Where to start your 5 minute life

We're going to start exactly where you are now with exactly what you have.

This method will work no matter how you're spending your time.

This is the hard part because it's time to get real. This is a no judgement zone!!!

I’ll use my own breakdown of where I started as an example:

I spend a lot of time with my TV on. I'm not always engaged in it but it's on.

I started there.

After doing some research and some time with a stopwatch myself, this is the formula that I put together for myself:

Regular TV watching

On average there is about 15 minutes of commercials an hour. I know that some breaks are only about two minutes but some can be at least five if not six.

There are more than three breaks per hour but for My Five Minute Life, I went with saying three breaks an hour for five minutes.

It's not unreasonable for me to say that my TV is on 12 hours. With my formula that means….

12 hours with 3 breaks of 5 minutes each an hour…..I can get 36 tasks done in my day just by utilizing the commercial breaks.

36 tasks at 5 minutes each equals 180 minutes or 3 hours of getting shit done!!
Your breakdown can be based on whatever you do the most.

Streaming platforms

If you binge watch shows on a platform that doesn't have commercials, that's ok!! I’m a binge watcher so I totally understand. Start with 5 minutes between them. OR if you are using Hulu (my main TV watching) at the top left hand corner they tell you how many seconds you have in a commercial break.

I have made it a game to see how many things I can get done in a 90 second break. I may take a full 5 minutes and just rewind back to where the commercial left off.

Gamer

I am!! I am a huge gamer. Find a pattern in the game where you can sneak in a 5 minute break. This is going to take some discipline, I understand.

Everyone has to take a bathroom break or a break to eat. Start there if you need to.

It doesn't matter where you start as much as having the mindset of starting small new habits to get you where you want to go.

What do you start with?

I highly recommend starting with self care.

When I talk to people, many times they admit that self care is the last thing on their list or it goes out the window all together.

Self care went completely out the window for me over the years. Taking care of everyone else came first. I did not have the energy for myself after that.

Sound familiar? Stop that. :)

The other thing I highly recommend is to build yourself a physical list. When I say physical what I mean is, write them down.

Your list can be digital or paper. I use a combination of both. All I know for sure is that I have a really hard time remembering things that seem to be easy for others.

When living with chronic illnesses or mental health issues, this is common.

Don't be afraid to write down even the smallest thing if it's something you're struggling to remember.

What do I have on my self care list? Brush teeth, AM meds/sups, PM meds/sups, wash face, feet with tennis ball, feet with band (My feet are where I’m starting on my body work), reading, journaling. That gives you an idea of a few.

Some of those take 5 minutes or less and some do not. I was either not doing them or forgetting if I had done them. I needed a way to track that. (especially taking meds/supplements!)

I did not start with all of those. I started with just brushing my teeth beyond taking my meds/suppliments.

You can start with whatever it is that you need the most. Just one task is fine to get you started.

Do that one task until you feel confident that you’re doing it regularly and then add another task.

We’re not running a sprint, this is a cross country race… slow and steady will get you there.

A few other things about your lists.

DON’T stress if you can’t complete what you list every day. If it’s a tough day, only do what is critical.

DO decide what your most critical items are on that list and make those your base line for each day.

Example: If I do nothing more than remember to take my meds/supplements in the morning and at night, I've done enough for the day.

There are days like that more often than I like still, but it's a work in progress.

We're not looking for perfection, we're looking for progress.

We're going to use this same concept of adding in 5 minute tasks over time to get you whatever it is you want.

Does your home need attention? We can do that.

Want to make better wellness choices?
We can do that.

Have a dream to build a business?
We can do that too!

At my lowest, I had to focus on self care only. As time has gone on I have added more “areas” of my life.

My goal(s)? I have identified 5 areas of my life..
1 Self care
2 Home care
3 Homestead (my dream)
4 This blog (another dream)
5 A business in SecondLife (A virtual world) & it's blog

And that is the exact priority I put on each of them as well.

Will I ever have all of them at once running smoothly and effortlessly? I don't know but I'm going to give it my best to get there!

Where am I right now?
Working hard to make sure I get through my self care list as much as possible regularly.

Everything else is bonus.

What are your biggest self care struggles?

~Fero~

My 5 Minute Life: Managing ~ Building ~ Recovering 5 minutes at a time

Hey there!

Does the mud in your life make you feel stuck? Has depression taken over and now you’re spending your days lying on the couch watching TV or surfing the web mindlessly trying to escape?

I’ve been there more times than I like to admit. I’ve been in that mud hole of mental health since I was a child. The roller coaster of good days and then the next really bad.

Here is the story of how one of those really bad times changed my life.

