Putting on Blinders (and a little Monday Motivation)

 I've been putting off posting for  few days, thinking about where I'm going with this blog.  I started out doing this only for me.  Just to document my progress with yoga and see how far I've come trying to find balance.  Then a friend started reading it (I'm glad she did!), and I started thinking about her when I wrote.  Next, I found some very inspiring Christian blogs, and I realized that side of me really needed an outlet, so I started thinking about that when I wrote.  Several other important people in my life started reading this blog, who may or may not share my beliefs, and I started thinking about them when I wrote.  I found out about a blog conference, and the women/bloggers who are going, and started reading their blogs, and wanted them to start reading, so I started to think about them when I wrote. 

Can you see where I'm going with this?  It's all very UN-balanced, and scattered all over the place.  No wonder I couldn't decide what to write about or feel like what I was writing was "good enough".  So, as of today, I'm putting blinders on.  You know, like racehorses wear, so they can't see stuff that would spook them?  I'm putting on those blinders.  I'm not going to think about all of you and everyone else, I'm just going to stick to my original purpose: Finding balance and my yoga journey.  Now, that said, I'm glad you're here.  I hope you find something interesting or thought-provoking, or helpful.  I'd love to hear your comments and hear what you think about what I write.  But I'm going to put the blinders on when I'm doing the writing.  It's what I need to do in order to find my balance.

It's Monday, and I'm looking for motivation today. I wrote an email planning a trip to see some wonderful friends, and that helped a little.  Enough to get me over here to write, anyway.  Maybe this post will motivate me to get up and accomplish something else next.  Who knows?  I'm very sleepy and lazy...a side effect of the asthma, I've figured out.  Now if I can just figure out how to fix it.... The meds help the breathing part, but I can tell that I'm still not 100% when all I want to do is lay in bed all day and stare at the wall or the tv.  Actually, I was motivated this morning to go out and work on my flowerbeds, but with a thick, and I mean THICK,  layer of neon green pollen covering everything outside my house, I figured it would be better for the asthma to stay inside.  Seriously, it looks like someone colored the whole driveway with neon green chalk.   It's insane.   I'm praying for a huge, long, rainstorm to come wash it all away.

Are you motivated today?  How do you get motivated when all you want to do is lay in bed all day?

It's Monday, Again?

It's Monday again.  How does that happen so quickly?  This last week seems like it just disappeared from underneath my feet.  I'm trying to keep the huge pile of things that didn't get done last week from overwhelming me.   I purposely chose not to do them, and to spend time with family.  I am glad that I did.  I spent time during the week with my sister and her family, and with my parents, and it was wonderful.  This weekend, we spent most of our time at my mother-in-laws house building a new deck.  Well, watching my husband build a new deck... :)  And I'm glad for that too.  Really,  I'm most thankful for both being born into, and marrying into, wonderful families.  I am so blessed.   Not many girls get to love their mother-in-law like a second mom. 

This weekend was also Palm Sunday.  I may be weird,  but I think that is one of my favorite holidays.  It is upbeat, and happy, and celebrating Jesus entering Jerusalem on a donkey, fulfilling prophecy from hundreds of years prior that he would be the Savior.  People are waving palm branches,  crying out "Hosanna!!" as he rides into the city.  Now, I had to look up exactly what that means, because sadly I wasn't sure.   It started out as a plea "Rescue me!  Save me!".   By the time of Jesus, it was more of a term of adoration, and they were basically expecting him to save them from the Romans.
Palm Sunday is always one of the services which touches my heart the most.  Because when Jesus was riding into Jerusalem, He KNEW that he was going to die on the cross.  He went anyway.  He went for me!  He went for you.  He went for all of us.  So the thought that He knew what was coming, and went anyway, just gives me chills.  Add into that the cries of Hosanna!! (Save me!!), and I can't help but tear up at some point during the service.  It's just that powerful.

Last week, I kept my goals short:  Enjoy family, and Be positive.  I think that was very successful.
This week, I'm going to do the same.  I'm going to:
1. Be Thankful
2. Take the week for myself.  Not that I'm going to lay on the couch eating bon bons and watching movies all week.  I'm going to focus on doing things that take care of me.  Eating well, yoga, prayer, whatever.  Too often, I let myself and my needs slide to the bottom of the list.  This week, I'm going to be thankful for the blessed life I've been given, and take care of myself.

