#33: Making Time For What Matters

TRANSCRIPT – edited for clarity

Hi, dear sweet moms, welcome to Doing Things On Purpose, my little but mighty podcast that empowers women to take charge of their time, health, relationships, and money by doing things on purpose.

I’m Suri Stahel, a self love and self empowerment coach passionate about helping busy moms to slow down, pace themselves, and reconnect to build a life that feels whole and aligns with what truly matters to them.

And you’re listening to episode 33. Today, I want to talk about how we can make time for what matters. But before we begin, I just want to share a quick self care tip.

Mom Check-In

Trying magnesium and vitamin B for better sleep

If you’re a mom having trouble sleeping and you’ve tried slowing down before bed, but somehow you’re just waking up in the middle of the night.

I was reading again a book about supporting women in the perimenopause and menopause stage and there was a suggestion there about taking magnesium with vitamin B. 

I have a bit of a problem with magnesium because it gives me, diarrhea, but I found a preparation that had a lower dose of magnesium and it had some vitamin B in it, which is supposed to help you with your nerves.

Just to calm you down. 

And I’ve been taking it for the past week and surprisingly. I do feel like when I go to sleep, it is at a much deeper level. I can really feel that the quality of sleep has improved. 

So if that’s something that you haven’t explored, I just want to put it out there. I’m not a health coach or a doctor, but this is just something that I think might support people if they’re having the same problems and they’re just wanting to experiment.

Making time for what matters

Okay. So getting back to the topic of “making time for what matters.” Let me start with a question.

Is this a truth or a lie? 

To be a good person, a good mom, a good employee, a good boss, I always have to keep responsive to everything that comes up in my life. Maybe it’s caring for a sick parent, worrying about my kids doing well in school, people falling ill, including myself, and managing things when accidents happen.

So yes. There’s always something that comes up. And if you’re one of those people who feel like you don’t even have time to breathe, that you’re always responding, you might be thinking:

• I’ll get on that self care train when life calms down a little bit. 
• You say to yourself – No, I’ll get to it after we finish this project or when my kids get better. 
• Or you know what? Maybe I’ll just start next year. I’ll make it my New Year’s resolution. 

So this is a story or a lie that we tell ourselves because the truth is: life is always lifing. 

There will always be something that comes up. You can never be sure that what shows up a few months down the line is going to be more manageable than what’s happening right now.

So, as life keeps lifing:

• we just really have to get on with chasing our dreams
• finally investing in our self care
• finally working on that relationship

…whatever it is that you’ve always wanted to tackle, but you’ve had to put on the back burner.

So the next time something comes up, take a moment for yourself to calm down. Don’t let it derail you. Think about it like water off a duck’s back.

Remember that you don’t have to engage with everything all the time.

Nobody has enough energy for that. And, you know, it’s also part of self-care to realize what levels of energy you do have.

And if you’re like a lot of moms and you have just some precious little energy left after all of the caretaking work that you do, then that little piece of time and energy and attention is so precious.

Special tip: Setting boundaries around worrying

If you are a worrier – a person who likes to worry, one tip that I heard, I believe it was from Kristen Neff, it is to:

Schedule a time for you to worry. 🤯

So you set it in your calendar or in your mind, whatever it is. And you can say, “I’m worried about my kids. I’m worried about my parents. And I need to worry because that just shows that I care.”

Instead of spending your whole day, your whole week, your whole month, your whole year, worrying about something –put boundaries around that for yourself. 

Tell yourself, I’m just going to worry about so and so from four to 4. 30 in the afternoon. So that you can say, “You know, I really care, but I’m going to think about that later on in the day… Not right now.”

See if that helps you free up some brain space.

#1: Find out what matters to YOU

Okay. So now down to work. When you’ve realized that there’s no such thing as the perfect time to start, that now is always the perfect time to start, how do you make time for what matters? The first thing is to know what matters to you.

And of course, this is so different from each mother, from each human being.

💎 One of the exercises that we had to do in our life coaching training was to outline our core values.

Now, if you Google this statement, you will find a list of values for you to kind of look through, consider, ponder. Is that something that speaks to you?

And I will also include a list of values that you can look through.

I will put them in English and in German, since I’m in Switzerland, so that you can start thinking about it, letting it marinate.

• Print it out
• Look at this list
• Circle any values that speak to you
• Then come back to it after five minutes
• Cancel out any values that seem to be repeating or too closely connected, and just choose the ones that really communicate that thing that you care about.

So keep going back to this list. You can then put it aside for a while. Once you have, let’s say less than 10 – come back to it in a day.

Tomorrow:

• open back this list and then look at it again.
• Are there some words that are interconnected or some values that fall under other value headings? So cancel those out.
• Just keep the main values until you come up with three values, three core values.

You can still put sub values under these core values. If you feel like you don’t want to miss out on anything, that’s fine.

And then throughout the week, just keep repeating these values to yourself.

How do you feel when you say them out loud? Does it make you feel excited? Is it really true? Or do you need to switch out one of the values for something else?

So eventually, I mean, quite quickly, actually, you’ll get to a point where you can say very clearly what your three values are. Mine are love, connection, and joy.

💎 And these values can absolutely change with you as you change.

And then put your three value words on a piece of beautiful paper, or as a wallpaper on your telephone or on your laptop, something that you can keep seeing every day.

