I am a creature of habit — until I accept/realize that something is no longer working for me. This list will undoubtedly change with the seasons of my life. Here are my current go-to’s in my quest to live free.
Wellness
I am a Young Living Essential Oils distributor. I primarily use essential oils for emotional support. You are welcome to ask me how and why I use EOs and/or how to place an order.
One of my biggest accomplishments health accomplishments has been conquering my battle with insomnia. For many years stress manifested itself in my body via my sleep patterns. Every night I woke up in the middle of the night and so I struggled to arise for work in the morning. Three years ago, I took a sleep workshop that CHANGED. MY. LIFE. Now, I know how to listen to my body based on how I am sleeping. When things get out of wack, I have practical tools go get my sleep back on track.
Meditation
Calm and Headspace – apps for mobile devices
Journaling
The Artist’s Way – establish a morning practice that helps you clear a path for more creativity.
Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life – Ann Lamott offers some great tips for the writer in you.
Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within – another good writing tool.
Personal Development
Aroma Freedom Technique (AFT) – I am a certified AFT practitioner AND use the technique to help me move past limiting beliefs and thoughts to accomplish my goals.
Happy Black Woman – Allow Rosetta Thurman to lead you down the path of growth as a woman through her website and podcast.
The Miracle Morning – Hal Elrod developed a seven-step system (S.A.V.E.R.S.) that help you start your morning off right. Additionally, Hal has a podcast called Achieve Your Goals that features great leaders committed to personal growth.
Organization
I am a follower of many organizers who blog and offer courses. My current favs are:
Simplify Days (I took her Go Digital. Go Paperless. Live Organized course)
I Heart Planners (she offers some pretty cool classes and Facebook Lives)
Lime Fruit Trees (check out her artsy pages to make you feel all the love as you journal/plan your heart out)
I like to follow organizers who teach me how to put my own systems in place and who make suggestions that are free or low cost.
Last year my favorite app was Evernote. Evernote helped me stay on top of tasks for work, home, and business. I also used Evernote to go paperless in my home office via the Go Digital course mentioned above. While I still really like Evernote, it did not work for my to-do lists. So, in 2018, I am going back to a simple listmaking system that I will use in conjunction with my phone. I will continue to use Evernote to organize my genealogy research and blog posts.
Misc
AmazonPrime – my busy life makes it hard for me to visit four different stores to get all our household needs me. So, I use AmazonPrime to order things online. I broke up with Amazon in 2020. I now use variety of shops to get products. I haven’t found an efficient solution but I feel much better not defaulting to supporting bad leaders. #endrant
Bookshop – I now order books online via Bookshop. I support a local Black-woman owned bookstore in Chicago (Semicolon) every time I make a purchase. I have also set up my one online bookstore as a baby step toward my vision of owning a brick and mortar store in Houston. If you order from my shop 10% of the purchase goes toward SemiColon and 10% goes to me.
Grammarly – an online grammar editor for people like me who forgot everything they learned in Language Arts. I especially love that Grammarly has a plug-in that offers edits my webmail emails and blog posts while I type.
Instacart – I HATE grocery shopping. Thanks to Instacart I can shop from my phone and have my purchases delivered to my front door within a few hours. Some stores are adding grocery delivery as an option but right now this is the only service that comes to my home.
