The anxiety seeds of a pandemic

I used to love working and going places. Now I can’t even get out of my bed to go to work without some sort of anxiety attack. I’m trying my hardest to get back to normal but I just can’t seem to get in line. My life is forever changed. I wasn’t an introvert. The pandemic made me one. I used to have plenty of friends and vast social circles.

Now, I barely want to go to the grocery store or go in at a gas station. If I can be serviced at my car or have things delivered to my house, I’m satisfied.

I never thought this would change me but it has. I’m not the same person I used to be. I never did large crowds. Now I can’t even do large crowds online. The sight of a large group makes me cringe.

I would love nothing more than for things to go back to normal. It still won’t change the fact that I can’t get back to normal.

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5 Self care techniques that can help your anxiety

 

   Some anxiety can be really debilitating. I know because I am living with anxiety. Some days, just getting out of bed is a struggle. I also have clinical depression and both of these conditions together really make daily life a struggle. With two kids and a household to manage, I don’t have time to wallow in my mental setbacks. I have learned a few coping techniques and I want to share them with you so that maybe you can use these techniques to push through as well.

1.) Breathe.

  Studies have shown that the simple act of deep breathing helps to relieve anxiety. Fresh oxygen to the brain helps to give your thinking processes good fuel. Sometimes that’s all it takes. So just breathe deep and slow. Everything is going to work out for your good.

2.) Bathing and showering

  I remember when I was younger and my grandmother would say “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” Well, that’s almost true. The simple act of bathing is symbolic of “washing off the day”. It gives you a metaphorical clean slate. Just like every day is a new beginning, So goes a good shower or bath. So wash the day off and start over.

3.) Clean your personal space

  This is another “Cleanliness is next to Godliness.” thing. Removing the trash, junk, and clutter around you lends itself to a feeling of having it all together. The act of removing clutter from your personal space also removes clutter from your mind. You also reap the benefits of having a clean and organized space.

4.) Journal

  There are many ways that journals helps your anxiety and mental health. Journaling is a way of weeding through your thoughts and emotions. Having them on paper gives you time to really examine what and how your anxiety is triggered, therefore helping you to cope better in those situations. Not to mention it is a great therapy tool.

5.) schedules and routines

  Having a set schedule and routine is also a great way to combat anxiety. I have routines for everything and every moment of my day is planned out including my leisure time. I know this sounds like a lot but it works for me. Having a schedule keeps me focused and having a routine keeps me on task. I know what I am supposed to be doing and when I am supposed to be doing it. I just re-center myself when I get lost. I also take advantage of decorative planning. This helps me to use my creativity as a coping mechanism.

My life is not perfect by any means but having this five techniques in place already in my life has helped me to battle anxiety and depression greatly. I hope that they can help you too. Feel free to come back and visit my blog for more tips and links to great help and advice. Make sure to subscribe so you never miss a post. Remember to live every day like there is no tomorrow.

Getting out of the Holiday blues

For years I hated the holidays. I’ve always seen the holidays time as full of hurt, and a lot of headache. I have a huge family and I love my family very much. But over the years I’ve tended to separate myself from some of my family because of their negativity and attitudes.

This year I decided to go at the holidays alone and to my surprise I didn’t contract holiday Blues this year. I’ve been spending way more time with my kids. Who’s hilarious, by the way. My kids help to keep me grounded. Sometimes I think if I didn’t have my kids I wouldn’t be as much fun.

So this Thanksgiving, my family and I had Thanksgiving here at home. I cooked all the traditional Thanksgiving food that I love to cook for my family each year. We ate, we talked, we drank, and repeated until we all passed out for the night. I must say it was the most fun that I’ve had with my little family here, my husband, my two kids and his brother who currently lives with us.

There was no drama, no fussing, no stress. And this is how I would like every holiday to go but unfortunately I know it won’t be so, or can it be?

I’ve been working on the rest of the Holiday season and how I would like for it to go. Remember, plans will always change. Leave room for the unexpected. I have delegated certain tasks so that I’m not overwhelmed. Done is always better than perfect.

I’ve opted out of heavy decor this year. I have two little monsters that I will keep busy by letting them make the decorations (that I have strategically located online) and put up the tree. Michael’s craft store has been a real time saver for all of the decor and crafts for kids.

Finally, my menu is simple. Minimum leftovers predicted. I’ll have plenty of time to mingle and celebrate. I’ve also gotten plenty of disposable dishes and pans. Minimum cleaning predicted also. This planning didn’t take long and wasn’t complicated. Mostly clever and common sense. I don’t know why I didn’t think of all this before.

