Okay moms.
And dads.
I have a challenge for you.
It will require five minutes of your time every day.
You will have the option of committing more than five minutes, but five minutes is all I am asking for.
If there is an area of your life you are dissatisfied with, the only way to change it is to change what you are doing.
And it is on you to make the change happen.
Not your husband, not your wife, not your kids, not your boss, not your parents, and not your kid’s teacher.
It is on you.
If you want some part of your life to be different, you have to do something differently.
And you have to be consistent about it.
You have to develop a new habit.
When something becomes a habit, that’s when change happens.
Like when you brush and floss your teeth every morning and night, you (probably) don’t get cavities.
When you put your keys in the exact same place every day, you know exactly where they are and don’t ever waste time looking for them.
The easiest way for you to make changes is to develop habits that will stick.
And in order to be successful with developing new habits, the key is making them small and manageable.
Because when they are small and manageable, you are more successful. And when you are more successful, you are more likely to stick with something. And the longer you stick with it, the more permanent it becomes.
So here is the challenge.
I want you to think about something that currently stresses you out or makes you angry or annoys you or just prevents you from having the kind of day you want to have or the level of fitness you want to have or the relationship with your kids or your spouse that you want to have. Or whatever it is that you are dissatisfied with.
Maybe you have all the best intentions of working out every day, but your laundry is always a disaster, and you can never find your workout clothes.
And you spend fifteen minutes trying to find your sports bra, and then you have wasted so much time that the workout isn’t possible.
Maybe your kids bring home papers that need to be signed and you have no system for dealing with that and you are consistently late handing them in or you lose them altogether.
Maybe you are always five minutes late for appointments or your mornings suck because it’s always a sh*t show getting the kids out the door every day for the bus and it’s chaos over and over again.
Whatever the thing is, it doesn’t have to be that way.
And if you can just make one small change, you will eliminate some of the stress/unhappiness the situation is causing you.
And once you get the ball rolling, things often improve exponentially from there.
So my challenge to you is to think of one very small and manageable change you can make that will help you go down a new path.
Maybe you commit to laying out your workout clothes for the next day at night before you go to bed.
Sometimes what happens when you commit to this is that you ultimately get on top of your laundry. You don’t allow it to get completely out of control. You come up with a system that works better for you so you aren’t doing the same thing every single day.
Now not only have you started laying out your workout clothes, but this one little habit has had a domino effect, and now other areas of your life are improving. You are getting more organized in general.
Maybe you start teaching your kids how to make a decent sandwich so they can start helping with packing their lunches and take some of the load off of you. This teaches them responsibility, and the more responsible they become, the less headaches you have.
Maybe you commit to writing down your to-do list for the next day every night before you go to bed, so you start the day off with direction and a plan.
Maybe your car always looks like a family of squirrels has been living in it for the last six months, so you commit to cleaning it out every single day, so you stay on top of things and the next time you give a friend a ride, you aren’t completely mortified.
Think of one small change you can make that will change the course of your life.
I challenge you to do this because once you make one small change, you are much more motivated to make another one.
Once you add a little discipline into your life, it becomes easier to add more.
And these tiny little habits, when they are cumulatively stacked upon each other over the course of weeks and months and days change the direction of your life to get you where you really want to be, whether it’s financially or physcically or emotionally.
They snowball.
In a good way.
I speak from experience.
I am five years into making changes.
Five years. It has been very slow going.
But I am now to the point where I feel able to tackle bigger habits. Ones that might take longer than five minutes. But I do them because the payoff of discipline and doing the thing I don’t particularly feel like doing massively improves the quality of my life.
My newest habit?
Going to bed with a clean kitchen.
My mornings run 5000% more smoothly when I start my day off with a clean kitchen.
And you know what having a lot to clean at night has caused me to do?
It is snowballing into me cleaning up as I go instead.
And now my kitchen just isn’t getting so out of control.
It has taken me a long time to get to the point.
But this was my kitchen last night when I went to bed:
I am just no longer willing to wake up to a complete disaster in this room.
It has taken me a long, long time to get here.
And the kids being a little older has something to do with it.
But so does my commitment to making very small changes, one minute at a time.
A little bit of discipline is giving me a whole lot of freedom.
Freedom from stress and freedom from anxiety.
It’s also giving my kids freedom from a super bitchy mom who is totally stressed out by wasting tons of time due to almost constant disorder.
So who’s in?
Who’s gonna commit to a couple minutes a day?
