Constraint
Today I want to talk about constraint, which I think is the perfect topic for right now when we have so much going on.
COVID19 has kind of thrown us all for a loop and what I’m noticing is a lot of women spinning out in overwhelm and confusion.
We’re not sure what to do with life now and how to manage everything that needs to get done, work, homeschool, keeping the house cleaned, keeping up with your personal goals and dreams and the things you want to do.
They look to all these social media influencers and what I call Pinterest moms and they want to do it all.
The arts and crafts, the games, the 72-hour kits, the deep cleaning and organizing their house, walks, and homeschooling, and not to mention their own personal time to recharge and work on their goals.
This is where constraint comes in.
As I was thinking about this topic, an experience I had with my kids years ago came to mind.
When my oldest daughter, Kelsey, she’s 22 now, but when she was 4 or 5, her grandparents “hired” her and her brothers to pick up the pinecones in their yard. They paid each kid with a $1 and a trip to the Dollar Store to spend it. (Not sure if you have a Dollar Stores where you live, but basically, it’s just a cheap store where everything is $1.00.)
My boys knew exactly what they wanted to spend their $1 on so they were done in like 30 seconds.
Kelsey, on the other hand, had no idea. She went from the toy section to the book section, to the arts and crafts section to the candy aisle about 100 times. Back and forth. She felt she had worked hard for her $1 and she was having a hard time deciding what was the best thing to spend it on. She had so many options. She would choose something and then 2nd guess herself and change her mind.
30-minutes later, we finally had to start the count-down and basically force her to make a decision.
How many of us are like that?
Are we having a hard time making a decision?
We can’t decide how we should schedule our day, what projects we should do with our kids, what goals we should work on with ourselves.
There’s so much and we get overwhelmed. Or maybe all the doubts creep in about our ability to do some of these things, and we’re not so sure anymore. Or we can’t decide how to spend our time – all this drama comes up.
So, what do we do? We to don’t do anything. We allow ourselves just to spin out in overwhelm and confusion and waste a lot of time. Meanwhile, we get nothing done.
This is why I love this topic so much because if we apply it, it’s going to help us make the most of this social distancing time.
Today I want to teach you how to use constraint and how to make decisions ahead of time. I’ve come up with 5 simple steps that if you sit down right now and do them, your life will feel simpler and so much easier to navigate through.
1. Figure out Your Priorities – Not the influencer’s you follow or the Pinterest boards you’ve been looking at – what are YOUR priorities.
Make a list of everything. Keep writing until you can’t write anymore.
What’s important to you in your life? Your health, your family, having a tidy house, having alone time, losing weight, religion, your relationship with your spouse, honesty, what every it is for you. Make a long list.
Now take that list, and narrow it down to your top 5
2. Now write down everything you did yesterday, from the time you woke up to the time you went to bed.
Don’t leave anything out.
Now look at your schedule from yesterday, Does it align with your priorities? What about your to-do list for today? Does it align with your top 5 priorities?
Here’s the deal, if you’re not focused on your priorities there’s no way you can create the results you want because you’re wasting time on things that don’t really matter to you.
3. Use Constraint
Think of your list of everything you want to do, the arts and crafts, the homeschool, the goals you’re working on, and cross off anything that doesn’t align with your priorities.
Now, with what’s left on the list, Pick one thing to focus on – ONLY ONE THING!
Don’t go back and forth between the toys and the candy aisle
Choose one area and stick to it! Don’t get distracted by all the choices out there and by all the things you see other moms doing. Constrain and stick with your one thing.
4. Make decisions ahead of time using your prefrontal cortex
My boys had already decided what they were going to get before they stepped foot in the store. This saved them so much time.
Decide ahead of time, what your schedule each day is going to look like. Plan everything out, including your meals and snacks.
WHY?? Because when we can constrain and quickly make decisions, we create more time and it helps us get more done without ended up burned out and exhausted, which is what spinning in indecision and overwhelm does.
5. Stick with it!
Don’t change your mind or 2ndguess yourself or think the grass is greener over in somebody else’s feed.
Stick with the one thing you decided to constrain yourself to.
Be aware of all the noise that WILL come up in your brain, meaning all the thoughts that you’re not doing it right, and that so and so is doing it better than you and maybe you should try their schedule or whatever, and do it anyways.
If one of your priorities is to lose weight and get healthy then you need to join The Joyful Body Breakthrough. The doors just opened. If:
- You’re tired of struggling with the image you see in the mirror.
- You’re ready to kick overeating to the curb – whether that’s binge-eating, emotional eating, stress-eating, mindless eating.
- You want to be the one in control, instead of food calling all the shots.
- You’re sick of FIGHTING yourself day in, day out, and you’re ready to STOP beating yourself up and hating yourself.
- You’re tired of dieting and exercising and willpower-ing your way through and still not getting the solution(s) to your struggles.
- You’re exhausted from riding the on-again/off -again, black and white, all or nothing roller coaster, and you’re ready to get off and never ride it again.
- You’re DONE with the blaming, the shaming, the comparing, and the verbal self-attacking you’re having daily with yourself.
You need to join this group program stat before it fills up.
I won’t open it again until the Fall. So if you’re finally ready to live your life at your natural weight, have the energy to keep up with the kids, have the health and body you’ve always dreamed of, don’t regret putting this off! Right now is the perfect time to do it!
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: RSS