I realized that most of my stress and anxiety associated with the holidays is caused by my constant pursuit of perfection. I’ve been chasing a ghost. Perfection does not exist. I don’t have to impress my family. They could care less about the decorations or our outfits for that matter. They’re just happy to celebrate with us and that is just what the holidays are about. Family.

I wish each and every one of you a happy, safe and blessed holiday season. I hope to see you all in 2019.

Happy holidays!

Seeing life through someone else’s eyes

You never know how your actions affect other people until you hear exactly what you are going through from someone else’s perspective. It’s like shining a light into your own dark life.

I had a conversation with a close friend of mine and he told me a story about his ex-girlfriend. He was in love with her and she hurt him, badly. This story is common among people who have been in a relationship. The difference was that my friend was honest enough to tell me his true feelings. Feelings that he had expressed to no one before. I was touched and honored. For someone to share their innermost feelings means that they are very comfortable with trusting you and telling you this information.

The way he explained his feelings opened my eyes as to how my own husband feels about certain things in our relationship. My husband is the strong silent type. He doesn’t verbalize as much as I do. Now I feel like I have a better perspective on things from a man’s point of view. I will take the time to have a deep conversation with my husband to find out if this applies but for the most part, I’m sure he’ll be happy to know that I consider his feelings.

You never know how your actions affect someone else until you hear it from someone on the outside looking in. There is a lot we can learn from each other just by listening. Not just with our eyes but with our heart.

This conversation definitely opened my eyes.

Have I found planner peace?

So here I am, two years into my official planning journey and I end up with multiple planners. I was the girl calling other girls crazy for having multiple planners. I didn’t see the point in planning in multiple planners. I had no idea why certain information needed its own planner. Now I am one of those crazy people and surprisingly I feel more sane now than I have ever felt in my life. I am finally at the point where I feel like I don’t have to buy another binder or another accessory. I am really fine with what I have.

I also have a confession to make, I didn’t spend over $20 for each of the planners that you see in the picture. I got the two Happy Planners from Michael’s and I got the Webster’s Pages from Jo Ann’s. I used reward coupons and got each of my planners for pennies on the dollar. I also got stickers and accessories for 60% off at Michael’s. So far my planner journey hasn’t broke the bank and I’m proud of that. That makes my husband happy too.

So now it’s time for me to tell you what I use each planner for.

This little guy is my purse-onal planner. It is my planner on the go. I have sections for tracking and journaling. This is my personal planner dedicated just to me and what takes most importance in my life. It includes my routines, medication lists, mood tracker, workout log and Dr. appointment log. I keep a few sheets of grid paper to track what I have to do with my 2 kids. Each child has a small section in this planner. That’s it. I’m only using this planner for me. This is my personal domain.

Webster’s Pages A5 Color Crush

This gorgeous beauty is my social media planner. I have multiple social media accounts and I want to keep better track of what I’m doing and where. I recently purchased a domain for my blog and I suddenly needed somewhere special to track my blog and my YouTube channel. I was torn because I wanted this one to be my purse-onal planner, but it was too much to carry in my bag. I have a section for each of my social media profiles including my Instagram dedicated to planning. @creatively_dee288 You can find more pictures and layouts there of all of my planners and accessories.

 

Everyday Essentials Classic size Happy Planner

This big guy is my home and family planner it has the gold expansion rings and it is packed with everyone’s schedules, appointments, paydays etc. I also have the Happy Planner Home Planner extension in here. I use this planner for meal planning and household management. I love how customization the Happy Planner is. I can print and punch a million and one inserts or just go to Michael’s and Hobby Lobby and purchase more. This is the planner that also gets the most abuse. It is out on my desk all the time and sometimes my son uses it as a coloring book lol. I also spend a lot of time in this planner because everything else revolves around this planner.

I feel at peace with my planner system as it is right now. Each planner has a purpose. It took me a 30 minutes to set them all up to fit my life and fulfill their purpose. I often felt unhappy with my planning systems in the past because I felt like I wasn’t getting anything accomplished. Now that I have had my current system in place for 2 weeks, I feel like I have gotten more done in these two weeks then in all of 2017 combined. It’s amazing how just a small thing can really change your life. I never would have thought that I would be a planner girl let alone a 3 planner girl. I’m impressed with myself, my system and my productivity because of it.

