1. Turn off the TV. I just had a baby 14 days ago and I could have just vegged out in front of the 500 channels available to me at the touch of a button. I was amazed at how quickly time flew when I got lost in the TV vortex. What about going outside and taking a walk? Or better yet talking to your partner or reading to one of your children?
2. Limit the time you spend online, another time sucker. You can sit down to answer email, and hit a gossip site. Before you know it, an hour has just flown by. Computers are a great tool, but we need to keep how much of a role they play in our lives in check.
3. Don't nuke your food. We don't need to go and light a fire to cook a meal, but how about avoiding the microwave? Do you ever ask yourself what's in the food I'm eating? We are so civilized that we can't even pronounce the stuff we are putting in our bodies. Simplify: veggies, fruit, protein, and a non-white starch.
4. Did cavemen drink soda and frozen juices? I know they taste great, and hit the spot, but when did we stop drinking water? Entire cities were established around a good water source. Why don't we still think it's important? All I'm suggesting is stop making the sugary drinks the means in which we hydrate (including diet, they fatten you up too). How about having them as a treat and drink water the rest of the time? By the way, your kids are picking up their habits from you.
5. Stop and take a deep breath. We are all in such a hurry: The traffic is jammed, little junior has nine after school activities he's involved with, your cell is connected to your ear and we are on the go, go, go. Is it all necessary? Is there a way to simplify? If you can steal 5 to 30 minutes a day to just stop and meditate, or pray, do it. Think about what you are grateful for. What you dream of and want to achieve for yourself and your family, and take a few deep breathes. By the way, you are not a bad person if you say no once in a while.
6. Move. Part of being able to handle the intense pace of life is to be strong enough physically to deal with it. Forget thinking about exercise as a luxury that you don't have time to get to. Start viewing physical wellness as a must, and a right that we all have in order to enjoy this life. In the old days you had to move to survive. Now we just hop in our car and make our way to the drive thru. I don't believe that's the way it was intended to work best for us. You ever see how beautifully liquid your kids are and how well they sleep after a day of playing outside at the park or beach? Now that is the way life was designed.
I know it's impossible to simplify our modern day lives to the point of living in a log cabin, but we could learn something about ourselves from our primal roots. Do you ever just stop and wonder what it's all about? What are we really rushing around like lunatics for? How come we are not making our health a priority and taking better care of ourselves?
