    In regards to stress and sleep I learned a fair bit. As far as sleep is concerned I’ve never really had a problem with that but the idea of sleep debt is interesting and I better understand now how important sleep is. For sleep I learned many methods of falling asleep better like avoiding technology and journaling, but I do none of those things and have no problem falling asleep. So if I do in the future I will know these things and be able to apply them. It was interesting to learn about melanin and how it can help but you don’t want to get your body to start depending on it. It was interesting to learn about napping. I agree it is very good and do it often when I can, but sometimes it can wake me up in a bad mood because I have a lot going on and I would rather not be sleeping. I learned more about stress like how negative it can be. It can build up cortisol in your body which can affect your physical health, and cause you to break out in acne or get fat. I also learned different ways to cope with stress and reduce stress in your life. Stress is part of everybody's life, but when you are experiencing it everyday it begins to take a toll on you as you enter different phases like resistance and exhaustion. So you have to find different ways to reduce the stress in your life and be happy. There are two kinds of stress, good stress and bad stress but even good stress can turn into bad stress so you always have to be aware. I haven’t implemented any changes to help with my sleep because I didn’t feel as though I needed to change anything. My stress is fairly low because of not having too much going on and handling it very relaxed but sometimes I still feel it like in finals week even though i’m not worried about it, it affects me. This can be a good thing because it motivates me to study and get stuff done but I don’t know how to do it without some stress. I give it a 5. So it affects me positively at school but in life the way I feel is negative and sometimes I do things I don’t want. My biggest stressors are having things to do and places I have to show up and perform well when I don’t feel like it. Also my car and financial problems. To address the problems I learned I could do some things like handle it or do some stuff like downshifting to reduce that stress.
    My goal this semester was initially to work on my diet and put on a little more weight. But as the semester went on I found myself not really invested in this goal, which was an obstacle. I also struggled financially and didn’t feel like spending any more on groceries. Because of this I decided to change my goal to creating and following a budget. My biggest obstacles with this new goal were just reducing my spending because I wasn’t making a lot or sticking to the budget. The techniques I learned to help were to work hard to get money and show discipline when following a budget. If I don’t learn to have discipline when following a budget then I could have money issues for the rest of my life, which would be very stressful and would make my life seem almost like a slave. I will miss out on the feeling of financial freedom.
