Tag: Time management

Motivational Monday: Learning to Do Things In Our Own Time

If there is one thing I have learned from this entire year of 2018, it is that people will always do things in their own time. No matter how many people we seek (or not seek) advice from, people will always give their opinions of what you should or should not do with your life. The thing that I have learned is that you will only do things when you are ready to do them. Some decisions may seem simpler than others, however once you process them and can justify your own needs that is when you will make your own decisions.

Once you’ve decided to begin something, it can be easy to look back and wish you’d started earlier. However, you can’t start anything new if you aren’t in the right mind frame.

Sometimes dramatic events need to take place for your life to change and other times, you can get caught up with living a certain way until you are sick of it and decide to change. I think we become so used to making excuses for things even when we have a small interest in doing them, when if we would just start it might end up leading into something we’ve never dreamed of! Or that we might fall in love with doing whatever that thing is. If starting whatever it is that you want to start is seeming difficult, try taking small steps-write out what you want to start, begin for a short period of time to see how you like it and go from there. Whatever it is that’s on your mind that you want to begin, will continually come up until you start it! It’s your brains way of telling you what you NEED to be doing with your life! Whether that is eating healthier, going to bed earlier because you feel exhausted, starting a workout routine, changing jobs, beginning a hobby, whatever that feeling is, here is your permission to start.

I hope that for the New Year of 2019 you will look at things as easy to start because you listened to what you needed. I hope that whatever your desires are or feel your calling is, you can listen to yourself and begin to change. ❤

Motivational Monday: Make Use of Your Time

What would you do if you had all the time in the day to do anything you wanted? Would you start a new hobby or work on one the one you’re currently doing, travel, workout, spend time with loved ones.

Did you know that we spend our free time doing exactly what we want (within our means)? Whether we need a break to just watch a movie/TV show or scroll through social media. But what if you could turn that time around and spend it doing something that will make you really happy? What if you spent that time doing one of the things mentioned above and it inspired you to start something new?

Sometimes when we take a break, it will inspire us to be more creative. Thoughts will come pouring in about what we should be doing. All we have to do is listen to them and then take action. Whatever that thing was that came to mind was there for a reason and it’s telling us that this is what we want. Maybe it’s to travel to another country, go visit a friend in another state, join a group that interests you, start a new career or move to new state.

If you decide to move forward with your thoughts, make a plan to execute, save money if needed and see where it takes you! Once you get there, write down your thoughts from how spending this time doing what you wanted made you feel and recognize if it’s something you’d do again.

How do you make use of your time? Has something inspiring ever come to you where you listened to it and it changed you? Please let me know in the comments!

The Meals I Eat Weekly

If you saw my last post How to Stick to a Weekly Food Budget you got to see a list of the foods I restock in my fridge. This week, I thought I would share what I eat for breakfast, lunch, a snack and dinner. The meals are simple and can be thrown together/cooked quickly. I try to have at least two-three options of each meal so I’m not always eating the same thing every day. I buy medium-large quantities of items so they last a while and will make each meal different; large pack of frozen berries, eggs and almonds. Having go to meals to eat on a regular basis means you won’t have to think too much about what to eat-just remember to stock up on fresh ingredients at the store each week!

Breakfast: Eggs-sunny side up during the week and on the weekends I add cheese, toast and avocado
Cereal-Topped with berries
Yogurt-Mixed with granola and berries (use one or both)
For the cereal and yogurt I include chia/flax seed mix for good digestive health. Also, I bring a piece of fruit to eat at work in the late morning, usually an orange or banana.

Tip: On Sundays I put frozen strawberries and mixed berries into glass containers and thaw in the fridge to put in my meals during the week.

A fancy Sat. breakfast
A quick morning breakfast
Thawing berries for the week to put in my cereal, yogurt and smoothies

Snacks: Fruit bars
Veggies and hummus
Smoothie-My smoothies can include a combination of any of the following: Almond milk, strawberries, mixed berries, banana, chia/flax seed, peanut butter, cacao powder, avocado and spinach. Sometimes I make these for breakfast when I’m in a rush to leave for work or am going on a long car ride.

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Just one of the many smoothies I enjoy making during the weekend as a snack or for breakfast

 

Lunch: Sandwich-Multi grain or whole wheat bread, chicken (rotisserie or sandwich meat), cheese, olive oil mayo, spinach and salad dressing (if I don’t have a store bought brand I’ll make my own with olive oil, lemon, garlic, Italian seasoning, salt and pepper). I also eat a side of Greek Yogurt-I buy several flavors so I’m not eating the same thing all week.
Salad-Spinach, chicken, almonds, cheese, tomatoes, avocado, chia/flax seeds, seasoning and salad dressing. Salads are very versatile so you could switch up the ingredients weekly by using different greens, meats, cheeses, nuts and dressing or use some of the ingredients one day and all of them the next.

Tip: I put the salad in a long tupperware so I can store a fork and small-round salad dressing container in it.

Leftovers-I’ll bring anything to work that will easily fit into one tupperware dish like soup or whole wheat orzo with chicken.

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Leftover Italian soup from Christmas dinner

 

Dinner: My dinner meals are different each week but my normal routine meal is: Meat, grain & vegetable-even in the form of pizza-because this totally counts! haha.

Store bought meals-Sometimes at the end of the week I like to splurge for something in the ready to eat section of the grocery store or get a wrap with chips. If I know I’m going to do this before grocery shopping, I’ll add the cost of the meal to my weekly budget.
Check out: How to Gain Weekly Food Inspiration for more ways to find dinner recipes.

A healthy dinner dish
Sushi take out

Tip: Once you have the basics down for a few good recipes that you enjoy cooking, it’s easy to alter them with new ingredients to make the meals taste new.

I’d love to know what meals you eat each week! Leave some meals in the comments below.

Motivational Monday: Live the Life You Want

Every single day you make choices. Whether or not to do the dishes after eating, start and finish laundry in the same day, clean your home in one day or just lay around all day. These little things can often seem like a big chore in our head but in reality if we just get it done, we can spend the rest of the night doing what we want without thinking about getting something done later.
Side note: I’m definitely a culprit of agonizing over chores but in reality my home is small and they don’t take long to do-plus putting on music or a podcast helps motivate me to get things done. Another thing that’s helped is to pick a day for when I’m going to do chores.

Whether or not we do the small things today, we listened to ourselves by doing what we wanted to do today and left the rest for tomorrow. So what about the big choices in life? Do you listen to yourself about what you need for today so that you can feel better tomorrow? The point of this is to not burn yourself out by getting every single small thing done today but by finding balance of the small stuff so that you can focus on the big stuff you actually want to get done vs. what you have to get done (like chores).

I believe that we are living the life we want. When we wake up, we either let the small things take over our lives or we do balance the small stuff with the big things; your dreams.

The big things can be taken in small steps and are just as important to do as the small stuff. So don’t get too caught up always doing small things and remember to take care of yourself ❤

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