Simply Saturday: What driving you?

The month of March was a blur, and is all most over!  Where did it go? When I looked online today my last post was February 28th.  When I pause and look back at this month, I realized that I began with a week of travel to Chicago.  When I leave my family for work travel, it takes a week to prepare to go, and a week to reengage when I come home.  Rengaging included conversations with my spouse, supporting my little ones, and attending two birthdays in one weekend.  The following week was full of meetings and appointments, so there goes another week.  At the end of that week, was my son's birthday celebration, my younger's son's trip to ER for a broken elbow, and the arrival of my mom for a visit during Spring Break.  That brings us to today, and the end of a three week blur of activity.

"Our paths are paved with good intentions, and sometimes those intentions are not met because we are living life in full speed. " 

This is why its important to bring in simplicity everyday in simple ways, to help us connect to the people we love and the beauty around us.

Here are some simple ways to reconnect when the world seems to be going at warp speed:

• Breathe.  Take a deep breath, hold it, and then let it go slowly breathing out of pursed lips. (Now you read it, do it now.  How did that feel?)
• Take snapshots of moments in your day.  This gives you a real picture of what you experienced throughout the day, and a diary of how you spent your time during the week or month.  Ali Edwards has a wonderful tool call A Week in The Life, where she chronicles everyday living, and brings meaning back to the simple things.  Check it out.
• Be forgiving of yourself and others.  When you don't meet all of your goals or your schedules overlap, let it go.  Sometimes we cause undo stress because we are trying to walk in other people's expectations.  We can not be all things to all people, so just be true to yourself.  
• Begin where you are.  Instead of trying to make up for what was missed, like three weeks of blog post, meetings, outings with friends.  Just begin where you are.  As you do this, realize most of the time we are the only ones holding ourselves in contempt for what was.  Others forgive us, faster than we do so learn from their lessons.  Again, forgive yourselves and move on.
• Plan again.  So when the busy times come around again, what will you do differently?  I have been looking at busy times in my year, and seeing patterns.  I can see that March/April and September/October are high times for my work and family life.  Knowing this, what can I do to plan for some of those activities, so that next year I'm not writing the same blog post about being overwhelmed with activity.