Don't find time for everything, set time for everything...

As one of those nice IT guys, its very easy to get swamped down with a ton of different projects and tasks and forget the important things in life.  Getting overwhelmed by projects and promised found me short with my family, tired at work and generally miserable.   My solution which wasn't the right one was to eventally ignore some of the things I promised to do or just to dump them all together without giving warning to the people I promised to.

I needed to realize a different way of doing things so that the most important things got priority.  Here are some of things that I have started working on to help with this.

1.  Family -   The first thing was my family.  I had gotten into the habit of having my family work around my schedule and this wasn't right.  We had a family calendar that was shared out online.  Instead of just checking to see if there was nothing up that would interfere with what I was trying to do, I started putting my tasks in and requesting approval from the rest of my family.  It allows them to help me manage my time.  Another thing is to realize how important I am to my family.

For me, often I felt that if I was providing money to my family, that is what they wanted.  This is not true, they require my time to listen, to enjoy time with them, and to help them with their decisions in life.  What I did is when I got home, I reminded myself that once I got home, my job was to be a part of my family.  I sat in the driveway and cleared my work from my head and prepared myself to focus on what they would need from me in the evening.   When I got into the house, I was better prepared and was able to leave a lot of my work issues outside.

2.  Projects and Home business work


Having a home business is a great way to create a second way of making money, and to recover some of that money that we pay in taxes each year.  It is for me something to get me away from the computer and to develop a second hobby and a healthy lifestyle.  Right now my business is small and I am still learning how to make it work.  However, what I needed to do is give it the time that it needed to breathe.  This also required me set aside time that fit with my family yet gives me time away to enjoy it.

3.  Work

Work is where we spend the majority of our time, we have friends, we have problems, we have great successes and sometimes failures.  A lot of things happen at work that change our lives for better or worse.  It is good to share about your day at work but make sure it doesn't take over your conversations all evening.  Try to dedicate some time to discuss these things at home, but don't let it take up your whole evening.

4.  Relaxing time

I struggle with giving myself time to relax.  I spend a lot of time with a lot of other projects and found myself lonely, and frustrated thinking I was doing everything right and why did I feel miserable.  I often felt guilty about going out and doing something fun and relaxing thinking I was wasting my time.  This often made these events unenjoyable for others as well.

Making relaxing time a part of your life with your family and friends gives everybody a breath of fresh air and time away from the stressful things in life.  Book time for this, and try to include others whenever you can.  Have friends over for a games night, play video games with your kids, or go out for coffee with your spouse or friends.  Your body and mind will benefit from it.  Make sure to focus your time to things that are fun, your dreams, some goals you achieved, plan something that you want to do in the future that will be fun, even though it may take a long time to achieve.


I hope these ideas help better set time for things that will promote good health mentally and physically.  Giving time to relax and prioritizing your life will bring less stress to your life.

How to stop a busy lifestyle from turning you upsidedown!

During this past few months have been one of the busiest and most stressful time in my life.  Several personal events such as having a serious injury in my wife's extended family, having my wife going in for surgery herself and having some changes at work, and having a coworker going down with a serious injury of his own all compounded into a what has felt like a serious life crisis.  I quickly realized some of the big mistakes that I was making and am currently working on getting these straightened out and getting back to where I want to be physically, emotionally and mentally.

1.   Stress can activate bad health habits

Often stress is associated with leading people to drink, especially work related stress.  Its often the joke around the office too.  Right now at work, we've been two people short during a busy time with year end and the plant running at capacity.  My supervisor had a holiday booked that she couldn't cancel, so it left us with two people to run a department that is usually run by five.

What I quickly found that some of my bad habits started popping up.  I am considered one of the clean IT Techs, not drinking, doing drugs, smoking, and often my associates wonder how I survive.  However, when the stress turned up, I found two bad health habits raising their ugly head, I found myself drinking a lot of sodas, and I found myself eating greasy food.  My Fitbit page immediately alerted of what this was doing to my body as my weight starting going up and down as sugars and waters balances started going haywire and with the extra fat in the food didn't get processed like natural foods.

When dealing with a busy lifestyle and stress, you need to understand that your body needs balance and if you have developed a healthy eating habit.  With a planned and monitored eating plan, you can control the cravings to fall off the wagon and better watch your intakes and make sure your diet is balanced.  The great thing about the Fitbit system is that you can monitor if you life is more walking or moving around to know when to increase your intake.

If some of your other habits including drinking or smoking become more of a regular occurrence, you may want to look for a team of supporters to help monitor and control these habits as well.  Drinking especially has taken down many successful individuals who find losing jobs, marriages or even their lives due to letting their stress feed bad habits.

2.  Make sure you are getting your Nutritionals

When your body is stressed, it causes all sorts of unbalanced states within your body, with horomones sent to give you extra energy and battle the stress often run short.  This week I really realized that I hadn't been taking my supplements from USANA.  I found myself tied, discouraged and unable to work at top levels to help get rid of of the place I was in.

This week, I will get back on the wagon and order my supplements.  The Essential Supplements provide a balanced level of the nutritional minerals and nutrients to help balance my levels out and to improve my energy.  If you need to look at supplements, take a look at USANA or contact me for more details.

3.  Energy drinks

Often when people need to work harder than their body needs to, they rely on coffee or soda or energy Energy drinks shoot unhealthy levels of caffine through your system and although may give you a jolt of energy, they are found to provide unhealthy side effects.  Avoid these if possible, USANA provides a drink called Rev3 which uses green teas to give you a gentle boost of caffine that has long lasting effects and doesn't drop you at the end.
drinks.

4.  Sleep and Friends

This is one of the difficult balances when I found myself in this busy and stressful time to balance my sleep and friends.  Sleep is an easy escape from stressful situations.  I personally found myself searching sleep wherever I could, which affected relationships with my support team in my family.  When I took the time and realized that being with my family is an important job as well as filling me up, I find time with my family enjoyable and not a chore.

During my visit to my place of worship, one of my friends there noticed my tired condition and took me out for lunch later that week.  I was able to talk through some of the things I was going through and he helped lighten the load.  It allowed me to go back to work without some of the baggage I was carrying.  Freeing up to do my job better.  This past evening, I had a great night playing some cards with friends, and found the laughter and sharing times especially rejuvenating.

If you are finding sleep hard to find, that may be a different issue.  many doctors will recommend sleeping pills or other drugs to help you sleep.  Before taking such harsh measures, look at giving yourself a massage, or visiting your chiropractor to make sure that tight muscles or out of place spine isn't causing your restlessness.  And look at taking Melatonin to help you sleep at night.  Melatonin is the hormone that your body creates to signal your body to sleep, sometimes due to stress, this needs to be supplemented.  Visit your doctor and discuss the right choice for you.

Conclusion

Having a busy lifestyle is part of life these days, however, it needs to be monitored and controlled just like anything else.  To use tools and having good friends and family watch be accountable and alert you of warning signs is a good way to avoid these traps.  If you are having issues, always look at the way your life is and look for ways to change it for the better.  Wish you the best of luck.