You work hard on a routine for like a month. Come up with everything that may need to be scheduled into life. Read the blogs that offer advice on “How to Achieve Happiness in Life” and plan to implement EVERYTHING in said articles. The date you set to start arrives, it’s a great day! You get through it feeling like a champ and then YOUR real life happens. Kids have sports that just don’t fit into the schedule. Work kept you late. You have a health flare-up and too exhausted to be normal. Everything falls apart from there. It all seems hopeless. You give up and decide there is no hope. You can’t do it. You are meant to be a hot mess in life.
Is that your story? I can’t even begin to tell you how many times it has been mine. And for me it is a huge struggle and an internal rejection and reminder of how much I suck at life. At least that is what the record in my head tells me on repeat. Over and over and over again. It can get so draining that I want to give up and not even try anymore. Life can just decide what it is going to do with me. I give up!
Maybe I am the only one with this struggle, but I find that hard to believe. For years I thought I was the only one who couldn’t seem to get it together, but then I look at my house, my kids, my job, and overall my life. Guess what! The results around me show that I am doing life just fine, even without all the self-help articles and being the “hot mess” me that comes around regularly. Look at your life and see the positives!
Do you have a job? Are you able to pay for your necessities? Are your kids fed? Do they make it to school? Do they have clothes? Every life is different and what I see as success is not going to be the same as what you see as success in your life. Look for those things! Find your successes and celebrate them. It is time to move on from our “poor me” pity parties!
I used to try so hard to do everything perfect, according to everyone else’s standard. Why? Their life is not my life. So why do we do that to each other? And why do we judge someone else on the basis of what works for our life. Our life is not their life and we have no right to judge like that.
I wanted to be perfect. If I didn’t do it perfect, I was a failure and was sure to get in trouble in some fashion or another. That is a huge fear of mine; disappointment, screwing up, getting yelled at, etc. It sounds ridiculous, but this is a constant internal struggle no matter how hard I try. It has been getting better since putting myself in a healthier environment, but it will take some more time to get there, if you can say we ever “get there”. I have just recently been realizing that it is ok not to control everything, and I don’t have to prepare for EVERY POSSIBLE OUTCOME. That is exhausting and no matter how much we prepare for such things, what we didn’t see is what will happen.
I have tried many different routines throughout the years. Some worked and some didn’t. Some were really good for where I was at in life, like running an in-house daycare for a while; some were not so good. Because of my struggle with perfectionism, I would always overfill my routine. I remember at one point I had everything scheduled out based on time. And, oh man!, would it cause a shutdown if I missed a time change because life happened. I had 4 kids under 5.5 and lived in a very unstable environment; rolling with the punches just had to be part of life. Rolling was not one of my strong suites.
Let go of the Control! That is the best advice I can give. Make a general outline of things you want to accomplish throughout your day/week/month/year. What matters to you most? Do you want a repeating meal plan so that you don’t have to come up with the menu and shopping list each week? Or do you like to be a little more spontaneous and go a day or a week at a time? Do you have chores you think should get done everyday and some not so much? How can you track that to feel like you have a direction, but not be so wrapped up in rigid routines/schedules?
What really helped put all of this together for me was stumbling across FlyLady. You should really check it out! Baby steps! That’s her main focus for beginners. I like to dive in and change everything, hence the constant failures at maintaining. Her focus is one new habit at a time. Your life did not become a mess overnight and cannot be cleaned up in a day. We live in an age where everything is go! Go! GO! and that is more than we were created to handle. Modern conviences are great, but are we letting those add more stress to our lives by filling that empty space with some more go or are we using that time to check in with ourselves?
I started with the Baby Steps. I printed them off, because I am old-fashioned like that, and decided to start the 1st of the following month. You can also just check in everyday and go to the next baby step. I always just thought you had to dive into things, but that never worked. I didn’t put a lot of faith in this whole baby step thing, but what did I have to lose? I did really great with all of this and then caught myself trying to do it ALL again. Everyone else fits everything into their lives and make it look so easy why can’t I? Delusional thoughts! No one has it all together like that. Some of us do really good at making it look smooth because they just accept what was not gotten to and will try again tomorrow, and then some of us look like a Hot Mess because we didn’t get it done and now the world is ending!
