Every year, every season, there is a spirit of reinvention in the air. Whenever a new year comes or a new school period starts, people talk about change. Why not bring Summer into the equation? As things wind down and new beginnings gear up, we have a tendency to slip into a lull. While rest is important, and really the whole point of summer, the three-month time period is also a great opportunity to get things done. Today's world is all about maximizing time and effort, but things get busy during the regular year. It's difficult to build a new life into your everyday one, especially with a million things to do.
There are ways to set yourself up for future success without exhausting all your resources, though; you just have to know when and how to implement them.
Why summer is the perfect time to reinvent yourself
For students, summer is a much-needed break from the stress and hard work of school. For parents, it's a break from stressed-out students. As a universal time for vacations and relaxation, summer provides all of us with a unique opportunity to take some extra free time to work on ourselves. While work may still be present, and responsibilities are always demanding, the longer days and break from extra-curricular activities that summer provides give more time for personal projects.
Developing a new routine
Reinvention is all about change, and a key component of change is the creation of new habits. They say it takes at least twenty-one days to make or break a habit. During the typical school year, there is far too much hustle and bustle for kids or adults to worry about a new routine. In summer, though, you have the extra time to add something new to your day consistently enough for it to become the norm.
It's not enough to create any new norm, though. Your new habit needs to be beneficial for you and/or those around you, whether that means taking the kids to the park every afternoon or taking a cup of tea and some private time every morning. The idea of a new good habit is to replace a bad old one. That's essentially the point of rejuvenation, to restore something to a better state.
Take something you do every day that you've never really felt good about, like sleeping too late or watching too much television. Replace that activity with something better and stick with it, without being weighed down by your usual stresses. Set the alarm for thirty minutes earlier; force yourself to wake up and stay up, even if you just spend the time looking out a window. Take a newspaper, magazine, or book to bed instead of a remote. Find something little in your everyday life to change, to make your everyday life better even after summer passes.
A cleansing movement
Again, one of the best things summer gives us is more time (even if only a little). More time can mean more exercise, more grocery shopping, and more cooking.
All kinds of non-ideal things build up in our systems over the year. The busyness of a typical school/business year usually leads to more eating out and less physical activity than is healthy. One of the contributing factors, a side-effect of busyness, is stress. Because stress is less prevalent in our everyday lives during the summer, it's the perfect time to detox and clear your system of all the built-up junk.
The internet is awash with refreshing detox waters and colorful healthy meals perfect for summertime. Take the extra time to try something new, something better for you than fast food or pizza. Another great thing about summer is that, because you're not as pressed for time, you have some wiggle room to experiment.
The kids aren't rushing off to school; you have time for oatmeal instead of toaster pastries. It's still light when you get home from work; there's time to put corn on the grill. Lots of fruits and vegetables are in season, and there's an excessive amount of Vitamin D. Summer is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of nature and cleanse the processed world from your system.
