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Do this ONE thing to your WAHM Daily Routine when you are feeling out of control, and cut your stress level in half.

It’s a hack that not only doesn’t require a lot of time, but once it’s done the effects are super-sustainable!

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The problem: I’m starting to feel stressed out regularly

Here’s what you do:

Take your biggest pain point of your daily routine & drop it from the top of your “I hate this” list to the bottom.

 

Here’s how you do it:

Go through your day’s schedule or daily routine from start to finish.  Be aware of what you are feeling during each of the things you do.  When it’s over ask yourself:

 

What is the one thing you HATED doing more than ANYTHING else that day? The one thing that you dreaded doing, or dreaded happening?

 

There are going to be a lot of pain points during your day.  I’m talking about the one at the top of your “I hate doing this” list.

(Here’s mine as an example.  Every day I dread making snack plates for my kids right before they get home from school.  I HATE IT.  I think it’s because it signals my official “end of working time” & brings up feelings of unproductivity 🙁 even if my day was super-productive.  It doesn’t have to make sense I guess, feelings are feelings.)

What is yours?

 

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Now you are going to take that one thing, take your biggest pain point of your day, and send it to the bottom of your pain points list.

 

By making it as easy as humanly possible for you to do.

In some cases, you can get your pain point out of your life forever.

In my case, the end goal can’t be to “get snacks out of my life forever.” That’s just not going to happen.

 

Ask Yourself These Questions:

#1. Do I live with another adult who can handle this?

Don’t be afraid to ask.  These people love you.

Can this other person handle picking up groceries or dry cleaning on their way home? Help put the kids to sleep or pack their school lunches?  Most adults can use knives, they can clean & prep veggies too.

Does your mom come visit once a week? Give her a few rolls of toilet paper to refill in the bathrooms.  Or ask her to cook that dinner she made all the time when you were a kid (so you don’t have to).

Maybe your kids’ school has an early program your S.O. can drop them off at a few times a week on their way to work.  Now you don’t have to walk to the bus stop.

Just don’t ask in a whining, resentful “why can’t you just _______ you see how busy I am” way.  Getting into a fight is just going to make more stress.

Related: 4 Major Boundaries to Set when Working From Home + Tips!

 

#2. Can My child(ren) handle this?

If it’s something that has to do with them, get them involved.  Kids LOVE being praised for doing things themselves.  It teaches independence, manners, cleaning up after themselves – or are you gonna do it for them forever? Hmmm?

Put their stuff on shelves they can reach.  Give them their laundry to fold & put away (really WHO CARES if it’s neat??? If it means that much to you, teach them how to do it right).

Can you break this thing you hate doing into smaller steps for your kids to do?

I got my kids to make their snacks themselves, by making a snack shelf in the fridge they can reach.  My hubby does the cleaning & cutting of the hard stuff when we come home with the groceries.  The kids can handle butter knives with supervision for the cheese sandwiches or bananas or whatever.

Kids also LOVE spraying things & wiping things.  They love water, mops & Swiffer dusters, especially the long ones.  I just started these chore sticks from funcheaporfree.com.  The kids love picking them out & trading with each other it’s too funny 🙂

 

#3. Can I do this at another time of day?

You could be sabotaging yourself by doing this thing at the worst possible time for you or the people around you.  I can’t concentrate if there are loud, sudden noises around me.  That would mean to a reasonable person that I won’t write well when school-aged kids are home.

I’ve tried and then gotten so frustrated & mad at THEM instead of standing in MY reality – I have kids.  They are loud.  I don’t work when they are home.

Here’s another stupid thing I did early on – I worked early in the morning AND after the kids fell asleep.  That meant no time for the hubby, which meant bickering about what’s more important.

Try out doing this thing at a different time of day or night and see if it makes a difference in how you feel about it.

 

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#4. DO I REALLY HAVE TO DO THIS??????

It sounds obvious but it really isn’t.  People get into routines – sometimes it feels like we NEED this or that thing when we are really just USED to it. 

Amazon Prime delivers Whole Foods groceries to me for free with my subscription. I don’t HAVE to thoroughly examine the EXACT bag of carrots I’m buying.

Waking up early used to be hard for me.  I really wanted to get some extra work time in alone.  When I couldn’t wake up, I’d be pissed the rest of the day & blame all sorts of stuff on “not having enough time.”  Turns out it was the two glasses of wine I “needed” to help me not be pissed the night before.

Sometimes what we “need” to do is what is taking time away from what we need to do.

 

#5. Can I afford to pay someone else to do this? Or can I make this go away with money?

My dry cleaning place has free pick up/drop off laundry service.  (I’m not saying send out all your laundry for a family of 5, that would cost a fortune.)  Maybe you hate laundry – do you specifically hate cleaning bed sheets? Send those out.

Maybe you can afford a house cleaning service one a week, or every other week.

Can you save up for a few months & buy a dishwasher? Or a desk of your own? Price it out and see.

The reality is we should be budgeting for our priorities.  If you are regularly miserable about something and it is holding you back from moving your goals forward, and you can afford to put a few dollars a day aside to take it away, there’s no question it’s a priority.

 

One last thing to keep in mind,

Stress will never truly go away.

 

That’s because stress is NORMAL. It is our body’s physical response to an emotional reaction we get from having to straighten out something that won’t stay how we want it to stay.

The best thing we can do in general is accept our reality and change our attitude.

Take getting older for example – our age changes every year.  Mark Twain said, “Age is an issue of mind over matter – if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”  Not only age, I can apply that to pretty much anything.  Snacks, haters, laundry, feeling jealous over my neighbor’s Mazerati SUV (talk about extra).

 

What are our top 3 biggest pain points? Tell me in the comments – I love to hear from you!

-XO,

Mina

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Here are some more posts that might be helpful:

-How to Plan your Work Week to be Productive + Weekly Planner Template!

–How I Meal Prep Lunch, Snacks & Dinner Working From Home + 3 Days of Recipes!

–6 Workouts You Can Do At Home + Tips for Overcoming Excuses

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