Every Morning, Make Your Bed

This week I spent most of my time making a list of things that I needed to do and then compiling lists of the things I needed to do to actually accomplish the items on my to-do list. Welcome to adulthood. Sounds exhausting, right? It is! As I tucked my kids into bed and tried to think through what I needed to accomplish before the weekend, I realized that I never feel like I am truly accomplishing anything. I am constantly just trying to make it to the next task, but never really allowing myself to start the next day with a clean slate. I am constantly letting each day spill into the next day.

No wonder why I never truly know what day of the week it is.

As I sat at the foot of my bed trying to decide what I want to wear tomorrow, I glanced back at my bed and realized how put together it seemed. The pillows were in the appropriate place, the blankets were all folded and tucked neatly and it looked finished. Why didn’t I feel that way? Every morning that there isn’t a tiny person bundled up in my covers, I make it a point to ensure that my bed looks put together. But why? Growing up, my mom would ensure that we made our bed every morning and I never knew why, it was just something that we did.  I am not expecting anyone to see it, so why do I feel like I still have to do it? These are questions I never really thought about, probably because they aren’t on my list of things to do. While I sat there on the edge of my bed, I was not sure why I was thinking about them at that very moment. And then it dawned on me, I needed an item that I can simply check off of my list each day. It is one thing that I know that I cannot fail at. Every morning, I get up knowing that I want to give everything and everyone in my life 100% and I know that I will fail at that because it is unrealistic, but yet and still, I put those expectations on myself every single morning and every evening, I come home knowing full well that I left something unfinished on my desk or that I was unable to give each of my kids my undivided attention each time my son called my name or my daughter cried.

I have a to-do list that never gets completely done for one reason or another, so I can never pat myself on the back and say “great job. You rocked the day”. But why do I have to finish everything just to feel good about the things that I did accomplish? Why do I not allow myself to celebrate each of the small things that I can do everyday? I am not superwoman, no matter how many blanket capes I wear for my son. Why is one item crossed off the list not enough? It is! If you have one hundred items on your list and you can complete two, you had a successful day. We have to stop comparing our lives to those around us. Just because someone else can wake up at 3am, go to the gym for 3 hours, head home, cook a 7-course breakfast for their spouse and kids, get dressed and make it to work before 8am, does not mean that you rolling out of bed at 6, grabbing Starbuck’s and making it to work at 0759 is not still an accomplishment for you.

You have to choose the small things that you know you can do each day and do them. If you want to walk one mile, get up and start moving. If you want to spend ten minutes by yourself, uninterrupted, put it on your to-do list, do it, and check it off. We make our daily tasks so daunting, that we are unknowingly setting ourselves up for failure. Instead of making a list with all of the things that you have to accomplish for the whole day or week, break your list up into tasks that you can accomplish within just the next hour or two and then when you accomplish them, give yourself time to celebrate that you got them done. Go all out, have a cookie if you want. Kids shouldn’t be the only ones rewarded for earning stickers on their charts. As adults, we have to find ways to give ourselves a little bit of grace. Many of you, like me, are juggling a lot of different roles and responsibilities and you have to give yourself a chance to begin and end each day feeling like you did something. Even when you have a long list of unfinished tasks that you have to leave for the next day. Find one or two things that you are committed to doing each day and DO THEM.

And don’t forget to make your bed 😊.

On a scale of 1 to 10....

