2-20-22 Relax!
Quote: “Sometimes, the most productive thing you can do is relax.” – Mark Black
Just chill out!
Have you ever wanted to say this to someone or actually have said this to someone? Or… has anyone ever said this to you?! This is a popular phrase in the Zieroff house. We are a very emotional and expressive family – LOL. All 5 of us wear our hearts on our sleeves and sometimes get just a little bit carried away. We don’t get enough sleep or we react by being a little on edge. It happened even tonight. I was reading them all a story, which is part of our Sunday night family meeting traditions. Someone “accidentally” touched someone else and then the slugging turned into under the breath bickering and then I lovingly yelled it to get their attention back to the book. Sometimes we just need reminded to take it down a notch! Take a chill pill…or two! Go get some sleep and start over tomorrow.
This week I would love for you to look at your schedule for your week ahead. You will have 7 days, 168 hours, 10,080 minutes to make what you wish. For around 49 of those hours (or 2,940 minutes) you are sleeping if you average 7 hours of sleep a day. And if you work an 8 hour job, that takes away 56 of those hours (or 3,360 minutes). That leaves you with 63 hours or 3,780 minutes left of your week.
How do you budget your remaining hours and minutes?
Do you schedule in “relax” time or “down” time? I know many of you are like me where we are in a season of chauffering our crazy children all over the county. They are involved in more than we are! But how can you schedule time in the busyness of life during the 63 hours you have left to power down so that you are the most productive citizen for the rest of the 105 hours of your week?
You see, we need to schedule in time to power down. And I’m not talking just sleep. I’m talking about relaxing, fill-you-to-the-brim, recharge the battery kind of time.
One thing that will happen when we intentionally plan time in our schedules to recharge is that we will experience true peace, even if it’s just for a little bit. This helps us be ready for the unexpected things that are bound to come up. Car trouble, an extra work meeting, a grocery trip, a carpool shift, a sick kid, a person who needs a visit, etc. We have to expect that something like this will come up because it almost always does. When we intentionally have recharge time already on the schedule, we’re good to go when the pop-up surprise wrench in the plans shows up.
A word of caution is don’t look at what anyone else does to refocus or relax. Extroverts and introverts relax differently. Introverts recharge by being alone or in a calm place. Extroverts refuel by the energy that comes with being around other people. And depending on our stress levels, sometimes extroverts will need quiet time alone and sometimes introverts will need a group of people to destress them. It isn’t a one size fits all thing. But you know what you’ll need by looking at what your week ahead looks like.
Here’s an example. I have a big not so fun anniversary of a rough time in my past coming up soon. It’s hard every year at this time. I know the date is approaching and I know all that I have on my plate in the next couple weeks ahead. This past weekend, some of my close friends planned for me to get away at a hotel – dinner, jacuzzi, drinks, and conversation. We stayed up way too late but my cup is so full it is overflowing. It’s just what I needed to tackle these busy weeks ahead. I could have said no but I looked ahead at what was coming and intentionally said yes. This is what I needed to do to be the most productive person I can be with my 63 hours ahead of me.
The Bible says in Matthew 11:28, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” What if you took your planner, Google calendar, or schedule and said God, help me plan out my week. Let’s do this together. Help me schedule some down time this week to refresh. What do my children’s schedule look like? Where do they need a time to play with friends or time 1-on-1 with me? Is there time on my schedule with just me and my hubby to be alone? Is there time for me to rejuvenate by meeting a friend that needs encouragement and then we can both fill each other back up? See, when we allow our Creator to help create our week, we realize he was the one that created this life for us in the first place – why wouldn’t we ask him to be a part of planning it out with us?
We have one life. If we live to be 80, we will have lived around 29,200 days or 700,800 hours. Let’s make them count.