May you be blessed with a Thankful Heart this week. 

***Disclaimer: This post (and others) makes it sound like I know what I'm talking about regarding Jesus, and God, and all of that.  I don't.  I spent years having no belief in God at all.  And although I've found my faith again and been going to church for about 8 years, I still am really clueless.  I know that Jesus was born on Christmas, and that He was crucified and died on Good Friday, and that He was resurrected on Easter Sunday.  That's about it, as far as really understanding things.  I'm working on filling in the details.  I do a lot of looking things up online (google is great!) , or in books, when I come across something I don't get yet. ( Like Good Friday.... Why on earth is it called Good Friday if it was the day Jesus was crucified? ) That's next on my list! ;)

Happy Monday!

Happy Monday!  Just logged in to do a quick post, and I see that I'm up to 5 followers!  Woo-hoo!  Thanks to all of you, whether or not you hit the follow button or subscribe ( I have no idea how to know about who is doing that), or if you just stop by once in awhile.   Please take just a second, really, just a second, and CLICK HERE for something I really want you to know.  Then come on back and finish this post if you're up for it.


So, now that you know how glad I am to have you here, here's the next Monday Morning Staff Meeting.
First, the roundup from last week, then I'll tell you about my big lesson for the week:

Go somewhere new.  We went to two new parks and found some cool play areas.
Read something.  We read several new books from our awesome re-opened library.
Explore something.  We were going to explore the new library, but someone got sick, so we had to postpone.
Build something.  We built more onto the tree fort with daddy.  Okay, so I just watched, but  3 out of 4 family members helped, so I say that counts. :)
Clean something.  Hmm.... cleaned A LOT.  Some major stuff, some daily stuff.  My house looks so much better now, and I just want to do more!  (See mom, you were right.  Eventually I grew out of the messy stage.  It just took 38 years... )
Grow something. Managed to keep my flat of Impatiens seedlings alive for another week.
Cook something.  Didn't do any new recipes, but still cooked, so that's good enough.
Plant something. Planted some stuff along our new path to SomeGirl's house.
Investigate/Scout something.  Saved for next week, due to sickness.  

So, what was the big lesson from the week, I'm sure you're dying to know?  Well, you may or may not know that I guest posted over here last week for Fraddling Friday.  I spent the week thinking about how I was fraddling.  Fraddle is doing something someone else loves because they love it, and you love them.  Because I was thinking about it all week for that Friday post, I spent a lot of time thinking about something I wasn't looking forward to doing.  And I started telling myself to think about it with a different attitude.  I started telling myself, "Be thankful, not resentful."  I started saying it to myself in my head, Be THANKFUL, not resentful.   I am THANKFUL, not resentful.  And then I started to be thankful for it.  Thankful for the chance to do something that would really make the day of someone I love.  Thankful to be able to do that thing.  Thankful for the chance to share that thing with the person I love.  And I stopped resenting it.  The result was that I wasn't stressed out and resenting that thing the whole time, and instead had a nice day.  

There are two quotes that I really like about attitude.  The first, is by Winston Churchill who said, “Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference.”  He was so right.   The other, is from Francesca Reigler, who said, 

 "Happiness is an attitude. 

We either make ourselves miserable, or happy and strong. 

The amount of work is the same.”

 

My to do list for this week is going to stay simple.  Just two things, really.  

1. Spend time enjoying my sister and her family visiting.

2. Be positive about things, even things I don't like, and choose happiness over misery.  (That pretty much covers everything, if you think about it...)

 

I am choosing to be happy and strong.  How about you?  Is there something you could change your attitude about and make life happier for yourself this week? Leave me a comment and let me know.  I'd love to hear from you!

May you be blessed with a positive attitude, and the ability to see the bright side of things this week.

Staff Meeting - Take Two...

