- I've always wondered, "At what point in our lives
do we feel like we've truly grown up?"
Is it when we move out,
or finish school, get your first job?
Become a parent?
Because for the longest time, I felt like I was waiting
for this one definitive moment
where I would step into adulthood.
Like, here it is, but it's not happening.
That's what adulting is.
But I feel like throughout the years,
I have developed some key habits
that have made me feel more enriched and embodied.
And today I'm gonna share them with you.
So let's get started.
First up, we've got meditation, and wait.
Before you click out of this video thinking,
"Ah, I already know I should meditate, I should eat healthy,
I should stop using social media."
This video is not intended
for us to should all over ourselves.
They are just tools that we can use
depending on how we're feeling
to figure out what's gonna help us out in the long run.
And meditation has had a profound impact on my life.
There is like a common misconception
saying that meditation is like clearing your mind,
like making sure that your brain
is completely rid of thoughts.
That is not true.
That's like essentially telling
like your heart to stop beating
or your eyes to stop blinking.
Your brain is meant to think.
So of course, you're gonna have these thoughts.
When I'm meditating, I kind of imagine myself
sinking back into my mind
and watching my thoughts as if there were clouds in the sky.
You just sink back and observe.
And if I catch myself daydreaming,
then I'll be like, "Oh, I'm daydreaming."
And then I'll sink back down and observe my thoughts.
And that's pretty much what my sessions look like.
For me, like I started to notice
that the things that used to bother me don't,
or I've noticed that my temper has calmed down,
or I noticed that certain things
don't overwhelm me like they used to.
And practices like these definitely help just mellow me out
and ground me during times of just uncertainty.
Ever since I've been prioritizing my sleep schedule,
I have been performing better,
I've been thinking more clearly,
and I'm just a better version of myself.
Like I like to get at least eight to nine hours
every single night.
And god, it feels freaking amazing.
I recently read this book, "Why We Sleep" by Matt Walker,
and it just convinced me to clean up my sleep schedule.
I think he does a much better job
explaining why sleeping is so essential for us.
In essence, when you sleep,
your body and your mind repair itself.
So if you're not sleeping,
you're not giving your body a fair chance
to do what it needs to do.
And I love sleeping in my bed.
I wanna take a quick minute
to thank Brooklinen for sponsoring this video.
I have been using Brooklinen for the past three years,
and their bedsheets are my absolute favorite.
It's actually my favorite place to shop
for luxury bedsheets and high quality home goods.
So Ben and I wanted to do a little refresh for our bedroom.
So we thought we would do the sheets.
We want something a little bit more bold.
So we decided to go for this graphite
and steel oxford stripe combination.
I got the Luxe Hardcore Bundle,
and this includes a flat sheet, a fitted sheet,
four pillow cases, and a duvet cover.
I love that you can mix and match
from over 20 colors and patterns
and have your bedding fit your personality.
Investing in quality bedsheets
is like investing in your self-care,
because you are making bedtime exciting again.
And personally, I am so stoked when it's the end of the day
and I get to just slip into my delicious Brooklinen sheets
that are just impossibly soft.
They get softer with each wash somehow.
And I'm definitely not alone in my love for Brooklinen.
They have so many five star reviews,
I believe like over 100,000.
And I attest to this.
Honestly, I have the deepest best sleeps
in my Brooklinen sheets.
They're so comfy and so slinky,
I cannot recommend them enough.
And right now, they're having their birthday sale,
which is their largest sale of the year.
Everything is 25% off.
So this is the perfect time to try Brooklinen for yourself
or stock up on your favorites.
I will leave everything in the description box,
so please click the link if you are interested.
Reading is hands down my most favorite
high quality leisure activity.
And it's because in one spot,
I can travel to all parts of the country.
I can even like time travel to different time periods.
I can enter the minds of the most brilliant
and most hilarious people.
And I feel like my love for reading
really started the second I graduated from college.
I was like, "Oh wait,
I don't need to read anything that anyone assigned me?
Like I get to choose what books I wanna read?"
And that just blew my mind.
And I would say like the biggest tip
to get you started on reading
is just read things that you find fun, addicting.
So I remember like for the first couple years,
all I was reading were thrillers and erotica.
They were very engaging.
And then from there,
I feel like the genres began to splinter.
I started to really dive into nonfictions,
because like nonfictions are essentially textbooks
where I get to explore any topic that I find fascinating
or that I wanna understand better
from like psychedelics to politics to the attention economy.
Like it's just, the books are endless,
and so they act as building blocks
so that I can understand the world better at my own pace.
And reading fiction also serves more purpose
than simply entertaining.
It actually makes you practice empathy,
because when you're reading a book,
you are temporarily in someone else's mind.
And even if you find that character insufferable
or you don't agree with their life choices,
when you're reading,
you are forced to look at things through their perspective.
So you start to understand why they are the way they are.
And when you're reading, you kind of find characters
that are similar to the people that you know in your life.
And so it makes you empathize
with other people in your relationships as well.
And I also have a book club if you guys wanna join.
It's called Curl Up Club,
which I'll also leave in the description box.
Please join us.
Let's talk about stretching.
