Category Archives: Care For Yo’self

Five Faves: Apps to Bring Balance Right to Your Fingertips

five faves apps for balance

Towards the end of each month we share five of our favorite things to UP the AWESOME in your life!

This week, we’re sharing five fave phone apps that help us balance our minds and bodies.

We thought it’d be a good way to round out our whole month on the topic of balance with some of the favorite apps we turn to when we need a little more calm, a little more health consciousness, or a little more thankfulness for where we’re at right in this moment.

It’s so awesome that we are living in an age where we literally have the tools right at our fingertips to help us start to move towards our centers and live more fulfilling lives.

In this Maven Minutes, we share five of our favorite phone apps to help us exercise our gratitude, our brains, our bodies and our life-balancing muscles! (transcript below):

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How To Balance Your Mood With Food

jen neitzel on balancing mood with food

jen neitzelYou know how some days you wake up and as the day gets rolling you realize you feel really discombobulated and unbalanced? This was my normal functioning level for a long time.

I was so busy. Running from project to project. Working so hard at trying to stay on top of everything that I missed the basic fact that I was falling apart. All aspects of my health were fading. My energy was gone. I was bloated all the time and although my stomach didn’t hurt, it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but I had a growing feeling that something was wrong.

I’d wake up in the morning utterly exhausted. I’d look in the mirror and see the enormous dark circles under my eyes and think, “What is wrong with me? Why do feel so depleted all the time?”

All I really wanted to do most of the time was lay down.

Fast forward to six months ago – through a series of tests I was diagnosed with Celiac disease. Dum, dum, dum dum!

Since then I’ve learned so much about food and the mind/body connection, just as a way of healing my own body. In my case, I was sick with this disease for most of my life and eating tons of gluten. I actually craved it. I could eat it endlessly. It tasted so delicious that I just couldn’t get enough.

I never knew why I was so tired. I never understood how I could get sick so often, why I would stay sick for so long or why I had so many random symptoms and issues: asthma, aches, pains, brain fogs, clumsiness, anxiety, depression and more.

The good news is, I’ve got all of that under control now through my diet and I have insights that could be helpful to you too.

The thing that I’ve realized from this experience is that it’s possible, and even easy, not to realize how the food you eat affects you. It sounds crazy, I know, but this is exactly what happened to me!

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How Do You Balance Your Big Dreams With Everyday Life?

balancing your passions

“Is this all there is?” It’s a question that most of us have asked ourselves from time to time.

But the truth is, the question itself reveals many answers about what you may need in your life.

Finding balance is about more than balancing work and your personal life. It’s also about reaching your dreams and that means getting there one small act at a time, through busy, everyday life.

We all have deep curiosities that we want to pursue and when that curiosity grabs hold of you and won’t let go, we believe it’s a call from our deepest passions. But we don’t always make time to take action in the direction toward those passions. Our dreams get deferred to “someday” and then we’re left feeling unbalanced and longing for something else.

Until one day you ask yourself, “Is this all there is?” This is the rally cry from your inner self begging you to grow into the you you’re “supposed” to be and not the one that you think you “should” be.

So how can we create space in our everyday lives for those deep curiosities, big dreams and passions?

We share 3 important tips to help make it easier in this Maven Minutes video (transcript below):

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Maven Podcast :: Why You Feel So Unbalanced & How To Fix It

maven circle podcast on finding balance

You know that feeling when you realize your life is a little off balance? It happens to all of us at some point.

Maybe you’ve got a great home life, and some really supportive, good friends, but there are still things out of balance- your laundry pile that’s overflowing, or worrying about that hard conversation with someone you’re dreading having, or maybe you haven’t even started on your taxes yet this year! (please, tell us that’s not just us? ;)

Individually, they don’t look like much, but when we let these things that can throw us out of whack start to pile up, and pile up, they start to tip the scales leaving us feeling totally unbalanced – again.

It’s a cycle we’ve all been through and most of us will experience it many, many times.

Today, we’re sharing our personal experiences with feeling unbalanced and how to recognize it- from raging hormones and stress in our bodies, to our thoughts moving so fast it’s hard to think clearly. And we share our tips and tricks on how we’ve been able to start bringing more balance back into our lives, and how you can too!

