10 Ways to Be Happier During the Holidays

The holidays are a busy time of year, and often, what's supposed to be magical and fun can become really stressful. Schedules get bogged down, we’ve got tons on our to-do list, and we're fighting with crowds. That’s why it’s so important to find ways to reduce holiday stress.

Do Less
Look for ways to lessen the work by doing less. For example, if you normally decorate your yard with lights, put them on fewer bushes or trees than normal. If you're prepping for guests, skip dusting under all of the furniture. Reducing work where you can will add up significantly.

Maintain Boundaries
When faced with multiple invitations, remember that it’s okay to say no. Keep other obligations in mind and how much you can realistically do in a day. You could even say yes and just pop in for a quick minute and leave the event early.

Procrastinate
That’s right, if it can wait, then push your nonimmediate to-dos until after the new year.

Buffer
When you’re filling your schedule, be sure to create balance points ahead of time. Buffering your time allows you space to recharge. Don't wait till you're burnt out and overwhelmed to give yourself a break.

Bulk Gifting
Think of one or two really valuable things that you can share, then give them to pretty much everyone on your list. Things like cookies, candles, bath salts, or even your favorite book of the year make great bulk gifts.

Be Creative
You might enjoy gardening, so you could make little sprouts and plant them in nice jars. If you paint, then create customized pictures for the people you love.

Avoid Crowds
Be mindful of the events you choose to attend, and put off the ones that you can until the New Year, when the crowds die down. Try to get your errands done early in the morning, or skip the store altogether and shop online.

Shop Early
Plan ahead of time and get your food shopping done before Christmas and the New Year. You can also meal prep so that dinner is easy when you are the busiest.

Ask for Help
Whether it's getting your kids to help gift wrap or paying a little extra to have your gifts wrapped for you, seek areas of your life where others can help and use that assistance!

Prioritize Your Energy
There are a lot of evening outings this time of year, but it’s important that you safeguard your bedtimes so you have a strong immune system, a clear mind, and a much happier demeanor. Lean into eating healthy by eating at home or, at parties or events, reducing junk food or extra sugar. Give yourself opportunities to balance enjoyment with what you know your body needs.

The holidays are meant to be a time for making great memories, so be sure to take the steps you need to stay happy, healthy, and present!

Five Things to Know to Make Your Money Grow

Earning money is a skill; this is why some people are good at it and others aren’t. Money management takes a lot of time, energy, and attention because money is how we trade value. Money can create stress; it can also create moments of happiness. While money doesn't ultimately buy happiness, not worrying about money can help reduce a lot of stress that you spend a lot of time and energy on.

Money is one of the things that you need to have clarity and balance on in order to thrive and live life on YOUR terms, so here are five things about managing money that aren’t taught in school.

#1 Earned Money Isn’t All YOUR Money 

Money you earn isn’t all the money you have. When you’re starting in the workforce or in entrepreneurship, and you get your check, it feels great! Then you realize that a large portion of your check is gone because of taxes. One thing that isn’t always clear is how taxation works for entrepreneurs and how to benefit from understanding how it works. Five Things to Know to Make Your Money Grow

Nobody teaches you these things, and you can end up overpaying if you don’t learn them. You can go to Legal Zoom or find business programs and learn these skills from lawyers and accountants. Or you can hire an accountant who really explains things; it can certainly be a full-time job to do it yourself.

It's important to understand where your money is coming from, where it’s going, how it’s being paid, how it’s being spent, and how to preserve the most you can for yourself.

#2 Money-Earning Skills Aren’t Taught In Schools

You can look at earning money or generating business as a real-life game. You have a certain number of XP (experience points) and when you earn more, you level up. When you get to that first level, working up the corporate ladder... you may realize you can create your own job, and not have a ladder.

From there you may realize you can create jobs for other people, create more value, and reach a broader marketplace to make more money. These are different levels in the game of earning money, and each one requires a certain level of experience, which no one teaches in school.

