I’m a little behind on my posts because it’s my favorite time of the year. I love the the Olympics! We’ve been watching non-stop since it all came on again this year. It’s consistently the time of the year that I get the least amount of sleep because I end up staying up too late watching all […]
Author: SUM Sarah
Stop Hating Your Kitchen (and cooking)
Looking back at a young, naive self, I wish I could have imparted some wisdom. When I got my first apartment & needed kitchen “things” and a couple years later when I got married & we registered for “kitchen crap” (as my husband likes to call it), there are things I never would have registered for or purchased. Over time, I realized that I felt a significant amount of frustration & impatience I would feel when it came to tedium in the kitchen. After owning & using certain items, I slowly started to hate them. And then I started making a list of all the things I hate about “kitchen crap” and I decided I wanted to essentially push the easy button on my kitchen. Over time, I’ve been either getting rid of things completely (donating), replacing, and (in rare cases) adding some pretty cool stuff to my kitchen that legitimately makes my life easier.

Vacation & Physical Therapy: Where there’s a will, there’s a way!
Vacations are intended for relaxation. While that’s typically really good for mental & emotional recuperation, vacations can wreak havoc on your physical health goals. At least, if you don’t plan ahead. We recently took a vacation & despite planning ahead, I still found myself having to improvise in order to stick with my physical therapy routine. The experience did teach me a valuable lesson though: if it’s important enough, you can make it happen.

Type A Accomplishments: Occasionally Bittersweet
Being a very goal-oriented person can be a double-edged sword. Especially if you aren’t in tune with the people around you. You can accomplish a lot. But, if you’re not careful, those accomplishments can come at a cost to your relationships. One of the biggest challenges for Type A people is to find balance between the need for accomplishment and relationships in their lives.

Spousal Support: Being on the same page vs. doing the same things
Hobby: Preventing myself from eating everything in the house
Habits & hobbies can be detrimental & difficult to overcome when making a change. But, finding new hobbies can help fill the time of a previous bad habit. Sometimes those new hobbies can also come with the added bonus of a positive impact beyond the time spent on the hobby. When I started looking for new things to focus on, I managed to find a few new & fun hobbies that help me make better choices…. especially around the holidays when there’s SO much food everywhere.

Sometimes pushing through isn’t the answer…
There’s something to be said for pushing through soreness & getting in a good workout. Some days just pushing play and dragging yourself through the workout is really all you can hope for. But some days, that’s not the answer. Some days pushing yourself results in an injury. Close to three months ago, I […]

Why listening to our bodies is so important
Your body doesn’t really talk, does it? If you believe that, then you probably also believe that there’s no difference between a phone call and an in-person conversation too. Learning to listen to what our bodies are telling us makes a huge difference in how we feel and what we decide to do (at least […]

Why we fear personal change
Change is difficult enough. Trying to make a new good habit or break and hold bad habit. It just throws your whole day, week, or even months for a loop until that change becomes your new normal. And then you add in the people around you. In theory, if you’re making a personal change it should have no bearing on other people. It’s not like you’re making them change too. But it’s never quite that simple is it? And there’s always a lot of fear that comes with change because of the potential for icky, messy, roadblocks that affect your relationships.

Success = Planning Ahead (even if things don’t go 100% according to that plan)
There was a period of time where I just didn’t bother to plan my week. It just seemed so overwhelming and no matter what happened, there would always be multiple days where things completely threw my plan for a loop. I would then end up so wrapped up in the fact that I wasn’t perfect that I’d be more or less an emotional mess. Then I read an article about how successful people offer themselves forgiveness. And I took a slightly different approach to planning my week.