Building Your House: Maintaining Your Foundation
Building your foundation isn’t a one-time event. Habits will slip and you will need to rebuild or perhaps even change them periodically. Your goals may change, forcing you to shift your foundation to suit them and what you may need at any given time. But if you’ve spent the time investing in a base foundation initially, these changes are maintenance, and not necessarily a complete reconstruction.
There are several key challenges and factors to building a foundation, that I won’t discuss here but I encourage you to read my other “Resilient Reflections” posts which go into further detail.
Quickly, 2 challenges most of us encounter when trying to start building a good, solid foundation are;
Lack of resources. I don’t mean money. Usually, it’s time.
Ability to commit. You’re afraid to commit the time and effort or you don’t know how to set boundaries for others and yourself to give yourself the time to commit to yourself.
Three key factors to building a successful foundation are to:
Get organized. Yep. Science continues to tell us clear or organized surroundings help with clarity of the mind.
Create daily routines. You probably already have some you don’t even think about. For example, every morning you walk your dog at 7 am. That’s a daily routine. Or the kids go to bed at 8 pm. Eat dinner at 6.
Make personal care a priority. This speaks for itself. If you aren’t healthy, you can’t contribute to a happy healthy life for yourself or others.
But the reality in life is that routines get upended, we have various reasons to change our routines. We make excuses for not pursuing what might take more work than we thought. We set new goals we may want to accomplish or even health concerns may come about that need to be addressed. And that is life. Change.
For example, over the pandemic I had a very different daily routine. I got up a little later than usual at 7, walked the dog, 2 days a week visited my mom, worked from 9 until mid day, kept the household running, went to physio, maybe grabbed a nap, and so on. Very consistent. When things opened up, everything changed. Earlier dog walk, get on the laptop to work, get my son back and forth to lacrosse, change the times to see my Mom, squeeze in the household duties in different times, find together time for my husband and I, and no nap :( lol! I mean it sounds menial but for me to function well, I nap because it forces me to stop. I tend to be a bit of a go-go-go kind of personality. And school hasn’t even started up yet!
So yes, cracks will appear in your foundation from time to time. What’s important is that you monitor them and fill or fix them before they become too big. I’m certain that when school gets going and the weather changes, I’ll adjust my routine a bit to accommodate what’s new in our daily lives.
With a solid foundation, it makes it much easier for me to adjust and make improvements in my business, continuing studies, health care or relationships. By knowing my priority and need to stay mentally and physically well, it’s easier. For me I know I have to walk the dog, I know I have to support my son in choosing universities and balance with school and lacrosse this year, I know my husband’s shifts ahead of time to plan, I know I have to see my Mom, and most importantly, I know how much time I need to keep healthy. A lot of priorities? Yes. But by knowing the must do’s in my life, I can adjust to support the ones I love and myself. And maybe not everyone is happy about what I can accommodate, but those are the priorities I need to set.
Once I get the go ahead to fully practice yoga again, I’ll shift my priorities again. I’m planning some goals in my professional life, within the yoga business and outside of it, and because I have a fairly stable foundation, I can focus more on my strategy for reaching these goals and not worry about whether I’ll have the time, self-discipline, or motivation.
Try and evaluate where you are with your foundation. Are you starting to build it? Are you shifting it? Taking the time to assess where you are is the first stage to building a happy, healthier foundation and life! And you must be willing to change and adapt as you go through life. The only constant is change.
