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As moms, we all know the importance of self-care. We also know too well how challenging it can be to make time in our lives to do the things for ourselves that will help us be better at all the things we have to do. Our attention is constantly being pulled in a million directions and our brains can’t keep up.

Raise your hand if you’ve skipped a pedicure or massage session you didn’t have time for, but needed twice as long to finish your grocery shopping on your tired, aching feet.

Raise your hand if you’ve missed a workout or yoga class because you needed that time to finish an important project, yet were too distracted by stress to complete your work effectively.

Raise your hand if you’ve skipped a meal or opted for scarfing down junk because you didn’t have time to prepare healthy food and eat it mindfully, only to run out of energy before completing your to-do list.

Raise your hand if you’ve ever taken on so much that you couldn’t do anything as well as you wanted and everything suffered a little as a result, including your family and yourself.

Now that all our hands are already up, who thinks it would be awesome to add one more thing to our crazy schedules?

Yeah, thought so…

But what if this one extra thing was a commitment to yourself to spend at least two minutes a day developing a creative practice that would give you the mental energy you need for all your goals and projects?

Two minutes, that doesn’t sound so bad… But what is creative practice? What if you’re not an artist? What if you can’t follow through? What if you’re actually too busy?

We all know that the way to get better at stuff is to practice. We tell this to our kids all the time. We know that learning to ride a bike or play a musical instrument requires practice, but how do we practice creativity?

Sign up for the 30-day Creative Sprint challenge and see. Each day in April you’ll receive an email with simple instructions for a small project to complete that will stretch your mind in new directions, helping you bust out of that box you didn’t know your thinking was stuck in and giving you access to your best ideas ever so you can get more done!

How can this happen in only two minutes a day? When it comes to mental exercise, a little can go a long way and something is always better than nothing. If ten minutes is all you have to practice yoga, you’ll still feel calmer and more focused for having done it than if you never rolled out the mat, right? Five minutes of meditation beats stress way better than five minutes of Candy Crush. And two minutes of deliberate creative thought gives you more insight than two minutes spent wondering how you’re going to get everything else done.

Go HERE to sign up and learn more about how Creative Sprint has inspired others. Ask a friend or family member to sign up too so you can cheer each other on to creativity. Get ready to connect with Creative Sprinters everywhere when you share your daily projects on social media using the #CreativeSprint hashtag. Get ready to let go and have fun with it, and get ready to be even more awesome, cause mom, you got this.

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Ellie Valentine lives in Pittsburgh with her husband and ten year old daughter.  Her background in the arts has served her well as a bartender, mom, and fitness instructor.  Follow her has she blogs through her experience of the Creative Spirit Challenge. Go HERE to join in the creative fun with Ellie!