When I was young, my mother hung a plaque above my bed. It said: “Don’t tell your daughter to marry a doctor or lawyer, tell her to be one.” I ended up becoming a CPA, but regardless, the confidence that my mom tried to instill in me early on as a little girl has benefited me throughout my career and life.

“Fasten your oxygen mask before assisting others” is an all-too-familiar instruction that many of us tune out when waiting for our flight to take off. But this sage advice can not only save you in an emergency, it can save you in life and as an entrepreneur.

I’m a third-generation entrepreneur and have launched and sold multiple businesses. I’m also a CPA who regularly advises business owners on their finances and business operations. Over the years, I’ve seen how excessive stress affects entrepreneurs, myself included.

Each day we walk through the routine of life, wake up..take care of responsibilities at work and home...exercise...eat...sleep, and do it all over again the next day. Many times, It's not until an extreme event happens in our lives, that we wake up and appreciate the routine, have gratitude that we have able or healthy bodies to be able to do these things, and feel.

A few years back I went to a colleague's brother's funeral to support him in his time of loss. I had never met his brother before, but after attending his funeral, his life did make an impact on me from that day forward.

Many of us know what the "law of diminishing returns" is, but we forget about this once we start a business. For those that have forgotten…the law of diminishing returns is when we eventually reach a point that additional work will not create a better outcome, or you become less efficient.

I remember I was on a trip to Florida with my family in high school driving down a street by the ocean viewing one amazing home after another. My mom said to me that it must be nice to have a home that beautiful.

Exercise has always been a way to balance my busy life – whether when I was a student in school, in a public accounting firm or running my businesses over the years. I love all forms of exercise, but I am most passionate about yoga, spinning and running in my life as a way to release stress and be ready to take on each day.

I had an interesting experience in my yoga class. The instructor was playing random music from Pandora, and chose a classical station to end our practice with. What she didn't realize when she turned on this station was how it affected me. I immediately went back to being a teenager as soon as I heard the first piece play. 

My son has a few requests of poses that we do during a yoga practice when he comes to my class - one of them being Bakasana or Crow pose. This pose appears to be based on strength as you lift your knees to balance on your triceps without falling forward. However, the key to this pose is not muscle, it is your Drishti, or gaze.

Breaking the patterns that we have takes courage to first admit to ourselves we have them and then second to take the actions we need to change.

We have all been there in a business situation - just as you are about to make a decision, you have a sinking feeling that it is the wrong thing to do. We fight that pit in our stomach because we can not rationalize why we have the feeling we do because we have all the factual reasons why it is the right decision. Many times more than not, we find out later that our intuition was right.

Exercise has always been a way to balance my busy life – whether when I was a student in school, in a public accounting firm or running my businesses over the years. I love all forms of exercise, but I am most passionate about yoga as a way to release stress and be ready to take on each day.