What's up hikers! Today I'm going to talk to you about finding time to hike. One of the biggest complaints that I get is I don't have time. Well, I'm here to help and I'm going to give you some suggestions on how to find time to hike. If you don't have time to hike because you have kids, I have some ideas. With very little kids, you can put them on a front pack or a backpack and go on shorter hikes nearby, where you're not in extreme hot or cold weather. All you have to do is make sure that you bring like the diapers and wipes and food for your baby if you're not breastfeeding. And make sure you have maybe a changing pad. So if you need a change your baby while you're out there, then you can do that. Just make sure you take some doggy bags for the dirty diapers and pack them out with you. Of course. Plan your hikes with your little ones around their nap time. So that way if you're packing them around the fresh air and stuff will probably just calm them out anyway so you can enjoy some quiet time while they're napping and you're walking down the trail. A lot of trails are also stroller friendly so you can look up some of those and then take your baby on stroller friendly hikes. Babies usually love the outdoors so it's a great chance to get your child used to hiking and letting nature so that when they're older you can take them with you and they will love it just as much as you do. If you have older grade school kids, you can also incorporate their Earth Science projects and things like that that they may come across at school and take them out on a hike and do a finding a plant project. We have this really cool app on the App Store called Plant Snap and you just take your camera and you take a picture of the app and then Apple tell you what the plant or flower and it's so that you can take your kids out and even your most resistant kids who just want to stay home and play video games will find it interesting to at least take pictures of plants on their phone and it will give you a great platform to teach your kids about the Leave No Trace Principle and why trash is bad for the environment so it's kind of a good blending moment taking school electronics and then of course where we love to go out hiking messing them all into one thing, teaching your kids something and hiking with them which is really cool. And if you think you don't have time because you have teenagers here's an idea for you. So you can barter with your teenagers. They can do something they want. Like you can take them to a movie they want to see or a restaurant that they want to go to probably pizza and then the next time you say, okay now you're coming hiking with me we're going to go on a shorter hike. So you know they don't get bored and they don't find it terribly awful for them but at the same time you're getting them out there you're doing what you want to do and then you know you do something they want to do and return kids love that barter system that also will help them at least pretend to enjoy it and then they can go on a small while you're out there and you're not dragging along kicking springy teenagers. Another option for you is to maybe trade out some baby sitting with another mom. A lot of moms get together and they do a babysitting swap where you can take their kids for them one night or overnight so they can go on a spouse day or a friend day or a business trip or anything like that and then when it's your turn and they have your kids you can go hiking or backpacking overnight you can have some time in the wilderness by yourself which is what a lot of us want. So definitely look into that babysitting swap. If you don't think you can hike because you work too much I have some options for you. We all wish that we could just go out and hike for days at the let's base it. In reality we have a mortgage payment or rent payment we have car payments. We have health insurance premiums and medical bills and things that come with life, right? So take all that into consideration and then just plan your hike. I know that sounds easy, it isn't. If you plan your hike you can set aside specific times where you know you're gonna be able to hike and then it makes the time in between a little bit easier because you have something to look forward to. But here's how you can plan your hike while you're working. One of the things I like to do is negotiate with my boss where I work longer hours during the week a little bit and then I can get off work on Friday early or a different day of your choice. But you can get off a little bit earlier and then maybe go hit the trail for an evening hike or especially if you're getting off early the day before your weekend starts. You can maybe do an overnight back packing trip if you so choose. If you're sharing with your boss to be flexible with hours definitely can help get you out on the trail. If that's not an option for you then you can save a few vacation days or even just vacation hours and use a few of those to get off work early and just go for a hike at the end of your day or you can do a small back packing trip and it only take a few hours of your vacation time because let's face it, our vacation time is super valuable and if we have kids and we have a husband maybe we have to work two jobs and vacation really isn't much of an option. If you save just a few hours and can get off work early one day or maybe twice a month or even once a month so that you can get out on the trail that's just a small little way that you can make time to hike. One of the things that I do is unfortunate enough where I work early and then I get off at 3 p.m. so I just take my backpack with me to work in my clothes and I will just change right after I get off work and I'll go hit the trail for a short hike maybe like five miles or something and it's not too far away from my house maybe an hour or less away but I'm still getting out in nature kind of recharging my batteries which is what nature does for me when I come back it's like yes I'm tired and yes I have more dishes or housework that didn't get done but I feel good inside and really the dishes are still going to be there you know I might have done them and they're more dishes the next day so really just go hiking maybe not every day but every now and then it's okay to just push off some of that daily grind so you can go recharge your batteries in nature. Another possibility that you could do is maybe talk to your boss and a lot of companies will sponsor a wellness day. So you can you know talk to your boss and maybe plan something that is skill for all levels of people who want to get out and do a little hike you get off early one day and take all the your coworkers who want to participate and you go on a small hike and maybe you're just taking off two hours early but you're getting out there if your boss agrees to do that then maybe you can plan a wellness day once a month and that would guarantee you 12 hikes a year might just be small hikes and it may even be the same trails over and over again but it's still getting out there so that is another option that you can talk to your boss about. If you don't have time to hike because you have too many obligations this is going to be the toughest one of all you have to start saying no so that you can say yes. What I mean by this is that you have to say no I'm not going to go to the fifth bake sale of the year no I'm not going to go for drinks after dinner today no I'm not going to do you fill in the blank here basically I'm not going to do these things so I can say yes I am going hiking afterward today yes I'm going to go backpacking this weekend I would love for you to come you know just invite those people to do your passion with you maybe not all the people but your family, your friends even some of your coworkers maybe I'm going hiking afterward today or tomorrow why don't you come along so you can sort of maybe draw people that you really enjoy hanging out with into your other hobby and passion and that might be a fun thing for them to do too after saying yes to yourself so many times about yes I'm backpacking yes I'm hiking then eventually you can also feel free to say yes to some of those other things you used to do like yes I'll do one bake sale this year I'll do one drinks after work a month you can just sort of slowly start bringing that other stuff back into your life without overtaking your life so you still have time to go hiking or backpack it's a matter of balance you can't do all one or all the other I mean we wish we could right but we really just need to find that sweet spot of balance between what we feel like we need to do for other people our family, our kids, our work but also a lot of time for hiking if this is a priority for you which brings me to my last point is prioritize it is so important that you take the things in your life that you want to do and you give them a priority because if you don't prioritize you're never going to do the things you want to do you're constantly going to be bouncing from this to this to that to the other thing and you're never going to get anything done and the stuff you do get done isn't going to be done right probably so without getting too far into the weeds with this if you really want to hike or really want to backpack give it priority and even if it's something where you have so many obligations right now you just can't do it look to the future and stop making obligations so that you can incorporate hiking so that three months down the road six months down the road a year down the road you have the time to hike if hiking is not priority to you then you've probably wasted the last 10 minutes watching my video the last of the honest if you're still with me here hiking is probably a priority so I hope that you can use some of these ideas as a starting point at least to get you some more time to hike I would love to hear how you guys have already found the way to give hiking a permanent spot in your life comment below so we can all share and talk about this if you've got any value from this video we'd like to see more give me a thumbs up subscribe so you don't miss the next one and I'll see you guys next time bye