“I deserve down time” has been a concrete part of my belief system. If I look to my past to discover when I started believing this, I settle on the years I was a stay-at-home mom raising four children. As soon as I got them in bed at night, it was “down time.” I’d watch a show, read a book, talk to a friend on the phone.
Fast forward to the kids are all grown and out of the house and I’m still telling myself “I deserve down time.” My husband and I have been happy to crawl in bed as soon as dinner is over (at 6:00 pm) and watch some Netflix or cable television for four hours.
It was time for me to question that belief.
There is an emotional vibration called tired and there is a physical sensation called tired. Emotional tired starts in the brain. Physical tired starts in the body. I think as a young mom raising children it was a mixture of the two. I never felt like I got enough sleep but it was also emotionally exhausting.
Earlier this week on my Instagram account I posted my schedule for the week. The first time I went through the process of doing a to-do list download and then plugging everything in the calendar I was surprised how much extra time there was in my day. I went into it thinking how busy I was. But once I filled my calendar (leaving my weekends pretty open) I had an extra eight hours in my week! Woah! That’s a lot of time. We spend a lot of time thinking “I should be doing _______.” That takes up a lot of emotional energy. When we just put something on the calendar, we don’t have to decide in the moment if we really want to clean house or call the insurance company about a bill they didn’t pay or workout. We just do it. All that thinking about it and distracting ourselves with other things that bring instant gratification (making a snack, laying in bed longer, scrolling on the phone) uses up extra time and energy.
I do love me some down time. And I do think it can be an important part of our lives. But schedule it in. If you don’t, then even the down time (making a snack, laying in bed longer, scrolling on the phone) doesn’t feel like down time because we’re busy thinking about the other things we should be doing and that zaps our energy and the pleasure.
Being productive makes the down time even sweeter. So I’ve altered my belief system to “I deserve me some down time and some productive time.” The balance feels amazing!
