Have you ever had to make a decision between two things, maybe something as simple as the red dress or the blue dress? You can’t decide and so ask a friend to choose. When they answer, ‘the blue one’, you realize you wanted to wear the blue one all along. You simply needed to get out of your heard for a moment, stop the analytical thinking (“the red one fits me better, but the blue one matches my eyes”) so that you could listen to your gut.
Our digestive tracts contain an extensive neural network of 100 million neurons. This offers us access to loads of information…if we know how to listen.

Have you been feeling exhausted and irritable, contending with scattered thoughts, trouble sleeping, and a lack of motivation? These are signs of emotional exhaustion, the precursor to emotional burnout. Emotional burnout is caused by extreme levels of stress, whether at work or in your personal life. It can lead to anxiety, depression, feelings of fatigue, discouragement, and hopelessness, an inability to concentrate, relationship stress, and self-imposed isolation.

Emotional burnout can disturb our physical and mental health and negatively affect those around us. Here are some tips to help you combat growing feelings of emotional exhaustion…

Imagine lying on a warm, sandy beach. The sun is slowly heating your bare skin. A breeze tickles the hairs along your body. The rhythmic crashing of waves against the sandy shore lets your mind drift into a playful place. Your breathing slows, and you can feel the tiny grains of sand around your feet. A pulsing of energy radiates along your skin. You become aware of every tendril of heat wrapping around your body, every delicate puff of wind, the salt air entering your nose, and how your breath matches the rhythm of breaking waves. Do your senses feel alive?

Today is my 26th birthday. The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the swollen lymph nodes around my neck. Maybe it was from all the incessant laughter from last night’s fiasco when my dear friend surprised me with a birthday cake – made out of 1-year-old marshmallows and chocolate pudding. Or maybe it was from my uncontrollable sobs as I look back at the last three years of my life. Three years ago was when I hit rock bottom. But despite what people would imagine what “rock bottom” would look like, mine was a silent, invisible bomb.