Why you need 10 minutes to yourself everyday

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Are you feeling overwhelmed? Kids or no kids, sometimes life feels just so chaotic. With everything going around us and with so many split second decisions to take, sometimes I am surprised, I haven’t gone mad yet! What do you do to keep your sanity? Here is my secret to taking things easy.

Do you remember that time, years ago… were you as young as me… when you had time to waste?
There was a time in my life, I look back with fond memories now, when I would get up early just so that I’d have a few minutes to myself. It was actually half an hour or a little more then. The whole world around me would be sleeping or just waking up… The sun just coming up itself. My favourite place was up on the terrace. There would be none around. I would sit there in the fresh morning breeze with my glass of orange juice or Tang, some pancakes or a french toast. The cane chair and table on our terrace, the palm trees making that ruffling sound as the leaves rubbed against each others, a Cuckabara singing somewhere or a parrot flying by. It is beautiful memories. I’d sit there till the sun came fully up or I heard someone downstairs. Usually, it was my grandfather (God bless his soul), opening the front door to pick up the paper. Sometimes, it would be raining… just a drizzle and a little cold. It would be coffee then. Grandpa, would request some tea before breakfast was served and… my day would start.

Fast forward to now. There is no reason to not get up before sunrise with the intention of having some quiet time. My son is up an hour before sunrise. His school bus comes at dawn. There is running and racing against time. There is the smell of food in the air and you don’t get time to feel nausea even if you are expecting! Half an hour after he leaves, it is time for hubby’s work and then one after the other the girls get up.

There was a time, not very long ago, when there wasn’t any internet. There wasn’t any need to socialise online either and to save us more time, we didn’t have any need for Candy Crush or Farmville. That was the time when people actually took there tea out in the garden. It didn’t even matter if the wifi was strong enough there. People had time to do nothing.

It is not like people had no children. Ofcourse people had children and ofcourse theirs were as wild as ours. Infact, I think, their’s were wilder. The kids climbed trees, built stuff in their yard and everybody entertained. The kids were kids and the mums were mums. The dads were allowed to be dads too. Nobody wanted ‘me’ time because they all got ample time to do nothing. That time, I have been told was when my parents were growing up. It could have been my childhood too because, even then, there was a lot of nothing to do.

This post is initiated by a book I read last year. The only point that stayed with me was that we all needed sometime for ourselves during the day when we did nothing. I realised, I had been doing this for years and that was what made life so simple then. It has stayed with me and I have since then preached it to a lot of other people around me.

We all need a few minutes of nothing, every day. It could be just ten minutes and it would do the job or it could be half an hour but usually, I find that ten minutes works well. It is less guilt in thinking that you wasted time and it is enough time from getting you to diverge your attention else where. I say, I swear by my Ten Minutes of Nothing.

What is nothing? It is doing just that… Nothing. Sitting idly. Coffee or tea or… not. Company or kids around or… not. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you have that ten minutes to yourself and you really are not doing anything.

Is it me-time, you ask? No, no. Not me-time. That would be the time for hobby or passion or self-care. That would be something else. This is the time when you are just you. We all need time to reflect, on life or lessons. We need time to dream or beam. We also need time to breath. Yes, we sometimes do forget to breath. It is alwas so hurried, so absent mindedly and oh-so mechanically that we breath, I feel. Don’t you think there should be a few minutes in a day when we can deliberately, purposefully, very calmly, slow down and breath. Realise that we are breathing… That we are alive? Running after kids or towards that deadline, whatever… We become so wound up. Don’t you think, we should wind down too?

I find my ten minutes shining on me various time during the day but I take it when I badly, madly need it. When the kids are throwing a mega tantrum, when son’s just gotten home wild and tired, when it’s bedtime and we are all fighting it… Or the best one that I have had till date, when I am breaking at my seams emotionally and physically. There, ofcourse, have been time when I didn’t feel the need at all. It has happened several times actually. I still go ahead and take the ten minutes for nothing even on those days. Just so that I can look out of the window and catch something interesting, you know. Or just so that I can find something interesting, a thought may be, while I roam around my house, room to room, in an out the doors. I don’t clean or pick anything. I just go around look at stuff: My son’s sweater on the couch, the teether under the chair, the half eaten apple on the dining table, that little smudge in the charcoal drawing on the wall…

It gives me strength, those ten minutes. It gives me purpose too. It reminds what all I love about what all I do. It even reminds me about what all I do for what all I love. Yeah, la la la. You know? We need time to la la la too. We should take out more time to do la la la. It will save on those trips to the doctor’s clinic.

Have you had your ten minutes of nothing today? Would you take ten minutes everyday to do nothing? Come join me on my Facebook Page. Tell me. I’d love to hear from you.

Like this post? Here are more Mommy’s Me Time posts that we love:

Never Head EAST
Don’t Fret Just Kiss
Crush Your Misfortunes

photo credit: Βethan via photopin cc

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