Stop, Drop and Roll, Moms

One day your life will flash before your eyes, make sure its worth watching –anonymous

Hmmm…Time management…..hahaha….have we mastered it yet?  Are we supposed to master it?

Seriously? Do we manage all of our time or is it better to structure our time enabling us to have the freedom to live life spontaneously. No, this is not going to be a piece on the art of organizing your time like preparing the kids lunches a week beforehand or laying out the kids clothing for the following school year!

What some of us have a hard time figuring out is how to live our lives as moms also for ourselves! Our worlds gladly revolve around our kids. It will for now, but with a caveat.  How about if we plan to grow with our kids, throwing a little adventure into everyday?

I am not necessarily talking about bungee jumping or skydiving but by all means go ahead.  I’ll be on EARTH drinking a margarita! Adventure could be nervously re-connecting with someone you haven’t spoken with in a long time or going on a canoe ride or snowshoeing through the woods on a white snowy day.  Or maybe it is trying some skate boarding with the kids. In my case, the adventure could be cooking in the kitchen!

Recently I was asked to write down my bucket list.  I struggled, but finally when I did write some things down; they were to see my kids grow up, see them married, have grandchildren etc.  But what were my own personal dreams?  Everything I put down was revolving around my children. Don’t get me wrong, my kids have made me grow in many ways…literally and figuratively.    So if I was to wave my own personal magic wand and nothing was impossible what would it be?

Wait a second, before I add another thing into my life;

Stop, Drop and Roll: Something I often do to get out of the self inflicted fires I keep on setting with my crazy over scheduled life.

Wake up call #1

Recently a family friend died tragically, he was only 46 and had a wife with 3 kids. The only comfort I took from this was that he lived so much more in his short 46 years than most live by the time they are 80.

Life is short sometimes shorter than expected.I often wonder have we spent more time with our ‘stuff’ than with the people that are important to us in our lives. We always have ‘stuff’ to do ‘stuff’ to take care of ‘stuff’ to buy, ‘stuff’ to get rid of… Stuff Stuff Stuff!

Sometimes when I am going through ‘stuff’ I think it is just a ‘colossal’ waste of time. I wonder why we spend part or often a majority of our lives, cleaning, organizing and maintaining stuff! I am a stuff person, there it is said; the professional organizer is a ‘stuff’ person.  What can I say, I like my stuff!  But here’s the thing, sometimes the stuff prevents me from experiencing the life I know I am supposed to be experiencing mainly because of the stuff I think I always have to do!

So this is what I am processing; Time is our biggest gift (heard that before), yet some of us take it for granted, time we waste, time we always expect we’ll have or not have enough of. We kid ourselves by thinking we manage our time. What about the constant; ‘I’ll be happy when, or I’ll have fun when, or I’ll travel when, or I’ll have friends over when… I think you get the point.  It is now Moms; it is the present MOMent that is important.  This doesn’t mean we stop planning for our futures, it just means we don’t sacrifice today for tomorrow.

Sacrificing admittedly is not something I relate to very well.  If you’re sacrificing; you’re doing things for the wrong reason.  You should be doing things for people because you want to, not because you feel you have to.  Being a martyr doesn’t impress me.  To me it means that you value your life less than what you’re sacrificing it for. Guilt and regret fall into this category too for me.

‘Your day will come’ is something I heard a lot in my younger years.  I wanted to do so much all the time, a lot of it was considered ‘over the top, let’s just say I haven’t changed much.  ‘Your day will come’ expression never resonated with me, but I obeyed and just sat back (as much as I could) and waited….for my day to come……I questioned; when my day would come, would it only be one? Here is what I have learned very early on; my day is today, it is everyday. So how do we make our day everyday?

Some people suggest we slow down and smell the roses. Others will say they want to go screeching hooting and hollering EEHAW to their grave having packed every day to the brim. I say wake up and smell the coffee, do both! But how?

We have to take action, nothing will get done for us like it gets done for our kids unless we do it ourselves;

Wake up call #2

When my youngest son was born to about the age of 5, he didn’t sleep….I was exhausted.  So was he.  I had gained an enormous amount of weight.  My health became an issue and I was simply overloaded trying to be ‘supermom’.  So I had to;

Stop, Drop and Roll!

At this time I wasn’t really in a position to take a couple of months off of work. But it was either that or the crash and burn scenario. I was surface living at that time.  Why do I call it surface living? Because a lot of people are there but they’re not, they do but they don’t want to. They can’t wait to sleep, they can’t wait to eat.  They would rather watch other people do things than experience life for themselves.  The natural instinct to live life to its fullest is lost. Why? We lost control, we gave power to external factors, the blame was always on others.  That just doesn’t sound right.

In taking the two months off, I did for myself what I did so many times for my clients; I structured myself.  I prioritized everyone (yes, everyone) and everything in my life.  This is not something that I set in stone because as I was achieving a certain sense of normalcy (my version) the balance would be knocked off and I would decide to work at rebalancing to see what worked for me and what didn’t.

For example; Exercise……yup….I have yet to develop that strong passion for exercise (the kind that makes you sweat), but I know that it is as essential as healthy foods.  So eating and exercise have to be equivalent on my priority list.  Obviously my children, my husband, my home (which must at all times remain our sanctuary) were all my priorities.  I had to figure out how to commit and release the enormous amount of weight I had gained. I understood the phrase if you don’t have your health you don’t have anything!

When I stopped, dropped and rolled; my son started to sleep his nights…..in his own bed.  Everyone around me appeared calmer, happier and more fulfilled.  I found systems from my health toolbox to lose a majority of the weight which simply made me more bearable to live with…My focus was on and I was able edit what was important to me.

Nothing has to be perfect….as much as I’ve tried….this effort has proven to be a time stealer! Don’t leave until tomorrow what you can do today.  Hmm another saying that has propelled a lot of us moms into high speed mode!   Stop Drop and Roll Moms!

Gayle Fransham