#3  Be a Creator, Not a Consumer

One of the best ways that you can level up your money-making skills is by spending your time creating rather than consuming. When you open your laptop and you're looking through the internet, are you consuming things? Are you reading blog articles, watching TV shows, watching TikTok, etc? Or are you there to create, work, research, and develop something of value that you can offer to society? This is one of the baselines that allows you to switch from not having enough money to having more than enough.

#4 Remember That Money Stores Energy

What money has evolved to today is a storage of energy. If you work a job or create a product, you put a lot of energy into it, and you're transferring the energy into monetary notes of value.

Just like a seed that contains energy, money can be planted to grow. Most people are taught that money is to be used; use it to buy consumer goods, housing, entertainment, etc. But money can also be a seed that you can grow to bear more fruit. The problem is most people aren’t taught this and don’t know how to garden with money seeds.

#5 You Have to Say “no” A LOT

Lastly, having money means saying NO a lot more. This circles back to minimalism and stoicism. You must be diligent in assessing what really adds value to your life, and what is worth that transfer of energy.

You should absolutely enjoy the fruits of your labor, but you shouldn't eat all the fruit that you have. If you’re worried that you're not going to have enough fruit in the long run, then it's time to really buckle down and identify what adds value for you.

The more you can implement these tips, the more you will be able to appreciate the life that's in front of you. If you identify what adds value and stop spending time and wasting money on things that you couldn't care less about, the more money and fulfillment you will have!

Your Power to Heal Yourself with Dr. Molly Hart

Description:
Take a deep dive into the neurological basis and physical pain that fatigue causes and how to resolve it with MJ and Dr. Molly Hart. This episode reveals the power you have within yourself to not only manage the pain without medication, but also how to level up your capacity to handle more, with less stress, and live your most fulfilled and pain-free life via neuroscience.

Show Notes:
6:27 – Different Bodies, Different Stress
9:51 – Dealing with Life’s Hardships
11:46 - Balancing Inputs and Outputs
15:53 - Growing Your Capacity to Handle Stress
22:30 - Two Sure-Fire Ways to Destroy Yourself
29:45 - The Importance of Pain Education
32:21 - How do you increase the capacity?
40:26 – How to Control Your Pain
49:16 - Empowering Yourself

Important Links:
https://www.pelvicbalancept.com/
https://www.pelvicbalancept.com/podcast
IG @dr_mollyhart https://www.instagram.com/dr_mollyhart/?hl=en

3 Key Takeaways:

• Women’s bodies often fall apart during postpartum and this is because women tend to overload themselves in addition to women lacking the proper healthcare and education on how to care for themselves better.

• We have control over our pain because we have control over our thoughts. But a lot of people don't know they have control over their thoughts.

• Pain education is crucial. We won't do something unless we understand why. Once you KNOW how to live intuitively, you don’t need to be convinced. When you’ve learned how to understand how your body functions, you know when to take breaks.

3 Proven Ways Gratitude Benefits You

Thanksgiving is a holiday best used to set forth an intention to have a grateful heart. Gathering around your holiday table and seeing all the happy, healthy smiles, is the perfect time to focus on the feeling of gratitude and instill it every day.

This leads me to share three ways that gratitude benefits you. Gratitude is not just something that makes you feel good in the moment. It can also have a big impact on your health, which can really be an inspiration to make gratitude a daily practice.

#1 Change Your Brain!

Practicing gratitude daily changes your brain’s chemical makeup by boosting your happy hormones, such as dopamine and serotonin. Dopamine helps you feel really good and fulfilled, and serotonin helps regulate your sleep, on top of improving your mood.

Research by UC Davis shows that gratitude is responsible for lowering the stress hormone cortisol by about 23%. Some of you may think that lowering cortisol levels seems counterintuitive, especially if you’re adrenally fatigued.

However, most people who experience chronic fatigue and exhaustion have an overproduction of cortisol, meaning that there is a huge benefit to your nervous system in lowering cortisol. The big boost of positive hormones can actually help balance out the effects of chronic fatigue syndrome.

