You’re intrigued by herbalism and the idea of using natural remedies to keep your family healthy – you’ve always wanted to be the Village Wise Woman, after all.
You’ve just got one problem: time.
There are already lots of commitments in your life and the thought of adding one more thing, as good as it is, seems a bit daunting. Maybe you should just wait until ______ is over or you’re no longer helping with ______ or the kids move out.
But if you’re perpetually waiting for things to be over or you’re always helping with stuff or you’ve got infants, you’re never going to fulfill your desire to learn about herbs.
So what do you do? (We’ll talk about the art of saying no another day.)
As a woman with a full schedule and four young children, I want you to know that it’s possible. Here are some steps for making it work:
Start small
Chances are, you have big goals here, like only using herbal remedies that you make yourself to keep your family healthy or to become your family’s herbalist. Maybe you want to be an herbal entrepreneur and create an income sharing your wisdom with others.
Those are great goals. But they can also be overwhelming.
The key is to start small.
Instead of thinking about ALL the things you need to know to feel confident as your family’s herbalist, choose on herb that you’re going to master, like calendula. Read all you can about that herb. Get in the kitchen and make remedies with said herb.
Keep an herbal journal with all of your notes and recipes that you can refer back to when things come up. Record what happened and things to remember in the future.
Then, when you feel comfortable with that herb, move onto another one. (Try starting with the essentials we recommend.)
Schedule it
Think about the important things in your life. Things you don’t want to miss. Things you can’t miss. How do you keep track of them? On a calendar. You note the time and date and put it in your schedule.
This is one of the best ways to further your herbal studies.
Decide how much time you want to devote to learning more about herbs each day or each week, pick the time you’re going to do it and put it in your calendar. You’re scheduling an appointment with yourself that says this is important to me and I’m going to get it done.
Then, keep that appointment.
You don’t flake out on the dentist if you just don’t feel like going or something more fun comes up instead, do you? No. You’ve been waiting forever to get in for this appointment and there’s no way you’re going to miss it. Plus, if you do, they’ll charge you for it!
Treat your studies with that kind of importance.
AMRAP
But what if you can only commit to 15 or 20 minutes a day or three times a week? One option is to let that discourage you and lead you to believe you’ll never get where you want to be because you don’t have much time for doing the work.
I vote against choosing that option.
The reality is, you’re probably not even doing that much right now and any step in the right direction is a good one.
The other option is to view this as an opportunity to grow no matter how busy you are so you make the most of that 20 minutes.
There’s an acronym in CrossFit (yes, I’m one of those people) called AMRAP. It stand for as many rounds (sometimes reps) as possible.
You get a certain time frame to do as many rounds of x number of exercises as possible and you hustle your ass off to do as many as you can before the clock runs out or you die, whichever comes first.
When it comes to your herbal studies, that means giving them 100% focus during the time allotted and finishing as much as you possibly can.
Maybe you use that time to read one herbal monograph or finish a lesson in an introductory course or fill out a page in your materia medica.
Whatever you choose, approach it with the, “This is what I’m going to do. It may seem daunting, but it’s only 20 minutes. I can totally do this for 20 minutes,” mentality.
Remember, you don’t need hours each day to learn about herbs.
You just need to make the most of the time you have.
p.s. Need more help living a healthy lifestyle with a hectic schedule? Here’s how we do it.
Pin this for later!
