2025: The Year of Well-being

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Here is what is new for 2025: I am changing my blog format to bring you streamlined well-being guidance aligned with five pillars: Mind & Body, Relationships, Career, Finances, and Community.

Here is why: In 2018, I launched my blog as an act of accountability for writing and publishing. Since then, I have published twenty-six long form blog posts, and as I reflect on them, I see this was my path to becoming a Well-being Strategist.

Writing helps me learn about myself, illuminating values, purpose, and well-being, and I want to pass my knowledge and processes along to others. My goal is to stimulate critical thinking about that it means to live well and for each person I reach to examine their life and confidently take charge of their own well-being.

2025 is The Year of Well-being and I am here to help you fulfill your potential, step into your power, and live well on your terms.

Your well-being strategy empowers you to interconnect five thriving life elements that encompass a well lived life:

1. Mind & Body: You feel good physically and have a positive outlook on life.
2. Relationships: You have supportive and meaningful connections.
3. Career: You are energized by work.
4. Finances: You manage your money well.
5. Community: You feel a sense of belonging where you live and work.

Seven months ago, I made the biggest change to my well-being since I started practicing yoga in 2011. The quality of my life has significantly improved since making this change and I am convinced it is the single thing that could have the biggest impact on your well-being:  Cut processed and ultra-processed foods from your diet – particularly those that contain the following:

• Refined sugars
• Refined grains
• Refined industrial vegetable and seed oils

Refined in this context refers to foods that have been significantly modified from their natural composition, typically done through processing that includes extremely high heat or other methods to create a substance that will last longer and/or is cheaper to use than the “whole food.”

Before I made this change in my diet, I was experiencing bloating, stomach pains, fatigue, brain fog, insulin resistance, low energy, depression, headaches, and body aches on a regular basis. The refined foods mentioned above cause a myriad of problems in the human body, a few reasons include:

• Whole foods are stripped of nutrients, resulting in empty / bad calories
• Processing food causes high levels of omega-6, which is pro-inflammatory and too much omega-6 can lead to systemic inflammation in the body
• Consuming processed and ultra-processed food causes cell dysfunction, which can lead to chronic diseases

For scientific data to support this recommendation, I highly recommend reading Good Energy, by Casey Means, MD. From the book:

Refined added sugar causes astronomically more deaths and disability per year than CODIV-19 and fentanyl overdoses combined. We need to see refined added sugar for what it is: an addictive, dangerous drug that has been included in 74 percent of foods in the U.S. food system for which the body needs zero grams in a lifetime…sugar shows up on labels in fifty-six different names and sneaks in everywhere.

We are experiencing a health crisis in American. I implore you to be skeptical about government “approved” ingredients, examine food labels and avoid anything that contains ingredients you don’t recognize (or can’t pronounce!), and choose whole, organic, and sustainable options with less than five healthy ingredients whenever possible.

It took effort and discipline to make this change in my life, but now I cannot imagine living any other way. The symptoms I experienced before have disappeared and mentally and physically I am stronger than ever, at age 53.

This month in two workshop formats I will share how you can create a personalized well-being strategy and bring it to life through proven methods. Join us and proclaim 2025 as your year of well-being!

1. Jan 15, 22, 29 Community Series with (remote) video calls including interactive discussions, strategies, and frameworks to help you create a vision and roadmap for your well-being strategy. Register here.
2. Jan 25 Well-being Workshop in Kirkland, WA with well-being strategies and framework, plus an all-levels yoga practice. Register here.

Wishing you peace, health, and happiness!