I had tried over the years to ignore everything that was bad in my life in my first marriage. I faked being happy. I didn’t tell anyone around me how bad the abuse was at home. It wasn’t physical abuse so, no proof anyway.

Finally the verbal attacks started on our kids. That was enough. I filed for divorce.

It was not an easy divorce. I had nothing to fall back on. I had no income, no skills, no real support system from the family I had at that time.

My ex husband didn’t make it easy, it got to be too much. I decided suicide was the only answer. It wasn’t the first time I had thought about it. This time, I had excuses for everything. The kids would be fine with their father. Everyone around me would finally be rid of me and me being a burden to them.

I obviously didn’t follow through but it prompted my ex husband to immediately take me in for evaluation to be put into a mental health institute. He’d then get the kids and I’d be out of his life, and someone else’s problem.

I will never forget the man who saw through the bullshit the first time. He was a therapist from our county mental health department. He of course spoke to my ex husband about what lead up to me coming in and then he came and spoke to me.

I sat there downplaying, skirting around issues the best I could as he asked question after question. Then he surprised me.

He had asked me when I last had a break from everything. I stared at him. A break? I was a mom with 2 small children, who gets a break?
I'll never forget his words… “I think most of your problem is standing in the hallway.”

I broke down. He saw through the bullshit. He knew and I couldn’t hide it anymore. After finally getting to say what I really wanted to say he prescribed me 3 days of respite care in a local facility. I needed a break from life.

I wouldn’t have to think about anything for 3 days. They would tell me when to get up, when to eat, when to take medicine, everything.

It was my first night sleeping in that hard unfamiliar bed under itchy covers that I lied crying not knowing what to do next. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t function at all.

That’s when I decided I only wanted to live for the next 5 minutes. But I didn’t want to die this time. I ONLY wanted to live for the next 5 minutes. I’d worry about the 5 minutes after that when the first 5 minutes were over.

And that’s how I started living 5 minutes at a time. I lied there watching the clock until I finally fell asleep.

The next morning I woke up and felt a little better, I had survived.

I stayed the 3 days and then back into the same world I needed to take a break from.

I never really gave my 5 minute life another thought honestly until almost 18 year later.

My life that 18 years since that had been one mud pit after another. Chronic Illness had been piled on top of mental illness and then being a single mom with few skills was quite the struggle. Many of life’s hardships fell upon me.

I have so many stories I could tell you about those 18 years, it would make your head spin… it did mine.

Then in 2016 I had the biggest nervous breakdown of my life.

Everything came crashing down August of 2016. I snapped. It affected me not only mentally and emotionally but it also affected me physically.

I told Evil and the rest of my family I knew what I needed. I needed respite care. I needed to heal without any responsibility at all.

I have an amazing family now. Evil is a very supportive boyfriend and he has two wonderful teenage kids. I could not get through life without them. My daughter had a tough time because she had never seen her mom like this before.

I couldn’t think past a 3 year old I tell people. I felt like a child trying to remember anything. Everything felt new and I didn’t know how to do it.

At first the entire world, even our home was too big. It was too overwhelming and way too scary. I stayed in our bedroom unless I had to come out.

My social anxiety amplified to the point where I couldn’t leave my home. If anyone wanted to see me, not only would they need to come to our home but…. I wouldn’t leave the bedroom.

Those first few weeks I spend writing anything and everything down. I was scared, I didn’t know if I’d get my memory back enough to even remember something I had thought earlier in the day. Lists of what I was feeling, notes about things I wanted to talk to people about. If it crossed my mind, I wrote it down.

I was not getting better.

Again, I started crying and couldn’t leave the bed. That’s when I remembered my 5 minute life.

Give me 5 minutes without thinking. 5 minutes of peaceful thoughts. 5 minutes of rest.

Slowly the racing died down.

I looked around me and decided that I was going to start exactly where I was with exactly what I had.
I had 5 minutes to do anything I wanted.

I started to develop a plan of getting back on my feet both mentally and physically.

I have two systems I use together. One is a simple Red, Yellow, Green system to help me prioritize what needs to be worked on first and a 5 minute task system to keep me from getting overwhelmed.

These two systems together have taken me from FML - F*ck My Life to FML - Five Minute Life.

I have a whole lot I want to share with you about these two systems and how it has helped me become a pretty good momager now.

My family still continues to support me every day as I continue to grow stronger and overcome the things I need to overcome to achieve everything I want in life.

Right now the areas I’m building myself are home management and self care with chronic illness.

I’m slowly adding into my schedule: blogging, homesteading and developing a business in Second Life. I have big dreams! I’ll get there. I’ve already come so much further than I ever thought I would.

I want to help you achieve everything you want too. 5 minutes at a time.

~Ferocity~