Kids are Back in School! What is next for YOU?
I hope you enjoyed the summer and got some much-needed travel or adventure in.
It’s been quite a while since I wrote a blog post. I took a little break to focus time on my kids and I am now re-focused on sharing some healthy lifestyle habits with you to help you remember that you need to show up for yourself in order to be able to show up for others.
“Alignment is when your thoughts, feelings, and actions are in tune with the truth of who you are and how you want to live”. - Oprah
For the first time in my adult/parental life, I took 3 months off work to be with my kids (other than giving birth twice) during the summer break. I wanted to be truly be present with them and take enjoyment from going on adventures together, going on vacation together and event driving them around to their sports. I feel as though I had a lot of good quality time with them during the summer, and now it’s time to get back to work.
Many kids are (going) back to school, in-person and for the full day or they are off to college!! Not only should we be celebrating our kids being back in a learning environment that is so important for their social and cognitive development, but what a treat for us! We get our time back! Never before did we realize how much we need our kids to be in school than when the schools closed due to the pandemic last March. We found ourselves at home with the entire family 24 hours a day, juggling their online school schedule with our work schedule and taking turns at the dining table for zoom calls! We didn’t have a moment to ourselves and some of us didn’t have any space to ourselves.
But now that it’s really happening, kids are going back in the classroom, it’s here, right in front of us, how are you feeling about having the house to yourself again? I will admit, at first, I thought Halleluiah! But I quickly found myself missing them. Missing their presence, missing having lunch with them, missing hearing their teachers’ voices coming from their bedrooms. And I was feeling a little down. So, I started to wonder why I was feeling this way. I thought to myself: “This is what I have wanted since the pandemic started - 8 solid hours of uninterrupted time to work”. And now that I have it, I find myself having a really hard time getting motivated. I almost want to go back to that time when they were homeschool’d and they filled the house with all of their noises and their energy during the day.
My business coach was the one who reminded me that it may take time to transition out of this routine that was my routine for 18 months. It’s not easy to expect to flip a switch overnight and change what you have been used to for all of this time. So, I have decided to give myself a little time to transition into this new routine, to not be too hard on myself, take it one step at a time and acknowledge the times that I do show up for myself. When I started doing that, I realized that the transition kept getting easier.
I wanted to share with you here, the steps I have taken to get myself re-motivated and find that new routine in hopes that will help you as well.
The first thing I did was to take stock of the things I love doing, the things that fill me up, that nourish me and give me energy. My morning list includes hiking with friends, working out, playing tennis, sitting quietly with my cup of tea, and taking the dog for a walk. My evening list includes taking the dog for another walk, hanging out with my husband, going for a drink with a friend, watching a show that I want to watch, and lying in bed with my daughters and just chatting about their day before they go to sleep.
The second thing I did was to commit to doing at least one of these every day. By doing so, it gives me something to look forward to, it really fills me up and makes me feel energized and good about myself and motivated me to dive into my work.
The third thing I did was to block time in my calendar with the activity. I have blocked time every morning right after the kids are off to school (for some of you it may be before they go to school) and at the end of the day before I transition into dinnertime. By putting it on my calendar, it has become a non-negotiable and it helps me to show up for myself. When I show up for myself in this way, I can show up for my family and for my work. It’s still a work in progress, but when I do the things that nourish me, I feel much more in alignment with how I want to be feeling.
What is next for you? How are you going to transition into a new routine? And what are you going to give to yourself so you can live your life in alignment with how you want to feel every single day!
All the best,
Tanya