5 Lessons you can learn about your health by watching your kids navigate their own pandemic struggles
All of my kids are officially back at school and while I can’t say being back at school is “normal,” it’s nice to have a little bit of our old lives back. I’m so thrilled that they’re back in school, but let me tell you, it was a special experience to have them home and to watch them learn and grow through a pandemic. In fact, I learned a lot about myself and my health by watching them navigate virtual learning and all the other craziness Corona has thrown at them.
I cannot say that I enjoyed virtual learning, but now that we’re on the other side of it, I can look back and see the progress we all made. I urge you to look back over the last few months and see the changes in your life. Are they positive or negative? If you’ve struggled with this year and are looking for a way to turn it all around and end 2020 stronger than ever, then don’t forget to register for my free summit!
Here are 5 lessons I’ve learned watching my kids struggle, grow and thrive during the Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020.
Change is scary no matter what
It doesn’t matter how old you are, or what stage of life you’re in, change is scary. Doing virtual learning was just as intimidating and scary for my kids as it was for me! This was not a situation we thought we would be in, but we had to keep pushing through and trust that things would get easier.
The same thing is true of changing your health. You are comfortable where you’re at now. You know what to expect and you may not want to give up some of the comforts you’ve surrounded yourself with. But with change comes growth. If you want to change your health then you have to keep pushing through and trust that your actions will produce the results you want.
The unknown causes our heads to spin
Change is hard, but the unknown is way worse. Think back to March when the world went into quarantine and we thought, “This will only last a few weeks!” Then, months passed and things didn’t seem to be getting better! The unknowns starting eating at us. Even now, with my kids back in school, there are still so many unknowns that we could get lost in our own heads if that’s all we focused on.
Maybe you’ve wanted to start a new weight loss program, but you don’t know what to expect or what it expected of you. The unknowns keep you stuck where you’re at. Instead of worrying about the unknowns, create a plan and start filling in those unknowns.
For example, you may not know how to start eating healthier, you may not know what foods are good or bad for you, but hiring a coach and letting her teach you, takes away the unknowns and gives you back the power.
Having a plan even if it doesn’t go that way is better than no plan at all
When our school district told us that we would be doing virtual learning, I knew it was going to be a challenge. I run my own business from home and am not used to having to help my kids during my work hours. I knew that if any of us were going to succeed we needed a plan. I created plans for each of my kids and for myself so that we could all do what we needed to.
But, plans don’t always go according to plan. One morning my six-year-old daughter was supposed to get on a Zoom call while I was on a work call and we went over how to log into Zoom and join the call so she could do it on her own. We were all set up and ready to go, but in the middle of my work call she came in and said it wasn’t working. I had to run out of my call and help her. We couldn’t log in at all. I told her we would skip her call that day and we’d try again later.
Then I went back to my call and all of a sudden I got a notification saying I didn’t have enough memory to run Zoom and my whole computer shut down. I frantically pulled out my laptop to try and get back on the call as all my clients sat there waiting for me to come back. I was mortified!
But in the end, we got everything figured out, I finished my call and my kids asked me how it went. I realized that while it was stressful in the moment, both my daughter and I were able to get back to the plan and finish our days strong.
A plan is the best thing you can have if you want to improve your health. When you have a plan, you know what you’re going to do and you don’t have to make last-minute decisions. When things get off track, you can get back on track because you know where the track is.
Life moves fast and too often we don’t pay attention to the little things that really matter.
One of the best things that my family started doing during quarantine was gong on family walks daily. We are a busy family. All three of my kids play sports year-round; sometimes more than one sport each season! We are fast-paced and we love it. But when everything shut down and all their sports were canceled, we had the time to focus on just our family, our health and all the little things that get lost in the cracks of life.
It’s good for our mental and physical health to slow down, to take breaks, to evaluate our priorities. A lot of times, we don’t realize how much stress we’re under and the effects it has on our health until it’s too late. If you want to be healthier, both physically and mentally, then take time often to slow down and evaluate how you’re doing. Where are your priorities? Are you spending time on the things that really matter?
Our health is truly the most important thing we have nothing else beats it.
When Covid hit, I wanted to learn the best ways to keep my family safe and healthy. What I learned was that people who ate well and exercised regularly were less likely to suffer from complications. I was so grateful that I had already made my health and my family’s health a priority. Because those “little” things were the best defense we could have.
Too often, we take our health for granted so often. We don’t go to the doctor until we’re sick. We don’t change our eating and exercising habits until we see weight gain or have a health scare. But in the end, we only have one body and we have to learn how to care for it to the best we can. We don’t want to try and get healthy when something goes wrong. We want to live a healthy life so that we are already on the defense.
It’s also never too late to prioritize our health. Every time you choose to eat the veggies or hit the gym, you’re making a choice to give your best to yourself and your family. Because Mama, you never know when a pandemic will hit. You never know when your kids will need you and you always want to be there for them.
You can start making your health a priority right now by registering for The Empowered Mama Summit. It’s completely free and will leave you with the tools you need to end 2020 the right way. To reset your priorities so that your mind is strong, your body is healthy and your family is loved and cared for. Register for The Empowered Mama Summit today.
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