There are endless writing lessons for us to learn. As writers we are constantly practicing our writing, improving our stories, and honing our craft. The entire world is our teacher if we allow it to be!
As Sivananda Saraswati said:
“This world is your best teacher. There is a lesson in everything.”
It can certainly be true that some of our greatest lessons can come from unlikely sources! We can all be learning wherever we happen to be at in life. Having two young girls is a big part of the adventure that is my life these days so I thought I’d share some of that with you all today 🙂
Priorities
There are countless things I’ve been learning (or trying to learn!) in my life these days but most of them are related to the concept of priorities. A priority is when we make a judgement call over what is most important and is defined as “something given or meriting attention before competing alternatives.”
There are several ways this plays out in our lives and with our writing. And when our lives are busy (for example, when we are parenting crazy small children) these priorities are even more important…
Lesson 1: Recognize What Our Priorities Are
What if you could only get one thing done today? What would you choose?
This is a question I ask myself regularly these days and it can transform how I approach my tasks.
Having priorities in place is vital because frequently only one or two items will get checked off my to do list before I need to rush kids home for naps or someone has a meltdown. (Let’s just hope the meltdown wasn’t me 😉 ) So if only one thing gets done then I should probably make sure it’s the most important thing. (ie: Maybe I should go to the grocery store for milk before getting distracted at the library…)
Sometimes it’s exhausting to constantly evaluate which things should be done first, to be differentiating which things are needs and which are wants. It would be nice to just do things in whatever order we feel like it… only then we run the risk of not getting the things that really matter accomplished.
The practice of identifying priorities has been forcing me to think about what my values really are. It is helping me see clearer which things are part of my life for a reason and what things I may be doing just because “that’s what everyone else is doing” or “that’s the way I’ve always done it.”
Prioritizing helps us weed out the extra so we can focus on what we really need in our lives.
For us writers, identifying and claiming our writing as a priority has power.
When we state that our writing is important to us, maybe even more important than some of our other activities, we are proclaiming its significance and value. And once we affirm that our writing is a priority that means we should be acting on that judgement call and making time for it.
We will never have time to do everything we want to do. But we all have things in our lives that are important to us.
Take a moment to think about the top things that you want to be making a priority in your life these days.
Lesson 2: Be Organized (at least somewhat!!)
The stories of mothers having “baby brain” have some truth to them, only I’d call some of it pure sleep deprivation and trying to keep everyone alive. These days my mind is all over the place and constantly distracted. I’m realizing that I’ll forget almost anything that isn’t written down. (Anyone else out there or is it just me?)
Everyone has different ways of managing and organizing their lives. Your system may look different than mine and we don’t all need to be compulsive goal setters just because I may lean that way.
But in order to be pursing our priorities we need to be at least somewhat focused. Time needs to be set aside and it helps to have some sort of writing plan. And for me and my writing this means I need to be writing things down as soon as I can when I think of them.
That cool idea I thought of while washing the dishes? Totally forgotten unless it gets written down soon. I need to be intentional in keeping my writing from getting lost and forgotten.
Lesson 3: Use The Time We Have Well
I will always have more things I could be doing with my time.
I bet you do too! The possibilities and the tasks before us are endless. However, instead of letting ourselves get overwhelmed or resentful, we can be changing our mindset to focus on using the time that we do have well.
Do we have five minutes while brewing coffee? Ten minutes here or twenty there? The key is to be using those moments and focusing on our priorities instead of zoning out or scrolling through the internet on autopilot. Even if these spare moments are used for other needed tasks, this can free up more time for us to have later. Five minutes every morning may not seem like much but we’ll be that much closer to our goals.
Whether it’s writing or other tasks that have to get done, we can harness the moments we have.
Using these small bits of time really adds up in productive ways! And there are tricks and techniques to use this time well.
Now I’m not saying we should never have any down time or a moment to ourselves to just chill.
Taking time to ourselves is important for our own mental health and well being so we need a good overall balance. (Self care should be one of your priorities btw!)
Lesson 4: Set Firm Boundaries
Having healthy boundaries in place is vital for our mental health. This is always important and has only become more evident to me since having children. It’s far too easy for me to become busy and over extended!
We need to protect our priorities and make sure other things aren’t getting in the way.
For example, my kiddos can stress me out sometimes and not getting enough sleep can wear me out. This means that protecting my mental and physical health is more important than ever. I need to actively ensure I’m taking time to myself, journaling, and doing other wellness activities not only for my sake but for for theirs as well.
My kids can also provide me with added motivation to actually stand up for these boundaries… plus they give me a great excuse when needed 🙂
Setting boundaries for our writing is important because this writing time won’t happen by accident.
There will always be things clamoring for our attention. Setting boundaries to prioritize our writing will enable that it doesn’t get pushed aside and forgotten. And setting boundaries to care for ourselves will enable us to be much better writers and better people in general.
So there you have it! A few writing and life lessons that I’ve been learning from my kiddos. What kind of life and writing lessons have you guys been learning these days?
