Not Too Much, Not Too Little, It's Juuuuuuuust Right
I’ve been hearing from a lot of folks that they are so wildly overburdened right now. Guess what came in my mail yesterday? A flyer that says “Do you feel like you need a personal assistant??” and it had a mom and a baby on the front. The flyer was a service to help you find a cleaner, pet sitter, house sitter, etc etc. A service to help you find a service. And of course, who was on the front, except…. a woman.
WOMAN.
W - wearing every hat
O - operating at full steam every day
M - managing all things for all people all the time
A - absent in her own dreams and ambitions to support everyone else
N - not doing enough for her own dang self
WOMAN.
I can be this woman sometimes too. I’ve come A LONG way towards breaking out of a lot of these habits but I still find myself drifting back into this sometimes. A natural, seamless, easy pull into making sure the world keeps spinning and being the owner and bearer of that responsibility every day in my life. So I came up with an idea. What if I committed to doing THREE obligations a day? Depending on the kind of day I’m having, those 3 things may be super intense and big and if I need a day of rest, those 3 things might look more like a bath and a nap. But I know me, and I know I like to feel like I’ve accomplished something (yes, I see you all my ‘write it on the list just so I can cross it off people - we should start a club). So as a recovering perfectionist, achievement junky, this method works really well for me.
Here’s a couple of examples of the 3-obligation strategy -
Day One - laundry, cook homemade dinner, text my besties to let them know I love them
Day Two - go to bed early, get a pedicure, catch up on the bills & budget
Day Three - take a long walk in the sunshine, read a book with my kiddo, empty the dishwasher
The perks of doing 3 obligations a day are that you still accomplish something, you edit the list to your real and present needs at the moment, you always make forward movement of some kind, and you feel like you’ve had some achievement. Try it out and let me know if this is a good strategy for you!
