“I had brownies for breakfast. My day is ruined.” 8:14 AM. This was the first text I saw this morning. I’m not surprised.
The Washington, DC area is covered in snow…
Snow days can be a wonderful, peaceful, and fun.
They also can be difficult and challenging.
Why? Because when life slows down, shit hits the fan.
Sure there’s that honeymoon stage when we’re all excited + happy to hear of canceled carpools and meetings. But then….get ready to be challenged….Why? We women keep ourselves so busy, busy, busy….PTA meetings, carpools, work projects, making meals, disciplining, shopping, cleaning, etc etc…. When life slows down (or grinds to a halt with a snowmageddon), we can no longer ignore all of the thoughts in our heads.
“I deserve this wine/cookie/cake”
“I have no control around food”
“I deserve this cookie/wine/cake”
“I ate brownies for breakfast. My day is ruined.”
even: “What’s wrong with me? I should be able to just sit here and relax!”
HOLD ON! More than 60,000 thoughts go through our brain each day. Why are we choosing thoughts that hurt us? Life is hard enough, why choose to think that one thing we did in the morning (e.g. eating a brownie) ruined our day?
Step back from the brownies. You have not ruined your day.
What would you do if you dropped your phone and your screen didn’t break? Would you keep dropping it over and over again until it did break? NFW, right? In fact, we usually do three things: Pick up our phone, feel thankful, and then look to learn something from the experience. (e.g. “Thank goodness it didn’t break. I guess I should’ve dried my hands before trying to take a picture”). Why can’t we do the same thing with eating? You had brownies for breakfast. You could think: “Thank goodness I didn’t finish the whole pan of brownies. I guess I should’ve moved the tray off the kitchen counter so I didn’t see them first thing when I woke up”.
Choose kind and passionate awareness.
You haven’t ruined your day.
At this point, you might have a wine glass in one hand, a bowl of ice cream in the other hand, wishing you had a free hand to give me the finger. Why? Because it’s easier to get the “eat-whatever-the-hell-you-want-today” pass instead of looking at what’s really going on in our lives without all of the carpools, meetings, and homework help.
That can be another blog post (or contact me for a free mini-coaching session).
For now, here’s the RX for snow weekend success:
Schedule: Get a piece of paper and a pen and…
- Write when you’re going to eat your meals and snacks.
- Write down when you’re going to go to bed.
- Write down when you’re going to exercise (shoveling counts)
- Now pause: Is there anything that must get done today? Like if you don’t, you’ll get fired or lose a great airfare rate? Schedule it.
- Now you can stop right here. See how your day unfolds use your “white space” how you want (that doesn’t involve food because you’ve taken care of that above). Or, keep filling in your day with what you want to get done this weekend. Examples: play game with kids, laundry, color, plan a trip, make a snowman, organize a closet, etc…
Now, stick to your schedule. Of course, things come up and when they do, practice a new way of thinking: What can you be thankful for and what can you learn…. How were you to know that making snow angels would take twice as long?
If you’re looking for ideas on how to fill in your white space with things other than brownies….
Give Meditation a try (http://stopbreathethink.org (great for kids too) or https://insighttimer.com )
- Journal (set a timer for 5 minutes and write, write, write. Get the thoughts out of your head. Bonus stars if you go over time.)
- Listen to a podcast (my favorites:https://smbwell.com/smb-favorites.html)
If you are telling yourself you don’t want to schedule, that it won’t work, that this is a dumb idea….text me. I have some brownies I can drop off for you.
This is your life. Be kind. Learn. Own it.
xo
