Pace yourself and recharge your batteries
There are tools to help you cope with overload
CAN you believe they have found a term for what women have always been doing? It’s called hurried women syndrome.
And because August is Women’s Month, I want to celebrate and help all the hurried women who read this column.
Women want to have it all — the family, the high-flying career and the great body, but it is impossible. Women burn themselves out because they do not have the tools to keep doing the numerous things that need to happen every day.
Let’s take a typical day and see what we can do to make it easier.
Everyone wakes up and the rush starts. You need to make breakfast, get the children ready and to school, then it’s off to work, then back to fetch kids — often at different times if you have more than one child. Then it’s back to work or home to cook, help with homework, do chores and maybe have some time with your husband before bedtime. This all starts again the next day.
You cannot get rid of these tasks, but you can carry them out in such a way that you still have energy left at the end of the day.
This continuous stress often ends up turning into anger, resentment, weight issues and depression.
In these modern, competitive and stressful times, we need to equip ourselves with the right tools to cope and manage our lives better.
If you choose to have children, you want to be able to give to them as much as your parents gave to you. That may seem impossible if you are busy being busy.
So, here are a few tools to help you cope:
1. Plan, plan and plan. Every Sunday, take 30 minutes to plan your week ahead. Write down everything you need to do — and I mean everything. Include meetings, making dinner, making lunches, visiting your family, shopping, your goals for the week, your beauty treatments and so on. Schedule it so that there are times allocated to each activity and then stick to it. I use the five-day planner from Exclusive Books. You will start to see gaps where you can fit certain things in, or spaces you never noticed before where you could pop out to the shops or to gym. Planning will make you more efficient and will take away that rushed and anxious feeling. Being efficient will help you to conserve energy;
2. Join the 5am club. If you don’t already do this, then try waking up at 5am. This will give you an hour to yourself when nobody is around. You can exercise, visualise, reply to mails, read and so on in this time;
3. Me time. Take 30 minutes to an hour to do something for yourself. Tell your family that you need to recharge your batteries and then do something that feeds your soul. This could be going for a nice walk outside, having a massage, reading or meditating. It must be something that you enjoy doing. You will feel recharged and grateful to your family for allowing you this time, and you will function even more efficiently and lovingly;
4. Exercise. Keeping fit helps to keep the weight off and releases endorphins — the happy hormones that make us feel light and energised. Find 20 minutes in your day to get in some form of exercise. If you can’t get to a gym, invest in a good DVD and do some exercising at home. The easiest way of getting your heart rate up without leaving home is to do 50 squats, 50 lunges and 50 sit-ups; and
5. Stay positive. Your attitude can change how you respond to any situation. Steer clear of negative people, gossip, TV and the news. Focus on using your time wisely in the day to do things that create a positive and uplifting vibe for yourself and your family.
There are 86 400 seconds in a day. Implementing a few useful tools will help to reduce stress and enable you to use your time effectively. You are a powerful woman with the capacity to multitask. I wish you a blessed Women’s Month and hope that, as of today, hurried women syndrome is a thing of the past.
Follow me on Twitter @KanchMoodliar for more tips.
Moodliar is the Inyathelo 2011 winner for youth in philanthropy and a 2012 Mail & Guardian Top 200 Young South African. She is a motivational writer and speaker on topics of inner wellbeing and social consciousness.