Day: 7
Spoke: Family
Habit: Respecting Boundaries
I could write a whole series of posts on family and boundaries. If you haven’t read the book Boundaries by Dr. Henry Cloud, it’s a MUST. He discusses relational boundaries, but today I want to discuss time block boundaries.
When I had my first child I chose to work from home so I didn’t have to put her in daycare. Every single day those first three years I weaved all the priorities together at the same time, and it was a hot mess.
By working from home, mostly my cell phone, I was always “on” for everyone. Small children have constant demands. I was working and living in a house that needed constant cleaning and picking up. And then I had the pressure and nagging feeling over me as a constant dark cloud of all the work-related things I should be doing that I couldn’t get to.
I was stressed and my body showed it.
My hips started hurting and it kept getting worse. I couldn’t figure out why until I went to a Japanese Acupressurist who completely cleared it up in one session, after a year of struggle for me.
I was carrying guilt and it was storing in my body. When I was playing with my daughter I felt guilty I should have been working. When I was working I felt guilty I wasn’t spending time with my family or cleaning. I was never present in the moment. I was constantly focusing on what else I “should” be doing.
The magical shift for me happened when I got childcare help. I was able to time block my entire life. This is my window to work. This is my window to do chores. This is my window to sit on the couch and do nothing. Sometimes they may bleed into each other a little bit, like I choose to answer a work text while at home, but I work very intentionally at keeping my time block boundaries as firm and consistent as I can.
Time blocking my life has been so beneficial because every time my mind starts to drift to something else that still isn’t getting done I can turn the chatter off in my mind and just say “I’ll get to that on Saturday morning, until then it will have to wait because these things are the current priority.”
Do you ever struggle with being present in the current moment? Do the never ending to-do lists overwhelm you? Have you ever tried time blocking?
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