It is common for moms to experience the “baby blues” – crying, sadness, difficulty sleeping, irritability – within the first few days to couple of weeks after having a new baby. However, when these symptoms last longer than two or three weeks, you may be suffering from “postpartum depression” (PPD). The latter requires professional consultation and treatment, and is not something that you should blame yourself for developing. In any case, if you are experiencing depression after the birth of your baby, please do NOT delay in getting treatment.
How many women are affected by postpartum depression?
Although many cases still go unreported, it appears that about 20% of moms develop it.
Why, at a time that most would celebrate the birth of a baby, do you feel depressed?
There can be many reasons, but here are some potential ones:
Hormonal Changes:
Estrogen and progesterone hormones increase ten times during pregnancy, and then drop suddenly after birth. In fact, they are back to pre-pregnancy levels or even lower within three days of giving birth! Cortisol is another hormone that increases in pregnancy, and decreases dramatically after the baby’s birth.
Major Lifestyle Changes:
If it is a first baby, it can be very stressful learning everything there is to know about caring for a newborn. Add lack of sleep and/or a colicky baby into the picture, and coping skills can dramatically be reduced.
If this is not your first baby, there can sometimes be guilt associated with not spending enough time with your older children as caring for the new baby may be taking away time away from them.
Physical Changes:
It can be frustrating to hear about celebrities who are in their pre-pregnancy jeans within a week of giving birth! This is not the norm. In addition to weight gain, new mothers deal with the reality of permanent stretch marks, and the pain from vaginal deliveries or caesarean sections.
Emotional Causes:
Many times, mothers-to-be have idealistic thoughts of how the pregnancy, labor and delivery, and post-pregnancy weeks are going to be, only to find out that many things do not go according to plan. Forexample, if a mother was planning on cuddling and bonding with her baby immediately after the birth, but the baby has to be rushed off due to unexpected medical reasons, this can be devastating.
Although all moms experience potential reasons to become depressed, not all do.
As in other physical and mental health disorders, there are particular risk factors for developing postpartum depression.
Risk factors for PPD include:
History of depression prior to pregnancy or during pregnancy
Family history of depression (often a biochemical predisposition)
Previous history of postpartum depression after the birth of other children
History of an eating disorder
Lack of support from family, friends, and partner
Age of the mother – Younger mothers are at increased risk
The more children you have, the greater the risk of PPD
Troubled relationship with your partner
In summary, up to 20% of moms will develop postpartum depression. There are several reasons why you may feel depressed after the birth, and risk factors that increase the chances of developing PPD. Arming yourself with this knowledge, can help you identify if you may be suffering from PPD, so that you can get help as soon as possible.
Let’s talk about mindfulness for a moment. Simply put, mindfulness is about paying attention and living in the moment. Think of it as taking the time to stop and smell the roses. It’s about cutting out the distractions and noise. It’s about choosing to focus on something in particular.
There are some big benefits to practicing mindfulness. Top among them is of course feeling less stressed. One of the reasons we feel stressed is because we are pulled in many different directions and are constantly bombarded by new information, media, and demands. Practicing mindfulness allows you to tune out the noise and give your mind a break. This in turn will help you relieve stress and by making mindfulness part of your daily routine, you can start to permanently reduce stress and negate some of its negative side effects.
Practicing mindfulness doesn’t have to be hard or complicated. You don’t have to get into any long mindfulness meditations, unless you want to. You can start with some very easy and simple things. Let’s take mindful eating for example. Instead of eating in front of the TV or looking at your phone while you munch on a slice of takeout pizza, try this instead. Get out a plate and put your food on it. Arrange the slices of pizza and maybe add a small side salad. If you’re feeling fancy, grab a knife and fork. Sit down at the table and put your phone away. Focus on the food. What does it look like? What does it smell like? How does it taste? Savor each bite and pay attention to how your body is starting to react. Not only is it a great way to destress, you’ll find you’ll get a lot more out of each meal and this type of eating tends to keep you from overindulging.
Another great way to practice mindfulness is with a mindfulness meditation. Focus on your breathing and notice how the air rushes in and out of your lungs, what it feels like to have it move in through your nose and out through your mouth. Pay attention to the rise and fall of your abdomen.
