Ready to revolutionize your daily grind with a splash of serenity? Join me for 4 life-enhancing strategies that promise to recalibrate the way you navigate life.
It's all about crafting a life that our future (and current) selves will thank us for.
Ready to revolutionize your daily grind with a splash of serenity? Join me for 4 life-enhancing strategies that promise to recalibrate the way you navigate life.
It's all about crafting a life that our future (and current) selves will thank us for.
Hey y'all, welcome back to another episode of Whatever with Heather. Today, we're talking about four things I love, or my favorites for a good life. These are four simple things that I use in my life to help my life move forward, to help me feel less overwhelmed, to help me get unstuck when I'm feeling stuck. These four simple things have been game changers for me and I'm super excited to share them with you today, and you can take what you love and leave what you don't, but I hope to leave you with something that you can take with you and actually use and apply.
Speaker 0:The first thing that I love that makes a big difference in my life is meditation. Now, if you're not a meditator, you might like have red flags like no, I hate it, no, I hate it. Now I could just say meditation, but it's not just meditation that is my favorite. What is my favorite thing about meditation is meditation variety. Those may feel like two opposing thoughts. Right, we have meditation, which is stillness and being present, and then I have the word variety, which is a lot of different things. When I'm speaking about meditation variety, what I mean is that meditation does not just have to be sitting in stillness. I find a lot of power in meditation not being done the correct or right way, not getting stuck in rigidity around meditation.
Speaker 0:Meditation at its core is being here now. It is being fully present in the moment you're in. And wouldn't we all love more of that to actually be in the moment we're in. That's why we look back at parts of our life and we're like, oh, I miss that. We also miss it now because we kind of missed it then because we were always living somewhere else. We love moments of presence when we find them or create them. Meditation variety, then, is being okay with.
Speaker 0:I go on a walk, my mind is clear, thoughts come into me because I'm now clear and open and allowing thoughts to also be meditation, because now you were in the present moment with you and even with thoughts you can be in a meditative state. We need to get out of the mindset that there is a right way to meditate and a wrong way to meditate. Meditating is being here now, and then our goal becomes like how many times can I hit a meditative presence throughout the day? When I'm with my children, can I actually see them? I was baking with my son last night and being present in that moment is actually listening to him, actually speaking to him, actually feeling and paying attention when I'm helping him pour something in, instead of being all up in my head thinking of what I need to do the next day or distracted by this or that. Like being there, feeling with my hands, listening with my ears, seeing with my eyes. That's all the senses engaged while you are in whatever situation or process or place you're in. We can find moments of meditation while we're walking, while we're baking, while we're showering, while we're cleaning, while we're driving in the car or we're sitting in the car at our kids activities. We can find even one minute to just be present, to still the world around us and be in the present moment when you shower. A way to be meditative when you shower is actually notice the water on your skin, actually feel when you scrub your body, like actually being in the moment. You hear the water, you feel the water. Maybe you watch the water drip down the sides of the shower and that is your moment of meditation. It is being fully present, fully engaged in the moment you're in. Just to wrap it up, the first thing I love is meditation variety. No right way or wrong way to meditate, but finding more moments of presence, of being here now. The second thing I love and if you know me, you know I love this is that I love timers for productivity 15 minute timers, five minute timers, 10 minute timers.
Speaker 0:I think that many of us think that we become adults and somehow we just will figure out how to just make it all happen. But for me and a lot of people I've met, we need incentives. Housework can seem very daunting. It is. It's endless, especially things like dishes and laundry. Those are what I like to call bottomless chores. They don't ever really end. There's always something more to fill it back up and that is why they become really overwhelming and they're not very inspiring to do. There's some chores you probably do out in your house that feel really fulfilling, like that felt so good to clean. That Dishes and laundry are not that they are bottomless. They will always be being refilled by giving ourselves a set amount of time to do some of these bottomless chores or the chores that we just can't motivate ourselves to do, because when we create a frame around it, we create an end in sight. It's like if you were going to do a workout and you wouldn't know how long it was. It would be really mentally hard to continue through that workout. It would be a huge mental game. But if you do a workout, you know it's going to begin, you know it's going to end and it's going to take about this long. You now have a frame in which that becomes less daunting.
