Picture the scene. You wake up one morning and have one of the best days of your life. It begins early, ends late, and consists of loads of fun things that make you happy. This might be taking the kids to a theme park, or going to a spa with your girlfriends, for example. It would consist of all of your favorite food and drinks, and your favorite music would be playing the whole time too. When you looked back in the future, you’d say to yourself, ‘That was the best day of my life!’
Now ask yourself this. If that exact day happened tomorrow, what would be the things that would hold you back from enjoying yourself 100%?
There is a very large chance that you might answer with any of the following points, or even all of them.
“I’d be too tired doing all of that. The exhaustion would start to set in around 2 pm, and I’d be too wiped out to enjoy the evening!”
“To be honest, I’d spend the entire day thinking about all the housework and chores I wasn’t doing at home.”
Maybe you would even take it one step further, and can’t help considering the likelihood of it happening in the first place.
“It sounds fun, but it would never happen! I don’t have the money for those activities, and I wouldn’t get the time off work.”
Do any of these quotes sound like they could belong to you? If so, you’re not alone. Many busy moms (and dads) get so consumed by their current lives, anything different can seem too alien.
However, not all is lost. There are dozens of ways that you can both free up time and increase your own energy levels. Doing so means that you can enjoy your life more, as you should be doing.
Some of these methods will cost you money, while others will be free. But can you really put a price on time and having the energy to enjoy it fully? No!
The first thing you need to do is tackle the main time drains in your life. If this is cleaning the house, consider hiring the help of a company like DeluxeMaid. If this is providing healthy meals for your kids, looking into subscription services delivered to your door. If this is dropping your children at skill, set up a car-share scheme with locals whose kids go to the same school. You can see just from these three examples how there are solutions to pretty much all time drains. However, some of the things that are taking your time may be things you feel you cannot pass onto someone else. You may feel like you should shoulder the whole responsibility yourself. A prime example of this is caring for elderly loved ones or your parents. While you can still visit them weekly yourself, take some of the pressure and responsibility off yourself. You can do this by hiring professional home help.
As you can see, finding ways to pass on some of the responsibilities of life can be really effective. Getting back just a couple of hours each week means an extra two hours to chill and relax. Once you get this time back, however, make sure you use it for what it is supposed to be for. Using that free time to do an extra load of ironing is not the answer. Getting into bed with a favorite book, or watching a new movie on the sofa, is!
So, that’s some tackling of lack of free time dealt with. Let’s take a look at how you can increase your energy levels in general.
There are lots of obvious points we could make here. Eating less junk food means you can replace this with healthy items. These healthy things can act like batteries, that fuel you up and allow you to run properly. This is totally different to the effect that unhealthy foods can have. The chemicals, additives and excessive sugar and salt inside these things act like a poison. Getting more sleep is another obvious suggestion. And, as much as you may hate to admit it, exercise can be 100% responsible for an increase in energy also.
But we all know about these suggestions. However, there are so many things that can get in the way of doing your best in each of these areas every day. For starters, you may be too busy one day to make yourself a delicious salad. A fast food drive through may be the thing you need to grab for your lunch. A big deadline at work, a colicky baby or a poorly teenager might give you a sleepless night. And once again, a lack of time may mean that a 2-hour jog or gym session simply isn’t viable.
So, how can you increase your energy levels in other ways? One fantastic method for the darker, winter months is to invest in a SAD light. This mimics the same effect of natural sunlight, which we all lack when the sun doesn’t come out to play. Another minimal effort suggestion is to replace your unhealthy snack drawer with a healthy one. Throw out those potato chips and candy bars. Replace with boxes of nuts, dried fruit, and canned fruit. If you’re hungry and don’t have unhealthy items to hand, you’ll reach for the healthier ones instead. Going back to exercise for a minute, you can make really small changes to your daily routine. So don’t try and join a gym and go five times a week. Just walk to work one day per week. Take the stairs when you get there and be the one to offer to make a round of tea and coffee. Even just a touch more activity in your average day will build up over the week and start to make a difference.
As you can now see, there are ways you can free up your time and increase your energy levels. Why? Because that ‘best day of your life’ we talked about could be just around the corner. It could be next week or tomorrow! Be sure you’re as ready and raring for it as you can be!