You can practice mindfulness anytime, anywhere. The hardest part is remembering to do it. Create one or two small rituals for yourself that focus on mindfulness. Maybe it’s a simple meditation in the morning, or really paying attention to that first cup of coffee. Maybe it’s going for a stroll after dinner by yourself where you can practice being mindful of your surroundings and the beauty you encounter. Give it a try and start to reap the many short and long-term benefits of practicing mindfulness.
In one of my previous posts about reducing stress, I briefly mentioned the benefits of hugging and laughter to help reduce stress. They are such fun, easy, and powerful techniques that anyone can do just about anywhere, I thought it was time to dive a little deeper and look at why they work and how we can actively start using them to reduce the negative effects of chronic stress.
Let’s start by talking about hugs. Have you ever noticed how a good hug will make you feel better? It calms you and changes your entire outlook on the world and whatever it is that’s been upsetting or stressing you out. Turns out there’s some science behind hugs and a reason we start to feel better.
There are measurable effects on your heart and on the stress-level of your brain activity when you hug and those benefits will ramp up significantly around the twenty second mark. As an added bonus, your body will release oxytocin, a feel-good hormone. It’s no wonder your whole outlook starts to change after a good hug.
Start to hug your loved ones or your favorite pet more often and when you do, try to hold the hug for at least twenty seconds. Don’t be creepy about it, but if you’re comfortable – and you should be if you’re sharing a long hug – tell the other person about the benefits of these longer hugs. Before long it will become second nature and you’ll both continue to reap the rewards.
When hugging isn’t an option, or if you don’t enjoy them, give laughing a try. It relieves tension and reduces stress. As an added benefit, you’re drawing more air into your lungs, resulting in more oxygen being delivered to your heart, brain, and other important organs. Laughing often can even improve your immune system.
Put on a funny movie, watch a TV sitcom, read some funny cartoons, call a friend who makes you laugh, or just start laughing and fake it until you start to feel it. Laughter, it turns out, really is great medicine and great for both body and mind.
Fun fact for you. There’s even an entire sub niche of yoga practitioners who do laughter yoga as a stress busting technique. Can you see yourself taking a class where you go through various yoga exercises while also making a conscious effort to laugh out loud?
Did you know that exercise is one of the best ways to beat stress? It works in a variety of different ways, not the least of which is the release of endorphins, the feel-good hormones. Of course exercise has all sorts of other benefits too, but for now, let’s focus on the stress reducing properties and endorphins play a big role in that. Moderate exercise is also great for your heart and will help reduce blood pressure. In other words, exercise helps you directly combat some of the worst effects of stress.
Another reason exercise is great for stress relief is because it helps you sleep better at night. There’s nothing like deep sleep to help you relax and wake up refreshed and decidedly less stressed. Getting a good workout in or doing a few yoga exercises before bed can help you get to sleep sooner and stay asleep longer. Give exercise a try and see the benefits for yourself.
It doesn’t take a lot of exercise to start seeing the benefits. Something as simple as a ten-minute walk will help and the benefits stack up quickly when you make it a daily habit. You can get out there and walk. Or you can make yourself walk in place in front of the TV during commercial breaks. Get a pedometer that beeps when you’ve been sitting for too long and strive to walk 4,000 steps per day.
Of course walking isn’t your only option. Any type of physical activity helps reduce stress. Think about something that sounds fun. Maybe you enjoyed playing basketball in high school. Find a rec league that meets once or twice a week or stop by the park on the way home for a quick pickup game. If you enjoy swimming, join a local pool and take a swim before dinner, or first thing in the morning. You can probably shower at the facility and head to work from there.
Or how about dancing? You can join a club, take lessons, or just crank up the music and dance around the house whenever you need a break from everything else. Keep it fun and enjoy the additional mood lifting benefits of the music. If you’re ready for a more intense workout, sign up for a Zumba class.
Here’s the key to adding more exercise and physical activity in your life. Try something and see what you can stick with. That’s the most important part. Create some simple routines and habits that will have you moving more and watch the stress melt away.