#2 Increase Resiliency
The second way that gratitude affects your health is that it increases your resilience to stress, anxiety, and adversity. There are even some studies that support this:

-Psychology Today states that in 2006, a behavior research and therapy study found that war vets who experienced gratitude found lower rates of post-traumatic stress disorder.

-In 2003, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that gratitude was a major contributor to resilience following terrorist attacks on September 11th.

Gratitude is not about suppressing or ignoring thoughts and memories. Instead, it's a practice that balances out stress and negativity in life. Gratitude allows you to feel positive levels of appreciation despite challenges and stressors.

#3 Improve Your Self-Image
The third way that gratitude benefits you is by helping improve your self-image. When you put gratitude and warm energy out into the world, you receive that back. Think of the time that you were out and about and a stranger did something nice. Maybe someone smiled at you, or someone did a random act of kindness.  This makes you want to pay it forward, and that warm energy is shared and amplified.

The more you give, the more you get, and in turn, it creates a better self-perception. You focus less on fear-based thoughts and instead feel grateful for a nice conversation, or that you received a compliment. Gratitude can change your entire perspective.

Lastly, I want to share the best time to practice gratitude. While any time is great, the ideal time is right when you wake up. Take a moment, before you think of anything else, in your cozy resting headspace, when your brain levels are moving slowly and your subconscious mind is open and spongy, and start thinking about all the things that you're grateful for in life.

Think about things that you were grateful for yesterday and the things that you are grateful for right now. Think of anything and everything and just marinate in the feeling of gratitude. You can also add this practice to your evening routine, right before you drift off to sleep.

Answering Your Adrenal Fatigue Questions

SHOW NOTES:
0:42 – Entertainment that triggers the stress response
2:15 – Specific pillow MJ uses for firm surface or floor sleeping
2:49 – Oysters are vegan!
3:12 – Recovering from AF is hard
4:22 – Caffeine
5:24 – Adrenal fatigue is not what people think!
6:09 – Weight loss after Adrenal Fatigue
8:10 – No-brainer solutions and public advice
11:45 – How is meat healthier than fruits?!

Key Takeaways:
1. The first step to successful recover is  to figure out what is unique to your body and circumstance. Every body is different. And while symptoms may look the same causation often isn’t.

2. Blanket statements and finite definitions are exclusionary and over simplified. Once you are diagnosed with a chronic issue your symptoms are inclusive and your situation has now become complicated. Take these well intended thoughts, including what is shared here, with a grain of salt and always seek expert counsel.

How Minimalism Accelerates your Dreams

“Instead of wondering when your next vacation is, maybe you should set up a life you don't need to escape from.” -Seth Godin

Abundance flows in and out in multiple different ways and the most common vehicle that you may be familiar with is setting a goal, setting an intention, then do whatever it takes to make it happen. I call to call this, “Making it Happen.” But there's way that has been tried and true… And I would be lying to say that it doesn’t exist in my life. Whether it is science based or not, it is something that has rendered better results for me. And that vehicle is the “Law of attraction”.

I believe that the Law of Attraction is about setting forth an intention and moving forward with that intent to draw upon resources, experiences, and open doors to make or manifest the situation to occur. What I've experienced using this in my life, is that oftentimes things end up happening much better than I originally planned… I believe, largely because of the openness, positivity and idealism that comes with this type of mindset.

I want to be clear that this has nothing to do with doing nothing, wishing and hoping until the fairy Godmother appears. This is completely different. The Law of Attraction is about being open, fluid, and flexible, whereas “Making It Happen” is about being decided dedicated and consistent. Neither vehicle is wrong, but they're both very different.

I have hundreds of endless stories that are life altering and completely unexplainable due to the Law of Attraction. But what I noticed is there is a process or similar flow of life that I had in every single “dream come true” moment I've experienced. It comes down to minimalism. Reflecting, it seems minimalism helped enhance and make the law of attraction work. If I had not been practicing these deeper philosophies of minimalism, I don't think these results would've happened.

