Let’s face it; face masks and bubble baths aren’t actually self-care. While I love pampering myself as much as the next person, I’m a firm believer that true self-care isn’t sexy. No, I don’t have an issue with bubble baths — I swear — but I do have a problem with substituting commercialized ‘self-care’ rituals for authentic self-care practices.

Genuine self-care often requires you to do the ugly thing, the thing that causes you some discomfort. It means taking care of yourself in the realest sense — doing the thing that will ultimately improve your life in the long-run.

While…

Ironically, this story took me an entire two weeks to write — and not because procrastination is a particularly complex or difficult topic to write about.

The reason it took so long to write is because, for some arbitrary reason, I decided that it was going to be ‘the one.’ This would be the story that set my writing career in motion; an original and thought-provoking piece on the psychology of procrastination. Surely, this one story would launch my Medium earnings into the big leagues.

Do not do this. Don’t place an inordinate amount of importance on a specific task…

DATING & RELATIONSHIPS

I know from personal experience that dating in the era of swiping, ghosting, and hook-up culture can be rough.

Having experienced my fair share of unsolicited ‘u up?’ texts, clingy guys, and, self-proclaimed commitment-phobes, I know first-hand the toll that dating can have on your self-esteem.

It can be both mentally and emotionally draining if you don’t recognize your own self-worth and advocate for yourself. For this reason, it’s important to develop a strong foundation of self-care practices to help you navigate the dating scene.

In this sense, ‘self-care’ doesn’t mean buying a face mask or running a bubble bath…

I don’t care how much grit you think you have, doing hard things sucks sometimes.

It takes an extraordinarily motivated Gary Vaynerchuk-type person to consistently pursue their goals on a daily basis. Expecting to maintain that level of motivation is simply unrealistic. You get tired, you burn out, and you desperately try to get your spark back by listening to motivational podcasts.

This is the wrong approach.

The truth is that you don’t need motivation to get things done. All you need is a rudimentary understanding of neurobiology and a strategy to help you hack it.

The Neurological Basis of Motivation

At the neurological level…

DATING & RELATIONSHIPS

Much to my lesbian mother’s dismay, I turned out to be heterosexual. Unfortunately for me, that meant I had to learn to navigate the rocky landscape of dating in the 21st century on my own.

While I became adept at recognizing the signs that a guy is an overt asshole pretty quickly (ie. he’s rude to wait staff, he refers to other men as ‘beta males,’ and he unironically asks to be called ‘daddy’), it took me a lot longer to figure out the more subtle signs that a guy is bad news.

Now, after 17 years of dating, I…

Hustle porn is real. I’ll be the first to admit that I was kind of into it; the 5 AM morning routines, the medical student study vlogs, and the motivational speech compilations. Yup, I was totally guilty of fetishizing long, grueling work hours in pursuit of success. It wasn’t until burnout knocked me on my ass that I realized I’d gotten it wrong: you can be insanely busy and still fail to be truly productive.

Last December was when it hit me. I had just crawled across the finish line of the busiest semester of my life — I’d said…

I could tell that no one was taking me seriously.

“I’m worried about it,” I anxiously confessed to Dave, my teammate, on the start line.

“You’ll be fine,” he smiled bemusedly, before punching me on the arm and telling me to ‘toughen up.’ His response irked me, almost as much as the sharp pain I felt in my shin. I’d show him what tough looked like. I’d show them all how tough I could be.

As it turned out, I was far tougher than most people would have guessed and far less cautious than I should have been. Exactly eighteen…

If you were to go through my search history, you would know that I have a huge obsession with tiny homes. But I’ll be honest; the movement didn’t exactly appeal to me at first.

As a young adult, I pictured myself graduating college and moving to a cool Brooklyn loft or a stylish Parisian apartment. I’d have a closet full of designer clothes, and I’d take romantic getaways and stay in luxurious Airbnbs — all while paying down my student loan and saving for retirement, of course.

I think it was around the time I went back to school for…