A couple of really important aspects to finding balance are: 1.) To identify when you’re becoming off balance and 2.) Once you realize it, to ask yourself, “What do I need?” and then, to the best of your ability, give that to yourself.

Listen to our podcast below to learn more about how to shift in the direction of balance and hear some of our personal struggles, tips and triumphs with balance!

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Can you really ever find balance?

can you really find balance?

jena floating headWe all strive for it, are yearning for it- to find balance in our lives.

We want balance between our work life and personal life, between caring for others and caring for ourselves, between being overwhelmingly busy and mind-numbingly bored… it seems like most of us are endlessly searching for a stable resting place between the inner tug-of-wars we have in life.

So how can you finally get to that place of balance, once and for all?

Short answer: you can’t. I know, because I’ve been looking for a loooong time.

I think every major struggle I’ve had in life comes down to wanting to attain that sense of balance.

Over the 30 years of my existence so far, I’ve been trying to find a happy middle ground between some major internal conflicts… Struggles with self-identity and individualism and so wanting to be seen and heard, while at the same time wanting to be liked and accepted and feeling afraid to express myself and my thoughts. Struggles with being a crazy perfectionist over-achiever endlessly looking for that thing I could accomplish that would finally make me feel worthwhile, while also trying to laugh and love and play and maintain some semblance of a life.

I think, in our minds, we have an idea that balance = totally rocking being a great partner, friend, parent, workerbee, community member, citizen of the world AND self, all at the same time.

“If only I could balance it all!” we cry, feeling guilty for all the loose ends and things left undone. Feeling desirous for all those things in life we still yearn to do, and envious of the people who seem to be out there doing ‘em. Feeling unsatisfied that we’re struggling in one (or more) of these areas in our life so that means we must be failing.

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Maven Minutes :: Trust your inner awesome, change the world!

mavenpledgevideo

What’s a maven exactly, and why do we call ourselves that? Well, the dictionary definition is “expert”, and we believe that we’re ALL experts at something. That we’re ALL here for a purpose. That we ALL have a great path ahead of us to fulfill.

We believe we are all mavens in the act of becoming who we truly want to be!

We’ll be talking about community & connection around here all March long, and we think the greatest thing you can do to impact your community in a positive way is to move toward what makes you happy, to trust yourself, and share your true self with the world.

So we’re starting a movement, Mavens! A movement of people who are committed to follow our dreams, to break through fear and obstacles, to find more presence, balance and fulfillment in everyday.

But it can’t be a movement without YOU.

So in this Maven Minutes, we share what it means, to us, to be a MAVEN and remind you that by changing yourself, you can truly help change the world!

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Truthy Tuesday: A Magazine Editor & Business Coach Dishes On Being Spent

truthytuesday_letitiaelizabeth

{By guest maven, Letitia Elizabeth}

You’d think spending my days window shopping for models, planning indulgent recipes, and chatting away with my sisters from other mothers would be an enviable way to live, but the truth is I sometimes want to run away from it all.

As a woman, the surging pressures of exhaustion, stress, and lack of motivation is enough to make us throw in the proverbial towel no matter how glamorous our life may seem to others. But it doesn’t have to be that way. With a bit of TLC that I like to call nourish, nurture and embellish, we can spread our love to include ourselves and win the battle of feeling spent.

As a green living activist, I often find that a happy soul equates to a happy planet. You’ll be hard pressed to find an energetic and relentless do-gooder who is depressed, fatigued, and feeling worthless. With self-love comes clarity, and peer-driven impact will inevitably follow. That’s why I’ve made it a priority to practice self-care on a weekly, if not daily basis, so that I never lose my fight or drive to inspire change for others.

While waiting for a full on breakdown can induce much-needed change, why wait for that moment with everyone around you as an audience? Everyday is a new day, but it is not a clean slate; so you must take a stand to interject life’s little pleasures even when you think there is absolutely no room or no time.

A simple routine of four new habits can kick that negative energy in the butt, so that next time someone asks “How are you?” a poopy answer like ‘tired’ or ‘busy’ is a thing of the past. Because let’s get real, all that family time, friend time, work time, time on the computer, time on the phone, and time trying to be superwoman is hardly benefitting you. One day you’ll just find yourself pulling your hair out. Well, if you haven’t already!

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