Starting a homestead can feel really overwhelming. It will feel like there are endless projects to do and things to learn, but don’t worry, there are people who have been in your shoes and have created beautiful and successful homesteads. There are so many resources on starting a homestead and homestead skills that it can be hard to figure out where to start. My suggestion – start with what interests you most! Are you most interested in raising animals, growing a garden, preserving food, making homemade goods or in creating natural remedies?
We all have different ways of starting our day – some of us try to have a very intentional routine while others linger in bed scrolling, and most of us have experienced both. Starting our day with intention has a monumental impact on our productivity, mood, and overall well-being.
I’m sure it comes as no surprise, but the way you start your day is the way your day will go. Our perspective determines how we feel about the day and if we start the day with a feeling of “I’m exhausted and don’t want to do anything” it will surely linger throughout the day slowing us down and making our daily tasks feel like an annoyance. While on the other hand, if we start our day with gratitude and the intention of being happy, our day is much more likely to be full of positivity.
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Benefits of A Morning Routine
Creating a morning routine can impact our mood, our productivity, our creativity, and our overall mental health. Not only does the routine itself help relieve stress because you don’t need to make choices each morning and you know what to expect, but the intentional time each morning can have monumental effects on our well being and personal growth.
Researchers have found that routine can have far-reaching psychological benefits, including alleviating bipolar disorder, ADHD, and insomnia.
What your morning routine consists of will alter its effectiveness. These practices will allow your routine to improve your mental health, overall wellness, and personal growth.
Practice Gratitude
Gratitude has been defined as an emotion or state resulting from awareness and appreciation of that which is valuable and meaningful to oneself.
When you’re focused on the good, it’s a lot harder to be upset when things don’t go the way you hoped. Practicing gratitude can bring us joy by seeing all that is good in our lives.
Gratitude can change your brain and overall emotional state. When you wake up each day and think about what is good in your life, you shift your selective attention. You train your mind to focus on the positive.
If you don’t know where to start or feel silly you can start really simple by just making a list each morning of 5 things you are grateful for. I am grateful for my cozy home, I am grateful for warm coffee, I am grateful for the birds singing outside, I am grateful for nutritious food, and I am grateful for the opportunity to reflect on life. You can also try guided gratitude journals or gratitude cards. Do your best to really feel the gratitude and joy with each statement. The more you do it, the easier it will get!
Meditate
Meditation is a practice used to train your brain to control your thoughts and focus (usually on your breath). It is often defined as a tool to heighten your state of awareness. Meditation is great way to start your day refreshed and gain control of your thoughts and intentions.
One study found that 8 weeks of mindfulness meditation helped reduce anxiety symptoms in people with generalized anxiety disorder, along with increasing positive self-statements and improving stress reactivity and coping
There are endless guided meditations you can try. One of my favorites is Breathe People (not an affiliate). These meditations are very helpful for releasing stress, tension, and creating a sense of calm. You can also try just sitting and focusing on your breath. Breathe in. Breathe out.
When we write about our hopes and dreams, it can actually help those dreams happen. You can create a mental rehearsal by writing your dream: a practice of feeling and planning what your dreams will look like and how they will make you feel when they happen.
According to research on mental rehearsal, once we immerse ourselves in that scene, changes begin to take place in our brain. When we are feeling the emotions of our future — whether that’s gratitude, joy, freedom, abundance, enthusiasm, love, and so on — the creative thoughts in your mind can become the experience. As the body receives the chemical signals of these emotions, essentially the body is receiving the signal that the event has already occurred.
— Dr. Joe Dispenza
Plan & Set Intentions
Plan your day! Create a schedule, decide how you’ll feel for the day, and set intentions. Planning and setting intentions can happen while journaling, you can write to do lists, you can choose some affirmations for the day, and organize your thoughts and schedule.
For example, if you are wanting to eat healthier, set the intention that you will nourish your body with healthy foods and plan ahead by preparing healthy meals and snacks.
Do you have a morning routine? What are your favorite parts? What do you want to add to your morning routine?
As I’ve gotten older, time feels like an increasingly rare commodity, so I try to be more mindful of how I use it.
Gardening makes you a better mother or parent. Not because you’re “being more productive” or “more natural” but because you can learn a lifetime worth of lessons in one garden season. If you allow it, the garden can help you grow and evolve. Gardening has taught me many lessons in such a short time. My garden has forced me to hone skills and qualities I’ve tried many times to master as well as qualities I’ve never utilized. From the natural process of growing a garden and the environmental challenges, such as deer devouring my garden, the following are a few of the skills and lessons this garden season has forced me to practice.
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Effort Makes All The Difference
A seed cannot grow if you never plant it: in gardening and parenting. If you don’t put forth the effort, you can’t get what you desire. If you want Zucchini, you need to plant Zucchini seeds. If you want a child who lives with kindness you must show and teach kindness. We have to put in the effort to get the beauty & bounty; whether that be a thriving and healthy garden or child.
“Remember that children, marriages, and flower gardens reflect the kind of care they get.”
— H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
Growth Takes Time
It takes time to see the growth from your efforts. A sunflower doesn’t bloom the day after you plant the seed. It takes time.
“A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.”
— Liberty Hyde Bailey
Patience
As the garden takes time to give back for the effort you’ve put in, it teaches you patience. Instant gratification doesn’t exist in the garden. We find instant gratification with most things in modern society, which leaves us inept with patience and therefore unprepared for parenthood. With gardening and parenting, we learn even with love and effort, we won’t immediately get what we desire.
“Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.”
— May Sarton
Slow & Intentional Living
Peace & Contentment
The garden, with all it’s beauty and calmness, teaches peace & contentment. Something about it’s beauty feeds the soul and shows you the way to your inner peace.
The Importance of Having A Relationship With Dirt
Gardening will show you how important it is to have a relationship with dirt. As a parent, this is an important lesson. Your child will crave to play in the dirt and for their health and wellness, it’s important you allow them to do so and even encourage them.
“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.”
–Margaret Atwood
The Undesirable Will Happen (and that’s ok)
The garden will never go exactly as planned; neither will parenting. The garden will show you that no matter how astray things may go, with commitment and love, it will still be beautiful. Flowers will blossom and fruit will form.
“A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.”
-Dogen
These are all beautiful and necessary lessons to hone for motherhood and a garden is a wonderful and forgiving place to learn such lessons.
What have you learned or hope to learn from your garden?
