The day in the life of a stay at home mother of 4 boys trying to live a simpler life in this mass consumer age.
We have a winner! Sara who said that until now she has been keeping track with sticky notes and her phone which wasn’t working that well for her with 3 young children. Hopefully this will help.
Remember there is no wrong way to use a bullet journal and you can modify it to your needs.
Here are a few pages I added to my bullet journal this last month.
How do you use your planner/bullet journal?
Today, I give thanks to all the people that have been in my life so far. Good, or bad, they have all touched my life in some way to shape me into the person I am today. They have all helped in the process of making me me. A mother, wife, daughter, sister, friend, professional, homeowner, world traveler, career surfer (did this in my teens and early 20s), crafter, blogger, gardener wannabe, designer, thrifter, and mentor.
I love being in my 30s and having the maturity to be able to look back even on the people that treated me poorly and just be proud of myself for getting out of their way and keep them out of my life. Life is too short to let other people make it difficult but I also learned from these people how not to treat others. Then to be able to step back and forgive them for their trespasses. That is the most freeing of experiences. To just let it go. But I hold fast to the saying “Fool me once shame on you but fool me twice shame on me.” I have gotten very good at letting go most of the time. Sometimes I have to talk my self out of thinking poorly of couple of people. To stop breath and send them a prayer of goodwill and move on.
I’m thankful for every teacher I have had good and bad to show me how to be a good educator and how not to act while teaching. I plan on one day being an educator of some sort when I get older so I´m hoping that these experiences will help me help others learn. To be firm but fair.
Then there are those people that I have met in my lifetime that are amazing and I am really thankful for having gotten to know them and learn new ways of being awesome. Those people that shortly after you meet them you just know that there is something special about them and you just REALLY want to be their friend or just get to know them better. To maybe get to learn just what it is that makes them so great and maybe learn how to wield that for yourself.
These people all make up my world. They all helped me put together the building blocks that make me who I am. I have borrowed things I say or a way to do something from some person or another and by doing so made a unique me. As a life coach I have seen how getting stuck on how someone treated us can have a profound effect on how we move on in life. I’m not saying that it is that easy just to forgive and forget. It all has a process to it. But there is a quote out there somewhere that hate is like a poison you drink yourself and hope that the other person dies.
When have you felt that feeling of just having to get to know a person?
Have a story of learning from a relationship with someone but now being able to look back not with hurt but gratitude?
If you want to dive deeper into how to forgive others or yourself grab a notebook and start writing. Write everything that comes to mind. Even if it is really “nuts”. It is your brain trying to make sense of a situation that is hard to make sense of. When mom died and I had run out of words I sat and scribbled in my journal. I had to regress to a time where I still did not have words because the pain of losing her was so immense that there were no words but there was feeling and energy and it all flowed through the scribbles. So just let it all flow on to the page no matter what it is that comes out. Write until you feel empty and nothing comes out. Keep it up until you no longer feel ill will towards whomever it is that you can not forgive. It will not all happen in one session. It will take time and you will need to do this over and over again. But one day you will realize that you did not have those uncomfortable feeling towards the person.
Good day!
As I have noted in the past I need my Inner Guide Planner and a Ta-Da List/Gratitude journal every work day to keep everything straight with my big family and keep my home and myself from falling into chaos. Or, what the Fly lady calls it, Can’t Have Anybody Over Syndrome (CHAOS).
I’ve sort of been playing with the Bullet Journal lay out in my Gratitude Journal but it was a real mess. I had used it for all kinds of things and let my kids draw in it to keep them good when out and about and I was ready to commit.
What is a Bullet Journal you ask? It is any notebook that is set up in a certain layout. The first page has your name and contact information so that if it gets lost then it can be returned to you. Then comes the index page where you will be able to write where you can find things in your journal.
Then there is the Key page where you show how you will be using the bullets in your journal.
Then you have the Full year or full month page. I went with month so that you have an overview of what the month will look like. Then your personal and if you have professional goals for the month on the page opposite the monthly overview.
And after that you start your journal.
I use erasable pens and erasable markers in my journal because I like things neat and tend to make typos or not like the way something looks so I like to be able to erase and redo things. If you are starting out and don’t want to put that much money into it then you can use a pencil or your favorite pen. When starting out be frugal and use what you have so that you know you like the process of Bullet Journaling. Most people have a spare notebook laying around. If you like it then you can start getting fancy with it and get all the bells and whistles.
After looking at all the cool pics on Instagram of bullet journals and how you can adjust it to your own needs I was hooked. I had to get my own. I will be developing my own Bullet Journal style over the next few months and will be updating you on the way. I want to introduce you to the Bullet Journal now and what the basics are and then give some idea of how it can be modified to your needs. Most of the people I follow on Instagram are students that do not have a house to run or kids to take care of. So far I haven’t found a nice Bullet Journaler that does have kids and ALL the stuff that comes with that. This helps me stay focused on my goals and keep me mindful of how much I do everyday.
I also add that day’s weather forecast so that I know what to expect.
My 3 oldest boys went to their grandparents for spring break and it shows in my activity level logged on FitBit that I have not been running all over town and constantly keeping a 3 year old from putting himself and others in harms way. To keep me mindful of keeping up with my steps I just add a bullet in my journal reminding me to meet my 6K steps that day and as I check in with my journal through the day to see what is left to do I can be reminded to stay on top of my steps.
I will be adding pages to help me with tracking my weigh loss and the prizes I will reward myself with when hitting my milestones and tracking how we are doing in paying down our debt. These will all be in future posts. I will have monthly budget pages which will be directly following my mostly goals and also lists of books I plan on reading. Blog posts I plan on writing and so on and so forth. You guys get my gist.
Now to the fun part. I bought myself a Moleskin bullet journal in a wonderful Teal color. I am going to do a giveaway to a lucky reader of a Bullet Journal of their own. A Moleskine Notebook that I will send you directly from Amazon to your house. This is open to the whole world. You will be able to enter to win your journal from today March 16 2016 until March 31st of 2016 11:59pm I will announce the winner on April 1st.
I’d like to take today to talk about the importance of self care no matter what your profession is but especially when you are in a care taking job. Whether you are in the health care field, a mother, or taking care of aging parents people get depleted pretty quickly. It is difficult to keep giving and giving but a lot of people misunderstand what self care really looks like. It isn’t always a massage and a mani/pedi. Self care can be as little as just taking 15 min in the morning and reflecting on what your day will look like and remembering to acknowledge the things you can be thankful for that day. Morning journaling can go a long way in putting your mind in the mind set of getting things done and prepping for what is to come that day. Drinking your favorite warm beverage or juice while doing this can help set the mood for a wonderful day. It is just a short check in with yourself. Your feelings and your body.
Most western countries have the bad habit of hitting the ground running as soon as the alarm goes off. Believe me I make this mistake too. Especially while I was working full time. But I always tried once I got to work to make myself a cup of coffee, look over my calendar, and envision what my day will look like. What tasks I had left over from the day before and what I needed to do that day. Now as a stay at home I go over all the different tasks that I have to do to keep this family functioning.
Morning Journal is my favorite and least expensive self care technique. There are plenty of other ways.
