Does your vision of summer match your reality?
In our minds, summer is supposed to be this wonderful, magical time with our children. A time for making memories. Filled with trips to the pool, ballpark and family outings where everyone is smiling, laughing and having a good time.
In reality, while some days may include those things, summer for many moms is stressful! We spend our days running the kids to camps and activities, breaking up fights between siblings and preparing meals and snacks! Finding time to do our day jobs can be a challenge, let alone finding time to focus on ourselves!
But that is exactly what we need to do to help bring our summer vision closer to reality because as they say, “if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!”
So are you taking care of yourself this summer? Are you prioritizing time for your health — mind, body and spirit?
To have a good summer, we really need to do more than just focus on our kids. We need to focus on what I call our Health Esteem!
It’s more than getting our workout in or eating healthy, although those things are important. It’s about showing up as the best version of yourself and to do that, you have to fill your own cup every day.
My Health Esteem team recently held a master class called “The Good Life” with award-winning author Jonathan Fields. The class helped us better understand how to cut through the noise and discover the simple daily actions that lead to living our best lives.
Jonathan calls out three “Good Life Buckets” that we need to measure and keep filled in order to live our best lives:
- Your Vitality Bucket – this bucket is about optimizing your mind and body.
- Your Connection Bucket – this bucket includes what happens between you and other beings, experiences and environments.
- Your Contribution Bucket – this is how you contribute to the world, what it asks of you, and what it gives back to you.
So first, take inventory. How are you doing in each of these areas? Is there one area you need to focus on more than others? Start there.
Here are some tips for filling each of your Good Life Buckets:
Vitality:
Our vitality is the bucket we generally think of when we think of our health. This bucket includes five key areas: movement, nutrition, sleep, breathing and slowing down to get present. If you need to focus on this bucket, think about which of the five areas you’re lacking in first. Start small and focus on that one area. What I’ve found is that by starting with one area, other areas naturally improve and my capacity to focus on other areas expands.
For example, you might decide to focus on movement first. Commit to taking a walk every day at a time that works for you or to working out two to three times a week. When I started my health journey, I focused on 20 minutes a day two times a week because that was all I felt I had the capacity for. Now I work out for 30 minutes five to seven days a week. Not every day is a hard workout, but I get some form of movement in.
Getting more movement in has helped me sleep better.
If you need to focus on nutrition, maybe you focus on eating whole foods and cutting out the highly processed stuff.
If slowing down is your focus, get present and focus on tiny, doable actions that will become part of your daily practice. Maybe that’s five minutes of quiet prayer or meditation each day.
Bottom line, you can start taking small steps every day to fill this bucket and the results will compound!
Connection:
We connect with people every day, right? But do we really? Our connection bucket can also be measured in five key areas: 1) friends, family, and chosen family, 2) community, 3) loving, intimate relationships, 4) self-connection and 5) connection to source/God/The Universe.
Sadly, I think this is a bucket we often overlook because the people that love us will forgive us, but if we aren’t in connection, we aren’t fully living. Connection ignites the “feel good” chemicals in our brains. Without it, we can feel empty, unhappy and alone. As with the vitality bucket, assess what areas of connection you are lacking in and focus there first. And again, start small so that you don’t overwhelm yourself.
If you need to be better about connecting with friends, make a commitment to send one or two friends a text each week. Just say hi and ask how they are doing.
Work out a plan with your spouse or significant other to have a date night each month. It doesn’t have to be anything extravagant, even a movie night snuggled up on the couch after the kids are in bed can do the trick.
Get out with your family in the community for a local parade or festival.
Contribution:
Contribution is also another area that is easy to neglect. As moms, we are so busy taking care of everyone else, we often think our purpose is solely found in our children. It doesn’t have to be! Contribution isn’t just what we can give to others, it’s about being who we were created to be! Having a sense of purpose, feeling excited and energized, in flow, the feeling of being fully expressed and knowing that the thing we are doing is deeply meaningful.
The contribution bucket can be the most challenging to find what really fills it up and can take some heart work. But if you’re willing to dig deep, the benefit of filling this cup will overflow your life with fulfillment!
My only tip here is to listen to your heart and follow your dreams. Remember back to when you were 17 and you had the whole world in front of you — what did you want to do then? If that still makes you smile, go get it!
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