I used to constantly second-guess my decisions and worry about worst-case scenarios. It slowed down my work, drained my energy, and made it harder to enjoy life. 

I’ve been a neuroscientist for over 20 years and I’ve learned that you don’t need to optimize every minute of your day to make your brain stronger. 

Even the smallest shifts in your approach can lead to positive changes that help you focus, feel calmer and fight burnout.

Here’s how I keep my brain strong and healthy.

High achievers often see anxiety as a flaw. I see it as a smoke detector: signals from the limbic system, your brain’s emotional center, pointing to what matters.

Whether it’s an emergency or just some burnt toast, I wouldn’t want to get rid of the alarm. In the past, ignoring my anxiety only made it harder to tell when to act and when to stay calm.

Now when I feel anxious, I pause and ask what it’s telling me about why this moment matters. Once I can name it, I can address it, rather than stewing or freezing.

When you’re under pressure, the prefrontal cortex — your brain’s CEO — floods with dopamine and norepinephrine.

These chemicals sharpen focus and drive in the short-term, but they also deplete the neurotransmitters tied to joy and fulfillment, like serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins.

This isn’t a sustainable form of motivation. It will only burn you out and make you miserable. 

When I start to get down on myself, I do a simple shift. Rather than ruminating on the outcomes I don’t want, I focus on the outcomes I do want. This helps clear my mind, and makes me more excited to pursue the goal in front of me. 

I don’t track my REM sleep or heart rate with an Apple Watch or an Oura Ring. Wading through too much data about things I can’t directly control just makes me more stressed.

If I wake up tired, I remind myself that today might be tough, but it’s going to be ok. Then I stick to my routine instead of trying to make up for it with additional caffeine or sleeping in the next day.

What helps more is managing the habits that set my brain up for good sleep: morning sunlight, a consistent bedtime to support melatonin release, regular exercise, and a calming nighttime routine to lower cortisol.

Jumping back and forth between different tasks and projects can sometimes make you feel more productive, because you get a little boost of dopamine every time you focus on something new. But that productivity boost is an illusion. 

Task-switching actually taxes the prefrontal cortex, the part of your brain that helps you make decisions and solve problems. This strain can lead to mistakes and mental exhaustion. 

When I really need to buckle down and get stuff done, I break the task into small time blocks so I can focus fully on one thing at a time. 

Positive thinking is a very powerful tool. But it can sometimes make you feel worse.

So many high achievers fall into this trap. They try to force their way to a good outcome by avoiding any negative feelings, and end up getting in their own way. 

A more helpful approach is to acknowledge and label your emotions.

It might feel silly, but it eases the load on your amygdala, letting your brain release tension and refocus with intention instead of suppressing your feelings.

For a long time, I focused solely on my ambition to avoid feeling like a failure.

From a neuroscience perspective, this approach elevated my stress hormones. I’d get a quick boost of dopamine and motivation, but in the long-term, it led to me feeling burned out.

Now, whenever I start to spiral, I take a deep breath and remind myself that I’m doing my best. 

By recognizing my worth beyond my output, I can rewire my brain and unlock a greater sense of joy and fulfillment.

Alex Korb, PhD, is a neuroscientist, UCLA professor, and mindset coach. He is the author of ”The Upward Spiral.”

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Gigi Gonzalez has a new rule for herself: She doesn’t work Fridays.

“Fridays are my errand day,” says Gonzalez, 36. “That’s when I go to the dentist. That’s when I take my dog to the groomer [or] when I get my nails done.”

For the rest of the workweek, Gonzalez keeps her schedule tight, working Monday through Thursday from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

That wasn’t the case one year ago, when Gonzalez says she logged a more traditional 40 hours of work a week as her own boss running The First Gen Mentor, where she’s a financial educator, content creator and author.

It’s not that she’s landed a sudden windfall or considerably increased her rates. Rather, Gonzalez moved from Chicago to Valencia, Spain, with her husband in May 2025. Since then, her personal expenses have gone down enough to make a 16-hour workweek possible.

The move has transformed her work-life balance, her finances and her outlook on a long-term future abroad.

Gonzalez’s journey abroad kicked off in 2019. One day, she was discussing her financial services job at a high-school career day and advised students to study abroad if possible, something she regretted not doing herself.

After repeating her regret through seven different presentations that day, Gonzalez decided it wasn’t too late for her to live abroad as an adult. She says she spent the next two years saving about $20,000 with the goal of taking a year-long sabbatical from work.

The Covid-19 pandemic upended her plans, so in April 2021 Gonzalez says she used her savings to launch her own business, The First Gen Mentor, where she offers financial education to first-generation students and young professionals of color. A few years into being her own boss, Gonzalez realized she could do her job from around the world, and she revived her plan to move overseas.

