Have you chosen your word for the year yet? Or maybe I should ask, do you plan to choose a word for the year? Personally, I like choosing a word in addition to my goals because the word is usually tied to a feeling, whereas our goals may not be, or let me say the feeling associated with our goals may be harder to identify. I would argue then that you picked the wrong goal if it’s not tied to a feeling, but we’ll save that discussion for another day. Let’s stick to your word for the year.

I recently had a request to do a training for a group of pharmacists and I had to say no. It was a great opportunity and something I love to do, but I didn’t have the bandwidth to take it on. What’s interesting though is I knew that as soon as the request came in, but I thought about it for a while before saying no, trying to rationalize how I could do it. And when I said no, I felt like I had to offer an explanation as to why I was saying no.

One of my friends recently celebrated her birthday. She’s in her first year of her medicine residency, her intern year which is unbelievably busy, so she had to celebrate her birthday on call. When she told me she was on call for her birthday, I responded with “that’s a bummer…” She quickly responded with, “No, I’m good. I worked really hard to get to this point, so I don’t think it’s a bad way to celebrate my birthday at all!”

Recently, I was really excited about Monday. I went to bed early the night before, so I could get up early, got dressed, put makeup on, wore something other than yoga pants and a tank top, and actually got my son to school on time. I came home, mediated, and had coffee in my favorite mug on the back patio before I got to work. The day started off perfectly, and once it started, it didn’t stop. That Monday was literally the busiest Monday I have had in a very long time. I couldn’t believe the calls, packages I needed to sign for, papers I needed to file, and meeting after meeting. It was a lot. And even with all that, it was still a great Monday.

It’s the second post in my “Yoga Can” Blog Series! This series is all about the stuff you never knew yoga could do. And this week we’re talking about your genetics. Yes, yoga can change your gene expression! I think it’s important to share this kind of information about yoga to really broaden your knowledge and empower you to change your health. You have no idea how much control you can have over your health and your family history and how it will impact you in the future.

This may sound kind of weird, but sometimes I wish I had a job that had a set schedule. Before you clutch your pearls, let me explain a bit. When you work a set schedule you have to be somewhere at a certain time and you leave at a certain time. You might even have to eat lunch at a certain time (now that might get on my nerves, it seems weird to be told when to eat…). Now full disclosure, I haven’t had a job with a set schedule since my residency and even then I always worked past my set hours, but having a set schedule can create discipline and increase productivity. Because I don’t often work set hours due to my travel schedule, work can bleed into more hours than what’s necessary.