Parenting Yourself

Parents can be wonderful things. Not always, but sometimes. Like with everything in life, take what you can use and toss the rest. Here are a couple of things that a parent would do that you can probably use.

Enforce your own bedtime. Even if you aren’t tired, go to bed at a reasonable hour. Only you can decide what a reasonable hour is. A good rule of thumb is if you wake up feeling dead tired, your bedtime is too late. Make it earlier. If you’re waking up right around the same time the alarm clock would normally go off, that’s the right bed time. Either that or you get woken up partially too often while you sleep. Eliminate the distractions, noises, and lights that make your sleep restless instead of restful.

Eat your vegetables. Not all vegetables are bad. There are some I won’t eat. I just don’t eat them. I eat other vegetables. There is no one food that is the sole source of anything essential. There is also no one food that is a source of everything essential. You need a variety of things. Try out different vegetables, and eat the ones you like. Here’s a big hint: salads are not the only way to get vegetables. I fought against that knowledge for a long time, insisting that I would have to eat salads. But I wouldn’t. And the lettuce would turn brown and the carrots would decay and the celery would become limp and leaky. That did not endear me to vegetables. Once I stopped trying to force myself to eat salads, things got a lot better. Vegetables are also good in soups, stews, in tacos, steamed and on the side, mixed with rice, chopped up and put into a Hamburger Helper, or eaten raw, with or without dip, depending on what it takes for you to eat them. Fruit is also good for you, but higher in sugar. They can also provide a different portion of the “variety” you’re supposed to eat. They’re also easier to eat raw in most cases.

Make your bed. I’m very tired when I go to bed, and the last thing I want to do is straighten out the covers so that I can crawl into them. I take about 30 seconds in the morning to flip the covers back into their “made” position and straighten them at the foot of the bed, and voila, I have a made bed for me to fall into that night. Or, if I get sick in the middle of the day, a great place to nap. I don’t want to make my bed when I’m tired and sick, either.

Wash your hands. Some people will tell you “well, I don’t pee on my fingers” as an excuse for not washing their hands after using the bathroom. There is a really good biological reason for washing your hands, whether or not you pee on your fingers. It’s a little disgusting, so I won’t go into here. Google it or just trust me. It’s the same thing as not eating your boogers. Your body is working really hard to get these things out of your body, why are you intentionally putting them back in?

Maybe your parents taught you these things, maybe they didn’t. But you can teach yourself these things. They’re excellent habits that will make your body and mind healthier and better prepared to do whatever you need to create your Future.