Small Steps Towards Improvement (Pt. 1): Find Your Anchor
You need an anchor — a life anchor. When I was drifting for so many years, I didn’t have one, nor did I know how important it was to have one.
Do you have an anchor in your life? Anchors can take the form of many different things such as people, places, things, or exercise. Anchors help you feel grounded, they help you feel calm, and give you a place of focus for your mental chatter.
Having spent the better part of my life running from one thing to the next like a chicken with my head cut off, it’s no wonder that when I transitioned to being home full-time with a baby that I felt completely lost. I had nothing to ground myself and I felt like I had no direction or purpose.
Yes, I was a stay at home mom. And yes, one of my life purposes at that point was (and still is) to raise kind, confident, generous, amazing little human beings. It’s a big stressful job!
And that’s it right there: it’s a job. We put so much time and effort thinking about productivity, maximizing potential, or whatever else into our paying jobs, that sometimes we completely forget that the job at home is just as important and requires the same, if not more, attention to thrive.
Run Your Household like a Business
Are you the Parent In Charge of The House? This is the parent who primarily manages the calendars, the meal planning and prepping, kids schedules, or any of the minutia that comes with having a house, a family, and a partner. If so, you are The Chief Home Officer, and you should run the household like a business.
In the beginning, jumping right into this can seem incredibly overwhelming. So let’s baby step it out.
Find Your Anchor
The first thing is to find an anchor for your day. As I said before, anchors can take many forms. Now that I am several years in, I have quite a few anchors such as exercising or a morning ritual. . . well, those are just for me. But as CHO, a family business anchor is also a must. Because when the wheels are spinning like crazy, you need something that anchors you to sanity and lets you feel a little bit of control over your life.
Let’s start off by just creating one.
For me, that was a whiteboard near the hub of our home, which is the eating area. I took a large white board, some washi tape, and dry erase markers and created a weekly calendar. This may not be your anchor, but for a visual person like myself, this was the perfect solution.
In the early stages, I simply had the days of the week and our meals. Having this visual hanging up where I would see it several times a day organically created the routine of meal planning for me. One day a week, I would meal plan and update the whiteboard calendar at the same time.
Eventually, we ended up writing our weekly activities up on the board as well. We did the weekly view for almost 5 years, but at the beginning of 2018, we switched over to a monthly view on the whiteboard. As we transitioned out of the baby years into kid years, I found that we needed to have a longer view than just a week to discuss during family meetings. Play around with it and find what works for your family.
Partner Perspective
This simple step started to move our family in the same direction. Before the whiteboard, Zach and I were already sharing calendars, but with me being an analog lover while he is all about digital, it was hard to meld our worlds. I would constantly forget to add things to the online calendar and/or even check the calendar, which I’m sure was quite frustrating for Zach. Additionally, I would be frustrated that he didn’t know what was going on with my activities and life.
Solution: Whiteboard with weekly activities and meals. Up there, in the middle of the house, for everyone to reference.
What’s your family’s anchor? Do you have a similar hub that holds all the essential schedule information for your family? Leave a comment below letting us know what works for your family.
