Feeling stressed and frayed with your current schedule? I get it! It is so easy to feel squeezed to fit everything in. Maybe you have kids back in school, perhaps work has added something on or you are just trying to squeeze everything in your schedule. Regardless, you are trying to figure out your new “balance”. However, that is not the right word. Balance implies you can fall off at any time as in a balance beam. And that is exactly what it feels like, always on the verge of falling off. Symptoms come out as anxiety, reflux, joint pain, headaches, brain fog, lack of sleep and so many more. We don’t need more balance, we need more harmony!
While there are so many ways to address this, there is one very simple and straightforward change you can implement today that might just surprise you and instead of being on that proverbial balance beam you might just find harmony within the exact same schedule – that is with this one tweak…. Read on…
It is so easy to get pulled into anxiety just by our schedules. We are literally scheduling ourselves right into our own drama. Last year, I had a pilates class that started downtown 15 minutes after I finished work. Traffic could be a challenge at the hour of the day and I had to not only get there but change clothes. I really, really don’t like being late so this was a huge stressor on those days as I raced out the door trying to leave my office on time. I tried changing at the office, different routes and nothing was making a difference. Soon, I realized I was stressing over this all day on whether I was going to make it on time. One day, I decided I needed a buffer so I wasn’t running out the door so, I simply started scheduling my day to start 15 minutes earlier and end 15 minutes earlier. That extra 15 minutes in the afternoon allowed me to wind down as slow as I needed and make my way to pilates in a very calm manner. I took my sweet 15 mantra to my other days and realized on my day off I wasn’t allowing myself time to actually get to other places without feeling hurried. I always arrived on time but when I added my extra 15 minutes gaps to my day, the entire days energy shifted for the positive.
With this easy realization, I started sharing this with my patients asking them to de-schedule themselves by putting in a 15 minute buffer. The feedback I have been given is amazing. People who were on the verge of high anxiety waltz in calm, they are smiling and laughing again. The beauty of this is some are now starting to set better boundaries around their time and realize that while they are very capable of most things it doesn’t always mean they have to be the one to do it.
If you are feeling hurried, anxious and never have enough time in the day then try the sweet 15 trick and allow yourself the time to actually breathe! Your cortisol levels will go down, sleep might just improve from the changes you have made during the day and that stubborn belly fat has a fighting chance of resolving (of course with eating right, sleep and exercise).
If you have any pearls like my sweet 15 then jump on social media and share them with all of us. It takes a village!
To your health,
Laura
