Photo by Rodolfo Marques

We are one week closer to Christmas, and I am so excited for a much needed break from work. Although we just had Thanksgiving off, because I work in Fashion PR/Influencer Relations, I need to work a little bit every day (including weekends and holidays). To be honest, all of my team members work around the clock. Kind of the nature of the beast for the time being. So I am excited just to be out of the office for a little bit longer. I certainly feel like I'm on the verge of a big burn out, but it's nothing some much needed TLC can't solve.  In the meantime, I'm very blessed to have a happily balanced holiday social calendar with the right amount of holiday activities with friends but also enough solo time for me to work on my blog, set goals for the next decade (because fuck planning for just one year - that rarely works in my favor), reflect on the past year and come up with action plans to make major changes in my life! The system I have going now is not what I want to bring into 2020. Oy, there is a lot to do in the next following weeks. A lot of changes are happening rapidly, but life guarantees change. Nothing we can do but role with it and use it to make us more durable. I hope you can use these next few weeks to reflect as well. I think it's soooo important to make time to reflect, reset and realign with our priorities and values so we can cut out the stuff that doesn't work and add more of what we actually want in our lives. I'm excited to reflect and plan! Maybe it's my type A personality, but whatever. I am who I am. Anywho, below are a few things that stuck out to me on the world wide web this week. I hope you enjoy! 

• Tis The Season: I really want to bake some holiday cookies! And drink wine and watch holiday movies :) 
• Better Safe Than Sorry: This is an INSANE story of a girl who escaped a psycho who tried to hold her captive! This woman is so lucky to be alive but it's also a really important wake up call for why we should all put a little more thought into our actions, especially when it comes to a party or substance abuse culture. It might seem like fun and games all at first, but you never know how quickly something can escalate. This story confirmed my fear of why I have never done drugs and why I never plan to! 
• Little Acts of Kindness: This is the cutest reaction ever! I totally want to do this for my local delivery people! 
• Love Birds: This is for all my friends in relationships. I highly recommend listening to this episode about want matches. It's so fascinating and eye opening! I personally think this is something everyone should listen to if they want to take their relationship to the next level. 
• Self-Love: The Art of Being Single - I really enjoyed this article. Being single during the holidays can induce more feelings of loneliness. Especially if most of your friends are in relationships, because being the 5th wheel is never fun. But I love how uplifting this article is. I like that the universe is essentially forcing me to focus on building a fulfilling life because I have so much time to focus on dance, pole, my blog and mapping out my career/side hustle path so I can make more money. I feel like that has been the biggest blessing of all this year... I just didn't realize it until now. 
• And to piggy back off this topic, I also liked this article about refusing to be sad because we are single during the holidays. I have been pretty sad this holiday season, and at first I thought it was because I don't have an intimate relationships with anyone special... but then I had a really upsetting daydream where I completely relived visiting my dad in him coma every day during Christmas break back in 2014... and I was like "oh, I'm sad because I'm still grieving" and grief is something that never truly goes away. We just get better at learning to deal with it and channeling that pain into compassion for others. Which leads me to why I am LOVING Meghan Donovan's #SpreadKindnessSpreadJoy campaign. I get so happy reading what other people are doing to spread kindness this year. Please, please, please try to participate. If you can. I promise you, doing something nice for someone else is the fastest way to turn your day around! 
• Clean Living: OH MY GOD!!! Please listen to this podcast about sustainable eating and the broken red meat industry!!! I love that they discuss the broken poultry industry as well. Luckily, I've never really been able to digest red meat, but I eat chicken and turkey every single damn day! I know it will be a costly expense, but I only want to eat sustainably raised chicken, turkey and (on the rare occasion) beef going forward. I have also been to the sustainable restaurant discussed in the podcast episode, and I can admit that I didn't feel sick after eating beef like I usually do! It was certainly more expensive... but all burgers in nyc are expensive, so I'm use to it. *chuckles and cries while looking at bank account
• Shopping Addition Is NO Joke! This podcast episode is perfect for this holiday season. Obviously, I have struggled with this… a lot. I have turned to shopping to get a huge rush of adrenaline. But for this holiday season I've only purchased a few things that I truly, truly love. I did drop about 45 things in my shopping cart during the black friday sales... but I only ended up purchasing 2 dresses and 2 headbands! Can I get a round of applause for my restraint! I finally have a much better understanding and more self control, but I could have saved sooooo much money on dumb asss purchases if I had said no to frivolous things and yes to financial freedom (aka savings, investing, travel, etc). I have a long journey to clea
• Get out of debt: I have an intense journey to clean up my mess from over spending, but it's one of my top 3 priorities for the next 36 months. I hope you make financial freedom one of yours too if you're in credit card debt or have student loans! We in this together fam! And ThisArticle Will Help Us Get There! 
• Pop up holiday bars in NYC I want to check out! Thanks Meghan Donovan for sharing this link!