There are four ways I've seen extreme similarities in all these occurrences in my life, and they've all been rooted in minimalism…

#1 Intention

In minimalism, the first and foremost question is: What is your intent? What is important to you? What adds value to you?

When you focus on something intrinsic, the real root of what's going make you happy, healthy, or contribute to something positive in life, this allows you to focus achieve a good result. Regardless of what happens, the result good because it is rooted in an intention that is aligned with your values and priorities.

#2 Reduced Distractions

When distractions are removed, you’re able to focus. You can go through life excited with this new intention and idea. It’s not like a specific goal or to-do list, it’s new inspiration that you’re open to and moving towards.

Having this type of focus is extremely simple when you aren’t bogged down with a bunch of other things that require your obligated attention. 


|#3 Alignment

When you practice minimalism, things are simple. And when things are simple you are able to be open and flow through inspirations with ease. You are able to have more awareness towards opportunities, inspirations, creative thinking. You have space to take action.

When things are complicated, things are more stressful. Even if you feel a creative notion, it often feels like another thing stacked on the to-do list or an inspiration that fades because there are so many other primary things to have to get to.

#4 Patience
Moving through minimalism inspires you to prioritize the most important things in your life. With this, you already are moving towards your ideal results. Life is already full of fulfillment and value. This gives you the ability to have more patience and less attachment to your inspirations. There’s no rush because you’re already moving in that direction.

It doesn’t mean you aren’t set on allowing it to manifest… it just means you’re not so attached to the result. Ultimately, you want to be happy. If that happiness can be found today with what you currently have, it’s only sweeter when you find happiness in some of your dreams coming true. But also, less of a disappointment if they don’t or something different, or better were to occur.

This is what living your Everyday Vacation is all about!

When you focus on letting go, removing the excess, creating life on your terms becomes easy. As soon as you embrace the power of minimalism and the law of attraction things you intend will being to draw into your life, create for my life with more ease and less stress. That’s monumental.

3 Things That STOP Your Healing Journey

When you’re healing from chronic or adrenal fatigue, sometimes you’re going through the motions and feeling some relief from the healing processes, but then you reach a plateau. It’s frustrating! Here are three main reasons why you may not be recovering completely. Hopefully, this will help you identify what is standing in your way.

Number 1: You Need to Let Go

The first thing is that you may not be letting go of your performance obligations. These are your sky-high expectations of yourself. You may be doing a lot of things right, like getting good sleep, taking time to relax, reorganizing your diet, and trying to remove excess from your life that's weighing you down… but also wondering why you’re still not healing.

If you don't get rid of that mental stress of self-expectations, then you actually promote more fatigue… and this causes your mind to stay in the stress response: fight or flight. You have to identify what additionally you have to remove so that you have a little bit extra to rest, recover, and restore.

Number 2: You Need to Embrace a Recovery Lifestyle

The second issue could be that you haven't fully embraced a recovery lifestyle. Maybe you've found a few things to implement, and they’ve improved your life a little. But you're feeling like you're not making distinct progress. This means that you haven't looked at your entire life as a whole.

You're trying to rebuild the foundation that you are sitting upon, both physically as well as mentally, and emotionally. The lack of consistency, the lack of embracing that recovery lifestyle as a top priority, could be the very thing that's holding you back.

Number 3: You Need to Discover What’s Really Going On

The third thing that may be stopping you from recovering is that you don't know what's going on. You’re fatigued. You’ve made some progress, but for whatever reason, you're stuck. You need specific tests from specific doctors, not just your general practitioner.

You need these specifications to make this continual progress toward healing. The things that we need, the things that make us thrive, feel fulfilled, be happy, and just live an awesome life, are the things that take consistency over time.

When it comes to your inner wellness and all the other areas that make your life enjoyable, it's important to make sure that if you plateau, you continue to search for solutions. Ask what else you could be missing and ask what else you could do to improve your journey even more.

It's amazing how much further you must go – not in a bad way – but from that point where you start to feel really good and really comfortable, there is still so much better that you can feel. And that's so inspiring because it's good to know that it's not just black or white.

