I once heard a man give this advice: When I come home at the end of the day, I visualize myself hanging up the work day’s stresses on a tree outside my door. I know I can pick them up the next morning on my way out. This way, I can come inside to my family and be present, knowing I left my worries outside.

I liked the concept, so I tried to practice this. The way he described it, I pictured him walking up his curved brick sidewalk, draping the problems on his Japanese Maple and then breezing through his red front door. Carefree, of course, because he left his problems on the maple! Duh!

I hit a few snags while trying to make this work, First, this guy assumes a distinct transition between work and home. Before Japanese maple, work. After Japanese maple, home. Line drawn. Done!

My drive home is more like this:

Text one son about haircut while walking to the car; think about first patient tomorrow; ask myself why my car keeps making that clunky noise when I start it; add paper towels to the grocery list; outline email to dental equipment rep in my head; stare at the Christmas decorations while I’m idling at the light; think about how we should gussy up the office for the holidays and that we should play Christmas music over the next week; make mental note to find non-annoying 8-hour Christmas playlist by tomorrow morning; wonder about the decisions I made today; wonder what decisions I’ll have to make tomorrow; think about whether I should ride the bike, play with the dog, make dinner, order dinner or even what IS for dinner? Ladies, even our thoughts multi-task.

So, that’s the first problem. That guy’s line between work and home is a tree that greets him every evening like clockwork. Same place, every day. The line between my work and my home is a hurricane spaghetti model at best. And if it’s a spaghetti model, when/where am I supposed to hang the day’s worries?

The second problem is, I enter my house through my garage (I actually park in the driveway, not the garage, but that’s another story). We do have a tree out there by the driveway, but it’s an ugly pear tree and I don’t really like it. It seems ill-suited for this task. As I walk through the garage there are PLENTY of places I could hang my next-day-worries, not unlike many of your garages I’m sure. But, once I fling my problems into that garage, good luck finding them again! Those problems will disappear into the garage abyss just like my favorite folding chair, the basketball airer-upper, 27 flashlights, 18 Phillips-head screwdrivers and my cute little mini shovel that I have needed and can never find every single May since 2002.

What to do? Where am I going to hang these worries for at least a few hours or days at a time?

I recently started my own business. Last week was slow, which generates stress, anxiety, and a general sense of impending doom. You know how it is: “This isn’t going to work and we’re going to lose everything and live under a bridge!” (Because thoughts like this are super-helpful and productive. That’s exactly why we have them. Duh.) I worked throughout the week tweaking marketing plans, changing my outreach approach, reviewing my advertising and social media outlets. Pretty soon it was Friday afternoon. By that point, the people I needed to market to were long gone, out of their offices and home with their families. I needed to leave it for Monday and go home to my family. But that stupid voice kept prattling away about losing everything and living under the bridge, making my head hurt and my stomach upset. My body felt so heavy. I knew it was time to go home and do the weekend but I was trying to figure out how to do the weekend with this anxiety in the background.

Then I had a thought (thank you, good part of my brain, where have you been anyway?). I walked into the house and told my husband “I’ll be with you very soon. I need about 15 minutes to put some things on paper and prepare for Monday so that my weekend is all about being here, with all of you, and not about work or the bridge we might have to move to.” I grabbed one of my favorite journal books, poured a glass of wine, slapped on the noise-canceling headphones, and began to write. I made a list of 10 things I would do on Monday that would work to move my business forward. Some tasks were small, some were larger, some were scary. Also, I added this to the list: Every time I have a negative/anxious/worried thought this weekend I will immediately refocus back to the present moment and what I have to be thankful for right now. Even if it’s as simple as my dinner plate or the fact that I have fingers and toes.

Guess what? It helped! It wasn’t perfect. My anxious part of my brain is frequently running ahead of the rest of the pack so the thoughts would slam in out of nowhere and interrupt a perfectly fine moment. But I got better at refocusing on being thankful for whatever I could find – one time it was an avocado. I had a good weekend and Monday morning, I picked up the plan and I went to work.

This list gave me permission to relax and spend time with my family knowing that I had a plan for those worries come Monday. It’s not as idyllic as a Japanese Maple along a curved path to the door, but the wine helps! I think I’ll do the same this afternoon. Maybe it will even become a Friday afternoon ritual.

We have to learn to put our thoughts down every once in a while and pick them up later. Our brains do their best work during these breaks and often give us the solutions we are seeking. You need peace this weekend. Find an avenue for that in any way you can because you need a break. Monday will be here soon enough and the list of tasks will be waiting for us and we will be ready to take them on, even if we have to go bridge-shopping! Xoxo