Find Your Flow
My phone alarm vibrates at 4:45 am, then again at 4:57, and I'm up brushing my teeth, washing my face, and making my way to my desk. I write until my eyes go bleary and hop on my yoga mat, start the lesson on my phone, and practice. I start the kettle and grind the coffee beans, make two coffees, and sit down to tackle my messages and to-do lists while he heads off to work.
Two sleepy teenagers emerge slowly from their beds, and I feel the day really begins. They read in bed while I finish working, and then the day goes fast. Breakfast and books, a nature walk, a writing project, lunch with a documentary, a break to play outside, math and music, art and science or history, individual work, and then school's over for the day.
He comes home from work, and I take a walk or dig into a project, and then it's time for dinner. If it's a warm night, we make a campfire and turn on the grill, sit outside and talk while we cook together. If it's a chilly one, we close the door and cook inside instead while the boys enjoy a few video games. We eat together and watch The Great British Baking Show while we clean the kitchen, take showers, read books, write stories, or watch shows.
We read something together, talk and act silly, and drift off to sleep. Another day is done. More memories made. A delightful dance we share.
This is the flow of my family life on the slow, easy days where ritual, rest, and predictability are honored - the days when togetherness feels like a sweet dance.
And then, there are the other days.
The alarm goes off and I hit snooze too many times to count, rush to my computer and find my writing time is already gone. A frantic email arrives, and I'm stuck on the phone and computer for an hour troubleshooting. I burn the breakfast. We aren't into the book. It's too rainy for the nature walk. Math feels too hard. We spend hours out for dentist appointments. We have to make an unexpected trip to the grocery store. I get stuck on an endless Zoom meeting. A family member calls with a problem. The to-do list piles up and my blood pressure rises. The boxes don't get checked. The stories don't get read. We eat in a rush. The kids play video games way too long because I forgot when they started. We barely muddle through.
This is the flow of my family on the frantic days where ritual, rest, and predictability are lost - the days when togetherness feels like a struggle or a distant memory.
We have both. How about you?
Some seasons have more of the dance, and some have more of the struggle, and until recently I thought I didn't have a choice. Instead, it felt like I'd randomly get the dance or the struggle at the whim of the next wave of fatigue, harried email, or bad mood. And then I read a thing or two.
Every book I've read lately has mentioned daily flow, daily rituals, and family rhythms - how to get them, how to keep them, how to make life feel more like a dance, and less like a struggle.
So I've been taking notes.
In Simplicity Parenting, Kim John Payne praises daily rhythms as "islands of consistency and security" for children, with ideas for simplifying meals, schedules, and activities to make this happen more. On the book's website, families share how they create daily rhythms, food rhythms, and more.
In Big Dreams Daily Joys, Elise Blaha Cripe talks about the importance of keeping white space in our calendars, setting priorities, and planning the flow of our days, saying, "The point of planning isn't to schedule every moment of our days. The point of planning is so we don't have something to do every moment of our days."
In Mitten Strings for God, Katrina Kenison paints a beautiful word picture of her slow and easy days with her boys when they were little, sharing simple and easy ways to choose togetherness over busyness. She says, "Only by slowing down do we make time for one another . . . And just as our children depend on us for three meals a day, they also need us to prepare peaceful spaces in the midst of this busy world."
In The Charge, Brendon Burchard encourages those of us who want to walk through life fully awake, fully alive, completely ready for all we were created for to stop several times a day to take control of our daily flow by asking, "Where shall I focus my attention right now?"
As I write this, the coronavirus pandemic is still impacting so many of us around the world, giving us more time at home with our families than ever before but not necessarily more peace of mind or a better daily flow. (It's even throwing off schedules for many of us who stay at home full-time with our kids in non-pandemic life too.) And with summer coming to throw our schedules for a loop yet again, I thought I'd share my story.
After subjecting my family to more than our fair share of pedantic, scattered, flow-less days, I changed it up and found our flow.
Just like that - I decided to change the flow and found our days slowly shifting from the latter scenario above to the former. I pulled out a journal and sketched out a few daily scenarios, decided to choose my focus rather than allow it to be chosen for me by my emails or phone messages, and our days changed.
If your days have felt more like a struggle and less like a dance lately, you can change it up too. Here's how:
#1 - Grab your journal, calendar, or a blank sheet of paper and a pencil.
#2 - Write out your ideal daily schedule.
#3 - Turn the page and write out a realistic daily schedule that may not be ideal but would feel like a family togetherness dance.
#4 - Highlight or underline the priority items and non-negotiables (the things you really want and need to do each day).
#5 - Find a way to fit all of the other stuff around those priorities.
#6 - Try it out. Day after day after day. Fail and start again. Keep trying.
#7 - Adjust as needed. (Summer's coming, so you may need a new one. I find that our flow changes about every 3 months. If you're looking for ideas, here's my family's Stay Sharp This Summer schedule from last year.)
Right now, the breakfast and books, dinners together, and lots of time outside are our non-negotiables, along with my writing and work and my hubby's work too. We make it easier by pushing grocery runs to the weekends, preparing ahead of time for family meals, and staying up late most nights to keep the emails and to-do lists at bay.
The dance doesn't work every single day, but it's working more and more, and I'm thankful for the family togetherness that's happening because of it.
What about your family? How do you set daily rituals and find your flow to keep togetherness feeling like a sweet dance?
Hop into our email group and shoot me a message - I'd love to hear your ideas!