How To Have Less Stressed Kids

stressfree

As a parent we want our kids to have best and do best, so we sign them up for classes such as sport, art, piano, violin, Language learning, lego and robotics and so many more.  3 months break in summer will give kids some break but no, we sign them up with summer camps during summer break. When do kids get a chance be a kid and play? It seems because of extra activities and fear for safety, kids are no longer free range kids as 30 years ago. Kids are showing stress signs but acting up, health issues and other disciplinary problems which may indirectly related to being so busy and high exceptions from parents, to school. One of the kids who  is in Private school 2nd grade has 2 hours daily homework, in 2nd grade, can you believe it? May you can but it baffles me.

There are many kids who are either bored and too much stimulated by activities that surrounds them. Parents are not happy either, many parents seems to think they are busy driving kids from one activity to another. If no one is happy, why do we parent do this to ourselves? Stress  survey done by Lucile Packard Foundation for Children’s health (Palo Alto) found that over 50% of 9 to 17 years old were stressed out on average to high level of stress. That can’t be good.

Tips for Less Stressed Kids and Parents:

We can not eliminate 100% stress and worries from our own life, let alone our children’s, however, we can surely try to minimize it by doing a few things. I think it may help parents and kids both relax a lot. Last semester, we followed hectic schedule our 2nd grader, and we have slowed down this month so we can get a bit breather. Here are a few things that we did that might work with other children as well.( Note I write child as he or him but this case goes for both girls and boys.)

1. Slow Down:

You might think every waking moment your child should be doing something magnificent or learning. And it might be hard to see your child laying on sofa doing nothing, telling you he is bored. Creativity strikes right after boredom happens in many cases. Unwind after school activity for a day. Let them think and soak up all they did and did not do.

If you do extra classes such as music, art, swimming and other cool things, make sure your child has only 2-3 activities per week so give him time to relax his body and mind.

2. Create Mini Goals and Solutions:

If your child has tons of home works or things to do, it can be overwhelming. Sure it is overwhelming for adults too. Breaking down things to do list or a problem in to mini section and tackling it helps see the result much faster and keeps us motivated, same thing with kids. In beginning you may need to help your child do this, until he learns how to do that on his own.

3. Create a Space:

Majority of our stress comes from not finding stuff when you need it, especially for kids. If your kids or you are always looking for book, home work or a project you worked on last minute, it will increase blood pressure for all of you. Create a space for your child’s things, school works, hobbies so he can put everything in its place and find it when necessary.

If you teach kids to clean up since they are young, it helps them when they’re older. However, there is never too late to start, even for older child or even teen. Teaching them keeping their stuff organize and helping them by getting them bookcases, boxes to store stuff.

4. Make Time For Sleep:

It has been said that minimum of 8 hours of sleep is needed to function better, but little kids to teens sometimes need more than 8 hours sleep. Do you remember when your infant was born, he was sleeping or cat napping 18 hours a day? Of course, kids do not need less sleep as they grow older, they may need 8-10 hours sleep to feel refresh and function properly. So, make sure you have routine for them and they get enough sleep to feel rested.

I have a younger kids so it is easier for me to stick to sleep routine and Zenguy has perfected sleep routine with kids so well, they know it and do it well. I am not sure yet how to enforce on teens but they can be reasoned with as well.

5. Eat Together:

With family so busy with activities and things to do, we hardly tend to eat together. I fall in this category occasionally so I know. Making time to eat together as a family does wonder to kids self esteem and share what they liked on that day and what they did not. Young kids tend be chatty so we listen a lot or should I say we try to. 🙂

Seeing family life together and what everyone has done that day, makes everyone feel in “know” and be part of something special. At least, I know I felt that when I was a kid.

6. Talk and Listen:

Being a parent can be demanding and we have things to take care of, bills to pay, dishes to clean, and so on, but taking time to talk to your child if something is wrong will help by asking direct and open questions and then listening to them. Always ask questions that can not be answered in “yes” or “no”. If you ask how was your day, you may get answer like “fine”. You should ask “What happened during X event?”

7. Let Child be a Child

Sometimes we want so much from our children and we think of them as little people. They are not, they are still kids and will make mistakes. When I teach some concept to R, and I expect him to get it, and when he does not I sometimes get frustrated. I usually do not get upset with other child making same mistake. So I came to realize that wearing mom hat makes me expect a lot from my own kids, so I tried to wear teacher hat and try to be rational when I know a parent in me want a super smart child, instead of just human child.

