Southern Living - Red Wine Sippin' - Wife - Mom of 3 - Jesus Follower- Mompreneur
Work/Life Balance
Today I thought I would share with you my thoughts on work/life balance. As a full-time working and traveling Mommy of soon to be two little ones under the age of 4 and a blogger on the side I absolutely do NOT believe in work/life balance. It is a complete falsity and simply does not exist. You might be wondering…”Wait, Chelsea, what do you mean?!? I am always hearing I need to strive for a ‘good’ work/life balance.”
If you look at a single given day you will not find balance. Each day is going to be weighted heavier either to work or to life. That is just the way it works. Instead I like to picture it like a scale…instead of stressing yourself over an individual day’s work/life balance imagine your life as a whole on a scale. What you are looking for is it to average out overall. Where you are needed most at that moment in time is where you need to adjust the weight on your scale. For everything there is a season and purpose…some seasons will be much heavier at work (as it was for me this past fall and winter as I set out down a new career path and had to sacrifice 6 weeks away from my family for in-field job training) and some seasons will be heavier at home (my current season with two doctor’s appointments a week as I prepare to welcome a new baby in less than 4 weeks). But you know what I am learning?!? This is totally ok. Release yourself of the pressure we put on ourselves as we try to be superwoman. The perfect mom, perfect wife, and all-star employee…
I once heard a female speaker, also a mother of four, who has been very successful in her career say the following, “don’t ever let anyone tell you can’t have it all. You absolutely can. You just can’t have it all at one moment.” This has stuck with me – oh what sweet truth.
One thing that has proven helpful to me is to list the top 7-10 roles you play in life (mom, career, wife, friend, sister, volunteer, etc. you get the idea) and rank them in order of which play the most important roles in your life. That way if there is ever a question of where you should direct your time you can reference this as a guide. Be aware…these roles do and should change both in which you claim as your top 7-10 and in which order they serve as your phases of life change.
So friends let’s let go of the pressure we put on ourselves to find that perfect balance and instead let’s strive to “have it all – maybe just not all at once.”
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