Are you ready to actively do something to reduce stress on a daily basis? If not, I would like to encourage you to pick up and develop a daily habit that helps you accomplish just that. Stress not only reduces your quality of life; it can also negatively affect your health. There’s a reason why they say stress kills. Start doing something about it and embrace life to the fullest with some of these simple techniques that help you stress less.
Start Meditating
One of the best tools for reducing stress is meditation. You can start with a simple breathing meditation by getting comfortable in a quiet spot and focusing on relaxing and thinking about nothing but your breath. From there, give some of the free guided meditations a try. There are even some wonderful apps out there that turn your smartphone into your favorite new meditation device. Set aside a few minutes each day to meditate and watch the stress melt away.
Keep a Journal
This one may surprise you. A journal is an effective tool to help you worry and stress less. The simple act of writing about what’s on your mind can be incredibly freeing. A journal is also a great tool to help you look back and figure out what’s triggering or causing periods of high stress. This is valuable information to have since you can’t work towards reducing or eliminating a trigger if you don’t know what it is.
Go for A Walk
Another simple, but very powerful technique is to go for a walk. Get outside if possible, but if that’s not a good option, hop on a treadmill or pace around your house. It doesn’t take a lot of walking before you start to see the benefits. If you only have ten minutes, walk. If you have an hour lunch break, walk for 20 minutes and spend the rest of the time relaxing and eating. Make it work and get in the habit of walking regularly.
Hug
That’s right. Something as simple as a hug can help you relax and fight stress. Make sure the hug is genuine on both sides and for best results, hold the embrace for at least twenty seconds. You’ll start to feel yourself calm and those endorphins will flood your system. Don’t have anyone around to hug at the moment? Laughing out loud is pretty powerful too. Turn on a fun comedy that leaves you in stitches.
Clean Up Your Diet
Last but not least, take a look at what you’re putting into your mouth. A clean diet of mostly whole foods that’s low in sugars and preservatives will nourish your body and fight much of the damage stress causes. It will also help you feel calmer and more in control. Start making some small changes and see if you don’t start to feel better.
Do you know what one of the most effective ways to de-stress is? It’s sleeping. Yes, exercise is great and meditation is a wonderful tool, but the best thing you can do to stress less on a regular basis is to get a goodnight sleep.
You already know this is true. Think about how much harder your job and your life in general feel after a night when you were up with the kids, or working until four in the morning to finish an important project. You get grumpy, it’s harder to focus, and every little problem suddenly becomes insurmountable. You feel a lot more stressed throughout the day and it only gets worse if you end up sleeping poorly for several days in a row.
Now here’s the interesting bit. The average person doesn’t get the optimal amount of sleep at night, and even when we do, our sleep quality often isn’t great. Too often our sleep is disrupted throughout the night, even if we don’t fully wake up and most of us struggle with falling asleep.
Thankfully there are a lot of things you can do to improve both the quantity and quality of sleep you get. Before you tell yourself that you can’t afford to sleep more, realize that not focusing on sleep will cause you to be less focused and productive. You’ll actually get more done by investing time into a good-night sleep.
Start by establishing a bedtime routine. Try to go to bed at the same time every night, even on the weekends. It helps your body get into a rhythm that makes falling asleep and staying asleep easier. Cut distractions from your bedroom. That means leaving your phone in the living room. If you need an alarm, go buy an alarm clock. You don’t want those alerts and notifications keeping you from getting into those all-important deep sleep zones. Turn off the lights and have a good look around your bedroom. Are there any small indicator lights or blinking lights? Try to remove them if possible. Listen for any sounds from electronics and the likes. Make your bedroom a calm, quiet, and dark place of rest.
Last but not least, watch your screen time at night. Our eyes and the way they process light, including the light waves from our screens have a big impact on how alert the body is. One of the worst habits we’ve all developed is to look at our phones while trying to go to sleep. Biologically it’s the equivalent of watching the sunrise. Stop telling your body it’s time to get up while you’re trying to go to sleep. Instead, focus on calming activities like reading, talking with your partner, or meditating for an hour before going to sleep. Reduce screen time for a few hours before bed or at the least invest in blue light filtered glasses or install an app that changes your display at night.
