I've moved! Visit my new site.

Momsoap is movin' on up, to a real dot com! Visit my new site at: http://www.momsoap.com Please visit my new site and re-subscribe if you like my writing. I hope to see you all there!

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Setting priorities is an act of self care

For years I've wanted to take a yoga class. I bought a book and did poses at home. I watched DVDs and did Pilates, which uses yoga moves. But I never took a class.

When I was pregnant, I swore I was going to do pre-natal yoga to prepare my body for labor. But I never got around to it. I was generally too tired to think about it and as the pregnancy wore on I sleep became more and more of a priority.

Speaking of priorities... In November I joined a small group of women for a Personal Renewal Group. To those of you who have known me for many years, yeah, I know, it totally doesn't sound like me at all. Before I had a kid if I'd heard of this sort of thing I probably would have snorted, said something vulgar and made fun of women who did this sort of thing. (I apologize to all the women in my group, I think you are all lovely and strong women.)

We are reading this book called, A Mother's Guide to Self Renewal and we have been going through one chapter a month, learning how to better care for ourselves because as so often happens with moms, we forget that we are people with needs.

So yeah, I was talking about priorities.

I have realized lately that I am prone to some ADD tendencies. I'm pretty sure I don't actually have ADD. But I grew up in an unorganized and often chaotic household, which brings me to my point, lest I get distracted and start babbling like I often do.

This month in the PRG, we talked about setting priorities.

I read the chapter the day before our meeting and when I read it, I felt like the floodgates of knowledge opened up in front of me.

Right.

If you want to get certain things done, you have to put them in order of priority.

Oh, yeah.

An old and dear friend of mine and I used to have this joke, "If you want to get things done, you have to do them." It seems I forgot that lesson somewhere in between getting pregnant, giving birth and becoming known as mommymommymommymommy.

Even though I knew that a lot of my priorities were getting pushed to the wayside, I didn't know exactly why.

It was because I am easily distracted and often I think that if I can't get to it one day I'll do it the next. Then the next day comes and the same thing happens.

Like I said before, I'm easily distracted. I don't think that's going to change. At least, not anytime soon.

Since I started writing this post, I've checked my e-mail. Posted two messages to an online forum. Made a phone call. Gone outside about 15 times to check on a sleeping toddler in the car.

But I always came back to writing this post. Because, as hopefully you, my loyal reader(sss?) will see, this blog is one of my new top priorities.

Heh, heh, heh.

You are probably wondering why I'm smirking.

Yeah. I'm distracted, but I'm going to let you see just how easily I can get out of touch with reality unless I have a good priority list.

I started to write this post about a yoga class I started last night.

So much for priorities. I will do it tomorrow.

I will.

I will.

3 comments:

  1. I have a hard time with distractions and priorities myself. Just pick one. One thing that you're going to make a priority. After you've got that one integrated, pick something else to add or do. Every time I start thinking about priorities, I give myself a big list, then put it in order, then try to figure out time to do everything and pretty soon making priorities becomes the priority instead of actually doing any of the stuff on the list. I'm still working on it clearly. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow! I'm so glad I checked the blog tonight. I am also at a place where I'm realizing that I need to "renew" and am making progress toward this goal. Hence, my commitment to commenting on blogs instead of just lurking. Doing so helps me feel connected even when I am "stuck" at home with a toddler, a teenager and a senior citizen in my care. I am also easily distracted. In fact, I have walked away from this comment twice to take care of various things, including "seeking" my husband and daughter who were hiding behind our bedroom curtain and to take cupcakes out of the oven. Anymore, I think of the backtracking and running around that go with being easily distracted as exercise. I find the best way for me to stay focused is to work a to-do list almost every day. Anymore, I have to include self-care specifics on the list or I might ignore myself completely. Good luck!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sonya, I think that for me just the lightbulb moment of realizing I needed to readjust my priorities was all I needed. I do really well with lists and once I'm focused, I do ok.

    Elizabeth, I'm so glad that this helped! I cannot imagine trying to get in self care when you have *three* other people asking for attention. One is bad enough. And I agree that my self care stuff has to go on my to do list otherwise it will *never* get done! Good luck with your self care. You deserve it.

    ReplyDelete

Hey! Momsoap has moved. Please comment on http://www.momsoap.com. It'll help me transition and your comments will be forever linked to the post. Thanks for being a loyal reader. Psst, you're my favorite. Don't tell the others. ;)