Relaxing at the drop of a hat has never really been my strong suit, especially on weekends. It’s one thing when you’re on vacation, but when it’s Saturday and I start to feel guilty about emails piling up or feeling like I should be getting ahead on work for the week ahead to make my life in the future easier it’s hard to stop, take a breath and purely relax.

HOWEVER, I have found one magical way that’s helped me slow down and take a breath, and no—it has no meditation or journaling involved!!!

This is going to sound weird…but here me out…when I really want to relax I make a schedule. Okay, okay, I know this sounds like the opposite of relaxation, but when you’re used to powering through and going constantly to just go cold turkey without a plan can be occasionally (or constantly) panic-inducing. 

For those of you that also struggle with really letting go, as weird as it sounds, I’m telling you to give this a try. By a schedule, I don’t mean I plan out everything in 30-minute intervals (although boy howdy does that sound incredible to me), but I do give myself chunks of time and block those out. 

For example, I have a tendency to feel guilty when I binge watch a show on a weekend instead of doing the things on my to-do list—however, taking time for myself, which sometimes for me means staring at a TV screen is also important. 

So, instead of beating myself up every time I hit “play next episode” before I sit down in front of the TV I tell myself, here’s the plan:

Watch TV for up to three hours

Take a bath for up to one hour

Read for up to one hour

Do one or two items on the to-do list, if and only if it sounds fun

What I’ve found is that by telling myself that I am going to take three hours and watch TV I stop feeling guilty and I can really just relax into it because it’s all part of the plan for the day. 

I do absolutely know that I must work on my guilt/self-worth issues when it comes to feeling like I need to constantly do more, but we also need fixes in the meantime while we sort out the bigger issues and I’ve actually found that sometimes these fixes in the meantime start to help me sort through the larger issue at hand. 

I repeat this is not a permanent fix for the underlying issues, but the more and more I schedule in this relaxation the more I find that the world doesn’t come to pieces when I stop overachieving for a day or two, which, in turn, helps me see that I can slow down and take care of myself and know that, that is also as important as how much work I get done. Two birds…one stone…I hate that saying. 

Alright loves, I hope you have a wonderful day and take some time for yourself even if you have to schedule it in. XOXOX, CAMDW