One of the main reasons why we are so much more stressed than let’s say our grandparents were, is because we are taking on a lot more. We have families where each partner is working a full-time job and possibly a side hustle as well to make ends meet financially. That leaves all the hard work of keeping house and raising a family, which needs to be done during “off” hours. Most of us no longer mentally clock out at the end of the workday. Instead, we take our work home, and are reachable at all hours via text message or email. Add to that the stress constant connectivity and social media creates and it’s no wonder we’re more stressed than ever.
It’s time to do something about it. It’s time to stop trying to do all the things all the time and focus on reducing stress in your life. Start by reviewing everything you do in a given day. A great tool for this is a time log. Keep a simple piece of paper or a small notebook with you at all times. Set an alert on your phone to go off every 30 minutes (during waking hours), and quickly jot down what you’re doing. Be brutally honest. No one else needs to see this log and you can burn it after you’re done. After a week of logging, you get a pretty good idea of where you spend your time and mental energy.
Now comes the fun part. Look through your data and decide what you can let go off. What can you stop doing? Open up some time for yourself to exercise, meditate, or to take a nap so you can catch up on much needed sleep.
Next it’s time to review and release all those worries, questions, and “should-dos” that are stressing you out. Get out another sheet of paper or two and start to write down anything and everything on your mind. All the stuff you’ve been thinking about doing. All the stuff that’s been worrying you. Get it all out. Walk away for a few hours and then come back to your list. Cross out as much as you can. Things that are out of your control and you decide to mentally release. Tasks that you feel like you should do, that you really don’t need to do. Then rewrite what’s left on two different lists. One will be things you can do, or have someone else do for you. This will become your master to-do list for the next few months. The other is a list of worries, or concerns. Notice how much smaller and shorter those lists are and how much lighter you feel just getting it all out of your head.
Last but not least, go burn that master brain dump list. Doesn’t it feel good?
Are you feeling stressed? I’d be surprised if you weren’t. Between the growing demands of our jobs, raising a family while working full-time, and the increasing need to stay connected all day every day, most of us feel stressed out more often than we like to admit. Add to it a chronic lack of sleep and exercise, and you have a recipe for disaster. Stress kills and that’s no joke. Let’s look at some of the worst negative side effects of stress and what you can do to stress less and relax more.
Stress will cause your blood pressure to rise. You’ve experienced this when you found yourself hot and with a raging headache when you were in a particularly stressful situation. Feeling that way from time to time is no big deal. The real danger is in the lower-level stress we all feel on a daily basis. It can lead to hypertension and a higher risk of suffering from a heart attack or stroke.
Next, let’s look at sleep. When you’re stressed, you don’t sleep well. You may even find it hard to sleep at all. Insomnia is a common side effect of living a stress-full life. It doesn’t take long before you start to feel the negative side effects of not getting quality sleep. You feel drained, unfocused, and things spiral downward from there quickly. Your body can’t function well and recover without at least a few good hours of sleep per night. For optimal health, destress and shoot for at least six to eight hours.
Since stress is so hard on the body and mind, what can you do to reduce it? Quite a bit actually. The most obvious solution is to go to the source of the stress and cut it out of your life. Obviously that isn’t very practical, or desirable when you’re having a few rough weeks at the job you rely on or your kids are driving you nuts. Instead, try things to actively relax and destress when and where you can to counterbalance the unavoidable. Go for a walk outside. Hit the gym for some exercise. Meditate. Learn some breathing exercises to help calm yourself down whenever you feel particularly stressed. Get plenty of quality sleep. Eat a healthy diet and cut down on sugar and caffeine.
We’ll talk more about how you can stress less and love life in future blog posts. Being aware of the stress and how it is affecting you is a great first step. Now take a deep breath and go for a stroll around the block. Notice how much better you’re feeling already?
Life is a combination of achieving goals and enjoying life, but it is not always easy to do both at the same time. There seems to be a broad spectrum on the scale from go-getters and over-achievers to those who slack in all departments.