Just two blog post in and this one is going to be very personal. Normally it takes much longer for me to bare it all, but this is a personal blog, right? So here we go. I know that we live in a world where people feel very comfortable telling you exactly how they feel without regard to how it will affect the person they are saying it to, but just because society makes that okay, should we all just say what we want to anyone that we meet? I was in Kroger, my favorite hangout, after a long day at work. I did not have time to change, so I had on the outfit that I wore to work and I am sure I was sporting some pretty big bags under my eyes at this point as well. My son was being surprisingly cooperative as we deviated from our normal after work routine of cooking dinner, watching Paw Patrol or Moana, completing bath time and going to bed. I was completely prepared to deal with a combative toddler, but out of sheer luck, he was tolerating being in the grocery store. We were on our way out, but I, of course, had to have an Iced coffee from Starbuck’s. I place my normal order of a Venti Iced Coffee with heavy whipping cream and sugar-free vanilla syrup. No big deal, right? As I am waiting for my drink, another lady joins me at the counter. She asks how old my son is and I tell her that he is almost 1.5 Yrs. old. She goes on to ask a few other questions, with the last being why do you order your iced coffee so particularly? I kindly reply and tell her that I have been following a ketogenic diet since March, and I limit my carb and sugar intake. Her response after this made me speechless! She proceeds to say, “well you may need to try something else. Your baby is no longer a baby, so you can’t blame your weight on him for much longer”. I was floored! All I could do was smile, tell her to have a nice evening and walk away. As I walked away I went back and forth between wanting to cry and wanting to scream at her about all the work that I have done to lose weight so far, but I am an adult right so I couldn’t throw a temper tantrum. My son was not throwing one, so neither could I. Plus, why should I get so worked up over her 2-second evaluation of my weight and life. I have dealt with my weight for my entire life and even shed more tears than I can remember as other people made comments about it when I was younger. Those comments normally came from family members, so they don't count right? I have never had to stomach a comment like this made by a stranger, so this was new territory for me. I have never fit into society's vision of “small” or “thin”, and I may never as far as the number on the scale goes, but I am working on being a healthier version of myself and that should count, right? So why did this one lady’s comment bother me so much? Had I met her in March, I probably would have cried my eyes out while eating Oreo’s. Counterproductive, I know. Instead, she made the comment to the person that I have worked hard to become. While losing weight, I have gone through a lot of personal changes. I had to gain back some self-confidence that I lost after I had my son and I had to find some that I never actually had because of the struggles of being “overweight” when I was younger. But what made this lady choose that particular moment to make that comment? On a day when life was already hard enough for me. I wanted to know what was going through her mind when she walked up to me. Then I thought does it really matter? Is her reasoning going to make me feel better? Absolutely not! In the time that it took me to walk outside, put my groceries in my car and get my son buckled in his car seat, I realized that I didn’t care about her reasoning. I didn’t care about why she felt like she should point out my weight to me. I didn’t even care that she didn’t seem to care about how her delivery made me feel. My body made an amazing human being and that took time, so weightloss is going to take time as well. I am not ashamed of this nor do I shy away from it. She did not understand that to me this weight gain meant that my body had finally gotten it right. I was told at 21 years old that I would never carry a baby to term without an immense amount of medical intervention. She didn't know that this weight gain meant I didn't lose my baby at 12 weeks when the doctor said that I had a threatened miscarriage due to bleeding. She doesn't know that I have a daily struggle inside just to get my body functioning properly and she didn't know that sometimes the struggle becomes so intense and overwhelming that I just want to give up, but this smiling little boy that changed my body makes me keep going. She did not know these things, so the motivation behind her comment did not matter and I did not care about it. I do, however, care that I have grown enough to understand that her words do not have any bearing on my life. I will probably never see this lady again, but she made a pretty big impact on my Thursday night. She reminded me that instead of just letting everything that I think flow out of my mouth, I need to think about my delivery and realize that my words will impact whoever hears them whether I am speaking directly to them or not. It is my decision whether the impact is positive or negative. I also realized that I was finally at a place where someone else’s opinion of my body did not matter to me. I have been working really hard and because of some of my medical issues, I have had times during this journey that I have had to fight against my own body to continue to lose weight. Did the lady at Kroger know that? No, she didn’t, but I do. That is why I chose to gain something from the experience rather than allow it to hurt me. From now on, I am taking these experiences and deciding on a scale of 1 to 10 how much of an impact it should have on me and what emotional, verbal or mental response it requires from me. Plus, I feel great when I look in the mirror. I know where I started and where I am now and I refuse to let one random lady at Starbuck’s derail me completely after all of my hard work. Maybe she was having a terrible day or maybe she really just thought I should work harder than I had been at losing weight. At the end of the day, her opinion is just that, her opinion. My reaction and response is the only thing that I could control in that moment and instead of getting upset and throwing a temper tantrum, I chose to walk away and smile. Why? Because she didn’t need to get the satisfaction of a negative response from me. Plus, how can you be angry in a Kroger that has a Starbuck’s? Groceries and COFFEE! In my mind, that should be one of the happiest places on Earth :-).