You can feel good here and you can continue to improve that good feeling and improve your health and resilience even more!

Top 5 Advanced Minimalist Mistakes

Minimalism is a way of life, a way to find balance and clarity, and to clearly distinguish boundaries for your mental health, your relationships, your space, and your own physical capacity. I want to share the five common mistakes that I see veteran minimalists make, so that you can transition into it more smoothly.

Mistake #1 is thinking that it's going to look like curated social media.
As you start going about your life and start reincorporating or reorganizing things, you may find that they don't look visually appealing. This is where it comes down to getting to know yourself. Does form really follow function, or does form matter as much as function? What do you value most? 

That's the beautiful thing about minimalism; once you get to point A, you can level it up and get to point B. You can do so by continually retaking inventory and reassessing the spaces. Then ask yourself, how can I move forward in a better way?

Mistake #2 is overconsuming experiences.
While the material excess is gone, you’re now trying to replace it with other things. Whether it’s traveling, dining out, or diving into personal development and self-help… These things consume a lot of time, money, and resources. If you aren’t deliberate about what you spend our time on, our attention becomes scattered. 

This creates further stress and takes up additional resources. So all you’ve done is switch from the next thing to buy to the next thing to experience and spend resources on. It's crucial to ask yourself, not only does this add value to my life, but is this important?

Mistake #3 is failing to recognize that time is limited.
Time is the most valuable thing that you can't get back. What are you putting your time toward, and how does this look a week from now, a year from now, five years from now? 

Before you beat yourself up, understand that you're going to make mistakes. You’re going to try things, then realize you’re overextending myself. It takes a lot of honesty and humility to be able to identify that turn away. But once you do, you realize this is practicing minimalism in its most advanced form.

Mistake #4 is not thinking forward.
How much attention, and time, and resources will be taken by this thing that you're about to do or welcome into your life? It's hard to quantify; sometimes you don't realize until you get into it. Then it takes you being a bigger person and stepping up to your honest self and admitting that it’s not what you want anymore.

When you can identify the things that are most important to you, life gets really simple and it gets super clear what your North Star is, in terms of what you should or shouldn't allow into your life. The process takes a lot of digging and self-awareness, it takes a lot of pivoting and what it comes down to is priorities.

Mistake #5 is not knowing your basics.
Your basics are your values, needs, priorities, and preferences. Understanding what these elements are helps you zero in on the things that are most important to you. Acknowledging and meeting your basics helps you thrive, keeps you balanced and sane, and makes you happy. In turn, your life gets easier and becomes more enjoyable.

If you’re feeling like you keep reaching outside of yourself; whether it's materialism, over-consuming experiences, or just the next exciting thing, then oftentimes it's this is often because you don't fully understand who you are at the core and what makes you tick.

When you're not giving yourself the things that it takes for you to thrive and feel fulfilled, you're going to start reaching out to meet that need without actually knowing what you're trying to fulfill. 

Having this level of awareness is key when it comes to deepening your growth and your journey into minimalism and accessing even more of the benefits from this way of life. Minimalism focuses most on what adds value to you and what you value. Ultimately, practicing minimalism can lead to massive amounts of happiness, peace and fulfillment.

Overcoming Adrenal Fatigue with Mindset (with Erika De Pellegrin)

Description:
Is it possible that you could be going through adrenal fatigue? In this podcast episode, MJ interviews a special guest, Erika de Pellegrin, who shares her own personal experience with adrenal fatigue and how she recovered from it. Tune in to learn about what it is like for somebody else to struggle with and go through the process of getting through adrenal fatigue while maintaining different levels of balance in life.

Show Notes:
0:07 Intro: Erika de Pellegrin - Host of the Balance Theory podcast and co-founder of Esfi
2:50 How Erika experienced adrenal fatigue
9:30 The path and road to adrenal fatigue recovery
17:08 Change Your Life
19:30 Why does the feeling of FOMO exist?
27:20 Erika’s definition of an everyday vacation lifestyle

Important Links:
instagram.com/erikadpelle
www.mjgordon.com
YouTube - MJ Gordon

When Chaos Makes us Snap

About to Snap? Do THESE 3 Things NOW!