How many times have you caught yourself saying that you don’t have enough time or there isn’t enough time in the day? Is this really the truth? It isn’t! There are many people who do both – they achieve their goals regularly while still having enough time to enjoy life and the fruits of their labor.
If you’re like most people, you probably think these notions are for other people, who are super extraordinary, and you feel that you don’t fall into the mix. Today, the demands of work, career, education, family, and homeownership seem to take priority over enjoyment. Relaxation time may be scheduled as a once-a-month outing or even an annual vacation.
Are you waiting for retirement to enjoy your life? Many workers feel as though they are waiting for life to happen rather than creating the life they want.
Do you wish you had more time to achieve your goals and even more time to enjoy your life? If so, you are certainly not alone. Here is a special report on how to prioritize your life and make more time for both achieving your goals and enjoying your life.
Finding Balance
If you think about life being balanced, you might envision a seesaw in the position of being directly balanced in the middle with no ups, no downs, and simply managing to stay in the middle ground.
Of course, life doesn’t work like that. There are ups and there are definitely downs. Sometimes you might feel as though you just want to jump off the seesaw and lay on the ground for a little while just to gain your equilibrium back.
What does it mean to be in balance, if life has its difficulties? When you are in balance, you maintain your equilibrium while life’s ups and downs come to visit. Of course, you go through the various emotions as circumstances both good and not so good work their way through your life.
However, being in balance means you get to choose how long you stay in the down position. Of course, realistically, you can’t always stay up on the seesaw of life, but you can choose how you feel and what your action steps are going to be while you’re down.
Being in balance means intentionally, no matter how hard it is, choosing how you will show up under any given circumstance.
How do you really achieve balance? You can achieve balance in several ways:
Feel your emotions and move quickly through them – it’s perfectly fine to become emotional when the roller coaster of life gets too fast and too furious. Feel what you need to feel but move quickly on to the next step. The next step after feeling is action. If something doesn’t feel right, chances are it isn’t right. The next logical step to create more space in your life for fulfilling goals and time for enjoyment is action.
Choose an action step to recreate the scene. If you’ve lost a job, fire up your resume. If your home needs a repair, start asking family and friends for referrals on contractors. Don’t just sit and stew about what happened, but take the appropriate time to recreate what happens next. The faster you barrel through the downs of life, the sooner you can get back up. It’s simply a matter of gravity. Put those feet on the floor and bounce that seesaw up once again.
Don’t regurgitate facts and stories repeatedly – the more you talk about what happened, how unfair it was, and what a nuisance it was, the more energy you expend. This energy could be used for better purposes. You can create an answer to the problem and you can spend that much more time enjoying your life, setting and achieving goals.
If you find yourself faced with a problem, take the energy needed to create some sort of answer rather than dwell only on the issue at hand. We all use energy to get through the day’s events. However, we get to choose how much energy is spent on each project. Look at your life, what is going well? Do you have an amazing successful career or education? If so, then you might be spending all of your time and energy in that one area and the rest of your life is completely out of balance from family to personal relationships.
Sometimes, the unexpected can throw you off. How do you hit the reset button when life throws you a curve and knocks you off balance? Sometimes truthfully, no matter how hard we try not to dwell on something, we fall back into patterns of thinking and talking about something. What do you do when you can’t get the needle off the record and you are stuck? Call a friend and get an accountability partner.
Ask someone you know to reroute you when you are stuck. Ask them not to let you dwell on what happened or what you cannot control and help you return to present moment status.
Sometimes all it takes is someone to remind you that, in this present moment, you are fine and all is well. You might not have the answers to what will happen in the future, but anything is possible.
Make a choice and make some change. If you really want to achieve your goals and enjoy life to the fullest, you must choose where your energy will go. Make a choice that seems best in the moment and follow through with it.
If it doesn’t work out, don’t hold yourself to task because in human nature, there is always a choice. You may not like all the choices, but staying stuck won’t ever work. Make a choice with the information you have in front of you and take action steps toward that choice.
You will find yourself balanced, until a more optimal choice presents itself. At least you are not standing still and you are taking action steps toward a solution as compared to constantly focusing on or talking about the problem.
