On LInkedIn, a busy dad and a creative who's been working from home with his little ones, asked me:
1.) What do you wish you’d streamlined or simplified sooner? 2.) What was one breakthrough moment with you & your kids where you tried something different and it clicked for all of you? 3.) What did you to make time for recharging and taking care of yourself? ?
I loved the questions and did my best to keep them simple (but not cliche). If you're wondering the same, here are my thoughts:
1.) As a former athlete, I internalized that my worth = quantifiable results. And that busy & hard work = results. This was the first thing I had to unlearn after my 2nd trip to the ER due to severe burnout.
As creatives, we need spaciousness as much as we need frameworks and structure.
And doing nothing is sometimes the work.
Also, on the contraty to the typical time-batching and 90-min cycles, I found an alternative that suits me better: daily themes. Most importantly, find something that's in sync with a bio-chemistry of a human body, and your particular preferences just as much as it is with lunar centers and planetary movements. (We will be talking more about this in Elite Mystique Agency and a cool free tool we're working on).
2.) Although I spend/t 24/7 with the kiddos, we introduced date nights a few years ago. Once per week, each gets an uninterrupted 1:1 time.
Nothing fancy. Each week, each one of them gets to pick the day and we spend time together. It can be as simple as 15 min of playing with Legos! It's the attention, presence that matter - and them feeling "extra-specially" seen and heard.
Also, from the young age I made point to NOT have every minute of their every day planned out. That way they learned to self-initiate play or just be bored when I was on a call in the next room. This makes our days much easier - and now that they are getting older and even more independent, it's been simply wonderful. (So much so that I need to set timers for myself to put the phone down, to close the laptop, and stop working already).
3.) Nothing I can say will land until you're ready for it :-) And even then, it will change.
Self-care is so many different things. It can be a morning walk alone. Or a quick workout when the kid's asleep. Or an early bed-time without the TV on.
One thing I will say is that self-care is physical, mental, emotional, spiritual thing. So I've never been without a coach because that's the kind of support that has worked best for me (with some exceptions here and there), but certainly much more so than a typical therapy. So that to me has been a part of self-care, too.
What about you?
What have your experiences been? AND if you have a question you'd like me to answer, do let me know.
Sara
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