Cynthia Hall

I never had a morning routine. I’d wake up and go straight into task mode — phone, to-do list, whatever needed handling that day. My space didn’t factor in at all. It was just the background I got dressed in. Then I started opening the curtains before anything else, and it changed the order everything happens in. Here’s how to build that same habit for yourself. 1. Start With Light, Not Your Phone Before you check your phone or think about your day, open your curtains or blinds. That’s it....

For a long time, I carried around this quiet belief that my story was basically done — that the important decisions had already been made somewhere in my twenties or thirties, and everything after that was just living out the plot. Then, on some completely ordinary day, I realized that wasn't true at all. Nobody had actually finished writing it. I had just stopped picking up the pen. There's a strange belief we settle into as we get older — that by a certain point, who we are has already been...

I’ve had this conversation with myself more times than I’d like to admit: Why am I so tired? For a long time, my answer was just: I’m just getting older; I'm in the thick of hormonal changes; of course I’m tired. Of course my brain feels slower some days. I filed it under “things I can’t control” and moved on with my coffee in hand. Here’s the part that makes this a little embarrassing: I should have known better. I worked in healthcare for over 20 years, and one of my main jobs was keeping...