It is okay to be out of balance. Sometimes there’s a big project at work or a special event at home. You are out of balance because that event or project takes priority. A special event, like a wedding for example, takes a lot of time, but it will eventually be over. A home repair or project will come to completion, as well.
An annual meeting at work will soon be nothing but a distant memory. Sometimes it’s your season to work like a dog to get the job done. It’s okay to be out of balance for a while on occasion. Remember, however, it only takes a few minutes every day to get closer toward a goal. One small action step is better than no action at all.
It’s perfectly fine to be out of balance due to a special meeting or function or life event. You can still create a daily habit of taking one small actionable step toward a personal goal, dream, or desire.
Achieving Goals
Create reasons not excuses. Even during those times when you have no choice but to be out of balance, for example a work project is taking up most of your time, there’s no reason why you cannot set aside a mere five minutes toward a goal.
If you want to author a book, you can write a paragraph in five minutes. You can edit it later on but you can’t edit a blank page. If you want to start your own business, you can write down one paragraph or several notes of a business plan in five minutes. By the end of the month, all those five minutes will turn into something bigger.
It’s like a snowball effect. You start small and continue rolling that snowball down the hill. Before you know it, you have a boulder of success coming your way.
Being goal-oriented is good, up to a point. Some people are obsessed with getting things done. People who obsess about getting things done, put everybody and everything before their own hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Then, suddenly, they look around and their life is moving faster as time goes on. They’ve reached a certain age and all of their hopes, dreams, and aspirations are nowhere in sight.
Don’t be addicted to getting things done for everyone and everything. Put yourself on the schedule. Put your dreams on your to-do list. Be addicted to getting things done for you, and more importantly for your dreams.
Put it down on paper. There’s no better or faster way to achieve a goal then to put it down on paper. Have you ever noticed how the items on your to-do list get done when you write them down and refer back to them?
If you have goals, dreams and aspirations or you simply want to enjoy more of life’s simple pleasures, put it down on paper. If you want to spend more time in nature, put it down on paper. If you want to walk down by the beach, write it down. Believe it or not, it becomes more tangible and real if you put it down on paper. You can now look at it as a goal or an item, which is incomplete if you don’t follow through. Putting things in writing makes them more effective.
Break it up into smaller sections. When a task looks like a mountain, it will feel that way until you break it up into smaller stepping stones. If you have a task to complete, break it up into smaller chunks. Take the project apart from start to finish and spend a few minutes each day breaking it down.
If you want to rent your basement out, for example, and you go down there and look at how many days and hours it will take to achieve the goal and simply throw your hands up and walk away, break it up into smaller chunks.
Give yourself 15 minutes per day, each day, where you clean out one box or one corner. Before you know it, the basement is cleaned out and you are ready to move on to the next step. It’s important that you do not exceed the 15-minute time limit. Once the 15 minutes is up, go on to the next task.
Take one small step each day even if you don’t feel like it. This is probably one of the most important tips. Take one, small actionable step every day. If you want to achieve goals, you must realize the thoughts in your head will create your life to show up as it is.
If you feel that a dream is unreachable or unobtainable, then it will be. However, if you take one small actionable step each day, you will soon realize your goals and dreams and you will be living life to the fullest.
You might even ask yourself how you got there so quickly. Our dreams are so important to us and when we think about how they show up in our heads, they are these grand visions. Maybe yours is of a mansion in California or an acceptance speech at the Oscars. Then we check out and tell ourselves those dreams are too big and too unrealistic.
If you want to become an actor, take on extra work to pay for some acting classes. If you want to author a book, write one paragraph per day. Small actionable steps can add up to large measurable results.
Get an accountability partner. Grab a partner and share the experience. For example, if want to lose weight ask someone who is dependable, honest, and capable to help keep you on track. Don’t do it alone. You may also want to consider the following ideas to help you focus on being accountable to yourself.
Record your progress.
Pay a fine.
Join a mastermind group.
Put a timer on it.
