Priorities

I am reading a book called PUSH by Chalene Johnson.  She is the trainer of TurboFire and TurboJam, and she is a great inspirational/motivational speaker.  So the beginning of the book is a 30 day Challenge to help you get your priorities in order and become better organized.  I am only on day 4 so I still have a ways to go, but it has really got me thinking.

You have to come up with your top Life Priorities and go into detail about your number one priority.  It was easy for me to decide that my family was my number one priority and that I wanted the best for my kids and husband.  Going into the details took a little bit more work.  However, I finally got it done.

Now I look at my life as it is today and know that I have a lot of work to do.  I mean I thought I did what is necessary to keep them happy and provide for them.  But after looking at the details of my priority that is just the minimal.  I need to find the time to actually be more involved instead of just being present. I mean I get up and take the train an hour to work in the morning, work all day, take the train an hour back to my home town, drive 15 minutes to pick up my oldest, drive home, start prepping dinner(that is if I don't have to actually run to the store or do some other errand,) exercise for about an hour, finish off dinner, and we are looking at 7-8 at night already.  REALLY??? Come on! I just finally sat down to relax. Then there are the 100 other little things that need to be done before we all get to bed, plus trying to devote time to my business.  This is why I am lucky to make it bed by 11:30pm.  My schedule feels non stop but when I step back and look at it, did I really do anything to improve my number one priority.

Let's see:

I didn't get a chance to actually sit down and play with my kids.

I had a 20 minute car ride to talk about each of there days.

I only had 5 minutes to look through JJ's backpack and try to get him to talk about what he did today at school.

It only took 3 minutes for him to read his baggy book to me.

Story time and tucking into bed, took 15 minutes.

See I only devoted 43 minutes of my direct attention to my kids, if you could call talking while driving direct attention.  With little small talk conversations or little hugs and kisses mixed in throughout the day or short conversations while I am cooking we can round it up to 60 minutes.  So my kids barely get an hour from me???  That's not the mom I want to be.  So I need to change some things up.  I need to change my schedule.

Sometimes we get so sucked into all the things we believe that need to be done, now, now, nowwwww. But we are neglecting the true reasons we are doing any of those things in the first place.  Our families.

This is the beginning of my mission to change things around.  I will be actively involved in my families life.  The gears are spinning and hopefully leading me to a new path of less stress and more happiness.

We will see how I make this happen.......

Shannon