The Universe Is Flinging Reminders At Me Left And Right

Last week after a near nervous breakdown due to majorly overextending myself over the last year, I did some serious soul searching.

And I started making changes immediately.

For the past couple years, I have confused the words busy and productive.

I have been busy for years.

Like really, really, REALLY busy.

Non stop. All the time.

Over the past five years I have fallen into this mindset of filling every spare minute I have with “work.”

I put the work in quotations because work is not synonymous with productivity.

I have been spinning my wheels for years.

I have been working harder, not smarter.

Trying to build a business and working from home around the needs of your kids and your family, makes it really easy to fall into the mindset that every spare minute must be filled with something — anything — work related.

But this mindset and this thought process has not gotten me where I want to be.

It has simply worn me down.

I’ve had little a-ha moments where I’ve declared I’m giving myself a day of rest and taking Sundays or Monday or Wednesdays totally off to give my brain and my body a break.

But it hasn’t happened.

This paradigm shift is proving to be a very hard one for me to break.

Any amount of time I have that isn’t filled with something “work” related gets filled.

But the irony of this thought process is that I am so burned out I’m really ineffective, I’m not focused, and REALLY inefficient, and I hardly have any boundaries.

I’ve been working very hard on this for the past week.

Here’s an example of a situation I would have handled a lot differently a couple weeks ago.

Number 6 and 7 get on the bus around 8:05 every morning.

Some mornings, especially if the day before has been super busy, I drive them to school if they ask. That gives them an extra 30 minutes in the morning before they have to leave for school.

This past Tuesday we had one of those mornings.

At 8:00 they were ready for school, but I let them have a half hour of time to do whatever they wanted and told them I’d drive them to school.

They are on a Go Fish kick right now, and they broke out the cards.

And then they asked me if I’d play with them.

I immediately defaulted to I can’t. I have too much work to do.

Then Number 7 said, “It only takes a few minutes to play a game, Mom.”

She was right.

I sat down at the dining room table and dealt the cards.

We played one round.

She was so happy.

SO HAPPY.

All because I played one game of Go Fish with her.

She was laughing and I was laughing and for a few minutes, I wasn’t Salty Mom.

She kicked my ass which made it twice as enjoyable for her.

Of course Number 6 saw how much fun she was having, and he asked to play, too.

So we played another game.

And then we played one more before we left for school.

It was such a nice way to send them off to school.

No yelling. No freaking out. No rushing.

And laughing.

I have missed out on so many of these opportunities.

SO MANY.

And the rate at which the kids grow up was made crystal clear yesterday when I dropped Number 3 off on his first flight ever for a trip to Florida with his high school swim team.

AND THEN IT WAS MAGNIFIED A MILLION FOLD WHEN I SAW THIS VIDEO ON FACEBOOK.

Grab a whole box of tissues.

Seriously.

https://www.facebook.com/WSFM1017/videos/449560472603388/UzpfSTE1OTcyNTU2OTg6MTAyMTkxMjEwNDY0ODkxNzk/

I really don’t want to miss out on any more of these opportunities, because in the blink of an eye, they will be gone for good.

The Universe is reminders of this and flinging reminders of this at me left and right the last couple weeks.

And now?

Well, now I’m flinging one at you.

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