It all began when… my husband and I realized one day that we were completely and utterly overloaded. It was somewhere between our first and second child (second and third for him) and we had absolutely no idea how we’d gotten ourselves into such a state of overwhelm.
We felt pulled in so many different directions. Obligations were piling up faster than we could manage the backlog. We were exhausted and defeated by the sheer weight of the stress.
We simply could not continue to live this way.
He and I called an emergency regroup and sat down to discuss our options. We laid out everything that we had committed to for work, the kids, our friends, and our extended family. We prioritized what needed the most attention, tabled less critical but necessary tasks for later, and decided to cut a few tasks altogether. Unfortunately, there were not a lot of tasks we could completely discard. Most of what was on our list simply had to be worked through, but we could certainly commit to finding a better way to manage our lives going forward.
Thus we came up with The Sanity Plan. Our Sanity Plan is defined by reducing work and obligations to a manageable load, working smarter not harder, and prioritizing time for relaxation and wind down. We have always been the type to work hard, play hard. But enough was enough. For all new potential opportunities and obligations, we asked ourselves:
“Does this add to the Sanity Plan or not?”
While our lives are still not perfectly sane (whose are, really?), it helped us to reframe the inflow in terms of what we felt we could handle and keep our end goals in mind. Sometimes we are better at it than others. This blog will detail our journey to keep up with our Sanity Plan and hopefully inspire others to write their own!
Best,
Sane Mama & the Sane Gang
Further reading: 10 Principles to Live By & What Does Sanity Mean To You?
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