you seem to enjoy reading them as much as I enjoying writing them. Because I’m so insanely busy with work lately, I couldn’t publish a post that I had scheduled to go live today (no time to finish it!). The icing on the cake is the fact that the furnace in our house went out and I’m left with no heat!! If there is one thing that everyone knows about me, is the fact that I’m always cold. I get made fun of at the office because I like to wear my blanket scarf when sitting at my desk and if I could, I’d probably bring an electric blanket with me to work every winter. Luckily our furnace is getting fixed at this moment. I find it so difficult to think when I’m cold though, it’s a little crazy. This morning, when we noticed that the heat went out, I was walking around the house not knowing what day of the week it is all I […]

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Few weeks ago I had a nice conversation with my sister and somehow the topic steered toward my blog. She mentioned that she misses my girl-talk and relationships posts that I used to write when I first started blogging. I honestly haven’t noticed that these two categories have been neglected by me for the past year. I think that I sort of felt that since my blog started growing, I should blog in a certain way. When I first started my blog nearly two years a go (!) I wanted it to be a place where I could connect to other girls, where I could talk not only about beauty, food and fashion, but also life itself. I wanted to talk about my own life experiences, hear about others’ and share advice and inspiration with my readers. Somehow along the way I lost a bit of that “authenticity”. My dear friend Sophie recently wrote a great article about honesty that truly inspired me to make a change. Ever since I jumped on the whole “positivity” train, I started avoiding negative places, thoughts, feelings and people and I can honestly say that I have never been happier. Last week, however, I’ve […]

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