Speaker 0:Chores many times do not have a frame around them. Housework tasks do not have a frame around them. They could be endless. I could start cleaning my house right this moment and I don't know how long that would take till it was actually clean. It would take me an entire day for sure to do the baseboards and the blinds and all the things. So we create frames with timers. We use this with our kids as well. We do 15-minute family pickups where we set a timer and we're all putting in the same amount of time and we just take care of business. If a child's room is feeling really overwhelming, sometimes we're like you need to clean it till it's done. Sometimes we set a timer. There's no right or wrong in this, but you use the timers as a tool to help you, to help your kids, to help your family.
Speaker 0:If I have multiple areas in my home that need cleaned. One thing that I will do is I will select four areas throughout the day that I want to clean and I set 15-minute timers for each of them. Right now, if I had an hour to clean throughout the day don't even have to do them all in a row, but I'm saying that I want to spend about an hour cleaning today. The areas I would currently choose would be our master bedroom, the office that I'm currently in, and our garage and our flower beds. Those would be the four 15-minute areas right now that I feel like if I spent 15 minutes in each of those, I would move them forward really well. You can see how this becomes effective, because now you've made progress in four different areas and it feels so good. You can also use the timers for goals that you have. Maybe you want to write more, maybe you want to move your body more, maybe you want to meditate, maybe you want to go on walks, maybe you want to just spend 15 minutes a day playing a game with your family, using the timers to create frames so that it is doable. It feels doable Once again.
Speaker 0:When things feel endless, we avoid them. We don't want to do something forever, and when we don't create a frame, our brain thinks this is going to be forever. We know it's not forever, but our brain puts breaks on and stops us from doing it because it feels like it might be forever or it feels like it might be an hour, and an hour is more than we want to spend on it. We create frames so that we feel motivated toward action and even the times where we don't feel motivated, it's kind of hard to be like I don't even. I'm not going to do even five minutes. The times I'm very unmotivated to do anything in the kitchen, it's a five minute timer. I can do it for five minutes, just so it's better. Fine, I'll do it. I can discipline myself and force myself to do five minutes, and sometimes that's what you need. Be okay with short timers. Be okay with creating whatever frame you need for the thing to be doable. A five minute walk feels way better than a zero minute walk. Your kitchen, after five minutes of cleaning, is going to feel better than how it looks if you just leave it.
Speaker 0:We give ourselves wins quick, easy wins and there is nothing wrong with you needing or wanting wins in your day-to-day life. Otherwise it's just monotony. It's monotonous anyway in a lot of ways, but the frame helps us check things off, even if they're not completely done, and that feels good. Number two, as a review, is using timers for productivity or for things that you care about in your life. Number three is a paper planner, or paper planning For our family.
Speaker 0:I have a large calendar so that everyone can see the month ahead, and for myself and personal goals, I have this small notebook calendar where I write in my own personal goals. This does not have my family's activities in it. It's literally the things that are important to me, that directly relate to me, my life, my goals, and then for the week ahead I can write down what I'm going to do that week. I am not perfect at this, but the times I am good at this feels really good, and the times where I ignore this are usually times where I start to spiral into feeling stuck because I'm not doing much of anything.
Speaker 0:One thing I love about writing it is that it is meditative. We type all day, we're on our phones. The technology world doesn't feel super present, right, it's always somewhere else. When I'm writing, I am present. When I'm writing, I'm being intentional. I can't just type it out really quickly. I have to take the time and if I've taken the time to write it, there is more buy-in from me because I've spent the time writing it. It's another little trick to get myself to do the things that I say I'm going to do. I don't just say I'm going to do them, I write them. I have to look at them. I have to look back over the week and see what I didn't do. Or maybe I plan too much and then I learn the next week. Oh, the reason you are overwhelmed is you put in too much. Let's simplify. If I've invested my time, I'm more likely to follow through A paper planner for just yourself and your goals and the things you're working towards are great because it separates all of the things you're doing for your family, for everyone else, and lets you have a little piece of you and your goals and they're part of you and your family and all of that.
