Looking to capitalize on your summer break time?

Simply trying to find a balance between DOING and RESTING?

This blog will help you tick BOTH boxes!

While I MOST DEFINITELY recommend SLOWING DOWN over the summer, I also know how planning and preparation eases stress and makes my school year run more smoothly too!

Knowing that some of my time and energy is going toward reducing the crazy pressure of the school year is just one of the tools in my mental health toolbox.

I’ve broken my list into four “themes”: practice, exploration, organization and planning.

Practice

Summer is a great time to try out new things and build your skills. For one thing, our looser time table means that it’s ok if the things we’re doing take a little longer (as new things often do). For another, the slower pace means we have more time to experiment with what works FOR US and what doesn’t.

1. Recipes:

Try out some new ones! Find some new meals that you like and get familiar with them. It’s always great to have new meals to work into the standards you’re already used to!

2. Meal Planning:

Practice prepping food for the week. Meal planning can take many formats – which is why practicing helps you figure out what format works best for you! Do crock pot meals work best for your family? Is it better for your schedule to wash and precut just the fruit and vegetables you’ll use for the week? Maybe just having your breakfast and lunches prepped for the week would make a difference.

Personally, I do some sort of combo: have meats picked out and thawed for the week, prep veggies and fruits, and make a couple of grab and go snacks/breakfast/lunches. This setup allows for flexibility in our schedule AND allows for my neurospicy brain to have choices (but not too many)

3. Movement:

Are you a yoga girlie? gym buff? walking guru? biking enthusiast? Don’t know – no worries! Try them out this summer and see what fits. Often times gyms will have discounts over the summer too.

What works better for you – working out in the morning, afternoon, evening? daily, every other day, three times a week? Play with it and LISTEN TO YOUR BODY. Notice what you like or what doesn’t fit and start to create a routine that YOU ENJOY! Movement should be NOURISHING for your body, not punishment 😉

4. Self-care:

What fills your cup? Self-care can take MANY formats. The only CONSTANT is that the activity or action should FILL YOU UP, not be an additional item on the To Do list. There are so many options.

Take meditation for example, you can guided meditation (where someone talks you through the time), moving meditation (where you walk slowly or stretch as your body needs through the time), silent meditation, meditation with music, meditation with candles/oils, etc. Experiment. Play around with it to see what lands best for you. Take this approach with whatever type of self-care you explore!

5. Routines:

Think about what habits you want to hold during the school year. Summer is a great time to play with timing, structure, order etc. of your routines.

Reflect on your mornings, evenings, and possibly even your lunch hour. Blocking and planning out these time frames with habits that fill you up and are designed to fit YOU will help you capitalize on these time slots during the school year too!

Explore

With more time on our hands, we can explore our area a little bit more. Explore your own neighborhood, but also explore the area around your work.

1. Resources:

Got a new curriculum you’ve been assigned? Have you had an eye on some non-fiction educational reading? Are there any podcasts you’ve been meaning to test out? Summer is a perfect time to explore these in a low-stakes way.

Get familiar. Identify likes, dislikes, challenge points, or strengths. Add sticky notes, annotate or interact with these materials in whatever way FITS YOU. This little exploration is a perfect example of taking it easy while also getting some productivity out of it.

2. Authors:

Do you prefer fiction? non-fiction? memoir? a little bit of everything? What type of writing do you enjoy reading most? Explore authors. Talk to your local library and check out their suggestions. Follow me on Goodreads and check out some of the books I read. Get on Booktok (tiktok) and read some of the suggestions there too!

3. Local trails:

GETTING OUTSIDE and connecting with nature is SO good for you. Find local trails (around home &/or work) that are easy to hop on and off. Not a huge fan of wild critters? Look specifically for paved trails. These are a nice compromise between being outside and not getting incredibly gritty and dirty.

4. Coffee shops:

I don’t know about you, but I LOVE me a great coffee shop. The coffee shop vibe of putting in some earbuds, grabbing a warm (or iced) beverage and being in public (but not being forced to socialize) is my jam. It’s a lovely little combination of being out and about while also getting some me time. It’s a great place to journal and prep too!

5. Supports (mental health):

Scheduling therapy, massage, Reiki, or whatever other practitioners you may connect with for your mental health can be extra challenging with our school work hours – not to mention making phone calls, figuring our paperwork, and doing any follow up that may be necessary.

With a more flexible summer schedule, its easier to do all of these things AND trying out different providers feels more doable too! Find what/who works for you!

Organize

This category has me thinking about organizing your space & your calendar. When you’re teaching, all of the other “in your face” things (like students) end up taking your time and energy. This means that many of the behind-the-scenes tasks can end up cluttered, disorganized, and back-logged.

1. Your phone:

Set boundaries. Create focus times and app limits on your phone (iphone – not sure what its called on android).

Personally, I’ve created app limits for my social media apps. After 30 minutes of use (collectively) for apps like Instagram, Tiktok, Facebook, etc., these apps will close out. Now, I can get to them if I absolutely NEED to, but it makes it A LOT harder to get stuck in a time warp of mindlessly scrolling and then ending up an anxious mess. I’ve also blocked out my mornings and evenings so there are MUCH fewer distractions coming from this tricky little handheld device!

2. Your house:

Essentially the same as number two but the home edition. Summer is a great time to go through your cupboards and dressers and clear out what isn’t being used. Be realistic! If you forgot it was there or haven’t touched it in three months – you DON’T NEED IT! My only caveat here is if something is seasonal.

Reduce the amount of *things* you have. Do you really need 20 pairs of blue jeans? Do your kids need to have thirty t-shirts? Often we accumulate so much that we aren’t even aware of.