Focus on Your Goals
Meditate on your goals. If you’re like most dreamers, your dreams are so big and so vast, you think about them and just as quickly, you put them aside because they are too big and too unrealistic. Rather than look at the big dramatic picture of your dreams, meditate on your goals.
If you wish to be a successful entrepreneur, meditate on the goals you need to put in place in order to achieve the dream. Sit quietly with the goals you need to achieve, one at a time and meditate on them.
Create an emotion associated with your meditative practices. Meditate on how it feels to be exhilarated once your new dream comes to fruition. Meditate on how good it feels to be financially abundant and successful.
Visualize your goals. Once you’ve chosen vibrations such as excitement, exhilaration, satisfaction, and success, now it’s time to visualize your goals. See yourself at a book signing as you visualize, envision what it’s like to work on a remote beach somewhere as a successful entrepreneur. Get into the visualization and the feelings.
Speak about your goals in the present tense. If you want to live the life of your dreams and be the person you wish to be, it’s time to speak about your goals in the present tense. When someone asks you what you do for a living, you can tell them you are an accountant or whatever it is you do, but don’t forget to mention you are on your way to building your own business at the same time.
Get excited about your plans, dreams, goals, and accomplishments. When you speak about your goals, speak about them with enthusiasm. If you are ashamed, embarrassed, or uncomfortable with your visions and desires, then so will others. It’s all in the delivery. It’s all in the excitement. If you are enthusiastic and excited, then others will jump on board.
Create momentum. Once you have built up enthusiasm and excitement, it’s easy to get so high there’s no place left except for down. You come crashing down and don’t want to get back up again.
The best way to achieve goals and create a life you love is by creating momentum and keeping it up. How do you create momentum? You create momentum by staying in action, every day. It doesn’t have to be a grand scheme, just simple action steps whether it is talking enthusiastically about your business or creating and generating excitement through marketing. Keep a steady flow of momentum and watch the magic happen.
Managing Life Areas
In order to live a whole, full, and complete life, you need to break your life down into categories. What are the categories that are most important to you? Which ones are you most successful in? Where is there a breakdown and you need to recreate?
f you look at one of the categories and see how successful it is, you can rest assured that this area is one wherein you are fully accountable and available.
Have you noticed an area that is falling by the wayside? You might have to repurpose some time and energy from a super successful area, in order to create a life you love that is full of balance and success in all areas of your life.
Create a worksheet for each category in your life. For example, consider beginning with areas of your life similar to the ones listed below.
Cooking
Cleaning
Food shopping
laundry
Organizing
Scheduling
Finances
Social life
Sleep
Healthy eating
Fitness
Mindfulness
Physical activities and adventures
Travel
Keep the list fresh by adding other categories as needed as well as removing any that are not suited to you or needed. Don’t forget to include dreams, wishes and bucket lists.
Time Management
At the end of the day, it’s all about time management. When it comes to time management, we don’t want to admit we don’t have it all together. It’s one of the hardest issues to face and can be a challenge. However, the good news is it’s very doable.
What’s the hardest task? Do that one first. For some people, filing is the worst administrative task there is and for others, it’s filling out paperwork and making phone calls. Whatever you identify, as being your hardest task, is the one you should do first.
You will find this practice to be difficult at first; however, as time goes by you will be grateful you stuck with it. If you do nothing else in time management, this is the best tip you can follow. These tasks will become easier and quicker the more you practice.
Write It Down
Writing things down is very important. “Forgetting” tends to waste a huge amount of time and effort. When you write things down, the mind/body activity helps you to remember the task. Plus, you also have a built-in reminder you can refer to when or if you forget the details or specifics. Seeing things on paper also helps you to prioritize.
Prioritize Tasks
In order to prioritize tasks and events, you must know what must be done, what needs to be done, what you want to do, what is important to you, where your priorities are, and what’s falling by the wayside.
Put things in order of what should be done first. Putting things down on paper is the key to getting your life prioritized. Don’t simply make a to-do list. Write everything down in order of importance and priority. If you have to, you can number the items. This will drive home the point of how important one item is over another. Continue to write down what needs to be done.