Speaker 0:And at the same time, your goals and dreams deserve some time and space. So give them time and give them space in their own place. And then for the family, we have that big calendar. Like I said earlier, I also use Google Calendar and that's how I fill everything in and I can update events, but I like our calendar to be off our phones so the kids aren't checking their phones to see what is coming up for the week. Number three, the thing I love paper planning. All right, we're here. On number four, the very last thing. This is something I've done on accident at times and this is something that I'm now doing more intentionally and I am loving.
Speaker 0:It Is giving myself and my family at least one day a week sometimes two, of being unproductive. It's a day of not having to be productive. Now, if I want to be or we want to do things, you can. There's no guilt or shame in sitting on the couch and watching TV or playing games together or doing art together or baking something and making the kitchen a mess. We have this idea me too. I'm still working on this but we have this idea that the only thing that is productive is productivity, is action. But think about sleep and even recently, in the past few years, how much we've learned the importance of sleep. Rest is productive. We know it is Our next day. A lot of how it goes depends on how much rest we got, and the days where we get less rest affects our next day. Therefore, our rest creates productivity, creates action. It creates the energy and the space and the mental capacity to do the things we want to do.
Speaker 0:Imagine if you already don't have one day of non-productivity. Imagine what that would feel like. Now try to separate the guilt of not doing things but you literally have one day just to do whatever. It's almost like you're on a vacation. Right? When you go on vacation, you're like this feels so good because I can just do what I want, be where I want and no one expects anything of me. Imagine that, but once a week, or if you're really busy, once a month. Just imagine what that would feel like if you gave yourself the gift of a restful, unproductive day. Maybe you go shopping, maybe you go see a movie, like it doesn't matter, you fill it with whatever you want. Your day could be full and restful. See what I mean? It doesn't have to be a day of nothingness. It could be a day of lots of something, but nothing that moves you forward in anything, nothing that moves a needle, just a day of enjoyment. It's the guilt that you feel that makes those not productive days, those chill days, seem bad, but they are not bad. Just like sleep is productive, rest is productive, play is productive, fun is productive.
Speaker 0:If you need something to ask, like there's no way I could just lay around all day and do nothing, a question you could ask is what would make today enjoyable, or what would be enjoyable to do today? You are allowed to have days of just joy, of doing things you like Make time for reading, watching a movie, as a family, doing something creative Think of like childhood freedom, like you have a free Saturday to go ride your bike with your friends, like what would you do, and then do that for no reason other than that you believe that you get to enjoy your life, that it is okay to enjoy your life. It is okay to have a whole day where you just enjoyed being alive, where you enjoyed your family, where you enjoyed going slowly, where you enjoyed running around and having fun together. Productivity is not the barometer of a beautiful life. If you think to 80 year old you, what would 80 year old you say was the measure of a beautiful life? And then make sure you start doing more of those things and less of the things that 80 year old you wouldn't care about.
Speaker 0:So number four, to wrap up, is giving yourself one day a week of not having to be productive, a rest day or an enjoy yourself day. So the four things wrapping up Number one, meditation variety. Number two, timers for productivity. Number three, paper planning. And number four, one day a week of not having to be productive. If there's one here that you just feel like you need to add in, I invite you to add it in. Send me a DM on Instagram or comment on YouTube and let me know which one was like the one that you're ready to go for, or if you have more than one, let me know.
Speaker 0:It's kind of funny to talk about productivity and non-productivity in the same podcast episode, but these things go hand in hand together. They both exist for a reason. They create this beautiful flow of life of getting things done and just being. We have kind of two tips right here for the just being, the meditation and the day of non-productivity, and we have two things for more productive life. You have setting timers and planning, and both can work together in harmony, in unison, working together to help you build a beautiful life. Thank you again for being here for another episode of Whatever with Heather, and I will see y'all next week. Bye.