I have jumped back and forth from on track to off track so many times, I have lost count. Especially since getting diagnosed with FND, I don’t always have control of when I can physically manage to keep up or can’t. This has also really put things into perspective for me. I have to let go of the perfectionism and be kind to myself. FND is closely related to PTSD, particularly the chronic long term type. If I don’t work at keeping my mental health in check and keep working with my body to process out the trauma it is holding onto, I can spiral really fast and it will last for months. Even if I am doing all the things, I don’t have the choice of when a flare-up will happen. And if that flare-up happened because I wasn’t focusing on being kind to myself, I can get back on track, but it still takes months to regather myself. Usually, it has only ever been 3 months at a time since this all started, but my last outbreak was over 8 months. It was very discouraging, and I didn’t know if I would every catch a break in the cycle.
These are the times when I realized instead of a schedule or strict routine, I just need a check list. Things I know I want to get done everyday to the best of my ability. And if I don’t complete the checklist, I can start over tomorrow, but at least something got done. I include my self-care on this list because it is very important to remind myself to take that time every day. I never mattered. My ex was a very angry person who would get triggered over anything that annoyed him. My full focus had to be on pleasing him to keep my kids and I safe from the verbal/emotional/mental abuse that would insue.
Yes, I know that is totally illogical, but I was stuck in the trees and couldn’t see how big the forest actually was to realize I wasn’t going to be able to chop it all down myself. I couldn’t fix his issues if he didn’t want to fix them. This is why I had such a huge struggle letting go of control. When I left, it took me over a year to figure out what self-care meant to me and what I liked to do because I had the choice. Now, I spend everyday loving myself in some way or another and working towards getting myself where I want to be.
In the pursuit of finding how you want your time to go, don’t forget about yourself! It doesn’t have to be a lot. I know there are people reading this who may be in the same environment I was. You may not have a lot of time, but start by figuring out 1 thing that makes you feel good and allot yourself just 5 minutes to enjoy it. BABY STEPS!
I keep my routines pretty simple and wake up early to make sure I have time for them. I am a morning person, so you may choose to stay up later and do your things then. For me personally, if I leave it for the end of the day, it is not going to get done.
Let’s start with my morning list, but remember I did this one step at a time. Once I got the one thing down as an automatic part of my day, I added the next thing. If you look at the baby steps on FlyLady that I linked above, you can get other ideas that might work better for you. BUT DON’T TRY TO DO IT ALL!!!!!
A.M. Checklist
- 1. Water I get a water bottle ready right away in the morning with a lemon and ACV and make that my first drink of the day. I also grab 4 more water bottles and write 1-4 on the caps so that I know where I am at for my goal of water for the day. This takes 5 minutes of my time, if that.
- 2. Somatic Exercises I have found this to be a huge help to me when it comes to my trauma healing. So much so that I am working towards getting certified in it to bring this relief to others. This usually takes 15-20 minutes. Here is a link to a channel I really like on YouTube.
- 3. Meditation I am working on letting my mind work through whatever came up during my somatic exercises and letting my brain process. I usually put on some energy healing music with earbuds to help me get inside myself and avoid outside distractions. (Again, 4 kids in this house can get a little crazy.) Sometimes I will do guided, and sometimes I do self-led. This accounts for about 15 minutes
- 4. Journaling I do this while continuing to listen to the frequency music I picked for the day. Sometimes I write to continue processing what is trying to work its way out. Sometimes, I write about the dreams I had the night before in very detailed fashion. And for days I have nothing to write, I start prepping for the blog post of the week because, let’s face it, I don’t always have the time for start to finish on a Thursday.
- 5. Start Coffee Speaks for itself! lol If I do good at following my evening routine then all I have to do is hit start. If I was too malfunctioned at the end of the night, I don’t stress about it, I just make it. This can take 1-5 minutes depending on how far I got the night before.
- 6. Walk I used to workout pretty seriously, but since having more and more flare-ups lately I have noticed my body fights itself when I push too hard and causes me a lot of pain. Like hit by a bus pain. It used to really bother me, but I have come to terms that walking will have to be sufficient if I want to be able to live as a “normal” human. I will take up to an hour to walk to get my blood pumping and just get some fresh air and listen to nature. All of that super good self-care.
- 7. Breakfast! I am pretty boring when it comes to breakfast and make the same thing EVERY morning that I don’t work. I work weekends and 12 hour days can feel super long so I bring leftovers to eat throughout the day on the weekends, but Monday through Thursday I make my sandwich. Don’t try to make things complicated. Find what you like and make it yours. I don’t mind having the same thing everyday, but that’s the beauty here: I am not you and You are not me. Making my breakfast is about 10-15 minutes.
