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Last Updated on January 23, 2024 by Samantha Flores
While you’re busy keeping your kids happy and healthy, there is someone you are likely forgetting. That’s right, it’s you! But your family won’t thrive if you don’t. Check out our guide about how to stay happy and healthy as a mom.
Keep meal times easy
It’s only natural that moms want to feed their families healthy and nutritious food. However, that doesn’t mean you have to spend a huge amount of time and energy prepping and cooking everything from scratch.
Instead, make things as easy on yourself as possible. Make simple dishes and combine pre-made elements such as filling pasta with additional vegetables to ensure they are nutritionally balanced.
You can make things even easier by creating a menu plan for the week. Then you won’t need to come up with ideas all the time, and you can simply refer to this and so reduce the amount of mental work involved in meal planning.
Create a routine
Routines can sometimes feel a bit constricting. However, if you use them in a loose and sensible way, that can help you stay happy and healthy as a mom.
By creating a routine easily for your weekdays, you can help yourself mentally prepare for what you need to do, as well as use your time in the best way possible.
Although, the critical thing with making a routine as a busy mom is to not fill up every minute of your day with tasks. Instead, make sure you build in some time for rest and to just be as this will vastly improve the quality of both your life and the life of your children.
Get some time to yourself
One of the most critical things you need to do as a mom to stay happy and healthy is to make sure you get some time on your own. Of course, it’s entirely up to you to decide what you will do with this time from working on your career to spending an uninterrupted evening reading a novel and having a hot bath!
Unfortunately, many busy moms find it almost impossible to have any time where they are not constantly disturbed by their children or their responsibilities.
However, using a service like care.com, if you do find yourself in such a situation, can help. This is because they will help you find local childcare help so you can get some regular time for yourself.
Practice self-compassion
Often, our own worst enemies are the voices in our heads. If you don’t agree, just do the following thought exercise.
Imagine saying what you say to yourself out loud to your child! Would you or would you not want to protect them from such harsh criticism? For most of us, it’s the latter, which just shows how hard we can be on ourselves.
However, by learning to practice self-compassion, we can start to make that angry critical voice a little quieter if not altogether silent.
There are many ways to practice self-compassion including talking to ourselves with kindness and offering our ‘inner child’ love and safety. You may even wish to pick up a compassion meditation practice such as Metta, which is designed to help us realize we are like every other human being on this planet: in need of and entitled to compassion.
