It’s your choice, though clearly not typically an easy one, to NOT get caught up in the crazy busyness that happens this time of year!

 

 
     Hi there, it’s Elaine Gardner, the founder of DesignYourHealthyLife.com. This is the time of the year where the pace of modern life often picks up tremendously. We just come off, for a lot of people – not for everybody of course, a slower, more relaxed pace. A time of the year through the summer where people enjoy themselves more or let themselves enjoy more than the other times of the year. And I really want to encourage you not to get caught up in that craziness and busyness.

     I realize that for some people this is completely unavoidable, that it relates to children going back to school, activities picking up, or increased demands at work because the end of the year is coming and productivity and financials come in to play with all of that kind of thing. But I’m going to encourage you to try to keep that more relaxed pace and not join that crazy busyness as much as is possible for you.

     Unless you really enjoy that pace, that increased stress and those increased demands on your time really don’t serve you well. They can make you feel stressed, you can lose your focus, and just your general sense of wellbeing. And it’s really unfortunate timing because this is also the time of the year when the season is shifting and sometimes we have very dramatic temperature shifts depending on where you live, and this is taxing on the body and our body needs to adjust to this. So when we get that increase in busyness, along with that seasonal change that our body needs to adapt to, we can really get worn out very quickly. And that’s the last place that you want to be as we head into cold and flu season and those darker, colder months of the year where our energy tends to be lower anyway.

     So I’m really going to encourage you to protect yourself and step off this crazy busy bandwagon as much as humanly possible. And like I said, I know that this is easy to say and sometimes it’s very, very difficult to do and can be out of your control for many different reasons. But I just want you to think about it and I want to offer you some strategies in order to maximize your time and help you when things get really busy.

     The first strategy is to just say no. A lot of people say yes to things that they feel like they have to do, but those are things that don’t give them joy or enhance their life in any way. So if you’ve said yes to commitments that fall into that category, I highly encourage you to reconsider that and to back out of it as gracefully and easily as possible. And only commit your time to the things that you really want to be invested in, that bring you joy, that enhance your health, that further your career in a good way – those kinds of things, things that are in alignment with who you are, who you want to be, that enhance your health and enhance your life in some way. Not those things that just drag you down and take up your time.

     The second strategy is to bundle your errands and plan appropriately. So when you have a lot of little things to do, think about where you have to drive, where you have to be, the time that you have to be there. Then try to put things together so that you can be really efficient with the time that you have and not be bouncing all over the place wasting time, driving two days in a row to the same area of town for two different errands, when you could have put them together and saved yourself some time. Again, I know that doesn’t always work out to be that way. It’s easy to say, not always easy to do. But the more you can think ahead and bundle where you need to be, the more you can save yourself time so you can have that down time at home instead of running around doing errands and things like that.

     The third strategy can be really, really critical and is super helpful for me when things get busy and out of my control. And that’s to plan ahead. So the down time that I do have, I’m going to sit down and look at what’s coming up for me, and how I can maximize my time by bundling my errands and planning ahead for healthy meals and things like that. So when I’m short on time, if I have a quick meal that I can throw together when I get home, even if I only have 15 minutes before I need to be out the door again, if I eat something healthy I’m going to feel so much better during that busy day or that busy week. And that just makes a huge difference for me. Or enlist the help of others if things are really busy for you. If you have a family and your kids are involved in a bunch of activities, you could set up a carpool so that you’re not driving your kids to their practices every day or something of that nature.

     So there’s many, many different tactics you can use to save time, to reach out for support from other people, to take the pressure off of yourself. And I’m sure there’s other things as well that you could easily employ (or not so easily employ), but things that you could do to implement, to really save yourself time and money and sanity. And that’s what I want for you, is just to be as happy and healthy as possible. My goal is always to share inspiration and strategies with you so that you can have the health that you need to live the life that you deserve!