After some research, she and her husband set their sights on Spain, where Gonzalez can apply for citizenship after two years of residency through her Mexican citizenship. (She currently holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Mexico, where her parents were born.)

Spanish was Gonzalez’s first language, so there wouldn’t be a major language barrier. Plus, Spain launched its digital nomad visa in late 2023, which allows foreign freelancers, remote workers and self-employed business owners to live in the country while earning money from overseas.

From July 2024 to April 2025, the couple saved over $20,000 to move abroad by selling their furniture and focusing on values-based spending. “It didn’t feel like deprivation; it felt like I was budgeting towards a greater purpose of moving abroad,” says Gonzalez, who is a financial advocate for Intuit.

She also limited her impulsive spending. That meant no new furniture, plants or clothes. “Basically, anything I couldn’t pack in three suitcases [wasn’t] going to make the cut,” she says.

Gonzalez got her digital nomad visa in April 2025 and added her husband as a dependent; he works in operations for an international company and secured a transfer to their Spanish subsidiary. Gonzalez’s visa gives her three years of residency, during which she says she plans to apply for citizenship in Spain.

Gonzalez says her cost of living in Spain is much lower than it was in the U.S., which means she can work less, typically 16 but sometimes up to 20 hours per week, and still live comfortably.

As a result, she says her sense of work-life balance has “completely transformed.” She can enjoy the luxury of a slow morning, starting with breakfast, exercise, self-care and lunch before logging on at 2 p.m. when her U.S.-based clients are starting their days.

Gonzalez says some early and aggressive investments are also paying off. During the pandemic, Gonzalez says she invested up to 35% of her income into her retirement accounts. It was enough to hit a number where she’ll be able to stop working and live off the distributions from her portfolio in retirement. Gonzalez currently has over $220,000 stashed for retirement.

“That means that I have enough in my investments now that I don’t have to add more money,” Gonzalez says, “and I can still retire at the traditional age of 65 without adding another dollar, just by letting compound interest do its magic.”

With her retirement income taken care of, Gonzalez says she only has to work enough now to support her everyday spending. “If one day I want to stop [running my business] and just go be a barista or a waitress, I can do that, because I just need to pay for my current expenses,” she says. “I don’t need to earn more to put towards retirement.”

Gonzalez hopes to stay in Spain long-term and says retirement is even more within reach given its lower expenses, especially around medical care. That being said, she says her newfound sense of work-life balance and a slower pace of living don’t make her dread working a few more decades.

“I’m not rushing to retire because I’m semi-retired,” she says.

Gonzalez says her personal expenses have gone down since moving abroad. Rent for her and her husband’s downtown Chicago apartment was $3,700 for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit; meanwhile, in Valencia the couple pays 1,900 euros (roughly $2,200 USD) for a two-bedroom, one-and-a-half bathroom apartment.

Health insurance is another huge difference. In the U.S., Gonzalez says she and her husband paid more than $400 per month for employer-sponsored coverage with a high-deductible plan; in Valencia, their private health care is about $200 per month with no copays or deductibles.

“It’s really shocking as an American,” she says. “I don’t think twice about going to the doctor for something because there’s no copays; it’s already paid for.”

Not all of Gonzalez’s expenses are lower these days. Doing business in two countries is pricey.

Gonzalez says she employs a U.S.-based tax team to keep her LLC active and in compliance; her digital nomad visa also requires that she registers her business in Spain, so she has a Spanish tax team to help with that.

Given the added complexities of her business since moving, Gonzalez’s $350 monthly tax help has doubled to nearly $700 a month. “It was a big learning curve in the beginning, but I’ve adjusted,” she says.

Gonzalez says that when she told friends and family about her plans to move abroad, many of them didn’t realize how long she’d been planning for it.

“A lot of people see [others] living their best life in Europe, and then they look into the process, they get overwhelmed, and they don’t do it,” Gonzalez says. She recommends people really explore why they want to move abroad. Then, “create the systems and change their money mindset to be able to meet those goals.”

Gonzalez says her big moments of inspiration came from that high-school career day, but also when binging “House Hunters International” episodes or traveling abroad and wishing she could stay longer. It was enough motivation go keep her going through researching, saving up for and adjusting to her new life overseas.

“This is definitely one of the things for me, if I would have been on my deathbed, I would regret never experiencing life abroad,” she adds. “You get one life. Live it right.”

Conversions from euros to USD were done using the OANDA conversion rate of 1 euro to $1.16 USD on March 9, 2026.

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Shahezad Contractor’s initial aim in starting his halal burger business was simple: “I wanted more halal options.”