Let me know what you are going to change.
And we can all improve the quality of our lives together.
As I was reading this. I immediately went I am cleaning my kitchen everyday. Clean that up the kitchen table and the dining room I’m putting in one Fell Swoop. It’s easy once it’s done to keep it up I just need to do it. When I saw that yours was also your kitchen I started laughing.
Last night was our first night back to swim practice, and that always adds a little chaos to the mix. I had not planned things well, and had not stayed on top of the kitchen like I wanted during the day. We got home at 9:15 and by the time everyone was in bed it was 9:45 and the dishwasher needed to be loaded and unloaded. I DID NOT WANT TO DO ANYTHING!!! But I did it. And even after I loaded the dishwasher, there was still stuff in the sink. I thought about leaving that. But I did not want to wake up to a sink full of dishes this morning!!! So I washed them all by hand. It was 10:23 when I was done.
Boy am I glad I did it this morning!!!
And today I WILL stay on top of things and clean as I go (but not doing so much food prep today, so there should be much less to stay on top of) because I will remember that once the kids are in bed, I want to be in a position to just chill out and go to bed!
Keep at it, Josey. Discipline equals freedom!
OMG! I needed this! Thank you!! And you’ve done an awesome job-thanks for the reminder of 5 years (not overnight 😜)!
Definitely a process, Connie! Keep at it! Discipline equals freedom!
Thank you for your inspiration! I LOVE waking up to a clean kitchen! Thank you for all of your ideas & motivation to make small, realistic changes. Love your blog!
Aw, thanks, Leslie!
I really hope that some of this stuff sinks into the kids so they don’t spend their first 15 years of parenthood creating more chaos for themselves than is already naturally a part of parenting!!!
Lately, my life has been filled with chaos and confusion, stress and shame. After much soul searching (and a smack to the figurative head!) I realized I was doing too much. In my quest to “help” I was causing more stress.
I was neglecting my resppnsibilties and my home was not place of comfort. I decided I needed to create a safe haven for my kids. All I have to do, like you said, Susie, is start with 5 minutes. It has made a world of difference! When I am calm and present because I am not running like a chicken without a head, surprise, surprise the kids are calmer and happier! (Oh! It helps that the kids are back in school!)
Susie, I check for your new posts obsessively because you speak to my heart and give really excellent, meaningful advice.
Thank you!
NO SHAME!!!
We are learning as we go. Thank you so much for the kind words.
Keep at it, Goldi!
This is something it took me over 30 yrs. to learn. There is nothing worse then waking up to a new day, and coming down to a dirty kitchen. (And let’s not forget about the plans we left soaking, yuck!). I have never yet to come down to this mess, and thought, ” wow, I’m so glad I left this till this morning “. Better late then never!!!!! Baby steps…….
One minute at a time, Roberta!
I made a couple of decisions years ago with my kids when it came to the car…one, we don’t eat in the car which means we generally take it home and eat at the table. And two, if you bring it to the car, you take it out. Anything left behind becomes property of mom. I’ve had a clean car for years now and zero stress in that area (plenty in other areas). I love the small change post! It can work wonders.
I do something similar — we take our stuff out every day, too. But one kid is also on car clean out duty every day. We started doing this in June. It has kept the car neat, and the kids take their things inside because they realize how annoying it is when they are on car cleanout duty to have to lug other people’s junk out or pick up their garbage. Discipline equals freedom. 🙂
I’m going to tackle the end of my bar. I clean up my kitchen every night (dishes, pans, wipe the counter down), but there’s a bowl that sits on the end of our bar that is supposed to be pretty with lemons or something in it. But it’s always piled with junk and crap. And NO freaking LEMONS!! It stresses me out every single day. Tonight I’m doing a clean sweep. Everything is going… even the bowl. Next… my sock drawer! Thanks so much for the inspiration!! Every post of yours I read makes point and say “Yes! What SHE said!” 🙂
Yes Michelle! Good for you! You will feel so good to not be stressed out by that. It’s just a small bummer that doesn’t need to be there every day poking you and taunting you. Eliminate the annoyances. The investment will pay off tenfold. At least!
Done!!!! Sock drawer, here I come!!
Good for you! What’s after the sock drawer? 😉
>Going to bed with a clean kitchen.
Even if you can’t manage having the kitchen completely clean before bed, at least getting the dishes done makes you feel so much better in the mornings. I know from experience!
You have a really cute kitchen.