Conclusion:

We ll need help to lessen stress in our children’s life and our’s too. I am a work in progress and as I mentioned despite using pen name of Zengirl, I get un-Zen sometime, so I wrote this article for me to read when I need little motivation booster.

How do you keep your self or your child less stressed and more happy?

Image source:Stree Free Kids Curriculum

How To Stay On Track For Your Goals

Image source: monicaruns.blogspot.com

This is a edited re-post from my earlier blog post.

Have you set your goal? Once you have set the goal how do you achieve it? Finding ways to support your goals and making sure how do you stay on track to get to your desired road to your final goal destination.

Sometimes it is easy to get of the track and get of the path. Sometimes life comes in between, you know unexpected events or daily life things get in a way. I know I have been off goal track a few times, and I am sure I am not the only one who has gotten off the track.  The key is to get back on track to your goal as soon as possible.

Having clear goals with set of steps to achieve them surely will help. It seems simple and easy. But it is true, if we want to take control of where our life is going, we have to stop doing what is not working and start doing things you have been postponing for some day later.

Take a look at your life right now. Is where you want it to be? Can you change, improve it? What is your true personal value and what you want to be and do in your life? Knowing what you want and your values is big step.

Easy Ways How to Stay On Track

1. Be clear and know your core personal values and prioritize them.

Doing this step is important so that you will not do things outside of core values or ethics.

2. Look at your life to see what is working and what can be changed.

3. Set Clear and measurable goals based on previous steps.

4. Make sure your goals are balanced in life. Such as, do not set only money related goal and forget health or relationships. Make sure you have health, wealth and relationship with your final goal.

5. Follow or get mentor. Having a couch or mentor can help you clear your doubts and helps you keep in direction you supposed to go. Mentor can be a expert, a friend, a relative or hired expert. One does not have to spend lot of money to get right mentor.

6. Be with people who have similar goals. It has been said, we do get influenced by friends and family we usually hang out with, so be with right kind of people and with positive attitude.  If you can not find right people to hang out, join a community, organization or forum of similar minded people to reinforce the goal and its road to get there.

7.  Tell other people about your goal, write it down to make sure you are held accountable for your actions. It will keep you on track.

8. When things are getting off the track, ask yourself what is working and what is going right and do not focus on negatives. Making small changes towards goals will have gain you self esteem and motivation to keep going until you get to your goal.

Conclusion:

Sometimes life happens, we may get off the track of our goal. Having clear goals, mentor, a friend who held you accountable will steer you back to your road to your goals and back to track.

 

101 changes: Change 11 – Bring Out The Artist In You

Creative Paint Brushes

I am writing a series of 101 small changes that we can make to make the quality of our life better and build and lead a more happier life that is in tune with our heart and mind. These are small changes that I have made and am working on right now, so I know they are possible for anyone to do.

If you have not read previous posts, check out a few posts on the changes from the past:

101 changes: Change 1- Reduce Drinking Soda

101 changes: Change 2: Getting to email Zen

101 changes: Change 3: Slow down- Slow blogging movement

101 changes: Change 4 – Plant something

101 changes: Change 5 – Smile when you wake up

101 changes: Change 6:: Read a book – Benefits of reading

101 changes: Change 7 – Watch less Television and Be more productive

101 changes: Change 8 – Stretch your comfort zone

101 changes: Change 9:  Drink to your health- Benefits of Drinking Tea

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There is little artist in ALL of us, yes you too. Even if you think you simply can not draw, or write or tell poems, stories, tall tales or any other type of artist ability, think again as we all can be creative artist in our own ways! Let me show you how.

So what is Artistic Ability?

Artistic ability to think and work creatively, that means, create something new out of ordinary. It simply could mean, drawing what you feel, writing or telling something you feel passionate about, something you abhor about. It could mean using something in unexpected way, such as broken chair in to plant stand, making new recipe from leftover and so on.

Not only I think that way but many experts also seems to feel that all of us some type of artistic ability in us, we just need to encourage it and see it in us, believe in it.

What is considered Art?

When thinking of art, many people think of Paintings and famous artist such as Van Gogh and Picasso. While painting is certainly art, but it is not ONLY art in life. Here are some other talent that may fall under “art” or “artistic ability”.

