IT’S HEEEEERE!!! I can’t believe the day has finally come! Today, Caffeinate Your Soul: 52 Monday Mantras OFFICIALLY releases, and you can get your hands on a copy. EEEP. This has been such a labor of lovelovelove behind-the-scenes for years now (literally) to bring it to life, and it’s surreal getting to finally watch it work its way around the world to you now! ICYMI, Caffeinate Your Soul all stemmed from one of your favorite series here, Monday Mantras! They’ve been popping up on CUR from the start and are one of my personal favorite things to write – and apparently, one of your favorite things to read! And I get it – I think a lot of us want some sort of consistent thing to dig our hearts and souls into, but some daily practices can feel overhwelming where we just end up tucking something away on a bookshelf and forgetting it altogether.
Caffeinate Your Soul is like a daily devotional met a personal development book and got married on a coffee table. 😉 I wrote it just like I’m talking to my best friend (aka you, my internet besties!), sharing all of the things that I wish someone had said to me in some of my own hardest times – and also the things that some of my people DID share that made the biggest impact in helping me get back on track.
My hope + prayer is that you can pick up Caffeinate Your Soul every single Monday for an entire year for a much-needed and warmly welcomed pickmeup to start your week strong, so that in 52 Mondays, you feel like a stronger, braver, better you.
There are quarterly “check-in’s” every so often so that you can journal inside the book if you want and reflect on all of your progress so far. There are fun, colorful illustrations of every single Mantra inside so that they’re really stuck in your noggin. And it’s this beautiful hardcover book with the most EPIC photo (shot by my own mama – here’s the behind-the-scenes story of how it came to be!) so that you can leave it out on your coffee table or on your desk at work and it doesn’t feel like clutter or another thing on a neverending to-do list.
I guess first, a bit about the book itself for any of you tuning in who might have NO IDEA what the heck “Caffeinate Your Soul” is. It’s not your average chapter book by any means – there aren’t even chapters. Inside are 52 Monday Mantras, so it’s written to follow you through an entire year – really, a year’s worth of Mondays.
Why Mondays?
Because Mondays are the worst. If I had a dime every time I heard someone say UGH IT’S MONDAY or swear they needed a gallon of coffee to get through the day, I’d be retiring tomorrow.
It’s kinda the same as New Year’s Resolutions, right?
We have this pre-conceived idea of what the New Year means or what we’re supposed to do, and we put pressure on ourselves to get it right…and if (or when) it doesn’t go as planned, we call it quits altogether and give up or say we’ll just “try again next year.”
But – and maybe we’re seeing this now with the global pandemic and crisis we’re facing – we don’t always get a next year.
Heck, we don’t always get a next week – or even a tomorrow. And maybe that sounds morbid and it probably is, but it’s real and it’s the truth.
We have to stop planning for tomorrow like it’s promised or guaranteed and instead start making the very most of today. And I need you to understand right now what a big statement that is coming from me, a chronic over-planner and overthinker who has plans for tomorrow and the next day and the next week and next year. Like, girl, I get it…we like to plan things. So this isn’t to say DON’T make plans or have hope in the future because that would be silly and probably impossible – we need hope. We need things to look forward to in life, and things to get us excited about what’s coming.
The point is to not forsake the now for the next, because what’s next isn’t guaranteed – but right now is.
One of the 52 Mantras inside says it best: New Day, New Me.
Screw the memes that say 2020 is as good as over, as if we’re all just waiting around, twiddling our thumbs for the 2021 ball drop already because bad things have happened to so many of us this year. It’s MAY – ain’t nobody got time to wait 7 more months to make it happen! And the reality is that bad things can (+ do!) always happen to people. It’s the unfortunate inevitable reality of life.
But…GOOD things can (+ do!) always happen to people, too.
And we can choose to live our lives in mourning of the bad or would-be-good stuff, or we can choose to live our lives in gratitude of the good stuff – and in hopeful anticipation of the good stuff yet to come.
They say that 80% of folks fail at their New Year’s Resolutions by the end of February, and most of the rest fall off after that. EIGHTY PERCENT. So many of us let calendars dictate the trajectory of our lives. We wait for January 1st to start anew or for springtime to clean up our acts when in reality, the only thing we’re actually guaranteed is right now.
