I Watered What Watered Me - Small Changes Can Have A BIG Impact

I’m all for big resolutions, new beginnings and goals that are awe worthy, BUT I’m also a mom of 2 kids under 3, I have a full time job, a husband and I’m still not getting consistent sleep through the night so… anything major seems overwhelming. Too overwhelming. So amongst all the other New Year, New You posts that are inundating our IG feeds - I did a hard stop on a post where someone shared - in 2023 “I watered what watered me.”

Her list of 2023 highlights of what made her life easier was a wonderful reminder to myself that small resolutions can have BIG impacts on our daily lives. So, if you’re in my boat, where anything BIG just seems too overwhelming, then continue reading to learn how small can actually end up being really impactful (maybe even BIG)!

You know what her little changes were? Buying a bunch more phone chargers because she was terrible at charging her phone regularly, quitting the gym and committing to walking outside daily, buying a weekly pill organizer (and using it), amongst a number of things that she either invested in, scaled back or just quit altogether. And ya know what - the things that she did felt EXACTLY like where I am right now in life.

To kick this all off - and this is an easy one. What are your regular pain points?

Is it that you hate the pile of laundry that always piles up in that one spot on the floor? Do you also struggle with a fully charged phone? Or maybe partaking in any type of exercise just fills you with dread?

Write them down - write down all your weird, annoying pain points - then, because you’re a smart human, what is the easiest/simplest/most deliciously smooth way to execute making these pain points disappear? 

Here’s a few that are on my list -
- I hate my husband’s pile of pj’s that consistently end up on the floor on his side of the bed (the side of the room that you see first mind you). I’m going to buy a basket that slides under our bed that he can just drop his pj’s into so that I’m not seeing that first thing every time I walk into the room.

- I am frustrated by my lack of consistent daily movement, as my day gets going, I find it becomes easier and easier to just let exercising slide. I’m going to buy all the seasons of Game of Thrones and put an episode on in the morning before my kids wake up and do steady rowing til they get up. Because that would make me feel SO MUCH BETTER as I get my day going and it’s something I will look forward to.

- I am infuriated by the cup holder situation in my car. This may sound asinine, but there is not one cup holder in my vehicle that can hold my oversized water bottle. Thus periodically leaking water on seats and with driving, heaving it to the floor to annoyingly roll around. No more! I am going to buy cup holders that can hold extra large water bottles and put them in my car.

- Our medicine drawers are a disaster. It is the one cabinet in our kitchen that is narrow and deep and when you need to get to something it almost inevitably involves pulling everything out. Solution: Watching a 5 minute YouTube video on how to install pull out drawers, ordering the parts on Home Depot.com for store pick-up and setting aside an hour or two to install them.

And I queried my husband to see what his top annoyances were. Can you guess that things that I do are at the top of his list? 

- I steal his phone and computer charger all the time. My office is in an odd part of our house that is not easily accessible so when I’m in the main part of our house, it’s easier to just use his stuff than go get mine. Solution - buy more chargers.

- I leave cardboard boxes near our garage door with the intent of breaking them down, but I don’t always get to it as quickly as he (or I) would like. Solution - moving our bins closer to our garage and buying a heavy duty box cutter to make it easier to break them down.

- My side of the sink looks like a feral raccoon has let loose face products, hair brushes, glasses, water glasses, coffee mugs… you name it, it probably lives on my side of our his and hers bathroom counter. So, I just use his sink, but continue to let my side be well… occupied. Solution: Another opportunity to put in pull out drawers and invest in some better under shelf organization. 

How this ties into the bigger picture, there are a few main areas where I’ve found that most struggling mom’s have pain points in:
1) Quick healthful meals.
2) Time Management - for themselves, their marriages, their families and anything else that has to be factored into our lives above the things that are already mandatory for daily execution.
3) Finances - the money stories that we tell ourselves may not be in total alignment with our partner’s and how money gets spent, where the value of “things” lies is a sticking point. It took my husband and I YEARS to get on the same page, so know that you’re not alone.
4) Mom guilt - feeling like you’re not living up to your own or others' expectations of you as a parent.

Now, if you could alleviate stressors in any of those areas over the span of a year - wouldn’t that make a HUGE impact for you?! Even if those changes might be considered by some as ‘small’?

To tie back to the statement that made me stop the scroll - water what waters you. What are some micro actions that you can take that move the needle 1 degree closer to your bigger goals for you, your family, your marriage?

Leave in the comments the pain points you have and if you want to do a power 90 minute session with me to work through some of your pain points in your life that you just want a resourceful sounding board to kickstart your year on the right foot, write ‘THAT’S ME’ in the comments and I’ll drop in my calendar link to book a time!