Have you ever considered mindfulness for your home life? What exactly is mindfulness and what do I mean by home life? Let me explain.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is a practice that you can use to reduce stress and to relax the mind and body. Where do we experience a lot of stress? In the home.
By learning how to be more mindful we will learn to be more calm in our homes. When it comes to household chores, reducing clutter, worrying about money to pay for the bills and buying food, parenting, home maintenance etc we can become overwhelmed.
Add that onto other stressors we have in our already busy lives, practicing mindfulness will help us through these difficult times and allow thoughts to come more freely to us.
Allows us to take time out
It’s important it is to take time out in your day, at least a couple times a day.
Our grandmothers and their grandmothers probably had a method to their madness all those years ago with the tradition of morning and afternoon tea. Just like in the UK, I grew up with it (and still practice it to a certain extent).
Our colonial mothers were very hard workers. They didn’t have the mod cons that we enjoy today but they always stopped for morning and afternoon tea. Tradespeople always stop for smoko (Aussie slang for morning tea/lunch).
Why do we as mothers or women, either working in the home or outside of the home not take a quick 10 to 20 minutes out for ourselves? It doesn’t have to be a silver service, formal event. A nice hot cup of coffee or pot of tea in your favourite cup, a healthy snack, reading a book or magazine, watching a TV program or scrolling through FB or whatever it is you do to relax THEN pick up where you left off.
Whether that’s doing working, household chores, looking after your family or doing a craft. It’s important to have a complete break from what it is you are doing to have a reset. Whether it’s morning tea, afternoon tea or both, enjoy this break for yourself. (Don’t forget about the beauty treatments you can do in this time.)
Treat yourself like your best friend
Why are we so hard on ourselves? I’m sure a lot of us, especially those of us who are a bit older, were probably raised to not to be boastful or to gloat about what we can and can’t do.
This is especially true when it comes to giving ourselves advice. Imagine your very best friend going through a hard time. Whether that’s a lot on her plate with family and work, feeling like she’s getting nowhere and no help from anyone in the house or they feel run down and tired all the time.
What would you say to them? Would you comfort them and say it’s going to be okay? Would you offer them advice on what they could try to make things easier? Would you show compassion and empathy to them?
The same applies to YOU. Start treating yourself with the same compassion and kindness. Remember, as the “captain of the ship”, things will start to fall down around you if you’re not in the best head space.
Treat yourself kindly and look after yourself. Take breaks, pamper yourself and don’t allow small things to upset you. You have the power within you to not ‘sweat the small stuff’ and treat yourself well.
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