planning

Habits Shape Your Identity

January 9, 2020 by mamakay Leave a Comment

Habits shape your identity and your identity shapes your habits.
Atomic Habits by James Clear

Habits are the things we do each and every day for good or bad that make up who we are. They are choices we make each day of what we do and how we think (how privileged we are to be able to have so many choices). The good (and bad) thing about habits is that we often do them without even thinking about it. That’s why it is so hard to change.

As we start the new year we can think of so many things we want to change! But come February we have completely given up the hope of changing. What if there was a different way? And it doesn’t matter what day it is. There is nothing magical about January 1st! Here are some ideas to help you be successful in changing your habits.

Decide Your Identity

According to James Clear if you want to change your habits one of the things you need to need is to change what you think about yourself. By identifying yourself in a different way you will start to do the things that that type of person does

When you think about it — your actual life and identity is made up of all the little habits you practice all throughout your day. If you think of yourself as a healthy person you will choose to do things like exercise, drink water and eat healthy foods. If you think of yourself as a reader you will spend time reading whenever you get the chance.

Start Small

Start small and you will have better success. Pick one thing you want to change. Break it down into small chunks that are easier to accomplish and give you the feeling of accomplishment to help you continue to move forward.

For example, if you want to be more active the first small step would be to put on tennis shoes each morning. Once that is your regular routine add something more like doing some stretches. Maybe buying a fitness tracker so that you are more aware of how much activity you do each day would be a great next step. Next you could walk around the block each day. Each small step helps you to establish good habits that you will be able to maintain over time.

Body, Soul and Mind

I like to group the habits I want to establish in terms of body, soul and mind. Things to consider for the Body are drinking water, exercising, eating a salad, drinking a smoothie, getting enough sleep. For the Soul: reading the Bible, praying, listening to worship music, being still before God. For the Mind: reading, writing and listening to podcasts.

Habit Tracking

Keeping a habit tracker is very motivating for me. I have used many different forms from a hand drawn chart in my bullet journal to the one included on my tending sheet in Powersheets to the Loop Habit Tracker App on my phone. Sign up below to receive a Habit Tracker I created for you. There is something about seeing my progress that makes me want to keep it going.

Resources for Working on Your Habits:

Being intentional about choosing your habits, making sure to start small and then tracking them can make all the difference in creating the life you want and being the person you want to be. Don’t try to do everything at once. Just pick one thing and go from there.

MamaKay

You also might be interested in reading more from my previous posts here:

January Reflections

Hello Mornings

Weekly Planning Sessions

September 27, 2019 by mamakay Leave a Comment

My best days start with a weekly planning session on Sunday afternoon. I gather up my google calendar, my Power Sheets, my bullet journal, my Simplified Planner, my favorite pens, a tasty beverage and I pull up some good tunes on Spotify.

It just takes a few minutes to look over what I did last week and select a happy memory from the week to write in my planner. Then I add any accomplishments to my tending sheet in my Power Sheet workbook. I try not to focus too much on what didn’t happen but just move the things forward that still need attending to and let the ones go that can’t be helped.

Next, I shift my focus to the coming week checking my google calendar and writing any events on the daily pages of my planner and any to dos on the appropriate day. Visualizing the week ahead of time really helps me so I am not caught unaware.

I check through my brain dumps in my bullet journal to see if there is anything I can add to my to do lists for the week. Then I write it down on the appropriate day.

This usually takes me about 30-45 minutes. I come away feeling refreshed and confident about what needs to be done over the next few days. I look forward to this time every week and really miss it when it doesn’t happen.

Afterwards, I like to have a family meeting to spend a few minutes talking about everyone’s plans and schedules for the week. That way we all know what is going on. We add everyone’s schedules to our white board to keep us all informed. My ideal is to have a fun dessert to bring everyone together as they usually aren’t that fond of having family meetings.

Do you have a weekly planning session? What does it look like?

Back to School Checklist

July 23, 2019 by mamakay Leave a Comment

We are in the dog days of summer and although it might seem too soon to talk about it the kids will be back to school soon! My kids start back in less than a month. I have found that if I spend a little time now making a checklist of our back to school needs I can work through it a little at a time instead of going mad that last week before school starts to get everything done in time.

Here is what is on my list:

1. Clothes Inventory

I like to spend some time going through each child’s clothing to see what they already have and what they are going to need to go back to school. I like to do this 1 or 2 kids at a time on their laundry day. I have them work with me to pull out anything that they have outgrown or that has holes in it. Then we make a list of what they still need. Once we have the list we shop our bins of hand me downs and if we don’t have everything then we add it to the shopping list.

2. Buy the Needed Clothes

As much as possible we shop thrift stores followed by Target, Old Navy and Ross. Clothes shopping is my least favorite activity. But it has to be done. I only take 1-2 kids at a time to make it less overwhelming.