Sometimes, it takes seeing yourself from someone else's eyes to realize something about yourself.  That's what happened this week.  I had two people tell me that my list from the Monday Morning Staff Meeting last week was scary.  I think one said it was scary, and the other said it stressed her out reading it.  Now, that list was a very reduced size list from what I would usually use as my to do list to set myself up for failure.  That list was my heavily-edited-to-just-one-or-two-things per area list.   Those two comment-makers would have had a heart attack if they knew what I wanted to write! I thought I was going pretty easy on myself.  And yet two people thought that it was scary and stressful.  So, it's time that maybe I really take an even longer, harder look at how whacked-out I am how I'm still being unrealistic in my expectations for myself.
Now, that being said, the list from last week did make a big difference in my week.  I felt a lot more focused, and on task, as long as I was getting something from the list accomplished each day.  I  didn't get everything done before Friday like I had hoped, but I also didn't beat myself up about it.  More of the list got done than not, and so I consider that a success.  I definitely found it helpful to sit down and have a 'meeting' with myself and plan a little.  But I do plan to rethink my expectations for myself, to be sure.

So, thank you girls, for the eye-opening comments.  I clearly need your perspectives.  This week is spring break, and so my list is going to be a little more focused on fun rather than work, but I'm hoping it's a lot more balanced, and not at all scary or stressful.  Since it's spring break, I'm going to consider the whole week an O.F.F. (official fraddling Friday) week.  Ten things for Ten Days without school. Ten ways to Fraddle (show love and spread joy).  Ten ways to live in the moment and enjoy time with my boys.  Here goes nothing:

Go somewhere new.
Read something.

Explore something.

Build something.

Clean something.

Grow something.

Cook something.

Plant something.

Investigate something.

Scout something.

  If we can make a game out of the 'cleaning something', then they will all be fun things too.  We'll probably be going somewhere new, to the Dallas Zoo, maybe taking the TRE to get there.  We're going to explore the newly reopened local library, build something at the Lego Store, plant some veggies for our garden, grow some of our seeds from last year, scout out new parks for the summer,  and investigate....well, I'll leave that open to my boys to decide.  So it could be anything from spiders to volcanoes to mud puddles.  But I know it will be fun.  And hopefully, this list was a lot less scary and stressful!  And I promise to work hard on keeping my next week's list unstressful too, even once we're back in the real world of school and work.

May you be blessed by taking it easy on yourself this week.  

You deserve a break!

Lessons from the Happy Monster Band

 Sometimes, lessons come from the most unexpected places.  Like the PlayHouse Disney lineup on the Disney channel.  My littlest is on the couch right now watching the Happy Monster Band.  From the kitchen, I hear one of their songs... "Practice Makes Progress".  Now, I have always said or heard, 'practice makes PERFECT'.  And since I have such perfectionist tendencies, I tend to want to either do it perfectly, or just scrap it and not even try.  This is a huge problem, and something that I'm working really hard to let go.  Like my friend, SomeGirl says, we are recovering perfectionists.  So, hearing this song 'Practice Makes PROGRESS' really struck me.  Here are just a few lines from the song:

Practice Makes Progress

It will help you be the best

practice makes progress

it will help you find success

(If you want to hear the whole thing, click the link 

and the song will be on the bottom right 

once the playhouse Disney page comes up. )

It's true, isn't it?  The whole point of us working on things, practicing things, whether it's yoga or cleaning & organizing, or eating right, is to make progress.  Do any of us really, truly, think we can achieve perfection? No.  We might aim for it, and I might expect it of myself, but I don't think it's actually possible. Actually, I know it's not possible.  None of us are perfect.  So that means I'm automatically set in a position for failure, at least in my head.  I like the idea of expecting progress instead.   Lately, instead of beating myself up about not reaching those crazy perfectionist goals, I've simply been telling myself that a little + a little + a little =  success.  It will add up and get you there.  

One of the other things that struck me came from a conversation with my friend, J., yesterday.   She and I talked about always feeling defeated, because we're always having something come up, and then we get off track and have to keep starting over.  It feels like we're endlessly starting over.  Which is depressing.  But, maybe we need to just rethink that.  Maybe it's just all in our perspective.  As long as we do keep starting over, we're that much closer to success.  As long as we don't give up when unexpected things come up, we'll stay on the right track simply because we do keep starting over.