Now, with eight locations across the Northeast, he has much bigger dreams for Cousin’s Burger, the halal restaurant chain he launched in 2024.

“Our goal is to be the next In-and-Out or the next Shake Shack,” Contractor tells CNBC Make It.

Contractor, 44, is the founder and CEO of Cousin’s Food Inc., a halal restaurant group based in Philadelphia. Along with Cousin’s Burger, Contractor also owns a halal pizza shop, Cousin’s Pizza, and a halal barbecue joint, Cousin’s Smokehouse and Burgers.

Collectively, his restaurants brought in over $4 million in revenue in 2025, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.

In Contractor’s view, there’s “a lot of untapped potential” in the halal food market. “You don’t need to be Muslim to enjoy halal,” Contractor says: Many people prefer halal meat because of its “high quality and cleanliness,” as well as its more humane treatment of animals.

Aside from the Halal Guys restaurant franchise, there are relatively few mainstream American halal food options in the U.S., Contractor says.

He’s hoping to change that.

Contractor, who grew up on Long Island, got into the restaurant business almost by accident, he says. Technology was his first passion: after earning a degree in management information systems from SUNY Old Westbury, he spent 24 years working in IT.

The turning point came when his friend Tabish Hoda asked Contractor to participate in his halal food festival in 2023. Contractor, who has no formal culinary training but frequently cooks for family and friends, decided to make smashburgers — it was “the easiest thing I could do,” he says.

He bought enough meat to feed approximately 500 customers, expecting to have leftovers. Instead, Contractor sold out by 6 p.m. that day. “That’s when I realized that there was a ton of potential” in serving American-style halal food, he says.

Contractor started exploring the idea of opening his own restaurant in Philadelphia, which he saw as the “perfect location” to start a halal business due to its significant Muslim population, he says.

He partnered with Rizwan Ahmed, a restaurant owner he met at the halal festival to transform one of Ahmed’s existing restaurants into the first Cousin’s Burger location in 2024.

From there, the business expanded quickly. Cousin’s Burger currently has eight locations across Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware.

Contractor attributes his restaurants’ popularity to three key characteristics: high-quality ingredients, “really simple” recipes, and excellent customer service.

He gets his meat from Prime Halal, a Philadelphia-based, halal-certified butcher shop. “It’s a bit more expensive than what you’d find in your normal restaurant supplier, but the taste speaks for itself,” he says.

The smashburger is “by far” the number one menu item at Cousin’s Burger, Contractor says, and they’ve gotten the recipe down to a science: A portion of USDA Prime Black Angus beef is smashed on a flat-top grill, seasoned with their signature spice blend and then covered with white American cheese. It’s served on a buttered, lightly-toasted potato roll and topped with pickles and Cousin’s Burger’s proprietary house sauce.

A single smashburger typically costs $7 or $8, he says — the exact price depends on the location due to variations in rent.

Right now, food costs are “through the roof,” Contractor says. “I’d love to be able to sell a $4 burger, but it’s simply impossible. The economics of it doesn’t make sense.” Rent and labor are the other main expenses for Cousin’s Burger, according to Contractor.

These days, Contractor is less involved in the day-to-day operations of the restaurants. His main responsibilities are marketing, meeting with business partners and “continuing to grow the brand,” he says.

As the sole breadwinner of his household, which includes his wife and two daughters, Contractor says that it felt like a huge risk to leave his “very cushy” IT job to start a restaurant. At the same time, he had begun to worry that AI would affect his job security, so he decided to take a “leap of faith” and launch his own business.

“Building something for yourself, something that can potentially make generational wealth as well,” he says, “was really appealing to me.”

Contractor’s long-term goal is to make Cousin’s Burger a global brand, he says. Over the next few years, he hopes to open 50 locations and to expand into other countries, including Canada.

“I think the sky’s the limit,” Contractor says. “We’re going to keep going until somebody tells us to stop, or we can’t do it anymore.”

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I’ve been a therapist for over 30 years, and so many of the couples I meet with simply don’t see how their words and body language — even if they are not yelling — are disrespectful.

I’ve seen couples who have a hard time repairing trust that was broken during embroiled and ugly fights. Others lose a sense of trust by the sarcastic digs, eye rolls, interrupting, or belittling.

It’s vital to examine the kinds of communication that go under the radar as disrespectful. Awareness is the first step in taking accountability for your words. While the types of phrases below can seem innocent on their own, over time they can leave a partner feeling diminished and unloved — and the whole relationship in troubled waters:

1. Phrases that humiliate your partner, name-calling, or speaking disparagingly — directly or to others in public

Examples:

• “Really, second helpings?”
• “Oh, he always does that.”
• “Don’t pay attention to him.”