- 8. Soak my Feet While I eat my breakfast, I soak my feet in Epsom salts and essential oils. I don’t do anything super fancy. The magnesium helps my muscles not get too angry at me from movement, the oils are refreshing (lemon and rosemary) and calming(lavender), and the bonus is it keeps my feet soft. I do this for 15 minutes while I eat, sip my coffee, and play a game of solitaire with some cards on the table. I try to keep my phone use limited or I am asking for distractions
- 9. Get Ready for the Day Pretty basic. Brush teeth. Shower. Hair. Lotion. Dressed. Make-up. Depending on how long my muscles want to stay in the hot water decides how long this will take me. 20 minutes to 1 hour if I am pokey.
- 10. Swish and Swipe Here’s the link to the FlyLady article. Maybe 3 minutes. This has basically become part of my get ready for the day step.
- 11. Open Curtains Let that beautiful sunlight into the house! The time depends on how many curtains you have. For me 1 minutes swipe through the house.
- 12. Make Bed It doesn’t have to be hotel ready but pull up the comforter and make it look like somewhere you want to crawl into at night. Maybe another minute.
- Do you have specific things you do to keep your day going smoothly? Share your ideas. Let’s make a list of what works for us because it may work for someone else too. Remember though, You can’t do it all because we weren’t created to do it all!
- 11. Open Curtains Let that beautiful sunlight into the house! The time depends on how many curtains you have. For me 1 minutes swipe through the house.
- 10. Swish and Swipe Here’s the link to the FlyLady article. Maybe 3 minutes. This has basically become part of my get ready for the day step.
- 9. Get Ready for the Day Pretty basic. Brush teeth. Shower. Hair. Lotion. Dressed. Make-up. Depending on how long my muscles want to stay in the hot water decides how long this will take me. 20 minutes to 1 hour if I am pokey.
- 8. Soak my Feet While I eat my breakfast, I soak my feet in Epsom salts and essential oils. I don’t do anything super fancy. The magnesium helps my muscles not get too angry at me from movement, the oils are refreshing (lemon and rosemary) and calming(lavender), and the bonus is it keeps my feet soft. I do this for 15 minutes while I eat, sip my coffee, and play a game of solitaire with some cards on the table. I try to keep my phone use limited or I am asking for distractions
- 7. Breakfast! I am pretty boring when it comes to breakfast and make the same thing EVERY morning that I don’t work. I work weekends and 12 hour days can feel super long so I bring leftovers to eat throughout the day on the weekends, but Monday through Thursday I make my sandwich. Don’t try to make things complicated. Find what you like and make it yours. I don’t mind having the same thing everyday, but that’s the beauty here: I am not you and You are not me. Making my breakfast is about 10-15 minutes.
- 6. Walk I used to workout pretty seriously, but since having more and more flare-ups lately I have noticed my body fights itself when I push too hard and causes me a lot of pain. Like hit by a bus pain. It used to really bother me, but I have come to terms that walking will have to be sufficient if I want to be able to live as a “normal” human. I will take up to an hour to walk to get my blood pumping and just get some fresh air and listen to nature. All of that super good self-care.
- 5. Start Coffee Speaks for itself! lol If I do good at following my evening routine then all I have to do is hit start. If I was too malfunctioned at the end of the night, I don’t stress about it, I just make it. This can take 1-5 minutes depending on how far I got the night before.
- 4. Journaling I do this while continuing to listen to the frequency music I picked for the day. Sometimes I write to continue processing what is trying to work its way out. Sometimes, I write about the dreams I had the night before in very detailed fashion. And for days I have nothing to write, I start prepping for the blog post of the week because, let’s face it, I don’t always have the time for start to finish on a Thursday.
- 3. Meditation I am working on letting my mind work through whatever came up during my somatic exercises and letting my brain process. I usually put on some energy healing music with earbuds to help me get inside myself and avoid outside distractions. (Again, 4 kids in this house can get a little crazy.) Sometimes I will do guided, and sometimes I do self-led. This accounts for about 15 minutes
- 2. Somatic Exercises I have found this to be a huge help to me when it comes to my trauma healing. So much so that I am working towards getting certified in it to bring this relief to others. This usually takes 15-20 minutes. Here is a link to a channel I really like on YouTube.