What absolutely has to be taken care of today? What is crucial and critical and what can you let go of for now? For a single parent, there are days when everything seems critical, and we can get so caught up in the minutia of our everyday lives that it can be tough to see the forest for the trees. In order to get things under control and into a manageable circumstance, it can be helpful to define what is crucial and what is not.
For me, I have found over the years that if I start with the basics, I can better determine what is critical—my children’s health and safety, our family basics (like putting a roof over our heads and food on the table), and other details that affect our lives at the core of things. While there might be great drama and things going on that seem like rather dynamic crisis, they are not necessarily critical. These dramatic crises can actually create a lot of smoke and mirrors that keep up from being able to focus on what we need to and distract us from our children or the critical basics that need attending to in our lives.
As a single parent, you don’t have another adult partner to help you gain perspective or sort out what is necessary from what is not (at least many of us do not)—so it is up to you to strip away the fluff and drama and get down to what is critical. Start with the basics, those things that are absolute needs and necessities, and let the other stuff go—then you can attend to the extra stuff as you have time and resources to do so. What is time sensitive? What needs to be taken care of or something bad will happen? What is absolutely critical?
Also: What Feels Right?