This is a guest post by Swati Gupta. Swati was a computer professional before she left her promising  career to devote quality time to her little one. Today, she is a full time, busy mother of two wonderful kids. 

Looking at my “to take care list”, I found that I had a lot to take care of. Kids were on the top of the list closely followed by husband, home, grocery, laundry, dinner, relatives, friends, etc.  The list kept on growing every time I was about to reach its end. I started getting stressed and just could not breathe and then suddenly I woke up feeling breathless, but then I was relieved that it was just a dream.

A dream it was, but it gave me a reason to sit and introspect. As Moms, all of us have so much on our minds and our “to take care list”.  At times, taking care of everyone and everything leaves no time and energy to spend on ourselves. Many times “taking care of me” becomes the nonexistent part of the list.  This leads to stress and ultimately to anger or depression.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that to be an efficient Mom, you have to be fit and fine by the body and by mind. If you can take care of so much of stuff, shouldn’t you be able to take care of yourselves too? Don’t expect others to come and take care of you.

So here are some of the tips for taking care of MOM (ME):

1. Eat well: Take a good healthy diet. Only a fit and healthy parent can raise fit and healthy kids. Don’t skip your meals on one pretext or another. A Hungry person tends to be angrier. So spare your family of your wrath and eat on time.
2. Exercise: Take out some time daily for exercise. Walk, run, yoga, zumba. Whatever you like and whatever you can do. It will keep your body fit for now and also for  future.
3. Rest well: Give your body time to relax and rejuvenate. It cannot work well if it is tired. You will feel more stressed if you are tired.
4. Keep your expectations real: Don’t expect too much to be accomplished too soon. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Realize your limitations and manage your list accordingly. Too much on the list raises your stress level only and doesn’t help at all.
5. Prioritize: If there are many tasks on the list and all need your attention, think and prioritize. Accomplish the most urgent first. Doing many things together would not accomplish anything at all.
6. Indulge and pamper yourself: Sometimes just indulge, pamper yourself. Go for shopping or visit a spa or anything that gives you pleasure. Don’t feel guilty about it. It will rejuvenate you like anything.
7. Have some ‘me time’: Everyday try to take out some time just for yourself. Time in which you do something that you like to do. It may be gardening, surfing the net, taking a walk, meditating or anything else.
8. Delegate responsibility: Don’t try to do everything on your own. There may be items on the list which can be done by other family members too. You have to tell them what to do. They would be more than happy and willing to do them.

All said and done, I know everyone has different circumstances and situations, but we can all try to incorporate some of the above stated points to live our lives a little more smiling and without the stress.

So now that I have taken my “me time” and am done with this write up , let me go back to my ”to take care list”.

I would appreciate if any reader would add more points to the above mentioned list. Looking forward to listen from you.