Getting your mojo back might be as simple as making your bed!
As busy mums with intense family lives, there’s a myriad of tasks that need doing and attending to along with keeping up with our career. Along with picking up the pile of shoes and bags at the front door just so we can get in, paying the bills on time and taking the tribe along to all their various dental and optical appointments, there is the social and emotional responsibilities of #mumslife like organising playdates for our kids with people we don’t know, running about to soccer and ballet lessons and making sure we have given everyone a tuck in and a good night kiss (partners included, if they live with us).
As a high achiever who sets high standards in my career and in all of my relationships, I know what it’s like to be juggling so much that you just want to scream… “STOP the bus I wanna get off”. I know you know the feeling of wanting to murder the next person that wants to preach to you about “selfcare”.
But you’d never say that out loud, right? Like is that even allowed? To hate your partner and resent your kids while at the same time loving them so much? It’s a harsh reality of feeling overwhelmed that none of us would like to admit to.
When you are at the stage where your internal rubber band has just about lost all its stretch and the feel good feeling of a Friday chilled Chardonnay really doesn’t kick in until half a bottle in (not to mention leaving you wiped you with a hangover the next day) there often doesn’t feel like there is anywhere left to go except into that inevitable spiral of a busy weekend and then on to Monday school rush and work chaos starts all over again. This is the point where everything begins to look a little like the half a serve of day old porridge that is still sitting on the stove unwashed that no one quite knows what to do with (I mean will someone just eat the last two damn mouthfuls).
All of this really zaps our energy and our motivation and any fun creative potential we might have left. And honestly, sex, the one joy we thought we had left in life, well who can be bothered with that?
While dealing with all of the above might very well be standard #mumslife and every mum everywhere certainly doesn’t have it any better (well maybe that celebrity, you know the one we all know? She kinda has it together doesn’t she? You know true is, I think you’d actually have quite a bit in common if you ever had a chance to ask her). Perhaps the only way out of the drudgery of all of this then stopping for a moment and asking, what do we truly have in our capacity right now that can pave the way to something different?
Sometimes this can be the smallest thing. It doesn’t involve meditation or yoga or getting up before the birds (seriously, hear me now when I say, you don’t have to get up at 5am to squeeze an extra hour out of your already packed day).
What if part of clearing the mind was actually doing to take a bit of control back in our external environment? What if we could shift our internal view point, just by changing what our external world looks like?
There is a quote by Marie Kondo that says “Life truely begins after you have put your house in order”. There is a time in my life when I would have slapped that woman for saying that! But there is some serious psychology in this stuff.
The benefits of minimalism – start with your bed!
We all have experienced the sheer joy of cleaning out the kids toy box and clothes they have grown out of or clearing out the top draw of our office desks at work. Hell even the cleaning the gunk and limp veggies from the back of the fridge can feel amazing, even if we are sneakily only doing it to procrastinate on something more important!
If our lives are busy and intense and the home we walk into at the end of the day is equally as chaotic and cluttered, how can our wellbeing be soothed and our thinking be organised and clear?
As much as we can resist because we are annoyed that our partner often doesn’t put their fair share of housework, making a habit of regularly decluttering our rooms and workspaces can honestly provide us with a calmer life outlook and clearer mindset and more “space” to make decisions without the overwhelm.
One of the easiest techniques is to simply make our beds every morning. We honestly can’t be all things to all people, particularly when we are already doing so much, but I myself certainly find great joy these days in coming home to a tidy bedroom and made bed. That three minutes it takes me in the morning to do this makes me feel almost nourished and cared. I love coming home to that sanctuary (honestly, I think about it all day!) – and this honestly as simple as selfcare needs to be.
Self care is really when we honour something that works and make a ritual or disciplined routine of it, in a loving pleasurable way, because we know it makes us feel good and we prioritise that feel good feeling. This is very different to doing something because we have to or someone told us to. When we master one area, we then can decide if we want to tidy another area (such as our email inbox). The flow on effects of this are really quite remarkable. The sense of peace that it can inspire quite often has a little ripple effect that filters outwardly to our partners and kids and work colleagues. Inevitably it gets people wondering what on earth you are doing differently. Is it that new hatha yoga? Early morning ocean swimming? Detox diet? Essentials oils that you are splashing about all over the place?
I’ll leave it to you to decide whether you let your friends into your little bedroom secret!
Vashti D’Vyne is an Intuitive Naturopath and self proclaimed Libido Liberator with over 20yrs experience in the health and wellness industry.
Along with seeing clients in private practice, as a consultant she has worked for some of Australia’s best nutraceutical supplement brands and also within a national medical institute for sexual dysfunction, a journey that eventually lead her to developing unique and integrated personalised programs to help individuals to access and switch on their “mojo”. As a health practitioner she is dedicated to talking about the “real stuff” when it comes to addressing total body health and wellbeing.
As a wife to a Mr Fix It and mother to 3 growing teens her interests include practicing Love Languages, enjoying time in nature, and collecting crystals and rocks.
“Real and lasting health comes through first being informed, then being inspired to take action thereby realising for ourselves our own body’s limitless potential for health, wellness and energy” – Vashti D’Vyne.
She can be contacted at https://www.facebook.com/themojomechanic/