Check In On Yourself
This week I want to start off with a question to you, the reader. How are you doing? Not your family, not anyone else around you, but just you. This week at work I listened to a lot of virtual workshops and one of the first sessions had a speaker that was very motivational and spoke a lot about taking care of yourself not only in the office/in regards to work, but personally as well. Quite honestly that really hit home and it got me thinking about a lot of different things I could be doing for myself during this pandemic, but also well after that as well. I was hoping to share my thoughts and ideas on checking in with yourself and putting yourself first from time to time, no matter how many other people are depending on you.
Time is something that we all have different amounts of. Someone like me that lives a pretty busy life under normal circumstances may have a pretty packed schedule, but I still have a lot more time to myself than a mother of 3 kids, just to put things into perspective. I realize I am not the busiest person in the world but that does not mean my time is not being sectioned off into many different things. Even our biggest time eaters are sectioned off into smaller sections. For example work takes up eight(ish) hours of my day but how much of that is spent on the phone, checking emails, working on projects, etc. I think the most important step here is to realize just how your time is sectioned and broken up in your daily life. How much time do you have to yourself once all the important things are done? Would you like to add more time to that number? If you did have more free time what would you like to do with that time? Now there are no wrong answers to this last question. Your free time is yours to do as you please, if you want to just stare into space, you do you! Time truly is a precious thing and I think so many of us take if for granted.
So now that we have thought about all that, how can we make better use out of our time? During that workshop last week there was a lot of talk about prioritizing your projects. What needs to get done right away and what can wait. The one piece of advice I personally took very personally was to not sit all day monitoring emails at work. Things like that can be so distracting and take your focus completely away from your important tasks. Setting aside certain times for certain projects and activates is so very smart in my opinion. If you have followed this blog since the beginning you might remember how sporadically I actually used to post. I would type out a post really whenever I felt I had time to do so, sometimes that wasn't too often. Eventually I decided I needed a schedule with my posts and now I am writing every Sunday. This works great for me. I deal with my important tasks during the week, and still set some time aside for myself to dedicate to writing. The funny part is I am a lot busier now than I was back when I used to hardly post, but I am just using my time a bit more effectively. Think about how you can do just that.
Now I did not only want to talk about time today, even if it has eaten up a lot of the space of this post. Overall I wanted this to be a reminder for you to check in on you. If you are like me, you have spent the time since this pandemic started checking in on the ones you love just to make sure everyone is physically and mentally healthy. Sure most times the ones you check in on also ask how you are doing, but only you can truly answer that fully honestly to yourself. Always remember that you are also a priority. Take some time on yourself to make sure you are staying physically and mentally well. Another suggestion during that workshop was to have an established morning routine. That really got me thinking. Sure I have a somewhat structured morning routine: Hit the snooze twice, contacts in, skincare, brush my teeth, makeup, dressed, breakfast then out the door, but it made me wonder if I could do even more for myself in the mornings. Hitting the snooze twice is just under twenty minutes of time just spent dozing in bed while messing up my sleep schedule at the same time. How can I use that time a little better? I decided I am going to try and start getting up right when my alarm goes off and fit in 15-20 minutes of yoga. A nice stretch in the morning is never going to be a bad thing. Are there ways you can structure your life a bit better to set yourself up for a better day?
Overall I just want all of my readers to check in with themselves. Ask yourself all the questions you ask your loved ones when you are checking in on them. If you need someone to talk to I am sure there is someone in your life you can reach out to. None of us are going through the crazy time alone. We are all handling things the best way we know how and in some cases I am sure that means barely hanging on. Just know that is okay and work towards a better day tomorrow. You are not selfish for putting your needs first from time to time regardless of how big your home is. Your kids or spouse or any other family members you may live with are not going to love you any less if you take a few moments to breathe. We all need to take a step back from reality sometimes just to relax and recharge. Accept that you are human, and allow yourself to do that for you! You will thank yourself for it later I promise.
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