💎 And so these top three values will be your lighthouses, your guiding stars.

And if you ever get lost, if you ever wonder, “Should I do something?” or “How should I do it? How should I handle this?” ask yourself:

• What would my top three values say?
• What would love say?
• What would trust say?
• What would simplicity say?

Whatever it is, your value happens to be always check back. So that’s the first step.

#2: Outline your big priorities

Once, you know, your core values. The next step is to outline your priorities.

So of course, taking back all of the values that you’ve worked on and making sure that any priorities, any actions that you want to set up for yourself, that you’ve been thinking of doing aligns with your core values.

Think about these things as your big rocks, the things you need to fit in your day, because it matters so much to you. And because you can only fit so much in a day, I want you to think about

• ONE priority, which is a self-care priority
• ONE priority, which is relationship-based
• ONE priority, which is professional, passion, purpose, or growth based.

So brainstorm about actions that could be used to prioritize your self care, your relationships, and your personal growth or professional growth that you can do every day.

• Whether it’s reading a book or finishing a book that you’re trying to do.
• Whether it’s daily yoga
• Whether it’s getting eight hours of sleep
• Whether it’s always checking in with your partner every day
• Spending time reading to your kids.

There are so many, but don’t get overwhelmed. Just brainstorm some ideas.

And then pick just one single action for each priority area that you want to focus on right now.

The important thing to think about is to action one of those ideas every day. One action for self care, one action that nurtures your relationship, and one action that furthers your professional or personal growth.

Because we need ALL of these pieces to feel well.

#3: Calendarize your priorities & implement consistently (whenever you can)

Okay. And then the final thing you need to do is to implement. And how we do that is to put it in our schedule. Now, I know some people are very resistant to scheduling…

You like to take it as it goes. You like to be in the flow. You are still believing the story that you need to remain responsive to everything all the time.

But ask yourself, if you can always be blown by the wind, if you have no solid ground to stand on. Is that really serving you? Or is it really taking away your power to manage your day?

But before we get started on that piece, I want you to track your time for the week.

• What do you spend your time doing when you wake up? What happens?
• If you’re at work, how much time do you spend answering emails, having unexpected meetings? How much time do you have for your creative work, for your brain work?
• How much time do you spend with your kids, with your partner
• And then how much time do you spend taking care of you? If at all.
• What happens when you get home?

Do you just veg out on the couch? Which is fine, but what does that look like?

• Is it 30 minutes?
• Is it three hours?
• Is it four hours?

So however you track your schedule, I like Google calendar, but if you like to do it manually, whatever it is, just make sure it’s something that you do consistently or that helps you track your time consistently.

And then when you start looking at these pieces, just within the space of a week, you will notice some things. You will notice the parts of your life that actually – you probably always knew that you were losing time with.

These tend to be small pebble like items that fill up our day.

So what happens is that we don’t have time to put in our big rock items, our priority actions, the things that really align with our core values that really bring us further in terms of our life satisfaction.

So instead of doing what you’re currently doing, schedule your big rock items first. Maybe you want to schedule in your self care and creative work in the morning, and then schedule in your big rock relationship items at night when everybody’s home and it’s the perfect time for you to not be on your phone or not be answering emails.

Because it’s family time.

And I know, I know, especially if you love what you do, it’s so hard to turn off. I’m not perfect myself. It’s something I constantly have to work on, but just that awareness to keep grounding back to the things that, you know, support, you makes all the difference.

Summary

So these are my three tips for you to make time for what matters and get out of your own way.

The first tip is to realize that life is always lifing. The perfect time to start will always be now:

1. Know what matters to you by starting with your core values.
2. Outline your priorities, your big rock items.
3. Schedule in those priorities into your daily calendar.

Because doing something small and consistent every day beats doing something big once in a while any day.

To illustrate this, can I just share a little story that happened recently? I think it was yesterday. I do yoga with Adrienne, and she has a theme of Halloween for October, which is so fun. And I read a comment from, I think, a woman who was saying that she had suffered all her life with anxiety and bulimia and anorexia.

And she was always resistant to people telling her, “Hey, you should try yoga.” For the longest time, she never did, but then one day, she came across this video and she began.

She had actually been going through a horrible panic attack early in the morning at 2am and woke up looking for remedies when she came across the video.

And in her comment, she writes:

I never felt at such peace with myself and my body. It’s been about nine or 10 months since I first saw this video and it’s still my lifesaver. I have learned to breathe and control my anxiety, depression, and I have recovered from nine years of anorexia and bulimia, and it began with such a tiny step, I almost can’t believe it.

💎 It made me think about how the solutions to our problems are not angels coming down from the sky or Prince Charming on horseback. It can be something so simple, something so small, and something so unexpected.

💎 And all that we have to be willing to do is to try things out, to experiment through small, consistent action.

My pro bono coaching offer

I hope this episode has been helpful and nourishing for you.

💗 And if you need support…

• I’m calling in clients for my three month pro bono coaching series
• If you’re called to reach out, just go to suristahel. com/offerings

Thank you so much for joining me. As usual, you can find the transcript on my website at suristahel.com/33 for this episode 33. And if you want to connect, you can go on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

I wish you a beautiful rest of the week. And I wish you peace in your thoughts, peace in your words and peace in your heart.

You’ve been listening to Doing Things On Purpose with me, Suri – and I’ll catch you again next time.