I've been lucky enough to have always been surrounded by ambitious, creative people. Even as a kid, I was consistently in environments where people wanted to be the best versions of themselves and ferociously went after their dreams. I believe that growing up in positive environments like that helped me to believe that literally anything was possible. But as I've gotten older, life has thrown so many obstacles my way that have led me to seriously doubt myself in the past 3 years. I know I'm not alone in feeling this way.

 I love discussing my insecurities with my friends and learning to not be ashamed of them, but I also know that the only way to create the life we want is to learn how to overcome those mental roadblocks and get to fucking work. But pushing past those negative beliefs can feel like pushing a heavy bolder up a fucking mountain. It's a lot to take on by ourselves. That's why I made a simple little rule for myself in 2018 to ensure that I am constantly rejuvenating my spirit through impactful events. Each year, I challenge myself to go to a minimum of three career/personal development conferences. And I'm happy to declare that I've met this goal for the past two years.

Yesterday, I attended the Small Business Summit in NYC ( a conference for women, by women, designed to help us create the businesses and lifestyles we desire) by Create & Cultivate. Create & Cultivate has been one of my favorite career and personal development resources for the past few years. I actually attended another conference by the company back in May. But I loved how hyper-focused this event was. I walked away feeling so inspired and powerful.

In my opinion, there is nothing more vital to our sense of self-fulfillment than investing in ourselves. There were so many amazing pieces of advice shared during the event and I was able to connect with so many intelligent, creative, driven women. I left the conference feeling re-energized and excited to take action instead of letting my negative thoughts stop me in my tracks. But I wanted to share a few of my top take-aways from the event with you so you can feel recharged to. So here we go:

Lesson One: We are capable of giving ourselves everything we want.

We live in a time where technology allows us to have access to pretty much every tool and resource we need to make our dreams happen. Isn't that insane? Although there is definitely a dark side to being exposed to too much technology, past generations have never had access to so many people, sources of knowledge and global resources. We don't need to wait for anyone give us permission to do anything anymore. if you want to be a director, start making movies and publishing them on your own website or youtube. If you want to be a chef, start creating dishes and sharing them on social media. If you want to be an artist, start creating work in your free-time and sharing it with your community. We can teach ourselves almost anything to help us stand out in our desired industries. Like, damn, who knew that you and I were this freaking powerful?

Lesson Two: The road to success is going to be really uncomfortable, and you have to accept that if you want to win.

One of the Co-founders of Health-Ade spoke about how she was living on $300 a month and delivering her products in her own car while starting her business. But Now Health-Ade is in every bodega, grocery store and convenience store I go to. It just goes to show you that we really can survive the hardest times if we stay focused on our dreams and stay frugal/savvy.

Lesson Three: Execution is so much more important than the idea.

There's really no point in freaking out over competition or being in an "oversaturated market"... pretty much every single freaking market is oversaturated. Just focus on providing the most value, delivering the best product/service you possibly can, or developing the most vital skills in your industry to be a top employee.

Lesson Four: "Don't let yourself be stopped by disappointing outcomes" - Stacy London 

Stacy London and Sophia Bush shared incredible advice in the last panel of the summit. They both talked about a few heartbreaking failures they had experienced in their careers and how easy it is to give up once you experience the pain of disappointing yourself. The stressed how you have to learn how to constantly get back up off your ass after you cry and scream and eat ice-cream and learn how to solve your own problems because no one else will ever solve them for you. You are the only person who can change your life and your circumstances. They are both HUGE advocates for therapy and for finding a small tribe of friends who are like family to help you through the hard times. Living am extraordinary life will never be easy. Even if your version of extraordinary is living on a farm with your family, that's totally ok as long as it's what you actually want. But we are all going to face a ton of road blocks during this lifetime, but there's always something beautiful on the other side.

I hope these top take-aways help you boss up this week. I have a feeling we are all on the cusp of creating something magical in our lives. After all, autumn is the season of magic and wonder. What has been the biggest lesson you've learned this week? I'm excited to keep growing with you guys. Until next time my friend.