I have a long way to go, but I can already see these little + little + little adding up.  My house is cleaner.  The kids area of the garage is organized now where they can just go out and grab something to play with, and have a spot to put it back.  (This is a huge deal now that it's starting to warm up outside.) My messy pit office floor is clear, and the couch isn't piled with boxes of stuff anymore.  That list that I made this week at my pretend  "staff meeting"?  It has really helped me focus on what to do.  SomeGirl told me it stressed her out to read it, and I can see that.  But for me, it's helping me to feel successful, because I didn't put any crazy time goals on there.  I'll just try to achieve those things this week sometime. It's also helping me feel successful, because as long as I'm doing something from that list, I'm on the right track.  Before, I was telling myself,  "Today I'll work on the office.  Or the kitchen.  Or the laundry."  So then, if I was working on laundry on the "office day" I'd feel like I was off track.  But it's all part of the bigger picture, the bigger job.  And aiming to have it done so that I can just do whatever on Friday with the boys is VERY motivating!

Things are clicking.  Things are adding up.  

Things are getting more balanced!  

WooHoo!!

   Yee-haw! (This is Texas, after all...)

and ALLELUIA!  

Or, as my youngest just said,

"Yabba Dabba Scooby Dooby Doo!"

May you be blessed with seeing  

PROGRESS 

in things you are working on, too!

Monday Morning Staff Meeting

One of the things I'm doing to find balance is reading some blogs on uncluttering and being more productive.  One of them suggested scheduling a twenty minute meeting with yourself to figure out what you really need to accomplish.  Now, granted, this was aimed at people who have so-called "real" jobs, but since I've already established here that I have multiple jobs, I'm adopting the idea.   I'm calling it my Monday Morning Staff Meeting, I've got my work boots on, and you're invited to tag along.

Ok, team, here's what needs to get accomplished this week, in no particular order:

Let's start with you, Office Manager.  Tackle that pile of paperwork on your desk and get it cleared off.  When you get done with that, I want you to get those two baskets of "to do" and "to file" stuff finally taken care of.  Get your email cleared out again too.
Housekeeping?  I know it's still raining and muddy out, but you've really got to get those floors mopped and vaccumed. Yes, I know they'll just be dirty again two minutes later, but do it anyway.  Finish getting the laundry done also please.
Yoga girl?  You need to get to the studio and get in at least three classes this week.  And start off the other days with fifteen minutes of practice too. I don't care how bad your asthma is making you feel, go anyway.  You'll feel better when you're through.
Head chef? You need to get the weeks menus planned out and get the shopping done.  Let's have at least a couple of slow cooker nights, so you can have the kitchen cleaned up before dinner.  Make sure you tell the dishwasher that she is not to leave without the kitchen being fulled cleaned at the end of each evening.
Faithful child? You need to put God and prayer time first everyday.  Once you've done that, the rest will fall easily into the right perspective.  Let's get through the end of chapter two in your study book this week, and don't forget to pray for those on your prayer list.
Nutrition lady?  You need to make sure you're eating from your healthy anti-inflammatory foods list.  Don't forget to drink lots of water and take those vitamins.
Mama bear?  Make sure you work with the boys on completing their chore lists without constant reminders.  And don't forget that it's your job to play with them and enjoy them everyday too!
Lady Gardener?  There's a lot of debris to get picked up in both the front and back once the rain lets up.  Let's try to also get the leaves cleaned out of those front flower beds too.  It will be time to plant soon!  If the weather doesn't clear up, at least get that worm composting bin started.
Girlfriend?  Don't forget about Talkin' Tuesday.  Not that TT would ever be forgotten, since it's one of the highlights of your week.
Wife? Make sure you do something nice for your hubby this week.  Just something little to show him how much he's appreciated and loved.  Plan something for Friday night when the kids are at Nana's.  Maybe do some more anniversary planning too.
Dual blogger?  Let's get some blogging done each day, and avoid the Talkin' Tuesday hangover this week.  Maybe catch up on the drafts that are started for the boys, and then keep the balance blog updated daily.
Inner self? Set aside at least one hour this week to just do something that you love that brings you joy.  Just for you.

And finally, remember that Fridays are O.F.F.  days (Official Fraddling Fridays).   With Friday being an O.F.F. day, we need to get this to do list done so that Friday can be just about showing love and spreading joy.