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2. Sarcasm and mocking tones intended as insults

Examples:

• “Great job on yelling at the kids.”
• “Is that what you’re wearing?”
• “Yeah, like that’s worth bragging about.”

3. Manipulative language that twists reality

Examples:

• “It didn’t happen that way.”
• “I never said that. You understood it wrong.”
• “You’re crazy if you really think that.”

4. Moralistic statements that insult, correct, criticize, demean, diagnose or label

Examples:

• “You spoil him way too much, because your mother spoiled you.”
• “You’re so selfish.”
• “That’s a narcissistic thing to say.”

5. Blame shifting

Examples:

• “I hate yelling, but you frustrate me so much.”
• “You’re making me feel guilty.”
• “Maybe if you tried harder, I wouldn’t have to step in.”

6. Blocking compassion by advice, interrogation, one-upping or correcting

Examples:

• “How come you didn’t talk to me about this sooner?”
• “Why don’t you just ignore her?”
• “I’ve done this a dozen times. It’s not that complicated.”

While this won’t solve all your problems, one tool I like to give couples after their first session is the almighty pause.

Whether it’s stepping away, going outside to breathe and relax, or developing a silly code word together when things get tense. The idea is to do whatever it takes to shut the reactive system down which typically requires elongating the space between your angry reactive feelings and the urge to spew these feelings out with your words. 

The pause could mean a minute, five minutes, or five days. This slowing down mechanism benefits us greatly in relationships because it makes us less prone to the judgmental words.

Essentially, the work before you open your mouth is the most important and influential part of having conversations that heal versus destroy your relationship. Pausing and preparing is about connecting within for energy before you reach for energy from your partner. We are all in training here!

Rachel Glik is a licensed professional counselor with over 30 years as a couples and individual therapist. She has taught and created workshops for organizations such as: YPO, The Kabbalah Centre, Onevillage, University of Missouri and Psychotherapy Saint Louis. Rachel is also the author of “A Soulful Marriage: Healing Your Relationship With Responsibility, Growth, Priority, and Purpose.”

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Excerpt reprinted with permission A Soulful Marriage ©2025 Morehouse Publishing, New York, NY 10016

When Naseema McElroy was 25, she owned five rental properties. It was how she thought she was going to build her wealth.

By taking advantage of subprime lending practices that allowed borrowers with weak credit histories to easily obtain high-interest mortgages in the early 2000s, McElroy figured she would borrow as much as she could to purchase multiple properties and it would all work out in the end, she tells CNBC Make It.

Then about a year later, in 2008, the housing market crashed.

“I was really naive,” McElroy says. Suddenly, she owed lenders more than what her properties were worth. To avoid foreclosure, she says she was forced to sell two of the investments for less than what was left on their mortgages. Two other properties were foreclosed on, and eventually she says she had to declare bankruptcy.

Since then, the now 44-year-old labor and delivery nurse has grown her net worth to over $1 million, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. She owns her primary home, but the majority of her wealth comes from investing in the stock market through broad-based index funds, documents show.

The biggest lesson she says she’s learned from the experience: “Real estate is one form of investing, but it’s not the only form.”

While there can be upsides to investing in real estate, it’s significantly riskier than investing in the stock market and can require a lot more work than many investors anticipate, says Alex Caswell, a certified financial planner and founder of Wealth Script Advisors in San Francisco, California.

On social media, “there’s been a popularization of the idea that real estate is somehow a silver bullet in terms of building wealth,” Caswell says. However, in reality, becoming a successful real estate investor requires extensive research and dedication, he says.

Before purchasing a property, Caswell says investors should consider a swath of variables, including how much it could appreciate, property taxes, maintenance costs, insurance expenses and the best way to finance the purchase.

All of these variables rely on assumptions, and adding all of your assumptions together can create “a lot more of an unpredictable investment experience,” Caswell says.

Additionally, becoming a landlord like McElroy may not be as easy as collecting a monthly check, Caswell says.

“I just remember how hard it was to be a landlord,” says McElroy, who was also working full time as a health-care administrator at the time.

On top of constant costs associated with maintaining her homes, she says collecting rent and dealing with tenants became a constant struggle.

McElroy says she never generated as much revenue from the venture as she expected, and looking back, McElroy says her failure to understand the true costs associated with real estate before taking on so much debt became the biggest money-related mistake she has ever made.

If you’re not looking to commit to becoming a full-time real estate investor, Caswell says you’re probably better off prioritizing financial security by investing in the stock market through retirement and traditional brokerage accounts.

If you want to “dabble” in purchasing property, only do so once you’ve saved enough to retire comfortably, he says.

“The risk and the level of dedication to succeed in a real estate venture is going to be so great that if you fail at it, it could really set you back financially,” Caswell says.

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