How to find time for nourishing yourself?

By no means I would call myself an expert in above topic. I want to exercise, I want to meditate, do yoga, read the book/magazine or simply spend a time with my family. But as many, I do struggle to find time for everything I want to do. I work, thankfully not full time, but still this takes a lot of time and energy. Up to last month I was a full-time student. Now, even though I have a proper job, I am still required to do lots of online learning to complete the competencies my post requires. I am struggling as F**K!

When I have started the Mindfulness course, which required me doing daily meditation, I thought ‘How am I going to find time for all of this?’. I have had another thing to do in my already busy schedule. But I felt I have to try it! So I have made some amendments to my daily routine, and to be completely honest I constantly change it as my days are never the same these days. Maybe it is not a bad thing? One of the golden rules of the Mindfulness is avoiding auto-pilot. It is so easy to fall into this auto-pilot during the daily routine. Then you may not enjoy your life as much as you could. You become less aware of the present moment, your reaction to important things become delayed. You do not notice small things which may bring joy and happiness to your life! So it is good to not have the same routine every day, however though, routine helps with consistency which we need to train our mind during meditation and body during exercises. I guess, the trick is to be aware of this routine and mindful of what we are doing at the present moment.

Here I would like to share some tips we have incorporated to our life in order to nourish our mind, body and family life.

Since Mr Sting and I decided to spend a life with each other we have agreed to never own Television. We think it is a waste of money and time and we just do not enjoy most of the TV shows so there is no point to spend time watching it if we do not like it. So while most of the people spend their evenings on the front of the TV we usually sit with kids, read books together, play simple games or just talk. I also do a bit of a ABA therapy with my son, our daughter often joins in. So we have family time ticked off. Let me just add, that I am not saying that TV is bad for you. I just think that not having TV at home helps us to have less distractions. And by ‘us’ I meas my family. So do not get rid of TV just because Mrs Sting says so.

Exercises are a bit more difficult. I like how Mr Sting incorporated his daily plank to our evening routine. He runs the water for the kids’ bath and do the plank for few minutes while bath is filling up and kids are getting ready. Only just yesterday I took kids to the park for play. While they were occupied with swings an slides I have managed to run around the play-ground, all the time being close and withing the eye-contact with my two monsters. After each circle I have stopped at the play-ground to do some squats and push-ups. Last lap I ran together with kids. So another box ticked off. We do not do it every day, though. This is solution for half-term/weekend days.

The biggest challenge was to find time for the meditation. You usually need a peaceful and quiet spot for that. HA! Try to find a place in our house which meets the criteria! Impossible!

At this moment I am trying to do it late in the evening for 10-15 min when kids are in bed and then another 10-15 min on the morning when kids are asleep and Mr Sting is already awake and play his PC games. When kids are at school, I have day off, no study to do and no house work to do… Other words twice a year! Then I can spend more time for mediation, up to 40 min and quick 5km run.

Then I have decided to start up this blog. Another thing to do… This is just crazy!

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