Hello everyone!
Welcome back to Lavendaire.
It's Aileen.
We are nearing the end of our Dream Life Series.
I've taken you through the entire journey, and now we're gonna talk about
how to find balance throughout this entire process, how to not get burnt out basically.
So we're gonna talk about self care, how to build healthy habits for yourself
to keep this lifestyle sustainable, because that's the point:
You want to be able to last long.
In order to last long, you can't just get stressed out
and burnt out really quickly in the process.
You have to make sure this is something you can do
happy, healthily, and in balance for the long run.
The first thing that I have to talk about is:
Nobody is perfect, and I'm not even sure that a perfect work-life balance exists.
Sometimes times feel good and things feel in balance,
and then sometimes something comes up and everything gets thrown out of balance,
and that's just the way life is.
But I think the point is to just not be so hard on yourself,
is to learn to let it go easily.
Self-forgiveness, again, is really important.
I see a lot of people get really stressed out in their careers,
whether they're in school or anything.
Even YouTubers get so stressed out.
I don't know if you guys realize, but when I'm meeting other creators,
I've noticed how hard everyone is working, which is really commendable and respectable.
But at the same time, I see a lot of people getting burnt out.
And it's just not healthy mentally, so this is one thing that I want to share,
and this is one thing that I always try to tell myself,
when I'm not being as productive as I want to be, is:
Success at the speed of balance.
I honestly don't remember where I first heard that quote,
but it really resonated with me because it's not a race.
Life is not about getting there as soon as possible.
It really is about having a sustainable, happy life
where you can build your dreams in a good way.
Not suffering so much along the way, but actually enjoying the process,
enjoying the journey of growing and learning.
Success at the speed of balance basically means to just do your best,
but go at a pace you can handle
because we just have a lot of things going on in our lives.
You gotta forgive yourself for not going as fast as you want because you know,
you gotta focus on your family for a while and focus on your health,
and make sure that everything in your life is taken care of.
Like I said, remembering that it's not a race, it's not a competition.
Making sure that you're just enjoying the process
rather than just trying to get to the end goal ASAP.
As you're building your dream life, self care is so important.
I would say it's one of the top priorities that you should focus on in your everyday life,
is to remember to take care of yourself.
Give love back to yourself because only when your own cup is full can you go out there
and give your love and energy for others and create good work,
because it's the most basic thing.
Take care of yourself in order to function properly and be able to do things for others.
Self care can be as simple as getting enough sleep, drinking enough water.
It really is the basics of just giving your body what it needs:
exercising regularly, doing things to keep yourself healthy.
Personally, I love to journal and meditate because that's how I stay grounded.
That's how I feel at peace.
It's different for everybody.
Ask yourself: What are the things that you really enjoy doing,
things that make you feel like you're filling up your cup?
What makes you feel pampered?
What makes you feel at peace?
And make time to do more of those things.
Make time to put that into your routine, whether it's daily, weekly, or monthly.
I made this worksheet to go with today's video.
It's on self care and ideal habits:
designing your routines for self care and ideal healthy habits in general.
And down here, I broke it down into morning, evening, and weekly habits.
So if you're part of the email series, then check your email to download this worksheet.
And if you're not signed up already, you can sign up down below.
All the info is down there.
Aside from those fundamental healthy habits,
like getting enough sleep or drinking enough water,
the next big habit that I recommend everybody try is meditation.
Try to meditate at least two minutes or five minutes a day
because meditation is that habit that will change your life.
It's something so simple and yet has such a profound impact.
I'll post some links down below on meditation and its many benefits.
But if there's any one habit that I recommend everyone try to start doing, it is meditation.
I have this meditation app called ZenFriend that I use pretty often,
and it always has quotes at the end of your meditation.
One that stuck out to me is:
"Half an hour's meditation every day is essential, unless you're busy.
Then a full hour is needed."
Basically, the busier you are, the more you should meditate
because meditation helps clear your mind, calm your mind, destress,
helps you center yourself, be able to control your emotions a little bit more.
It just makes you feel in control of your life, if you make it a daily habit.
It's not easy to make it a daily habit, let me tell you that.
It's something that I've been working on for years.
But I do notice that when I am in a good, consistent flow with meditation,
I just feel so much better.
I feel so much more at peace.
Another thing I like to implement are called "catch up days".
It's scheduling once a week or every other week,
an open day for you to just catch up with everything in life.
I usually find myself busy and I don't have time to do the dishes,
the laundry, and my house becomes a mess.
Things are out of whack.
So I love having a free day to catch up with this stuff.
It could be every Sunday or every other Sunday for you.
It's just important to give ourselves that time,
because so often we focus on just the most important things we have to get done,
or the most immediate things to give our attention to, and we sweep a lot to the side.
I don't know about you, but I'm sure there's a lot of items on your to do list
that you've just pushed back and pushed back,
just because it's not super important but it's something you should do.
So these catch up days are your opportunity to do those little,
almost unnecessary but necessary things that you gotta get done,
like clean the house, organize your closet, declutter this,
anything that has been on the backburner, you need to schedule time to get to that.
Lastly, I want to talk about building healthy habits into your lifestyle.
Habits are things that you just do automatically because it's out of habit.
You've done it so often that it just happens.
You don't really have to think about it.
You wake up and you automatically want to brush your teeth.
You just gotta do it.
It's just something that you've done your whole life, so you just have to.
You know how habits work like that?
They don't take much thinking effort to start them,
so it actually saves you so much energy
and it's more efficient to create healthy habits in your life
so that you're basically doing healthy things on autopilot,
things that will help you and support you to become better.
One way to build habits is called habit stacking, and all that it is,
is just stacking a new habit on top of a current habit that you have.
Whether you stack it before or after, it doesn't matter.
It's kind of like, say you brush your teeth every day,
you want to stack drinking water after that or journaling after that.
You start to look at the habits that you already do in your life,
and then look at the habits that you want to build,
and see if you can make any connections.
I find that it's easiet to stack habits in your morning routine and your evening routine,
because usually you have habits that are pretty set during those times.
Plus your morning and evening routines are kind of like your me-time.
You have time to do stuff for yourself.
So that's the basic idea behind today's worksheet.
So you're going to list out your ideal habits that you want to start building
and habits that you think will be helpful for you in your life,
for example: journaling, meditating, reading every day.
And then there's a section to answer:
Why do you want to build this habit?
What will it give you?
It's important to know why you want to build a habit
so that you have more motivation to keep it going and be consistent with it.
And then the next section is stacking those ideal habits
onto your current morning routine or evening routine or any weekly things that you do.
The last thing to know is that habits become ingrained in you after 21 days, I believe.
I've heard 21 days and also 90 days,
so I think it's important to at least do this habit
that you want to do for 21 days.
Literally check it off your calendar every single day in order to build that habit.
In the beginning you're going to have to force yourself to remember and keep track with it.
But hopefully after 21 days or 90 days (or even longer) of getting on this habit,
it will become something that comes easily and naturally to you
so that you're building your dream life on autopilot in a more efficient way.
Again this is just an ideal, and I know, in reality, sometimes we're good with our habits
and sometimes we fall off and we stop doing those positive habits.
If that happens, don’t worry.
You're not alone.
It definitely happens to everyone.
It's okay.
Just pick yourself up back up.
Start where you are, do your best.
That's all you can do, so don't make yourself feel bad over it.
Don't be hard on yourself over it.
We're all just doing our best, and don't forget:
Success at the speed of balance.
I hope you liked today's video.
Let me know your thoughts down below.
And here are some of my favorite posts from you guys.