Dear FlyLady,

I am trying to fly for almost a year now, but it seems so hard from me, I am a working mother for 2 kids (5 years and 10 years).

I fly for a day and rest for 2 days. I don’t know why i couldn’t commit to any habit. the only thing I do is drinking the water while I am at work. when I am at home , I feel tired and do a very little just for cooking dinner and that’s it.

I clean the sink every two days. I am trying to change my thinking, to be energetic, to have a routine but I write the routine and not commit to it. it seems to me it is a very long list, even if it has only 4 items.

And lately I discovered that what I do at home, I do to myself in my hobbies , I like sewing and drawing and crafting, I do buy things for my hobbies but never commit or finish a project.

Why is that? even praying to God

Why am I not a committed person?

My husband can commit to anything he decided for many weeks or month.

I am afraid my kids will learn not to commit to any thing like me. I feel like a failure in life.

What is your advise to me. Please help

Emy

Dear Emy,

Did you ever think that you may need to get a check up? I have been where you are right now. I could barely put one foot in front of the other. My energy level was zapped. Please go to your doctor and get some blood work done. Check your vitamin D levels and most of all check your iron. If you are anemic that would explain your lack of commitment.

Men rarely have low iron problems because they do not have a monthly cycle.

Now I want you to quit beating yourself up. I want you to celebrate what you are doing!

1. Drinking your water! This is great! But don’t deplete your electrolytes by drinking too much water.
2. Your sink is getting shined every two days. That is so much better than never!
3. You are cooking dinner for your family! and you!
4. You have a 4 step routine written down! You go girl!

Here are some things I want you to think about and implement if you are not already doing them.

1. What time are you going to bed? You need 8 to 9 hours of sleep. If you have to get up at 6am to get to work on time; you need to be in bed between 9:00pm and 10:00 pm. I know that seem way to early for an adult but you need to get plenty of rest. You have been living on adrenaline by pushing yourself.
2. Quit beating yourself up! This does nothing but push you deeper into a sad depressive place.
3. This could be a simple chemical imbalance in your body. The blood work will help to determine what supplements or medications you may need.
4. Are you surrounded by piles of laundry? That could cause a lot of your overwhelmed feeling. Just do a load of laundry a day.
5. Talk to your husband and see if he can help you with the kitchen or laundry.
6. Pick out your clothes before you go to bed. It makes it easier to get dressed each morning.
7. You may have more energy in the morning. This could be where you could do one thing on your four item list.
8. Your 10 year old and 5 year old are good helpers if you can get them to play games with you! We all just want to have fun.
9. As for fun, let’s talk about your hobbies. I have experienced the same thing. I loved planning and even doing the cutting stage of quilting or sewing. For some reason the implementing of doing the whole project caused me to procrastinate.

We are the queens of procrastination. I think it is because we love to dream; so we look at pinterest and HGTV! We get all these great ideas. Our minds get excited. It feels good for us. We summon up the energy to go to the store and get the items we need. Then we come home and look all around us to see our messy house. This is when we feel guilty about that and we subconsciously punish ourselves. I know exactly how this works.

For me I would cut out a whole quilt, put it into packets for each quilt square, and make one or two squares. Then it would sit in a tote bag. I did two this way. They were beautiful in my mind. They would have looked wonderful on our bed. But why bother if you never make up your bed. That sounds bad but it is how our mind work and we don’t even know we have done this.

Every time I saw those tote bags with the quilt squares; I felt bad until I decided to declutter them. I mentioned them in an essay many years ago and a nice lady came to my house from Michigan and got the guilt ridden quilts. She had a team of ladies who made quilts for foster children. Now those bad memories have become good memories. I blessed someone else with my talent for design and organization.

Don’t give up on your hobbies! They give us joy! Even when we don’t complete the project.

The other day my sister Paddi was telling me about a Ted Talk she had watched. I can’t find it but I have asked to send me a link. Here it is: Mel Robbins’ Ted Talk.(Thanks to all the FlyBabies who found this for me) It was given by a lady who procrastinated about most everything. She felt the same guilt that we do and she was afraid like you that her children were suffering from her procrastination. She was late all the time. (I remember this when we were children; it was so embarrassing to me) She decided that she needed to quit making excuses in her head. She realized that if she gave herself too much time that she would be able to talk herself out of it. So she came up with a plan! Think about this.

Most of us are in a seated position as you are reading this. In order to get anything done, we have to get up from the chair we are sitting on. This is when she decided that she needed to blast off! So she would say out loud!

5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Blast Off!

The results were amazing. She didn’t have time talk herself out of it. I have been playing with this idea for a couple of days. We already do this but in a different way. We set our timers. We say Ready, Set, Go!

Sometimes the hardest part to getting started is to get off our bottoms.

Are you ready to Blast Off! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Blast Off!

FlyLady

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