  • Painting
  • Sketching
  • Writing short stories, novels (fiction and non fiction)
  • Poetry
  • Music (playing, listening)
  • Telling stories, making speech (we all do that!)
  • Cooking, creating minor adjustment with ingredients to creating to new recipes
  • Photography
  • Landscaping ideas
  • Being frugal can be creative hence artistic (saving money sure takes creativity)
  • Making Money (also creativity certainly helps)
  • Making crafts design such as jewelry, pottery, clay, sand design and so on
  • Reading can be creative as well as it gives us new thoughts

As one can see being creative and being artist goes hand in hand. It is not only that we all do that, it also helps us cope with life’s up and down!

Creative Artistic are Born or Made?

Now many may ponder are we born creative or artistic or that is something we learn over our life time. Is that something you just do, or is it spiritual part of journey? If your parents were artistic does that mean, you will have higher chance of being artistic or creative?

While I am not sure about hereditary or spiritual part, I do know one thing for sure, all of us are born with creative ability or artistic ability in us. Some of us practiced it well and know how to use it, for rest of us, we need to tap and bring out the artistic side hidden behind our daily and busy persona.

Some people’s profession demands creativity and artistic expression such as musician for example, however if you are an accountant with desk job or busy housewife like myself, we can still use and believe in our artistic ability in our life.

How do you See Yourself?

We all human beings (and also other living beings) are mixture of our experience from childhood, friendship, books we have read, movies we have seen, music we listen to and people we see and hang out with. All these experience creates memories in our brain. Our brain’s memories and our perception of make us who we are; sometimes we have memories and experience of being creative, sometimes, one or both of parents, teacher have shown us that we have artistic side to us hence we tend to think “I am creative” or “I am artistic”. If our experience are different then we may think of ourselves to “I am not creative type” or “I can not do art”. But you see that is not who we might be as all of us some creative side inside us, if our parents, teacher, or friend’s memories did not show it, let’s show it our brain or mind that we are; because I am telling you that you are creative!

How to Increase your creative side or artistic ability?

So, how do we cultivate or bring about increasing our creativity or artistic ability? I consider these few tips will help bring out our hidden creative and artistic side out in open; Try it and let me know if it works for you or if you want to add suggestion of yours.

Simple Tips to Be Creative:

1. Listen to your Heart:

Oftentimes, we are bombarded with expert suggestions from Media such as Television, Radio, News Paper, Magazines and Advertisement. You may listen to expert advises, celebrity idols, friend or family’s opinions, but listen to your own gut feeling and go with what you feel is right. True friends and family will love you even when you do not choose what they said. Media and celebrities will not care, as they do not know us personally. Follow your heart or gut feelings.

2. Limit Choices:

In preschool and kindergarten, when kids were given more than 2 choices of snacks, they felt confused and unable to make choice easily. Same thing happens to us adults too, so limit the choice to choose from to minimum of 2 or most at 3. If you have many choices, cut down to 2 or 3 semi final choices to choose from.

3. Have routine but not schedule.

Having familiar routine to follow is re-assuring for kids and adults alike. For example, when I do not follow routine of writing on blog, it falls apart. Having schedule posts is sure ways to kill creativity, as it can not be forced.

Have routine and spontaneity in life no matter what you do, be it cooking, creating art, or music but do not have rigid schedule to kill your enthusiasm. Being creative works when we feel free and freedom to choose!

4. Do Not be Perfectionist

I know this very well, as I used to be one! my 6 year old is going through this, as he is taking piano class, he gets very upset when he does not play perfectly, even though he has learned the new song just 5 minutes ago! We are working on it. Being perfect kills creativity as goal of creativity is never to be perfect but to create something new out of ordinary. As I mentioned earlier, creativity works best when we are feeling free, and being perfect is not freeing!.

Just try to do your best, give your energy 100% to task which may or may not perfect, but it will be creative.

5. Forget Trends and Follow your passion:

Trends and fads are temporary! They maybe popular today and gone next day! When we try to follow other people’s success story, it simply does not work. When I left my six figure income to be home, it certainly was not popular in my friends and family and even I doubted my own heart occasionally thinking am I wrong? I might be bit poor compared to my working and making money from blog friends but I am certainly following my heart, if not my passion. This goes back to tip #1 that listen to our own gut feeling.

You can be artistic in making wood furniture or renovating old furniture, one does not need to be Picasso to be creative or an artist.

6. Create your future, forget past

Many of us get lost in past, including myself. It may sound silly, but we let our past dictate our future. For example, I have not published any fiction since being rejected from publisher when I was teen. I have since then published a few non fiction in magazine and books but my fictions I am scared to share. I am blocking my own creativity and working on changing that. If you also want to bring out creativity, forget past, create new you based on what you feel today.