For the longest time, I have not been able to touch my toes,
like it actually was a goal of mine
to be able to touch my toes since 2019.
There was something that happened last year
where I realized that I needed
to be more in tune with my body.
So I decided to do yoga three times a week.
And let me just show you the progress.
Look.
I can touch my toes.
Look.
I never thought I would be able to do this.
Like I always knew in theory
that my mind and body were connected,
but now, I really do understand.
It's because when I'm stretching,
not only am I releasing the rigidity from my physical self,
it's actually made my mind a lot more flexible too.
When I'm holding these poses,
like I could feel my body resisting.
I could feel my mind resisting especially,
saying like, "Ah, ah, I don't wanna do this.
It's uncomfortable."
But holding that pose and breathing through everything
has just been a very powerful exercise.
I've read somewhere
that yoga activates the parasympathetic nervous system,
and that's what controls your body
to relax and handle stress.
And so in that hour of yoga, that's when I'm working out
my parasympathetic nervous system.
So it's teaching my body to handle stress in a healthy way.
And I think it's ultimately like building patience,
like teaching my mind like, "Hey, this sucks,
and it's uncomfortable, but we're gonna stay here.
We're gonna be uncomfortable and you're not gonna die."
So I feel like
that's what I'm kind of training my mind to be.
Hard work looks different in so many ways.
It doesn't mean that I need to sweat
or burn a ton of calories, like I'm still doing the work,
but it looks different.
So if anything, it just made me appreciate strength
and resilience in all different types of forms.
Let's talk about cooking.
I think a big adulting flex that I'm proud of
is that I'm able to open up a fridge
and be able to whip up a meal using the ingredients inside.
I've always loved food and eating,
but cooking was a skill that took me a minute to cultivate.
And it started off by creating like a Rolodex of recipes
that I just knew by heart.
I think as long as you know three
where they're just no-brainers,
like you don't need to look at directions or measurements,
you can just eyeball everything and assemble it.
That is an amazing start.
I think what makes cooking daunting
is when you don't know how to cook something.
Like you're like frantically looking at the instructions
and like figuring it out,
and it's just like you're not in the zone.
But once you have like three recipes
that you just know by heart,
suddenly it becomes an extremely fun therapeutic experience.
You know, you put some music on, a podcast,
and you just get into the flow of cooking something
from beginning to end.
There is something extremely satisfying about it.
And at the end, you get a delicious home-cooked meal.
Sometimes like there's this pressure
to always have to make a new recipe and try something new,
but I don't think that's necessary.
I think just, you know,
going to your tried and trues are so solid,
and I think once you feel comfortable with those
and then you're feeling a little frisky
and you've got some extra time,
then you can add a new recipe.
At least that's the mode that I've been going towards.
Writing is a very polarizing activity.
It's interesting,
because when you write as if someone is gonna read it,
suddenly you can't really write anymore.
But if you're writing as if no one's gonna read it
except for you, then the freaking pen just flows.
That's the type of writer I am.
I like to write for my own eyes only.
And when you're writing,
you're essentially transcribing that voice inside your head.
And I think because I have so many thoughts and ideas,
they all like can slip away
if I don't capture them immediately.
So writing has really helped me be more responsible
and it's helped me with my mental health.
It's helped me with adulting especially,
because this is how I stay on top of things.
The second I think I have to do something,
I'll just jot it down.
Like you should see my Reminders app on my phone.
I have a list for everything,
and I feel like this is the best way
to have a running log of things that I need to do,
things that inspire me, recommendations.
There's a lot of like therapeutic factors
that writing has done for me.
First is the release.
There was a moment where I realized,
a lot of the times, my entries were written
when I was upset or angry.
And I feel like when you are filled with negative emotion,
like you wanna do something about it,
and instead of doing something irrational
like scream at someone or throw something, when you write,
you're transferring that energy onto the paper.
I know that writing when you're pissed off
can be just a frustrating process,
because my mind is going like 100 miles an hour,
but I hate that my hand can't match my thoughts.
So it forces me to slow down.
And as I'm taking the time out to really figure out like,
"Okay, why am I pissed off? What's bothering me?"
I can feel my whole body start to calm down,
because that's what maturity is.
It's about delaying your reaction to things.
And so when I write,
I know that I'm buying some time for me to cool off.
And the benefits of this
is that I can actually see what exactly is in my head.
Because a lot of times when I'm talking,
sometimes I just forget what I've said
and I just go in circles.
When I write,
I actually get to see exactly what has been bothering me.
I can pinpoint patterns.
I can spot things that resonate with me.
It's essentially collecting data,
and with that data,
you can become a better version of yourself.
So anyway, all these habits are just reminders
to keep your wellbeing in check.
I know adulting is hard, but we're all in it together,
and I would love to know what habits
help you in the comments down below.
I love getting new ideas
and maybe we can do like a part two.
And lastly, I wanna thank Brooklinen
for sponsoring today's video.
Just a little reminder, they're doing their birthday sale
where everything is 25% off from now to May 3rd.
Link is in the description box.
I wanna thank you guys so much for watching
and I'll see you guys in the next one.
Bye!