How can you create a barrier from negativity in your life? It’s difficult – we experience the idea of “should” in our minds. When something negative happens, we think, “I shouldn't be negative about this. I should change my mindset.” These moments come up, and we have negative thoughts or judge something poorly. You feel you’ve responded in a way that you’re not proud of. It creates this energy that sticks… then you look back and feel like you wasted so much time, effort, and energy on something that wasn't necessary.

You get to hard moments where you think you've prepared yourself but find yourself falling short of your expectations. You think you know; you have these great idealistic thoughts, and it just doesn't happen for you. And that's OK, it’s human. It's normal to stress, but you don't need to identify with that stress.

We FEEL that stress. Where does it come from? What can you do about it? It's OK that it exists, but how do we keep from letting it take us over? What can you do about it without getting so overwhelmed and expending more energy than is necessary? You must confront and deal with the actual situation.

Here are three things to work on to make a shift to manageable and tangible ways to handle the chaos - WITHOUT snapping!

#1: Know your boundaries. Through trial and error, you can identify when you’re agitated and overstimulated. Daily, you need 20-30 minutes of quiet time. Know your boundaries in all areas, from relationships, to yourself, your environment, your health, your schedule, your business, your finances, and all the important areas of life. Respecting those boundaries is #1, because when those boundaries are overwhelmed, the stress is too much. It's going to come out in some way. Managing what you can control is the best preventative to getting ahead of not snapping at all the little things. All those little things pile up, and when they make you upset, it’s because you haven't managed your boundaries.

#2: Create a process for when your energy gets pushed over the limit. What do you fall back on? What can you do to let the exhaustion through and allow the system to cool off? This process will get you back on your feet and let you readjust and reassess. Identify what you can manage and delegate. Most importantly: What can you let go of? What is the most practical thing that you can do right now – what is the thing that makes the most sense to get you to your goal? You must prioritize these, then cut out the excess and do the most practical thing moving forward. When you're in this state of chaos and stress, of triggering fear and negativity, you cannot afford to keep things in your space, whether it's on your schedule, in your obligations, or in your mind, that are going to promote more chaos and stress.

#3. Find your baseline. This baseline is not your ideal; it’s where you realistically are, energy-wise. Know your baselines in all areas and make sure that you check into those baselines. The baselines can move as you build resilience. Ignoring baselines leads to hurting yourself – costing you MORE time and energy.

Things get out of balance. Balance is an anomaly. You might swing through, hit that balance for a second, but you will always swing in and out; it’s ebb and flow. Understanding this, you must create those parameters for yourself, know your boundaries, have a process, and know where your baseline is at so that you have a starting point.

There are no shortcuts. It's about quality. Quality in how you take care of yourself, your attention, your time, your energy, and your schedule. It will help you avoid getting spread so thin that when something stressful occurs, you don't have the capacity to deal with it.

If you feel like you're about to snap or like life is just so chaotic and out of control, it’s because all these things have no boundaries. There's no quality. It's all quantity, which is like mass destruction for your energy. Finding your process, enforcing your boundaries, and returning to your baseline will lead you to regain energy, balance, clarity, and focus so that you can reach your goals, have success, and help everyone else.

Own Your Power (with April Garcia)

Create a Schedule That Aligns with Your Highest Vision

 Podcast Description: Managing energy and getting out of your own way are two simple, yet often difficult things for most entrepreneurs. MJ Gordon talks with April Garcia about simple solutions to overcoming these… in addition to high performance habits, self sabotage, and getting out of your own way.