7. Practice artistic creativity:

If you think you are not artistic or want to improve your artistic ability, practice. Practice makes things better. Sometimes having support from family member, friend, teacher or co-worker can boost us further in creativity, in addition to those support, we can also practice and support our own brain memories to help us realize our own creativity. Here are a few simple ways to practice being artistic;

  1. Get inspired, see people and things around you in new ways.
  2. Visit art museum, look at the painting, sculpture. Tell a tale about painting to a friend who was not there, write down short paragraph on the art itself, or draw something based on what you saw.
  3. Write a letter (not an email) to a friend or uncle who lives far away. Tell them what you have been upto and what are you working on.
  4. Look at people, kids and imagine funny joke or story based on what you saw. Find humor, irony or heart touching thoughts from those moments.
  5. Think of dreaded question of “what is for dinner?” by thinking of creating something out of leftover or decide where to go to eat by thinking creatively.
  6. Write down or think about questions that can not be answered in “yes” or “no”, by asking open ended and thought provoking question to yourself such as: “what do I like to do when I am free”, “what is my passion”, “what was best moment in my life?” and so on to increase creative thinking process.
  7. Combine ideas, when you and other person have different thoughts you can sometimes combine thoughts or ideas to not only compromise but also create totally new solution that may work for both of you.
  8. Write daily journal. It does not have be fancy, or only for your eyes. Writing your thoughts down will help you formulate your own thoughts. Create little stories to share your day and read them later just to see how far you may have come along since early days.
  9. Look at clouds, trees and your own doodle when you were bored to find shapes, and images just for fun!
  10. When unable to make a choice, think out of box to see how many other ways solution or resolution can be made? how many will work in reality?
  11. Be around people who you think are creative, artistic and positive influence. If you can not find such people, you can read about creative people in books, biographies to learn from them.
  12. Believe in yourself. Our mind is very powerful, it will manifest future you think, so think positive.

All of us have creative side, by believing in ourselves and listening to our own heart, all of us can be an artist and creative genius in our own way, without being famous! So go today and explore your artistic side!

Zengirl

Image source: freelance folder.com

7 Ways To Motivate Learning In A Child (or An Adult)

Education does not have be boring for anyone, otherwise learning does not happen!

All of us learn new things when we are having fun, and schooling is no different. Many Indian and other parents start teaching kids at home way before preschool age. When I teach or share knowledge with younger kids, they are like sponge, they absorb everything and naturally curious about things. Somehow many kids and adults lose that natural curiosity as we grow older and we focus on getting scores or passing instead of learning.

There is also another issue with education that, not all kids will fits in regular standard curriculum levels. For example, some kids may be reading at 3rd grade level and 2nd grade science level when she is in 1st grade. How do you go about teaching that child in regular system without her getting bored? Homeschooling or Independent studies might be one option to let a child learn at her or his level.

I do not write much about homeschooling here, but Patty and other readers comment encouraged me to write about various topics in my life here. Even if you do not homeschool your kids, or have kids yourself yet, this post might help you motivate any child or even yourself to learn new things and keep you motivated.

7 Ways to Motivate Learning:

Here are 7 ways I have found to motivate learning in a child (or an adult). These tips are written with homeschooling child in mind, but I am sure it will be applicable to public or private school going child as well. While, my experience is teaching younger kids, I hope these tips will work for teenager’s education as well.

1.  Do Not Compare:

Comparing your child with another child of same age might be tempting but it will not flourish the young mind. All kids and adults have unique talents and we all work at our own pace. It will not matter if 7 year friend’s child knows how to read piano music or 4 year old neighbor kids can ride bike without training wheel. Kids learn best when they are ready to learn. That is what Sadbury method or Jiddu Krishnamurthy methods have been working for many kids.

2. Competition Free Education:

We are always pitted against our peers to compete in many subjects since we are born. Schools and colleges are big examples for it with grades or being best student. There is no win win situation as there can be only ONE person who can be 1st, rest of kids may feel dejected. While healthy competition can bring out the best in some kids, in majority time, competition kills the enthusiasm, specially for someone who keeps being second best. Learning is a process and it should be treated as a result.