Let me know how your productivity has changed recently and what planner system you use. Don’t forget to subscribe to this blog for more lifestyle and productivity tips, tricks and most of all results.

How I have been handling my anxiety.

I have been having anxiety for some time now. How I held my anxiety has been a struggle for me. I finally found new ways to handle my anxiety and have come across reasons why my anxiety has become so bad.

My anxiety usually stems from me trying to do too much at once or having just too much on my brain at once. Now that I’m a grown woman and have two children one of which is a 7 month old, I’ve had to find other ways to handle my anxiety and calm myself down.

So recently I’ve been trying to do journaling, I have been using a planner, and I have been doing more blogging to try and overcome what goes on inside of my head. No one can really understand anxiety and it’s really different for everyone who suffers from it. Anxiety is a strange thing it comes from a strange place and not even scientists or Specialists know the really ins-and-outs of anxiety and what causes it. Like I said before my anxiety came from me having too much on my mind or too much on my plate and just being overwhelmed in general. Having another baby really brought on a lot of my anxieties which were only fears from previous pregnancies that didn’t produce a living child. I’ve always been afraid of having another miscarriage and this time when I got pregnant it was a total surprise and it was a little later in life than I would have liked it to be but God had other plans.

So first of all let me talk about my happy planner which I can’t stop talking about. I found a whole planning Community, a whole planning world of people like me who have become passionate about happy planning. I’m calling it happy planning but the truth is it is Glam planning or memory planning. And the roots of happy planning came from scrapbooking where as one person took a planner and used it to document memories and put pictures in so it became a hybrid of planner from day-to-day and a memory Keepsake. So with that being said, you could always keep your happy planners, one for each year or 18 months that you have. It can be kept that long because it is filled with memories.

So the happy planning thing was something that I got into. I enjoyed looking at everyone’s layout and the stickers really got me addicted.  I couldn’t use the happy Planner on its own I had to have stickers, I had to have washi tape, I had to have everything that went along with this happy planner. I must say that being able to dump out what is inside your head onto paper made my anxiety so much better. I was able to plan out my days and my nights. I got more sleep. I was better focused. I had more concentration because I didn’t have so much on my mind that I had to remember. I had the planner to put it in.

So while I was on the happy planner journey, I found a thing called bullet journaling. Now bullet journaling to me was a hybrid of happy planning it, only that bullet journaling was that you would have bulleted points that you would Journal instead of writing a whole paragraph. This became a problem for me because I am a traditional journalist. I like to write out whole paragraphs. So for me the bullet journaling system really didn’t work like how I would see it on Pinterest or how I will see it on YouTube. But the idea of decorating my journal to make it just as pretty and to get creative with it just like I did my planner was awesome.

So with all this being said, this is how I have been handling my anxiety and it’s helped me in a lot of ways. Planning has helped me to get organized and journaling has helped me to dump out all of the things that are in my mind. All of my fears and worries. When you can write it down and see it on paper, you can just about map out what is real and what is only in your mind. I can safely say that most of my anxiety is really just in my mind. So now that I have these two systems of letting out my creativity and unraveling my mind at the same time it’s so much more comforting.

Not knowing what God’s plan is or why I’m here or why I have kids or why he’s given me kids at this point in my life is no longer a question for me. The question is what am I going to do tomorrow? How are we going to enjoy today? What fun memories can we make?

I’m no longer stressed about what what I’m doing or what I’m going to do. I just plan on being happy. I think that’s why happy planning and bullet journaling has just really taken control of my heart. I’ve even got in my kids creative with me to help me put in the stickers and write things down and it’s just awesome.  So happy planning and bullet journaling has helped me to handle my anxiety in a much different way.

So now my life is filled with so much joy, so much comfort. I have more time for my kids because of how I’ve gotten organized. I’m smoking less,drinking less I’m stressing less and I’m enjoying it.

So hopefully this helps someone out there. If you would like to get into Happy planning there is a YouTuber by the name of Heather Kell, kellofaplan. Her videos have helped me tremendously. I watched videos from the happy planner website, all of these things can help and there are people on Instagram whose Instagram is dedicated just to planning. so if you go and look up #happyplanning or #plannergirls or #plannerbabe you will find these people on Instagram. I hope you all have a blessed week and I hope that someone out there loves happy planning as much as I do. If you have a happy planner please don’t be afraid to share what you track in your happy planner or pictures if you like. You can find me on Google+ and on YouTube.

I hope you find your happy.