Day 14-16

Making every moment matter was the next focus of my 21 Day Meditation. Deepak says that the present moment is the only real time that exists. Meditation takes you to the “now.” I have a much better understand of this these days and I no longer let future worries steal time away from me. Being in the flow means I can “feel” my way through life instead of the constant stress and worry.

Here I had to come up with activity where it felt like time stood still. For me this is being at the beach. I find, like many people do, being at the beach to be incredibly relaxing. The sound of the waves, the hot sun and the feel of the sand. Obviously, I can’t be at the beach everyday! But the point is to understand the feeling of time standing still, when you are in the flow and there is no stress and worry.

On the other hand, now I had to come up with anything that made me feel the pressure of the clock. I had three.

Getting older
Kid’s activities
Having dinner ready every night

At the time of doing this 21 day meditation I really did feel a lot more pressure about my age and where I was in life. I felt like time was SHORT. Part of me was so excited to do all these new things and the other part of me was like, “well it’s great you figured all this out, but it’s too late to really do anything productive with it.” I look at that much differently now. Partly due to a podcast that I absolutely love called The Sheri and Nancy Show (formally know as “This is 50”) You can find it here. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sheri-nancy-show/id1271868787 At the time of writing this I’m coming up on my 50th birthday. The entire idea behind this podcast is that 50 is truly the halfway point. It’s about working on all the health and wellness areas in our lives and making the best life we can and this includes following your dreams and pursuits. This is not a time to slow down or retire as previous generations did. Now is the time to use all your wisdom, focus on yourself and move forward into the next 50 years. This is exactly how I view the rest of my life right now. I’m working all the areas of my life to make it the best it can be with the goal of another 50 years of health and happiness.

The other two areas of pressure of the clock were not as serious, but still some things that needed to be solved. When my kids were a younger, I spent a lot of time getting all there accessories together for whatever activities they were off to at the time. What needed to change was more responsibility on their end in getting all their belongings together instead of me. They certainly were old enough, and honestly I never asked them to do it before. I took it on when they were little and then never let it go! That changed with me finally telling them it was time for them to take over these duties and the fact that they were older and actually wanted to do everything on their own.

The third was the never ending need to have healthy dinners ready for my family. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE cooking. And I’ve also always enjoyed meal planning and grocery shopping. But I was feeling the time crunch every night of getting even the meals I had planned onto the table. I didn’t solve this until recently when I discovered Cassy Joy Garcia’s “Cook Once Eat All Week” cookbook. If you follow me on Instagram you would have seen all my posts of the dinners I make out of this cookbook! I post my cooking regularly because I’m genuinely excited about the meals! This book is full of gluten free and paleo friendly recipes that are broken down into weeks with a prep day at the start. The idea is to dedicate one or two hours of time to cooking once a week and then when it comes time to cook the meals for the week you are only assembling and heating the food you have already prepped. It’s genius. There are a lot of meal planning cookbooks out there but NONE of them are paleo friendly (that I am aware of) and so good! The food is just delicious! So much better than most cookbook recipes I’ve made over the years, paleo or not and I have an entire collection of cookbooks going back years. Not only am I saving a TON of time, I’m saving MONEY because I’m no longer buying 5 different proteins for the week. I buy ONE and use it for all the meals for the week in different ways. I can’t say enough about it! Buy it!! You can get it here. http:// https://amzn.to/2N7xJZB

If you would like to start making every moment matter, start thinking about the ways in which you feel time. Try the following:

Think of a way a time when time seemed to stand still. Remember this feeling. You are working towards staying in the present moment to eliminate stress and worry!

List a few ways you are feeling the pressure of the clock. How can you make changes in your life to eliminate these pressures? It may take asking help from others or just making some adjustments in your day to day schedule.

I can’t wait to hear your feedback! Thanks for being here!