How to Have the Best Week Ever
This old Irish blessing is something I say early in January as I’m thinking about what this year may hold.
May you be healthy and happy
May your dreams all come true
May the best of the old year be the worse of the new
I know not every day or month is going to be stellar. I know there will be some challenges and things I learn from. Yet I always hope it is not that bad. I wish for the health and happiness to be so strong that the bad days and weeks don’t stop me much. After the year many of us had in 2020, I think a lot of us are wishing for this too.
So, when I think about what goes into the best week ever I see things like family vacation time, weekends at the beach and fun things I enjoy doing. I know I cannot go on vacation every week but what is apparent is I need to have more regular fun in my days, every week. There are also times that while it’s not my favorite I feel better after I spend time working out. My best week would also include time outside, preparing good meals, being able to pause for a minute to appreciate and feel grateful. When I finished thinking about what is in my best ever week I realize none of them are extraordinary or momentous things so why can’t I have more of them in my regular weeks this year?
What I have learned in my journey of living naturally well is what we prioritize is what gets scheduled in our weeks. We actually have more control over that than we realize too. Sure we have to work and that takes a lot of time. Our jobs get a lot of priority each week because they are important to our livelihood but how much of them have we used as an excuse for other things? Like, how often do we really need to do something and stay late for it that could wait until the next day? Work will never go away and there will always be something to do so repeatedly staying late isn’t actually accomplishing what we think most of the time.
Scheduling what matters is not a new concept but I’d like to propose something different in how we do it this year. Instead of letting time get away from us and saying we don’t have time, let’s go into this week with the idea of how we use our time. What is taking our attention? Is it hours on social media and we think it’s only 30 minutes? Is it crashing on the sofa in front of the tv after work because we’re stressed out and tired? Are we engaging with those we love every day by looking them in the face and asking about their day? It is often not the big blocks of time that get us progress and the big life changes we all wish for but rather it is the little minutes we all have and how we use them. This is where we can intentionally change how we feel, our relationships with others and where our life is going in a minute.
If you want to have the best week ever, start with how you spend your minutes. Where are all those little time wasters that you go mind-numb with that take away from where you could be connecting with a real human, taking a short walk, chopping a vegetable for a snack. If you hate your job but don’t want just another J.O.B. then where you are using your minutes to change what work looks like to you? Where are you tapping into what lifts your spirit to use every available minute to change what your weeks look lik