Defer Tasks
Don’t be afraid to carry things over to the next day. If you were unable to complete a task, don’t be afraid to carry it over to the next day’s to-do list. Don’t view it as a failure. View it as a fact and keep on moving. Moving forward is what’s important at all times no matter the day’s successes or failures previously.
What’s the worst thing that could happen if you don’t get to do everything? Can it wait? Will everyone survive? These questions may seem as though you are making excuses, but you are learning to prioritize. Once you learn how to prioritize, you will be in flow with what’s important to you and your life.
Avoiding Procrastination
The most highly successful people don’t have to deal with procrastination often. It’s not even in the cards for them. However, for the rest of us, it’s a reality. Here are a few tips to deal with procrastination when it strikes:
Allow a few minutes for guilty pleasures but put a timer on it
Set a schedule for checking social media
Work on a computer that does not allow (blocks) social media and email
Time yourself when checking emails or answering them
Balance Work and Play
If you’re all work and no play, you are sure to be successful; however, the down side to this is burn out. If you do anything for too long, burn out will surely follow. Here are a few tips to keep the scales balanced:
Choose your time to work and stick to it.
Decide, how much if at all, time you will spend on work after hours (for example reading emails at the dinner table, taking calls during family time, etc.)
Leave work at work.
Prioritize your work schedule and your home life will run more smoothly as well.
Learn how to delegate.
Learn how to say no.
Just like children, we need to schedule free time or play time. We need to be intentional about our time but to understand that while it’s over, it’s time to let it go. Playing for too long can lead to procrastination and loss of structure.
Take 5-minute play breaks; walk in fresh air, hydrate yourself, do some deep breathing or write in a journal. All of these help to energize your spirit.
Use Technology
There are absolutely no excuses for not being organized and achieving goals. Gadgets and technology can help you stay on track and help you meet your goals. There are calorie counters and even counters that track your steps. Take advantage of technology.
Declutter
If you feel as though your life is chaos, look at your environment. You are only as productive as your environment you are in. Take a weekend and throw everything out or donate it. If you haven’t used it in six months and it’s not season, then it’s time to let it go.
Organize
When it comes to organizational skills, you are in luck because you can create a new habit at any given time. You can learn new organizational skills that work for you. If you’re environment is a hot mess, then chances are more than likely so is your life. Use these tips to get yourself in gear:
Put yourself on the calendar.
Don’t sweat the small stuff.
Let go of what you can’t control.
Expand on the positive and minimize the negative so you can enjoy life more.
Start new habits. It takes only a couple of weeks to create new habits and once they are in place, they will stick.
If you backslide, it’s okay. Let yourself off the hook and start again. Pick up where you left off.
Don’t look at major projects like a mountain. Climb one step at a time. Before you know it, you’ll reach your objective.
Laugh at your mistakes.
Don’t beat yourself up so much.
Make time to meet your needs. Take a catnap, go for a walk, get some fresh air, write in your journal, or chat with a friend.
Make time management a priority.
Divide your day into manageable blocks of time.
Fine-tune your scheduling to meet your responsibilities to others, as well as yourself.
Work on your dependability and accountability. Do what you say you are going to do when you say you are going to do it.
Encourage and reward yourself. Use the reward system. For little goals incorporate small rewards. When you meet larger goals, treat yourself to something very special.
There are many challenges we all have to face, when it comes to achieving our goals, fulfilling our dreams, and living a life we love. However, once we step out of blaming our childhood, life, other people, we can clearly see we have the power to create a life we truly love.
We are given every tool and habit we choose to implement and by taking responsibility and looking deep within ourselves and our lives we see how we can step up our game and show up to shine brighter than ever.
Once we look into our own lives instead of looking outwardly and externally we can recognize where we fall short and create self-discipline in our lives. By creating self-discipline, we rest the button for a powerful and productive life. What thoughts come to mind when you think of taking responsibility and being self-disciplined? If they are negative thoughts, you might want to spend some time rethinking this thought.
You are a product of your thoughts. Associate success with taking responsibility and self-discipline and you will soon see, your life will be in priority order and you will have so much more time to enjoy it.
Once you establish new priorities and habits, you’ll wonder how you ever survived without them.
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