The end of last year and beginning of this year have been wild for me. With business growth and family things happening behind the scenes – I sometimes feel like there are always more things to do than I have the time for. To hold the current feeling of crazy at bay, I developed a little trick and thought you might want to know.
It is called the 12 minute rule.
It works like this; you can do anything, anything you need to do for 12 minutes and in 12 minutes the world will not implode. For real!
The Rule Of 12 Minutes
Here’s how I’ve seen it work this week in my life…
– The other night I had a horrible night sleep and woke up exhausted. We had so much planned that day I did not have time for the 3 hour nap I was dreaming of. But instead of telling myself I could not lay down, I decided to hop right into bed, put the covers over my head and set my timer for 12 minutes. 12 minutes was all I really needed to feel like I indulged, it worked wonders.
– I was not thrilled about going to the gym the other day, so I committed to stay for 12 minutes. You know what? By the time I got to 12 minutes I was feeling great and just stayed for the rest of the time.
– I was almost to the end of a book, but had to set it down to deal with more pressing life issues. Although, I couldn’t just let go of work to devour it – instead I snuck the book to a quiet corner and set my timer for 12 minutes.
– The house was a crazy mess and the kids were making me bonkers. I told Matt to hold down the house, jumped in the car and drove around the neighborhood with the windows down blasting my music for 12 minutes. All I needed was 12 minutes! It completely altered my entire mindset.
Why the number 12? There isn’t anything actually magical about the number 12, but it’s just enough time to really make you feel like you indulged some part of life, I tried 8 minutes and it did not have the same effect. 12 is also not so long that anything really is effected by it in life, 15 minutes and say dinner might burn. But if you disappear for 12 minutes, no one really notices.
Do you have any tricks for changing your mindset when you are feeling overwhelmed? I’d love to know! Would you be willing to try indulging yourself for just 12 minutes when you feel stressed? I can promise it will make a world of difference.
