One of the most common questions I hear is: “How do I do all of these things to care for myself, and not sacrifice time from work or family?” It’s a legitimate question when you’re trying to balance a busy career and family life. The answer is planning, prioritizing, and laser focus.

You can prioritize your self-care, you can plan healthy meals, cook them, and eat them. You can do it all while still doing all the other things that are important to you. First, you need to learn how to stop self-sacrificing.

“I can’t fit one more thing onto my plate”

When you’re already stretched thin, it can feel like self-care is the last thing that you can handle. Like it's the one thing, that if added to your plate, or onto your to-do list, would take you down.

The key is finding a way to shuffle your schedule and make it all fit without sacrificing what is important to you. That is not an easy task. However, it's something that I've been really successful at helping my clients do. We have to take a good hard look at where you're spending your time, what your priorities are, what your goals are, and deep-dive into what's going on in your life.

I've made a commitment to myself, to prioritize my workout every day. Even if some other commitments or other balls that I'm juggling make me tired or make it to where I only have a few minutes to get it in.

Even when I don't think I can physically do it; I make myself do it anyway.

Here’s why:

I know if I don't keep my word to myself, I'm not likely to keep it to anybody else. I want my subconscious to trust me. When I set my goals, I want my subconscious to support me. When you create habits and you continually follow through, you build belief within yourself that you can do hard things. If you don't continue to follow through with the things that you tell yourself you're going to do, your subconscious will help you create doubt.

“How do I add all of these things and not sacrifice time from work or family?”

You can schedule things until you're blue in the face, and you can shuffle your schedule. But if you don't sit down and figure out what your goals are, and what is absolutely most important to you, you will fill your schedule up with less important thing. They just automatically fill in.

Have you ever had a gap in your schedule and then at the end of the day, you can't figure out where that time went? If you don't intentionally plan it, if you don't intentionally fill it, that time will fill itself and it usually fills itself with things that aren't very productive, or at least not the things you need to be doing.

Get very clear on your goals, get very clear on your priorities, and get very clear on where they rank, which ones are the most important.

“How do I get my family on board?”

You are already the leader of your pack. Lead by example and don’t complicate it. Finding recipes and activities that help everyone to feel included is the first step. The next step is to show them how good you feel and how good they feel when you all make healthier choices.

I've found that most of my clients get a less than positive response when they announce to their family, “We're going to get healthy!”. So just lead by example and keep your mouth shut.

Maybe not everyone likes to exercise. Instead, find something that you can do together as a family that is active and fun, and doesn't feel like work. Then show them how good you feel, and how good they feel, when you all make healthier choices.

Make sure you point out to them how awesome and strong they feel when they're doing certain activities, or how great they don't feel if they overdo it on sugar. Don't be afraid to point out that belly ache they had on Thanksgiving night because they had a lot of pie or other things that they don't normally eat. Be careful not to make it too negative, just point out the cause and effect. Don't be afraid to point out that, our body feels good when we put healthy things in it and when we do healthy things with it.

They do what you do, not what you say, use it to your advantage. Say less, do more.

Show them through your actions, that exercise is important to you, taking care of yourself is important to you. If they watch you do that, they will download an imprint on their psyche that it's important to take care of yourself and your body. It's important to feed yourself healthy things. It's important to go to bed and get good rest.

At the end of the day, it can feel like you've got all these balls in the air and just can't quite fit anything else in. I would encourage you to take a look at the balls you're juggling and make sure that you really do need to have them all in the air at the same time. Then, I would also encourage you to share what you're dealing with, with your tribe, and allow them to share it with you.

It can feel overwhelming. It can feel like you just keep failing. The only way you're going to succeed is if you get back up and keep trying. Learning how to stop self-sacrificing means getting back up, taking one step at a time, one day at a time, and one ball at a time. If you watch someone juggle eight objects in the air, they're usually only touching one at a time in each hand.

You can juggle all these things. You can choose healthy.

You can bring your family with you and they will support you.

If you would like more suggestions or just don't know where to start, shoot me a message. DM me @hdtransformations on all the social platforms, or click here to schedule a time to figure out how to get you juggling all the balls and smiling too!!