3.  Memorization is not Real Learning:

Many educational system may encourages memorization and while kids seems intelligent, most kids forget what they memorized during summer break. Any memorization without real understanding will not take deep root of understanding, and hence will not remember what they have learned tomorrow. I am one of these prime example of it as I do not recall what I have learned in my engineering classes but I do recall what I truly understood things and had interest in it. If you have passion for something, you will retain the knowledge much longer.

4. Rewards for Simple Tasks are not needed:

Our current educational system is quick to punish and quick to give rewards for small achievement. Many experts think they are actually hindering the learning process and I agree. Giving Physical reward is different then showing encouragement to a child. When a child is shown a reward of food or new toy, learning is not goal but finishing the task to get a reward becomes the main goal and learning stop. Our mind is like a parachute, it works only when it is open. Child should learn something because there is an interest in it, not because of the reward.

5. Do not blame child for failing:

When a child has failed in learning new concept or old one, do not blame him or her. Do not even blame system. Try to find out the root cause of the failed issue. You may want to step back and take a break or see it from new perspective. Sometimes, child may have certain way to learning style that may be different from teacher’s teaching style. We all learn different way such as some learn better by visually seeing, some learn best for listening the step by step process and some of us learn best by actually trying our hands on it. Find out your child’s learning style. There might be some other issues or simple things that may make understanding the subject easier. Before you blame anyone, try to find the main cause and fix it and love and joy of learning will be back in the child.

6. Learning does not have to be expensive:

Many Asian Indian and other education minded parents spend fortune on kid’s private school, software, special tutoring programs and books. One does not have to spend lot of money for learning to happen. There are lot of free to cheap resources such as public library, PBS station, a few online websites and daily living can be part of learning.

For example, young kids can be taught colors when you fold your laundry, you can point out colors. Teaching shapes is easy as our own home or apartment have furniture, door, clock in various shape. Talking to grandparents or neighbor can make kids and us learn things from different time. My kids learn old mythical stories from his grandparents. Learning can happen anywhere, anytime. It is not confined to school or 9-3 time. There are many ways to finance your education if you are homeschooling or supplementing public school education.

7. Non Traditional Ways of Teaching and Learning:

My mom was a teacher and writer so she taught us at home, when we came from school and learning happened without us knowing that it was education. Learning happens when are having fun. For example, if your young child loves only cars, how can you teach math, history and science with it? It is possible, and it is called Unit Studies. In Car unit studies, you can learn history by learning and reading about early transportation such as first car, you can add cars or take away cars game to teach math. You can teach colors by different colors of cars. Science can be taught by if metal cars sinks and plastic car sinks or not for younger children. For older children, one can learn how car engine works to teach science or technology.

If you or your older child likes Harry Potter then there are Unit studies ideas for that also, such as here.

Keep Learning! and Keep it Fun!

Your Turn: How do you keep yourself or your child motivated to learn new things?

Image Source: Parenting Magazine

How to Handle Life Setbacks : 7 Tips for Stress Free Living During Stressful Event


Photo Source: Brittany Bush


It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over.
Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892 – 1950)

Only thing predictable about life that it is unpredictable

We can plan for our lives, when to get married, when to have kids and when to retire. Planning is great and having back up planning is better, as life always does not go according to our plans. I am sure mine does not and I am sure it is true for all of you as well.

Last Friday (Jan 21st), something happened and my whole Heart and Mind content from hosting site and everything got deleted and I could not see anything when viewing my site. I still am not sure what caused the whole database for heart and mind to be deleted but we called Bluehost, my hosting company and they have complimentary data back up and my content and site were back up in about 2 hours.

I lost some of my comments, my replies and any changes and updates I made in last 5 days though. So, if you made any comments in last few days before Jan 22nd, it might be lost with my own replies and changes. I suppose at least most of the content is back up.

It is scary to lose everything you have written in 18 months, all of your hard work going nowhere. While I hope none of you have to go through thing like that but if you face life’s set back, here are a few lessons I learned might help you through it.

Tips to handle Life’s Setbacks

1. Have a realistic plan for life. That means setting goals that are reasonable and achievable. Small goals and short terms goals are as important as long term and bigger goals. Bigger goals can be broken down in chunks for easier plan.

2. It is good idea to have back up plan to fall back on. Let’s face it, life does not happen always as we plan and as we like. Having a realistic plan sure helps but having a back up plan is sure way to keep sanity and something to fall back on when need arises.