3. Lunch Boxes

It only takes a few minutes to gather up the lunch boxes and containers from prior years but it helps so much when the kids are ready to go back to school to make sure they have what they need! The last couple of years we have gotten lunch boxes from Costco that have lasted really well. They come with ice packs and containers.

4. Backpacks

What says back to school better than a new backpack? I am always hopeful that at least some of the backpacks are still usable the next year but it seems like most of them have a broken zipper or seam by the end of the year. We did get a High Sierra backpack from Costco last year for one of our daughters and it stood up well and she can still use it this year! We are definitely going to buy more of them for this year.

5. Shoes

Do your kids always grow over the summer too? Now is a great time to find sales on shoes and make sure everyone has shoes that fit well to go back to school!

6. School Supplies

Now here is my love language! Give me $100 to spend on notebooks, pens, pencils and all the school supplies and I am a happy girl! I like to stock up on things I know they will use throughout the year because it costs so much more later in the year but sometimes I stock up too much on a particular thing. So before I go shopping it’s helpful for me to double check the supplies we already have on hand. I know many schools don’t give you lists until right before school starts but it helps if you get the basic needs and only have to shop for the couple of extra things at the last minute. Everything gets picked over if you wait until the last minute and it is so much more stressful!

7. Restore Good Bedtime Routines

Over the summer we are a little more lax on bedtimes and our normal routines. I find it helpful if a couple weeks before school starts we slowly move back to earlier bedtimes and wake up times so it doesn’t come as quite a shock when school starts. One of my favorite tools for helping with this is our Echo Dots. We set daily reminders to help us start our bedtime routines, brush our teeth long enough, turn out the lights and alarms to wake everyone up in the morning.

8. Plan a Fun Activity

We love to plan a fun activity to signal the end of summer. It could be a trip to the ice cream shop, a camping trip, or a water park. Having markers to signal the change of a season really helps with transitions and is a great way to make memories that will last a lifetime.

If you would like to print out a handy checklist just sign up below:

Summer Prep Challenge

May 16, 2019 by mamakay Leave a Comment

You know how at the beginning of each summer you think wouldn’t it be nice if we did fill-in-the-blank? And then you get to the end of the summer and think where did the time go? I want to help you actually do the things you want to do this year! Each day for 5 days you will receive a summer prep challenge email with a prompt to help you prepare for the summer you have always wanted.

We will make sure you know what it is you want to do with your time this summer and make a plan for actually getting it done with step-by-step directions as well as ideas to make this the best summer ever.

Taking a few days to plan here before summer starts will allow you and your family to embrace the summer season and be prepared for it.

Sign up for the Summer Prep Challenge below!

New Year, New You? How to harness the power of a new start while loving who you are right now

January 8, 2019 by mamakay Leave a Comment

The New Year is such a mixed bag, isn’t it?

On the one hand, it is a fresh start, a new beginning, a clean slate.

On the other hand, we are still who we have always been and will continue to be.

How can we harness the energy of the new year but not live in shame over all the past year’s expectations that haven’t come to be? What if we can reframe our thinking? Instead of deciding to be a whole new person (some imaginary perfect version of ourselves) we look for ways to make better choices each day. To celebrate our victories and to give ourselves grace when we don’t accomplish all the things.

Don’t get me wrong, I love making plans! Tracking my habits and breaking my goals down into doable steps has made really accomplish the things that are important to me. But there isn’t a day that goes by that I actually check off everything on my list. And I’m okay with that. Having those daily intentions have helped me to do more of the things that are important to me than I ever did before. To me this is a VICTORY!

Over the next few posts I am going to go through the tools I use to organize my thoughts, plans and to do lists. I hope you find them helpful. But they are just tools. I want you to understand that you are a beautiful human being just being you without having to fix anything! Let’s step into this new year knowing and believing that we don’t have to change anything but its okay if we do 🙂

September: the New (Old) January

September 13, 2018 by mamakay Leave a Comment

Fall is by far my favorite season! I love the cooling of the air, the shortening of the days, and the invitation to prepare for winter by preserving the harvest (even if its not from my own garden). It is the time of returning to routines and the home is central to it all. Warm meals and baking are welcomed after so many hot months where the kitchen seems unappealing. School begins and the rhythms of life become more predictable.

Each season brings a time for reflection for me. What is working in our lives? What isn’t working? What can we do differently? How do we want to spend our time during this season? I try to take some time to really think through these things. The last 2 years I have been able to get away for a couple days and it has been such a blessing to have the time and space to consider our lives. We have made some huge changes this past year and having some space really helped me have some clarity.

This year I also started making a wall calendar on a half sheet of poster board for the family for the season. It has been amazing to me how much it has helped us be intentional about our time. Seeing our schedule a little zoomed out has helped us so much as we make our plans.

I have been thinking about how much September seems like new year. It is a time for making plans, lists and preparations for the coming time. And then it hit me as I looked at the calendar. Rosh Hashanah was this week. In the Jewish calendar, September has been the new year all along.

So Happy New Year! May God bless you in this coming year!

MamaKay