Show Notes:
04:34 Things to Manage Energy
06:33  Choose Your Mantra or it will be chosen for you
* Mantras rewire your brain...help manage energy, state of mind, how I show up in the world.
10:05 If it's not a hell yes, it's a no, Boundaries, and the Power of No
10:25 Self Sabotage
14:28 It's not what we do once that matters. It's what we do over a continuous period of time.
15:14 This muscle needs to be our strongest muscle
17:00 Have a vision for your life.
17:41: Three Important Why's

Important Links:
Check out April Garcia at pivot-me.com

3 Key Takeaways:

1. Know what your vision is 3 Years from now, and take action every day to support that.

2. Don't be afraid to say NO, even to great projects, if they don't get you closer to your vision

3. Know yourself and the ways you might self-sabotage. Create space to take thoughtful action.
   
   
   

THIS Philosophy Could End Your Suffering

A lot of my content is deeply rooted in the fundamentals of minimalism. But one of the things that I've been exposed to is the philosophy of stoicism. Looking at it more thoroughly, I really love the principles and realize, that it is a lot of what we talk about here…

The idea of self-responsibility, taking out judgment, understanding where and what you can control, acceptance, temperance of will, etc. these are the ideas rooted in stoicism. So, I want to talk about some of the few principles of stoicism and how it relates to helping you create life on your terms and level up your energies and your successes.

First, people often think of stoicism as being completely non-emotional people that don't care about anything, but this is far from true. The idea is to not indulge in too many highs or too many lows. We like to label things as “good” or “bad” … “preferable” or “non-preferable”, and stoicism teaches the acceptance that things are just the way they are. To label it “good” or “bad” can create more suffering.

Stoics believe labeling is impractical because it's not the way that life is. The best way you can move forward is to say, “it's okay that things are this way”. Also, to be able to say, “what can I do about it now? What things are inside of my control?”

This leads to principle number two: Non-judgement, or acceptance of life as it is. From what I understand stoicism philosophy believes that the only thing you really should judge, is your performance, asking yourself, “Did I do this well? Could I have done better?” Everything else, like the way people think and behave, the weather, etc. may not be things you can control despite the fact that you may have influence.

So the next best step you can take is to accept the fact that that's the way that life is. No resistance equals minimal suffering.

When we get negatively emotional it creates so much stress. It releases chemicals of stress and anxiety and we imbalance our hormones. Sometimes if we're stressed long enough, we put ourselves in the sympathetic nervous system for longer than what is considered healthy. We start taxing our adrenals, draining our energies, creating more fatigue… all the things we're trying to avoid.

So it seems like simple principles, but when you take the time to apply this to life, you liberate yourself to have more energy and more clarity so that you can be productive or effective in the actions that you take moving forward.

Number three, stoicism philosophy is also about temperance. And this is where minimalism comes in. I talk about taking the minimalism philosophy deeper than materialism. We talk about “advanced minimalism” where we root out, not just our stuff, but our thoughts, habits, people in our lives, food that we eat, etc. Being gluttonous and over-excessive over things that may even be considered valuable, can create imbalance as well. So, temperance is about practicing discipline, and in practicing discipline, you also reduce suffering.

If you practice temperance, you actually develop a part of your brain that can withstand more suffering, so future suffering feels less severe. And this is important because when it comes to recovering from any kind of fatigue, or leveling up your energy, you have to have immense amounts of discipline.

Last, but not least an essential pillar that stoicism is built on is justice. And that means doing the right thing and being always fair to others, even when they're not fair to you. When people don't act fairly towards you, applying all the principles of stoicism allows you to accept the fact that that's the way life is, not judge, but to judge yourself in how you can best move on and take action within your control.

Oftentimes we are afraid that if we don't show up a certain way, then we would be considered lazy, irresponsible, and unmotivated. We judge ourselves so harshly. But if we're not kind to ourselves, in turn, we will put those same expectations and judgement on others. So we want to make sure that we are just at all times and that justice comes from the acceptance, of both ourselves and others.

So stoicism is this beautiful thing that really encompasses everything we talk about here and something really fun I wanted to share with you. I absolutely love this philosophy. It highlights so many areas of challenge and practical skills of how to move forward in a way that takes responsibility and empowers us to create more justice and love for the world!