Are you feeling overly busy and would prefer a little balance in your life?
It’s an interesting time. I have been speaking to a lot of women from all walks of life and many are striving. Striving to succeed. Striving for success. Striving for balance. Striving for happiness.
But what does striving look like? For many, it means busy. It often means working hard or putting the needs of others or our workplace above our own. It means skipping lunch breaks, working longer hours, starting work earlier or leaving work later and then often checking in after hours. Striving for that pay rise, excelling with a project or achieving that big goal. It means pressure, stress, overwhelm, even burnout.
Then on top of that, many are mothers. Mothers who put that same pressure on themselves, the pressure to become an ideal parent, an ideal mother and an ideal partner. Doing our best to create a safe and loving home environment, put good healthy food on the table for our family and be involved in our children’s schools and sporting lives.
It means that we must make choices.
Choices of whether we finish the project or task at hand or leave work early to pick up our children from school, choices about whether we can take time out to be there for the school excursion or reading in the classroom. Choices about whether we enrol our child in an extra-curricular activity that we know that they would love or do something for ourselves that we enjoy. What do we choose to compromise on that particular day? Our own needs, the needs of our family or the needs of our workplace.
We try to do it all, we don’t want to let anyone down – but eventually we do need to decide, ultimately ending in some form of guilt. Guilt that we may have let our colleagues down by leaving work early, so that we could be there for our children. Or guilt that we stayed at work longer than planned and couldn’t be the mother that we wanted to be in at moment, often disappointing our children. Or guilt that we have been so busy that we haven’t eaten properly and unable to sleep and know deep down that we are not treating our body the way we should be.
Finding balance can be hard and it can be an unhappy existence. Trying to be everything for everyone is not sustainable. Often meaning that we are not really living the way that we want to live.
That is without considering the economy and the increasing cost of living pressures. The additional pressure to achieve and to earn more and to provide for our families. Then competing pressures of consumerism and our children wanting more and our desire to provide our children with more than we were afforded during our own childhood. It’s a vicious circle.
Shifting from busy to balanced.
Walking away from busy is difficult. As is creating balance and harmony.
However, there are a lot of things that you can do. It’s not an all or nothing equation. There are lots of strategies and practices that you can incorporate into your everyday life to create more balance, harmony, and happiness. Things that you can do to help you swing the pendulum from busy to balanced.
I’d love to share these with you.
Busy to Balanced Retreat, Daylesford
I am joining forces with Ange Fragiacomo, Mindset and Wellbeing Coach from Conscious Living Hub to host the Busy to Balanced Retreat in Daylesford, this August.
I invite you to grab a friend or colleague and join us. We will introduce you to techniques that will help you thrive and walk away with a deeper understanding of how to build a balanced lifestyle that will support your well-being, productivity, and happiness.
It promises to be a retreat with a difference. Please join us for a transformative experience that will leave you feeling refreshed and empowered.
For more click here for more information or to book directly.