In this quest of mine to try and figure out what it is that I want to do throughout my life, I’ve been striving for things that will not only make me happy in the future, but also today. One thing that I always try to remind myself of is that if I always live for the future, I will not enjoy the journey trying to get there. Sometimes its hard to keep that thought front of mind when you want to change your direction!

Over the weekend I read the book “48 Days to The Work You Love” by Dan Miller. In his book, he has a chapter about creating a life plan which talks about having balance in all areas of life. Those areas include work, family, recreation, community, church, and personal development. He talks about how so many of us put the majority of our energy into work which in return doesn’t leave much room for the other important things that would fulfill us. His message states that really all of those areas should be equal.

I’ll be the first to admit, I get overwhelmed thinking about how to fit it all into my schedule. However, one thing that I love about incorporating these other areas into my life is the opportunities that they will present to me. I know that they can only lead me down new paths that I otherwise wouldn’t have discovered had I only focused solely on my work.

One thing I read in this book was that if you keep doing the same thing, you will keep getting the same results. That is so true. So, what am I going to do? Well, I want to improve on recreation and community.

To start, today I stayed after church and attended a meeting on how to get involved with volunteering. Even if I volunteer an hour or two a month, I’m exposing myself to meeting new people and helping our community. For recreation, I have scheduled two times this week to work out. I actually have a work out bag ready at work to use during lunch and then I’m going to work out in the morning on Friday.

So you have to start somewhere. I’m especially excited about community and personal development because these are the areas that will continue to open doors for me. Take a look at the list. What do you think you can do to start creating a more balanced life for yourself?

Do you remember when you were in school and learning was just part of your everyday? For me, it seems like this was just yesterday… until recently. The last thing that I remember is graduating from college and never looking back. I was career-focused, marriage-focused, and child-focused. I’ve now been blessed with all of those things.

In the midst of adding those things to my life, I didn’t realize how much I put “voluntary” education on the back burner. It simply wasn’t a priority because I was evolving in other areas of my life – all things of which I’m very proud of. Ever since I’ve hired my life coach, I’ve started to re-focus on learning new things and planning new ventures. I must say it feels fantastic. I’m taking classes on personal finance, child discipline, Mac computers, and next semester I’ll be taking a twelve-week course to prepare for an exam that I’m taking to advance my full-time career. I look at that list and it simply amazes me.

I feel like now that I’m ready and willing to learn what I want to learn, it’s more valuable and I’m soaking up new information twice as fast because my desire to learn is that much more. The best part is that I can create my own curriculum and decide what I truly want to learn. So my question to you is, have you invested in your education lately? If not, I highly recommend picking one area of interest and jumping in to educate yourself. It’s so darn refreshing.

Life is busy and each new day comes much faster than I would really like it to. I’m always looking at what I’ll be doing tomorrow, this weekend, or really anytime other than now.

I recently started writing down five things each day that I accomplished during that day. The purpose of doing this is to slow down, recognize what is going on now, and appreciate myself for what I do in a day. This exercise has really reminded me of my purpose, rewarded me for my hard work, and had reminded me how hard I really work to keep everything put together.

Here are five things that I’m happy to have accomplished today:

1) I got together with a friend today and cooked up a storm! I have 8 meals frozen in my freezer to feed my family during the week. That is 8 week nights that I don’t have to cook!

2) I spend time with a friend today. It was fun catching up and investing in a friendship.

3) I successfully got my child to bed after putting him to bed at my sister-in-law’s house and then waking him up to go home. He went right back to bed when we got home. I consider that a success!

4)I switched the laundry at the end of the day when I didn’t want to!

5) My husband and I bought a rug for our children’s play room so that they don’t have to play on hardwood floors anymore.

I consider those five great things just in one day. Imagine how good I feel after a week worth of accomplishments! What are five things that you have accomplished today?

When I met with my life coach for our very first meeting, she asked me what some of my goals were. One thing that was at the top of my list was being able to spend more quality time with my husband. For those of you with kids, you know that it gets a little bit hard to do when the majority of your time is spent with them as well. Sometimes just getting a sentence in at the dinner table is a challenge.

Well, the only way to start getting some quality time with my husband was to start consciously planning a date once a month. We started in September, a great month to begin considering it’s our anniversary. We took the kids to my mom’s for the night and then went downtown to the place where we had our first date… which happened to be a pub. What a perfect place though. We were able to sit down, enjoy some drinks, and talk for hours. It was great to catch up and talk about everything that was going on in each other’s lives. I felt completely reconnected with him. What a great feeling!

