Do you use summer to recharge your batteries for the year ahead? Or do you run into the new year just as breathless as when you finished it?
It’s overwhelming to commit to something lasting. The Summer of Growth Challenge is a 5 week challenge, the “rest and reset” theme is for this week only–but if your new initiative really speaks to you and makes you feel good, go ahead and continue!
Week One: Rest and Reset
- Change up your routine. You might just love waking up earlier & enjoying that cold brew coffee and/or davening time on the back porch before the kids wake up. Give yourself an incentive to get to sleep earlier.
- Resolve to drink x ounces of water. Actually do it! Set yourself up so that it’s an attainable goal.
- Make yourself a nutritious lunch (how often is up to you!)
- Or, challenge yourself to start a different good habit / stop a negative habit,
- Buy yourself flowers or a plant (and water it!). Put it in a spot that makes you happy when you walk into your home.
- Carve out a specific time to sit and read a book. It doesn’t have to only be when you’re falling asleep. You don’t have to always be “doing.” Bonus if it’s at a time that’s usually hectic. Reading is a very valid activity!
- Pull out your old albums and reminisce.
- Don’t be so busy. Is there something you can let go of, just for now, so that you can make time for something you’ll enjoy?
- Get a manicure or pedicure.
- Buy a self-help/self-improvement book and read it. Choose one lesson that you’ll take with you.
- Take a digital detox. Plan something enjoyable that you’ll do in that time instead (it could be one of the above).
- Use new and special shampoo/body wash/beauty products so that your shower feels like a trip to the spa–just for this season!
- Write a journal.
- Try a creative outlet/hobby that you always wanted to try but never did.
Sign up below to Download this calendar so you can fill in the days of the challenge with us and get reminders and ideas along the way!
Please share additional ideas of what you would love to do to “Rest and Reset!”
any recommendations of good personal growth book on relationships?
We have this older book post: https://betweencarpools.com/3-books-about-marriage-every-wife-should-read/
@FR – some books I have enjoyed are The Good Life by Marc S. Schulz and Robert J. Waldinger, Love Sense by Sue Johnson, Together by Vitek Murthy, Happy Together by Suzann Pileggi Pawelski and James O. Pawelski.
Creating a Life That Matters by Rabbis Manis Friedman
One more – Loving Bravely by Alexandra Solomon.
I would love to know who is the illustrator for Between Carpools. The graphics and drawings are absolutely stunning. I would really love to print some of the illustrations as art for my home. Is there anywhere to purchase them? Pretty please and thank you!
I honestly think most of them are from Canva or AI-generated…
Anyone else find that summer is the most hard-to-manage, hectic, can’t-catch-your-breath season? If you work at a job that goes straight through the year, I don’t even know when or how you make supper. Let alone a healthy lunch for yourself with a self-improvement book 😉
That’s why this is for you! I agree with you – summer can be, for many of us, a can’t-catch-your-breathe time. It’s hard to keep up and do something simply like make dinner, something that fits much more nicely into the routine during the year. But that’s exactly why you need to find something for yourself that you will choose to make you feel summer and not get burnt out. If we had a dentist appointment, we would work everything around it. There is something we can find that we enjoy that does fit even the craziest schedules (even if making normal dinners doesn’t!)
Agree. But there will be other summers in your life with a different vibe. File away this idea for another time in your life.
How do I get the calendar? Yesterday I signed up and got an email that said thank you for contacting us, we’ll respond etc etc.
Try signing up again with the new form above. You should get the calendar by email.
If you work fully in summer it’s just very hard to implement any of it as it’s much harder and hectier with kids around and you at work. So not so helpfull but mire wishful thinking
Many of the suggestions are not so time consuming, so even someone with a full time job – like me – can fit them in. Like buying a plant or a special body wash – literally one extra minute at the store. Journaling can five minutes at the end of a crazy day. Digital detox can be while giving the kids dinner and doing summer homework. Going to bed earlier to wake up a little earlier – always a great idea!
Thanks BCP for these beautiful suggestions. I may not be able to implement all of them but even one can/will beH have a real impact.