A new you doesn’t have to wait for a new year – a new you can begin today.
Wanna up that success rate? To get out of the 80% and into the top 20?
Forget the new year. You deserve to thrive EVERY day. Every damn day that ends in y.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” It’s one of my favorite quotes. And it’s important here. Because you know what a year is made up of?
Days. 365 of ’em. New day, new me. And the journey of 365 days begins with just one.
From my time doing what I do and getting the opportunity to talk with so many incredible women all over the country and world, I’ve seen SO MANY women fail to see the magic and the potential right in front of their faces because they’re battling the worry of the what-if’s. They’re hung up on the hard things instead of being grateful for the good things, and they’ve got society’s idea of who they should be – or who they are – weighing more than who GOD says they should be or who they are and I’m just not OK with that.
Like I always say on my podcast – it’s not enough to simply survive – you deserve to thrive.
I knew I needed to create something that could help get you to that place – something that could walk with you through a longer period of time to be there for the inevitable ups AND downs of everyday life. But also, something that didn’t feel overwhelming or like just another to-do on your endless list – which I admittedly sometimes feel when I’m trying to manage a daily devotional and daily journaling and daily everything else and its mother all before my daughter wakes up.
SO, Caffeinate Your Soul was born from this idea that we can attack our day with intention to feel better and BE better, and we can start with one day a week – the one day that many of us might dread the most. We can start with that one day, Monday, and we can start shifting the script and changing the narrative and changing our perspectives about that one day.
We start with one.
And instead of worrying about keepin up a resolution or a goal for an entire year right off the bat, we just set our sights on Day One. We take the “one day’s” that we’ve been stockpiling in our brains and on our hearts and we start now, on Day One. It doesn’t matter if it’s the 17th Monday of the year – heck, it doesn’t even really matter if it’s Monday! If Wednesday is the day you hate the most, screw Monday and read it then instead!
The point is equipping you with these sip-sized bits of encouragement, stories of hope, and REAL tips and ways to make your Mondays more meaningful and manageable. You might not be a changed person tomorrow – you might not be made anew next week. And that’s OK. You’ve got a whole year to get it right. You’ve got a whole year – 52 Mondays – to start again. To re-commit to yourself. To make it happen, and then make it happen again and again and again because practice might not ever make totally PERFECT, but practice makes a habit. And when we make good habits we KEEP, we have this whole new superpower within us to turn our changed days into changed weeks into changed years into changed lives.
Each mantra is short n’ sweet – it’s only a few pages so you can read it with your morning cuppa coffee since that’s fitting. Each mantra has a colorful illustration with it to help all my visual learners like me in da house really solidify it in your brain so you can recall and remember it throughout the rest of your week. And then every so often in the book we’ve got a quarterly Check-In, with a few questions to get you thinking and remembering what you’ve read so far; you can even journal inside the book if you want, if that’s how you learn best, and write down your thoughts and answers to check in with yourself and watch your progress as the year goes on. There are also some quotables throughout that are pulled and highlighted in case you weren’t feelin’ the hottest one Monday and maybe speed-read something or forgot – I worked with the publishing team and my own to really figure out some key takeaways that were worth repeating in this bigger, quoted way so that if you needed just a sentence or two reminder, you’ve got it.
Obviously we’re not grabbing scones + lattes with our girlfriends at cute coffee shops anytime soon (don’t sweat, these were shot pre-quarantine;) ), but my hope is that Caffeinate Your Soul feels like a coffee date with your bestie anyway – even if it’s on your couch with me. 🙂 All of the lessons + learnings inside are the pieces of advice and words of wisdom that I’ve garnered through the years, many of which came from my own besties along the way.
Lastly, THANKYOU.
Thankyou to every single one of you who pre-ordered a copy (or two!).
Thankyou
Thankyou for believing in me as much as I believe in you.
I just KNOW you have every ounce of potential + power already inside you to blossom into your best self. And I believe that Caffeinate Your Soul can be the tool and the kick in the pants you need to make the most of what’s been a pretty crummy year so far (ayo 2020), turn it around, and make it count while you can.
Maybe this year has sucked so far.
Maybe this year will continue to suck for a bit more, too.
But maybe this year isn’t over yet. And maybe your time to shine is right around the corner.
It’s time to Caffeinate Your Soul!
Are you ready?