We continue to plan a day each month for our date. In October, we went to a football game and our third date of the year (yes, year) is coming up this Friday. I’m actually not even sure what we’re doing yet, but that’s the least of my concerns. I’ve become very excited about this time that I get to spend with him. It’s something to look forward to and a time that I know we’ll be able to kick back and have fun.

So I guess what I’m saying is if it’s been a while since you’ve put your spouse at the top of your list, I highly recommend doing so. Its fun, stress free, keeps your relationship strong.

In one of my recent posts called “Taking Control of My Schedule”, I mentioned that I’d like to save time by making meals ahead of schedule so that I eliminate having to cook meals from scratch during the week. I recently found a website called Once a Month Mom. This website provides an entire month of meals that can be prepared and cooked in one day with a friend. Once a Month Mom provides the recipes, grocery lists, and anything else that you may need to know. In a nutshell, all of the time and energy it would take to put together the menu items and grocery list is already complete. All that needs to be done is the grocery shopping and cooking.

Of course I jumped on board with this idea right away. It didn’t take much convincing. Next Saturday a friend and I are getting together to do a trial run and do a shortened version of the menu. The website provides most meals including breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It also indicates that you should plan for eight hours. We are going to plan for three hours and try a few dinner recipes.

I think a lot of things will be accomplished:

-I’ll get some well needed “girl” time with a friend
-I’ll save money buy buying and cooking in larger quantities
-I’ll save time by not having to cook during the week

I’ll let you know how it goes!

The day that I spent with my dad couldn’t have gone better. My dad is one of the strongest and most effective leaders that I know. I consider this a huge advantage because I often use him as a resource. I purposely planned a day that included travel time in the car so that I could ask as many questions as possible.

We spent a lot of our day talking about setting goals and how to accomplish them. I often get really excited about goals that I want to accomplish, but that excitement is often followed by fear of not knowing how to go about achieving them. It’s almost as if a flood gate opens and my brain is filled with all the reasons why I’m not going to accomplish what I set out to achieve.

My dad talked to me a lot about breaking goals into chunks and just worrying about one chunk at a time. He used an example that helped me put it into perspective. Instead of worrying about about how we were going to get to Chicago, what time we were going to get there, how much traffic there was going to be, etc, he told me that the only thing we really needed to worry about was getting from my driveway onto the highway, which was of course no problem. Once we were on the highway, we focused on getting to the next biggest city half way to Chicago. Again, no problem. Before I knew it, we were driving into downtown Chicago. And because we broke it up into manageable pieces that took my attention away from the bigger goal, we’d succeeded without even thinking about it.

This small exercise was an eye opener for me. All of a sudden, I feel like my goals are achievable. From today on, I’m going to stop worrying about how far I need to go and instead think about the first thing I need to do tomorrow that will put me one step closer to where I want to be.

As I’ve been working on my schedule this month trying to find more time and efficiencies, I’m also making it a priority to spend quality time with some important people in my life. I’ve been sitting on one day of vacation that isn’t spoken for yet. My intention all along has been to use the day off for when I’m feeling overwhelmed with things piling up at home and use the day to clean and catch up. Well, my intention for that day of vacation recently changed when I saw Phil Keoghan (the host of The Amazing Race) speak about his book “No Opportunity Wasted”. The title speaks for itself, but during his presentation he had talked about spending time with his dad and how special it was.

I realized after hearing him speak how important it is to live your life to the fullest and never waste an opportunity. I called my dad up the next week and asked him what he thought about spending a day together. I could tell by the way he perked right up that he was just as excited about the idea as I was. We scheduled a day right then and there. I realized after I hung up the phone that it had been three years since he and I spent a day together.

Tomorrow is our day together and I am beyond excited for it. I can’t wait to catch up, bounce ideas off of him, and create a day full of memories. I will definitely let you know how our day turns out.

So who do you want to spend a day with?

So life coaching has been really good. I’ve been excited about the new things that I’m learning and the random ideas that I have running through my head all day long. In fact, I get so excited that I seriously can’t contain myself. I’ve always loved anything to do with self-improvement. I’m always looking onto the next thing.

