Journey To Yourself

19/11/2025

11/11/2025

I started my career in the drug and alcohol field, leading educational workshops.

One of my first sessions was called 😡 Anger Management.

Can you guess what we were really teaching?

💜 Stress Management.

🏃‍♂️‍➡️ Fast forward to my recent trip to CI Services, a UniTek Global Services Company, in Austin, TX, 🤠

where I had the opportunity to speak with their team about what it means to be a calm leader and why it’s critical to team safety.

We talked about:

💜 Recognizing when stress turns into frustration

💜 How your energy impacts your crew

💜 Simple ways to reset before reacting

The team was engaged, open, and had a lot to say about anger on the job and how stress, pressure, and long days can make it harder to stay calm.

Big thank you, Matthew Applegate, and to the Austin CI Services team for your insight, laughter, and honesty, and for letting me share some Texas sunshine with you. ☀️

06/11/2025

How many times have you said:

It's too 🥶 cold to walk my dog.

OR

It is way too damn 🥵 hot to be outside. I need to get back inside.

Most of us have the ability to work inside an office or at home. (Me included. Please do not put me outside in the cold!)

But every day, millions of blue-collar workers don’t have that choice.

In my work, providing stress management educational workshops to those in the blue collar/trades, I wanted to bring some light to the reasons why:

➡️ Construction is the 2nd leading cause of death by su***de.

➡️ Construction is the third stressed-out industry.

The first step to creating less stress and a strong community is to create awareness.

SO if you are anything like me, who hates the cold and is grateful for those outside working, send that gratitude text, like I do to my husband every Monday.

November is Men's Mental Health Month.

So next time you see those orange construction signs ahead, instead of honking or rushing by:

🛑 Pause.

🧘‍♂️ Breathe.

👋 Smile and wave.

A little awareness goes a long way. 💜

EDA Contractors, INC.

05/11/2025

You hear the ding of an email alert.

📩 It’s from Jennifer asking for information on a project you “didn’t” send.

Before you can even roll your eyes, you notice she CC’d your upper management.

😡 Now your blood is boiling, and you think to yourself, "OH it is on"

➡️ Short answer: You cannot control your first thought BUT you can control your second and the behavior that follows.

➡️Long Answer: When we become angry, it can be because we go into protective mode. In this situation, you were not only mad, but you were in protective mode. You did not want your boss or team to think that you were not a protective member of the team, so you needed to let them know.

04/11/2025

We often think stress only comes from negative experiences, tough deadlines, conflict, and burnout.

➡️ But here’s the truth: stress is a reaction to change, even good change.

When my husband and I first built consistency in our relationship, I noticed something strange: I felt uneasy. Not because anything was wrong, but because my body was reacting to a new rhythm of stability.

Then, years later, when we brought home our sweet rescue pup 🐶 , Mopsey, it happened again.

🥹 She was gentle, calm, and everything we hoped for… yet I still felt overwhelmed. My schedule was changing, my days looked different, and underneath that was the quiet reminder of my pug, Butch.

That’s when I remembered: our bodies don’t label change as good or bad. They just react.

02/11/2025

Growing up, I was known as the happy kid.

Always smiling. Always laughing 😆 (the loudest one in the room)

But what people didn’t see was how I stuffed my feelings and ignored what was really going on underneath.

By my early twenties, that habit caught up with me.

Smiling through everything turned into burnout.

So when Girls Spark invited me to speak with students at The Shipley School, I jumped at the opportunity to share what I wish someone had told me back then

💜 The importance of feeling your feelings.

💜 Understanding what stress really looks like.

💜 Building self-love.

The students were incredibly curious, open, and honest about what stress feels like in their world. We talked about mindfulness, stress, and how ignoring your emotions doesn’t make you strong; it just makes you tired.