Mindsets That Will Improve Your Life & Reduce Stress | Slow Living + Self-Care

Hi everyone, how's it going? Welcome back to my channel. Apologies for my unintentional, like, I don't know, six week hiatus from making YouTube videos. Life just got a little bit busy, but that's actually what has inspired today's video. Recently, I've been thinking a lot about the concept of having balance in life, and I really think that balance looks like not actually ever having balance, but instead letting the different areas of our life ebb and flow. Maybe instead of wanting to have all the different moving parts of our lives exist in a state of perfect equilibrium, home, family, relationships, career, health, self-care, personal goals, we can see them as constantly being in flux. Maybe what we should strive for instead is simply being okay with the days or weeks or moments where we are doing less of one thing, but more of another, because if we distill it down, that's exactly it. That kind of ebb and flow is inevitable. We all have to make decisions all the time about what is most important to us based on our preferences or our priorities or our values, which means that sometimes we're being pulled in one direction, which invariably pulls us away from something else. So I wanted to share with you all a few things that have been on my mind lately about how I go about respecting the flux that is life. I have often fantasized about this idea of having perfect balance in life, a kind of having it all mindset. You know, I want my house to be tidy and nice. I wanna be doing well with work. I wanna be a fully present and attentive mom. I want quality time with my husband and with my friends, and I want the space to nurture my hobbies and my creativity, and I wanna eat well every day. And there, you know, there are times where I do feel like my life feels quite balanced, but like it's transient, meaning that by the next week, I'm not feeling in balance all over again because maybe I'm behind on this one thing, or I forgot about that, or maybe I'm just having a down day. The more I think about that, about how our lives are just constantly shifting and moving, the more I realize that balance kind of just does not exist. I sometimes have to remind myself that it is very normal and even expected to maybe lag in one or more areas of our lives while other ones thrive, or at least just get more of our attention for one reason or another. And I find that when I resist the fact that balancing it all is pretty impossible, everything around me feels so much more rigid and stressful because I'm trying so hard to control spinning all the plates perfectly, you know? But the less I resist it and the more I accept it, the more I accept having maybe a less productive work day, but a more present day as a mom, or a messier house day, but a more focused on my goals day, the easier it is for me to let things simply be as they are and kind of welcome those inevitable ebbs and flows into my life and see them as something that's part of life as opposed to something that's like against me and I need to fight against. And you know, there certainly, certainly are tools that we can leverage to help us to lead better, more efficient, you know, more balanced lives, maybe meal planning. I love meal planning. I find that super helpful or getting meal kits delivered sometimes if you need to, or delegating things at work, or hiring a house cleaner or a babysitter, or learning new time management techniques, whatever it is. But still something always has to give because the nuts and bolts that make up all the moving parts of our lives are continuously in motion. So I really aim to shift my focus to what is most important in a given day or moment and simply take the pressure off of the rest. And really it's just, it's all about knowing what you can handle and being okay with letting certain things go and picking them back up again at a later date when you have the bandwidth to do so. Some really insightful, helpful questions we can ask ourselves here when it comes to this, when we're trying so hard to juggle all the things, but finding it impossible to do so and we're stressing ourselves out as a result are what do I have or not have the bandwidth for right now? What do I value most right now? What am I okay with letting go of right now? Maybe for a day, maybe for a month, maybe for a year. We have to be okay with certain areas of our lives being just good enough. Not perfect, but good enough. I've definitely always had perfectionist tendencies in my life, but if I'm doing good enough, which is really just what's good enough for me based on what works best for me, what I can handle or what I consider to be good, right? I think we can all have a bit of a different definition of what we consider to be good for us. That's really all I can do. That's really all I can do and really all I need to do because any more than good enough becomes superfluous. I read a really interesting perspective recently when I was reading actually about just the whole idea of having balance in life and that kind of thing. And what I read was we can have it all, just not all at once, usually. If we view different stages of our lives as seasons that we are in, it really helps us to see that everything comes and goes and different seasons of our life require us to show up differently sometimes. For example, I stay home with my almost two-year-old most of the time, which means that I simply have less time for work, basically, and creating content. And I mean, it's not like it's anything new. She's two now. So I've been juggling that work-life balance for a while now. But it is still something that I am juggling. But I have learned and I'm very proud of myself that I am so much more okay with the season of life that I am in. And I know that it will change one day and that's because things always change. Things are always ebbing and flowing. You really do just have to look at all the things that you do in your life and decide, okay, what needs more of my focus right now and what doesn't? So that is that for today's video. Thank you so much for listening. As always, I would love to hear from you guys if you have anything to share on the subject of like, I don't know, finding balance in life, having balance in life. What are your thoughts on it? What do you think about juggling all of the things? And what helps you the most? What, you know, is there a certain mindset or perspective shift that you've made in your life that has been really, really helpful for you? Let me know in the comments below. I would love to hear from you. And that's it, I will see you all in my next video.