If I were to ask you to rate your home life right now, and by that I mean household and family management like meals, chores, cleaning, the kids, all that, how would you rate it on a scale of “I am in control most of the time” to “my life is on fire and I LIVE in survival mode”?
If you answered that you live in survival mode, than today’s post is for you. And yes, this does have to do with fitness😂
Ok so who else has lived in survival mode, or is doing it now?
You know, where you are living each moment in each day reactionary to whatever happens to you. Running late everywhere, always in a state of flustered hurriedness, car’s a mess, house is a mess, laundry is behind, dishes piled up everywhere, picking up dinner multiple nights a week…chaos is reining supreme most of the day.
Does any of this sound familiar?
Sometimes this is kind of unavoidable, like when you have your first kid and you literally are figuring all of it out on the fly.
But when we are constantly in a state of survival mode, our brain is literally prioritizing survival, right? Basic, basic necessities-feed kids, maybe eat yourself (or maybe not), get people where they have to be and that’s it. Everything else falls by the wayside.
And unfortunately, one of those things is often our health and fitness goals.
I’ve been there. It’s no fun! I remember just feeling like I was always struggling to keep my head above water. Like if someone asked ONE more thing of me, I was going to snap. Every chance I had a quiet moment I just wanted to scroll on IG and numb out. And then I was supposed to make it to the gym too? Get out of there!
To be completely honest, the main reason I would even go to the gym during that time in my life was to get away from my kids for 2 hours they would allow them to stay in the childcare😂.
My life was the definition of barely surviving and definitely not thriving.
So what do we do?
What do you do when you know you need to be taking care of your body and feeding it well and exercising it, but you just feel like you can’t because you have NO TIME and you can barely get everyone where they need to be and fed?
Before you can even start to work on your fitness level, you need to look at your life. If your life is on fire, then we need to put that fire out FIRST, then once we have a life that is conducive to our health and fitness goals we have the freedom to actually do it.
We need to do this for our mental health as well. No one likes living in survival mode, and we aren’t meant to. Do you really think God created you to live as one flustered, overwhelmed, hot mess all the time? Yes, adulthood and motherhood is difficult and messy but it doesn’t have to cost our sanity and mental health!
Now, before I go on, I do want to say that if you are struggling with debilitating depression or anxiety or some other mental health issue, I have so much sympathy for you. I have not been in your shoes so I am not going to speak to those issues.
What I am talking about today is for those of us who are living in a survival mode because we are choosing to live our lives in a reactionary way instead of being proactive.
I like to think of this as a whole-woman approach to fitness. If you want to work on your fitness goals we need to look at your whole life, not just your eating and exercise habits. Yes those are a big part of it, but if the foundation of your life is not set up to support your health and fitness goals, then you are doomed to fail at some point.
My life has been changed SO much by starting to live in a more proactive, organized way and learning how to manage my time well. Seriously, no one teaches you this stuff, time management should be a class in high school. Maybe it is now, I don’t know.
So I’m going to share 2 resources with you that have literally changed my life. This is how I, as a mom of 6, am able to manage my house well, laundry done, meals planned, kids where they need to be, and run a business, and do it without losing my mind.
No-I’m not perfect at all and we do have bad days, but I don’t feel out of control any more in general in my life. I’m not living in survival mode. I’m not living with endless lists of what I’m supposed to do that day that only keep growing and never shrinking. I'm also not a unicorn. You are totally able to do this as well.
So the 2 resources are a book and a podcast.
The book is called the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: How to stay emotionally healthy and spiritually alive in the chaos of the modern world by John Mark Comer.
This book changed my life. It opened my eyes to how our modern world is so fast paced, how it wasn’t meant to be like that, how my phone addiction was messing up my brain and my ability to concentrate, and gives tools and ideas for how to unhurry your life.
Doesn’t that sound nice? An unhurried life. It’s a work in progress but I’m getting there for sure. I read this book like once a year as a refresher because it’s so easy to get back into living my life at breakneck speed, especially with all these kids.
This book has also changed my concept of rest. I’m a follower of Jesus, as I’ve mentioned before, and I now see rest, be it sleep or taking time off of work, as a way to honor God and how He created us. He didn’t create us to go, go, go 7 days a week with 3 hours of sleep a night. He make us needing daily rest and weekly rest, and my body and my mind have been SO improved by this.
If you don’t take a sabbath or rest day once a week, any day of the week is fine, please bless yourself with that. Read this book on your rest day. It is such a joy to unplug for the day and just focus on rest and family and God.
Ok so the next resource I have for you is a podcast called Systemize Your Life Podcast.
Yall, this lady is LEGIT. She’s aimed towards work from home moms but anyone can benefit from the information she shares in her podcast. Go listen to Episode 3 of her podcast, I’ve borrowed what I’m going to share with you today from her.
Ok so this is going to be really practical. What I want you to do is get your planner out and a sheet of paper. If you don’t have a planner please, please, please get a planner, or digital calendar. I use both, the Google calendar for events and the paper planner for like the rhythms or routines of my life that week.
So get your paper, and you are first going to write down the CORE things that you need to do to live and function well as a person and in whatever role you have, mom, dad, whatever. These are your non-negotiables. If you need a refresher on non-negotiables, you can read this post on that.
So you write down your non-negotiables or your core needs.
For example, mine are: time with God, weekly 1-1 time with my husband, weekly 1-1 time with the kids, meal planning, exercise, cleaning/laundry, and then the random to-dos that go with having a home like changing the lightbulbs or random paperwork or whatever, the stuff you have to get done at some point around and in your home and family to keep it from falling apart.
Those are your core, non-negotiable needs. It’s a core need if you can say to yourself: I need to do this thing so I (and my family) can live and function well as a person. These are the things that you want to prioritize in your life so you stay on top of relationships and you stay on top of your home and your stay on top of managing your body. You MAKE time for these things.
So once you’ve written those down, I want you to look at your calendar for the next week, and plug those things in FIRST. They go before social events, they go before shopping for some random thing you wanted to buy, they go before TV time or social media scrolling, they go before all of those things.
Chelsi from Systemize Your Life calls these Fundamental needs, and I think that’s such a great name for them because they are the FOUNDATION of your week and your life.
After you have plugged those in, THEN you go in and you add the other stuff-if you have time for it. The TV time, the social media, the random shopping and all that. But you prioritize your core needs.
I have simplified this a lot-please go listen to Episode 3 on Systemize Your Life. She utilizes time blocks (and I do too) but it’s too much for us to get into today.
What I want you to get from this, and this is what I have gotten from it, is this:
When my life is not in chaos, when there is order and organization, and the meals are planned and the groceries are shopped and I don’t have to rush everywhere I go, going to the gym is easy. Eating right is easy. It’s simple.
So that’s what I want for you today my friend. I want you to have a life where you aren’t a flustered hot mess all the time. You don’t have to live just wanting to numb out on your phone. It’s possible! I am a living testament to that.
Don’t live in survival mode. You don’t have to! There is an easier, simpler way to do life if you choose it. Yes, it will be hard. Yes, it will take sacrifice, but it is SO worth it.
And then you will have the emotional and mental energy to take care of your body and your mind how it should be. And this overflows into your family as well.
So the action item for this week: 1. Write down your core needs. 2. Plug them into your week FIRST before anything else.
Try it out for a month and see if it doesn’t make your life easier.
-Rachel
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