For example, my kids have ONE stuffed animal bin. If it gets full, the only way we buy or gift more is by choosing to regift, sell, or get rid of the ones we have.

Have a rummage sale (yard sale). Donate it. Pass it on to family. Just don’t keep it. Every item you have is an item you HAVE TO MANAGE. The less “things” there are cluttering your space, the more space you have to breathe!

3. Schedule & calendar:

I love using summer to schedule out things like dental appointments, doctor appointments, chiropractic, massage, therapy, pet visits, tax appointments, vehicle maintenance, etc. Whatever meetings or appointments you know you’ll need during the school year, schedule them now. Worst-case scenario, you’ll have to reschedule. Best-case scenario everything is set up and will run like clock work.

Similar to above, I like to have a broad overview of three to six months…even then whole year if possible. By summer, most next year school calendars have already been made available. I’m talking jotting down all of the appointments and meetings you’ve handled, reviewing the school calendar (yours, your kids’, your spouses – if they’re different) and locking in whatever else is on your social calendar. Shit is OBVIOUSLY going to change, that’s a given…but having a rough structure helps me wrap my head around things a little better.

4. Your computer:

Go through your desktop and file folders. Again – clear out the clutter!! Organize files – on your desktop and/or in platforms like Google Drive, One Drive, etc. Make things easily accessible that you use often (star or favorite them). Create a “well-oiled” machine that will improve your efficiency.

5. Your classroom:

Go through those cupboards! As a new teacher I received “hand-me-downs” of whatever muddled mess previous teachers left behind. You DON’T need it! Double check with your administrative team to see if there are specific rules for recycling or storing what you’re looking to get rid of.

Believe it or not, clearing out the physical space helps reduce stress and open up more MENTAL space too. My shoulders feel lighter just thinking about it ☺️.

Plan

Time to dream here. Visualize what you want your year to look like. Think about last year. What caused chaos for you? What did you find yourself NEEDING more of? What did you need less of? Now think about how to factor this information in for next year.

1. To DON’T list:

Think about your previous year. What are practices, actions, habits, etc. that caused more pain than pleasure?

Off the top of my head I think immediately of being on my phone (social media especially) first thing in the morning. It had a HORRIBLE impact on my mental health and is a DEFINITE NO from here to forward (do people actually say this).

To me the “to DON’t list” is a form of boundary setting for myself. How do I “life-hack” myself? What do I need to say NO to?

This can be HARD! I LOVED coaching but knew that while some of it filled my cup, it was ultimately incredibly draining for me. This was one of the HARDEST nos for me…but I know it was what was best for me and my family 😥.

2. To do list:

Think about all of the above themes (practice, explore, organize). What have you found out? What works for you? What do you plan on DOING for the upcoming year? What practices, habits, or routines will you try to incorporate with consistency?

3. Vision Board:

Let’s get visual! This can be done on paper or digitally. Gather up some images that invoke the FEELING you want to have for the year. Add words/phrases you’d like to live by. Create a list of three values you want to place front and center in your world. Putting a vision board together is a way of getting SUPER CLEAR about what YOU WANT. Think of it as a culminating report of whatever chapter or unit you’ve just covered. This “report” helps you gain a DEEPER UNDERSTANDING of the learning you’ve just done and creates a much clearer path for your way forward! Check out my vision board.

4. Goals:

I listed this one last. If you’re a concrete type of person and writing out a goal improves your accountability, then go for it. I’m a little on the fence with this one myself, but I think it has to do with my fear of failure more than the efficacy of goal-setting 🫣. I prefer goals to be structured more as defined affirmations (like what I did in the image above).

I recommend doing 1 and 2 FOR SURE before goal-setting, but I think doing #3 will provide that clarity needed to set really purposeful and actionable goals.

Start with three goals. I like the idea of having a small goal (something maybe you’ve already dabbled in but want to become more consistent with). The second goal could be newish too but something that you’ve never REALLY put full effort into. The third could be one of the same OR it could be what I refer to as a STRETCH goal. Something that your heart has always secretly wanted but you’ve never had the guts to really go for.

Regardless of what types of goals you create, make sure they are goals that you have the MEANS AND CAPACITY to achieve.

For example, setting a goal to make six figures next year is just not achievable for me (right now). It would only serve to be discouraging and likely stop any movement in that direction. Instead, my goal is to do THREE TASKS DAILY (during the week) that build my business. This goal is focused on the consistency it takes to build towards financial gain versus solely looking at numbers.

Narrow your focus

Remember how at the beginning of the blog I said something about finding a balance between DOING and RESTING? Here is where I hammer that point home.

This is QUITE an EXTENSIVE list. By no means should you be trying to tackle ALL of this at once. As I have said many times, “Find what FITS YOU.”

Look through the four themes. Which of the themes would provide the biggest bang for your buck? Which theme is something that your mind, body, and/or schedule has been longing for?

Look through the list of each theme and apply the same strategy as above. Often starting small is the best way to start. Use discernment. Tune into the messaging of your own body.

The whole “goal” of this practice is to REDUCE stress and IMPROVE quality of life. Keep this goal front and center and adjust your course as needed.

Want some structure for this practice? Download my Vision Board & Goals Template freebie. It’s the same structure that I used for mine above. I’ve removed the images, headings and descriptions to enable you to ADD YOUR OWN. Plus you’ll be able to choose from three different color templates.

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Happy exploration friends! I’d love to hear what part of the list you’re tackling this summer and see the vision boards you create! Share on social or shoot me an email.

May we all find that ever elusive “balance”.

Talk soon!

E