If there is one thing that I find the most motivating for getting up every day and doing what I do, it’s inspiring others. Many of you and people I work with know that my life is crazy. I work full-time, quite often working weeks in a row. All the while, juggling school and my website and family. All while dedicating a huge portion of my focus to my health and fitness journey. It’s no wonder that people ask me “how do you do it?”

Know What’s Important

With all of the projects and responsibilities that I have, I’ve had to decide what, out of everything, is truly a priority to me. My priorities are probably way different than what someone else’s is and that’s fine. Having priorities makes it easier for when I’m planning out my day or when life happens and I need to let certain things fall by the wayside.

Planning Is Everything

I do this towards the end of every month as well as at the beginning and middle of each week. At the end of the month, I will sit down with my monthly planner and schedule out content, blogs, and workouts for the upcoming month. Every Sunday and Thursday I will sit down with a notebook and make smaller goals or to-do’s for a few days at a time. This I use for if I’m working overtime as well as weekly school assignments and meal prepping. I’m the type of person that I also need to pencil it in on what chores need done when. If I don’t, things tend to pile up fast in my house and then I end up needing to spend one of my very few precious days off in order to get caught up.

Take the Time to Prep

Every three days or so, I will spend a few hours meal prepping. This allows me to stay on track with my nutrition goals. I even go as far as prepping days worth of shaker bottles with pre-workout and protein powder to make my mornings more efficient. I only have an hour and a half in the morning to get a workout in, get a shower, be dressed and out the door by 4:30 in the morning in order to make it to work on time. Some people could say that I wouldn’t have to do that if I skipped my workout. True. But this is where making my health a priority comes in to play and I will do what I need to do in order to achieve my goals. Something else that helps my mornings go smoothly is leaving out my workout clothes on my dresser. I wake up at 3 am and by 3:05 I am dressed and on my way downstairs.

Knowing When to Rest

This is something that I struggled with for the longest time. I would feel guilty taking a day off work or submitting an assignment in for school late all for the sake of taking care of my mental health. I don’t do it often, but I can tell now when I’m at the point of breaking and I will take a step back from everything and just rest. I’ll either take a day to read or just laze at my computer with YouTube. Maybe I’ll do some leisure cleaning (weird, I know). Whatever it takes to re-center myself and just take my mind out of that “I’m going to have a mental breakdown” zone. I can say that it’s been a while since I’ve gotten anywhere close to that. Recently I’ve been using running as a way for me to re-center myself emotionally. I will pop my earbuds in and just run through my neighborhood. I’ve had days where I’ve done it three times in one day because every time I went home I felt like I was going to have a panic attack and that I was losing control.

Do It For You

Everything that I do day in and day out, I do it for myself. I will volunteer for overtime because I want to. I am going to school because I want to. I workout every single day 2x a day because I want to. Everything that I do is for myself and not to impress someone else or because someone else wants me to. Something I learned a long time ago is that when you start living for someone else, you’re not living. You’re surviving. I wake up every day and do the crazy things that I do because I love it and I’m thriving.

I know this was a weird post, but still thank you so much for reading. Until next time…………