I’ve been MIA for the past few months. I know, I know. Actually, it started in April, back when my husband began his seven months of on and off again training. He’ll be gone for five weeks, back for one, gone for two months, back for two weeks–you get the point.

It’s left me with all the time in the world to be productive and write and grow my business and do all the things I don’t do when my husband is home (think: walk the aisles of Target aimlessly, redecorate the house, etc.) and the day my husband left I sat down with my planner and started to schedule my days. The next day I woke up and didn’t feel like doing anything, so I didn’t. I figured I had all this time and I might as well just wait to do it when I feel like doing something, which was bound to happen quickly.

Seven months later, do you know what I have accomplished? Some, but not much. Not anything considering how much time I’ve had to be productive and get it all done.

When my husband leaves something happens and my lethargy kicks into full gear. Maybe it’s that I don’t want to cook for just one so instead I make huge batches of food and eat leftovers all week; maybe it’s that I don’t want to clean because the house is hardly dirty without boots tracking sand in every day. Maybe it’s just that loneliness leaves me wanting to sit on the sofa and eat and ignore my problems with books and movies.

Mostly, I know that I strive to be the very best I can be because I want to make my husband proud. I want to grow my business to show him the sacrifice in getting started was worth it, I want to keep the house sparkling so he comes home to a nice place, and I love creating fantastic meals so he can always look forward to dinner. Then when he leaves, my motivation tends to leave with him.

But none of being my best changes when he’s gone. I can cook fantastic meals for my son and keep the floors clean so when he licks them he’s not also eating yesterday’s dinner and of course my business betters me and our whole family regardless of whether or not my husband is home. Changing my mindset has helped, but here are some practical tips to beat lethargy that, let’s be real, are often what we need most.

1. Schedule something every day. Even if it’s just a trip to the grocery store to buy more bananas. We don’t always have play dates or big events planned–sometimes the best we do is getting to the store, and then we walk around seeing if there are any great sales or we’ll buy a little treat, so we make it into something fun! Just having one thing to get us out the house every day makes a world of difference.
2. Plan your schedule in advance. If you wait to figure out what you’re going to do until the morning of, chances are that nothing is going to happen. For example, last week I made plans for every single day and I had a great week, but I didn’t plan ahead and this morning I woke up with nothing on the calendar. I texted friends but they were all busy, it was raining so we couldn’t go to the park, and everything in this area is too far to do spur-of-the-moment with a toddler. So our big fancy outing was going to the Dollar Store to buy batteries–totally could have been avoided with some advance planning.
3. Sit down for at least one proper meal a day. This comes down to routine. I find when I’m lethargic I just want to snack all the time and I do snack on healthy foods, but when I’m eating every half hour I don’t do anything productive–I just sit on my butt and stare at the TV while I polish off my cheese and olives. And then I do it all day. I am literally feeding my lethargy like this, but when I sit down for one real meal every day, it breaks that cycle and I sit down at the dinner table with my son and we giggle and make silly faces and enjoy real food.
4. Get involved in groups that meet regularly. For me, this is the mom’s group at my church, a military wives ministry called Operation Hope Front, story time at the library, and weekly spouse meet-ups at a local coffee shop. I look forward to these and they help give us a weekly routine. It’s hard to be lethargic when you’re at a coffee shop surrounded by sixteen other military spouses and thirty crazy toddlers.
5. Set yourself goals. “Clean out junk” is not a helpful goal. Goals must be SMART–specific, measurable, achievable, result-focused, and time-bound. If your goals are totally vague or have no time limit, you’ll put them off or never start at all. “Clean out the upstairs storage room and master closet by Friday” is a goal that will give you boundaries to complete it. When we’re lethargic we need specifics to get us going.
6. Plan a trip. Nothing feeds lethargy like having nothing to look forward to. When you look at weeks looming ahead and you don’t have anything fun on your calendar, it’s so easy to just sit down and feel depressed and overwhelmed. Plan a weekend trip to see family, plan a trip to visit your husband in Italy (I’ve had friends who have done this!) or simply plan a trip to a festival a few towns over.
7. Find friends whose husbands are also gone. I’ve gone through months where all my friend’s husbands were home and of course I was so happy for them, but I couldn’t just call them late on any Thursday night and ask I could come over and eat cookies. I’ve turned to Facebook networks to meet friends who I knew could get together spur of the moment any time or I’ve simply been intentional about planning activities with other ladies who were on their own, even if I hardly knew anything but their name. Then I got to know them well and viola, an any-time friend!
8. Make your bed well every morning. A Navy SEAL commander explains why this can change your whole day. It creates a sense of disciple and the accomplishment of getting the first task of the day completed sets the tone for the whole entire day. Sometimes you just need to get the first thing done to get yourself on a roll.
9. Get yourself some emotional support oils. Yes, essential oils are also good for the soul! Frankincense is my favorite for those days I just feel not quite right or totally blah, and Joy and Valor are two of my other favorite blends for when I’m feeling upset, sad, lonely. How does this work? When you smell an oil, the chemicals making the smell are being absorbed into the brain via olfactory receptors which are directly linking to your limbic system, controlling your emotions.
10. Get yourself a planner. This is how to be productive in day-to-day life but I find it also helps me combat lethargy because when I have to-dos written on my planner, I want to complete them, even if just to be able to look at my crossed off list and feel accomplished at the end of the day. My favorite planner is the Plum Paper Weekly Planner but a simple one from Target would work too–just as long as it’s something you actually want to use.
11. Download the Moment app. This app tracks the time you spend on your phone each day as well as how many times you unlock it. I find that my phone is one of the biggest contributors to my lethargy because I waste endless time scrolling and I just keep going back to check in case someone talked to me–you know the drill. Then I never get anything done because it sucks up my time and I see all these great things others are doing and I know I’ll never be able to do those so I just give up.

The hardest part of getting over lethargy is getting started. More than once I’ve texted my husband asking him to literally tell me, “Babe, you will do this in the next hour,” because I need firm direction. Us wives and mamas often have so much on our minds and so much on our to-do lists we simply don’t know where to begin so we avoid beginning at all.

Sometimes what’s needed is a change of mindset. My kids still need me. I can still make my husband proud from afar. I can do this to better myself simply because I want to be the very best I can be. And sometimes we need to sit down and intentionally relax for an hour so when that hour ends we know it’s time to get going with the day.

Lethargy is a very real part of being alone, and us military wives are alone a whole lot. The longer you let it determine your days, the harder it is to kick it so if you find that lethargy is a struggle for you, don’t wait until tomorrow to do something about it. Whatever you do, don’t say “later,” because that’s exactly what lethargy is–I don’t want to do anything right now, go away, I’ll deal with it later.

Oh, we all have those moments. There are times it is good to sit down in front of a mindless movie or with a good book and eat snacks and deal with it all later.

But when those moments come, let them happen intentionally. When your husbands are gone there’s so much “later” we can let it rule us; believe me, I get it. But don’t let it get it better of you. Go make your bed now. Plan a way to get out of the house today. Smell all the Frankincense and let your limbic system be changed. My-husband-is-gone lethargy might be real, but your potential is so much bigger. Never forget that.