Criticism.

The very words tends to make our skin crawl.

Whether at work or in your home, criticism from peers, direct reports, and even your spouse and children can be shocking. Human nature is to automatically go on the defense.

"Sticks and stone can break my bones, but words can never hurt me." Who made up that crap? Wounds heal. But words? We give them life to last through the eternities. And the best part is, we do it without thinking twice.

TRUTH: Not...

Let's get real for a moment.

How often do we set ourselves up to fail? How often do we base our success off of how much it looks like someone else's success? How often do we give ourselves goals that we can not possibly achieve and then are constantly let down by our performance or disappointed in ourselves?

The more we set ourselves up to fail, and see our efforts as not enough, the more we will experience the devastating side effects of emotional and physical...

"How did you get from there to here?"

My my husband at the time finished up Grad school and took a job with Mercedes Benz Financial Services in Michigan, leaving myself and our then three children in Arizona to finish up the preschool year and attempt to sell our home (in the middle of the 2008 recession). Our kids were ages two and a half, one and newborn, so it was a crazy six months! I taught preschool out of our garage, which we had converted...

A house built on someone else's land can't ever truly be yours.

Saying goodbye to our thriving Etsy shop in January of 2016 was nothing short of terrifying. We had sold $600,000 in 2015 on Etsy alone, making up 85% of our annual sales. The thought crossed my mind that it may very well be the end of Bailey's Blossoms as I knew it. I was partly right.. It WAS the end of Bailey's Blossoms as I knew it, but it was far from the end.

I made the slow walk out to my home office, which was a...