3. Take a break when something drastic happens, do not make a decision when your mind is in tension. When we are panicking, we are not going to make best decisions in life so wait until our mind is clear and we are thinking logically to make life changing decisions as we will bound to make choices out of emotions and not logic. Mind is like a parachute, it only works when it is open.

4. Take care of your self when things are down. Taking care of ourselves is last thing in our mind, when we are looking for solution quickly but unless we are well, we will not be able to help ourselves or anyone else in that matter. Like in plane emergency situation they say to put a oxygen mask on yourself before putting on your children, you can not save anyone unless you save your self first.

5. Have support of people and other hired expert when we do not know the answer. I am not tech savvy, so I had to ask Bluehost people to suggest what to do. You can do that with any situation when we are not sure about what to do. In other situation, such as plumbing or electric sparks in house is not the time to save money and fix it yourself (unless you already know how to do it).

6. When life give you a problem, think of what is the worse that can happen because of it? Then try to improve upon the situation. It is not all bad. In my case, I would have lost everything as I had not done back up, but I could always start again from zero again and thinking of that and improving the situation from it made it much easier for me.

7. There are always worse situation and people are in worst situation then you are, now that may not change the situation at the hand but it sure puts things in perspective. There are a few things that can happen to any of us, regardless of age, gender, nationality, race or how much or how little money or things you have, all of us are equal when disaster strikes. We all go through same things, it is how we perceive and act during the time that makes difference.

We all wish life can be rosy and peachy always for everyone, including ourselves. When things are going great enjoy it and when things are down, improve upon the situation slowly. Life is all about learning new things.

I hope using this 7 tips, your life during stressful event can be stress free as much as possible. Until we know and learn how to stop disasters in our life, next best thing we can do is to minimize the damage and still live the life we meant to live.

Zengirl

Note: I have lost all contents including readers comments in my database meltdown between Jan 17-Jan 21. I apologize for comments and content being lost, if you like you can please leave comments again. And be safe and please back up your data always.

101 changes: Change 4: Plant something

I am writing a series of 101 small changes that we can make to our life quality better and build and lead more happier life that is in attune with our heart and mind. If you have not read previous posts, check it out below.

101 changes: Change 1- Reduce drinking soda
101 changes- Change 2- Getting to email zen
101 changes: Change 3- Slow blogging movement

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Even if you have never planted something your entire life, you can plant something small to start this season. Try it, I know I have been a plant destroyer in past, either I watered too much or watered too little and when my dear plant failed to thrive, I felt so sad. I learned slowly with my mom and Zenguy who are better gardner than I am. If I can overcome it, I know any one can.

Continue reading →

Screw productivity : at least for a day

Source: iqwolf.org

We all have our “to-do” list, life to live, work at office, and at home. Rushing to and from meetings, social gatherings, cooking, dishes, and other everyday mundane but needs to be chores leaves many of us exhausted by the nightfall. I have been always getting done and making list, and usually organized person but I have learned a life lesson finally that some times, you just have to let perfection and productivity go and enjoy the moment.

We are also constantly trying to improve our life, productivity, ourselves. There are tons of books on self help and productivity improvement in the market. We are often obsessed with constantly improving ourselves, myself included. Most of the time, rightly so, however, maybe we should ditch all those list for just one day, and refresh by not doing anything on your list today.

This weekend, I single handedly managed to screw up our whole weekends plan by doing absolutely nothing on my to-do list, unknowingly of course, and we survived. For one example, I planned a local museum outing for kids on Sunday, but Zenguy and I watched a movie in late night and slept late on Saturday night. Next morning we woke up late, had late breakfast and did everything late and lazily. Finally we decided to drive late to museum only to realize that they will be closing in 40 minutes, by following winter time schedule. That did not leave much time to explore with 2 small kids, so we decided to skip it completely and revisiting on later day with more time.

So, now we had a long drive to and back from museum without any fruitful outcome that I envisioned, I was livid  at myself, as a generally organized and planned person that I am. But you know what? Little P, got to take much needed nap during our drive back, R got to see different part of town. We detoured our plan by filling gas in a van, grocery shopping and eating at our local favorite hangout and we managed to still have fun. Of course, apart from my hurt ego, everyone was okay. Lesson learned, ditch your plans sometimes and go with flow.Who knows you might survive, might even have fun and recharge yourself for your next day’s to-do list.

Go ahead, try it.

This should work for most cases other than life threatening emergencies, so decide first before having a lazy moment or day!!

Have you ever lost your productivity by chance and still things worked out? I would like to hear your stories.

Zengirl