That being said, I’ve felt very busy lately and overwhelmed with all of the things that fill up my daily schedule. I want to make new goals and strive for new things, but I’m struggling because I feel like I am stuck on a wheel and I’m unsure how to jump off.
There are only so many hours every day to work with so I figure that if I don’t have enough time, I need to create the time. Therefore, I’m currently giving my daily schedule a good fall cleaning.

To start, I created an excel sheet and filled in what I have to do hour by hour, 7 days a week. I expected this exercise to be a stress reliever and give me hope. WRONG! It completely stressed me out to see how full my schedule truly is. I wake up at 5:15 am and go full steam ahead until 10:00 pm at night. However, I try to look at things optimistically so I’m taking this as an opportunity to do something about it!

My goal is to prepare my schedule and have it work for me instead of me working for my schedule. Here are some examples that I want to be able to include in my schedule:
o Work out two times per week (to start)
o Cook something new once during the week, but otherwise have meals prepared ahead of time
o Time to update my blog
o Spend quality time with my family
o Plan monthly dates with my husband
o Have time to plan our meals

I’m starting to learn that things don’t just happen by thinking about them so I’m reprioritizing and finding a way to fit these things in. I’ve also realized that the more I can gain control of my current schedule and create more time for myself, the more time I will have to work on new goals that I set out for myself to achieve.

I will be blogging more on this and my progress. I’m looking forward to putting some things into action and sharing them with you as I do them. If you have ideas that you’d like to share with me, please send me an e-mail at info@forgetcommon.com. I’d love to hear from you. Happy Thursday!

Do you dread doing laundry each week?  If you are, count me in because I’m one of those!  It’s one of those things that I always save for Sunday…ALL day Sunday! By the end of the day it’s complete for the most part, but I always seem to have three or four random piles around the house left for me to do something with.  Then Monday comes and the unfinished laundry just sits until the next Sunday. I guess somewhere along the line I decided that it’s much easier to only do laundry on Sundays.

I didn’t realize that I had such a bad relationship with my laundry. But then a very good and valid point was brought to my attention, a point I had never considered before:  There will always be laundry no matter what.  It will never go away.  It’s a good point, isn’t it?  When it finally sunk in, I realized there were a lot of things that I could do to make laundry manageable and more enjoyable.

Let me share with you some things that I thought of when revisiting my relationship with laundry:

• The biggest thing that I’ve done is opened up the possibility of doing laundry on other days besides Sunday. I now do laundry during the week on occasion depending on my schedule. I also bring my laundry down to the basement mid-week so that I don’t create laundry stress for myself mid-week by anticipating how much laundry there is going to be when the weekend comes.   
• What is your laundry room or environment like? Is it a place that you enjoy being in? Do you have fond thoughts when you arrive to do the laundry? If not, it may be time to change your environment. Here are some things to consider:
  • The lighting – Maybe it’s time to update the light(s), dust off the cobwebs, or add a fun little lamp on a table.  Many times laundry areas do not have proper lighting so adding more light is very helpful.
  • Rug – Is your laundry area in the basement? Perhaps you could add a fun rug on the floor with some spunk and color. You want your laundry room to welcome you. A place that is quaint, cute, and creates harmony
  • The walls – What are your laundry room walls like? If they are cement and gray, perhaps you could paint them white to brighten up the room. Or maybe it’s time to go on a shopping trip to TJ Maxx and find a cute laundry picture to hang on the wall. You’d be surprised how much character you can add to your laundry room by doing simple things. Sometimes it just needs some love and attention
• Organization is key. It will not only keep your stress level down, but it will also create efficiency so that you can move on and be done with it
  • Separate your clothes into separate loads at the beginning so that you are ready to move to the next load when the time comes. (e.g. whites, colors, towels, etc
  • Have a bar with empty hangers so that you hang the items that need to be ironed or hung in the close
  • Where do you fold your laundry? Have a specific table just for folding your clothes. I was running into the problem of folding clothes in too many places which was what created the unnecessary piles around my house
  • Socks: For those of you who run out of time to go through and sort the socks, get a specific bin just for socks. That way if you run out of time you at least have a spot to go look for a pair of socks during the week. This will save you time.
  • Know how to access your clothes and the status of them if your laundry is not done by the beginning of the week. By having your laundry room or center organized will allow you to be able to find your clothes more quickly during the middle of the week should you need to look for them. 

I’ve learned that your laundry experience can be improved with some time and thought. It won’t go away, but at least it will be more fun to do!