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Are you a career mom and you feel guilty about it?
A lot of people have asked me over the years how I do everything. I do massage therapy,
I'm an author. I do professional speaking, I'm a mom. I have pets, I walk the dog, I
run my kids to appointments. I don't even know how I do everything in the day.
A lot of people have said, "How do you balance all that?" I have to say, I give credit to
any mother out there, first of all, whoever is a mom. I remember way back when I thought
being a stay-at-home mom was lazy. Yeah. If you're ever guilty of that, and now you have
kids, you're probably laughing with me. You're the CEO of your household and you're
doing a million things, and you're cooking, and you're cleaning, and you're managing behavior,
and when they're younger, it's quantity time and when they get older, it becomes quality
time and they need undivided attention from you.
Some of you are career moms, and so you may not be the CEO of a company or maybe like
myself, you are, and you're self-employed. You've got two full time jobs. How do you
balance it? How do you not feel guilty? How do you not feel like you're not giving a hundred
percent to your kids? Then, if you are, how do you not feel guilty because you're not
making more money? How do you balance that? First of all, I want to say, one thing that
somebody told me years ago, and that was that, your children don't view you as a role. They
view you as a person. It's not until they're much older that they'll start to make sayings
or decisions about how their mother was during childhood.
When your children are little, they just see you as the most amazing creature in their
entire life. That they love you more than anything. That's a relief because you can
know no matter what you're doing, that you're doing a great job and that you're the best
mother for those children no matter what. That's a great relief, but how do you balance
having a full time job and then doing all of the work at home and then just having your
state of mind balanced. The key is balance. I've worked at this for
years and I can honestly say, my children right now are almost 9 and 11, and it's taken
me almost nine years to get the balance down. Here's what we do. We have really structured
time. There's structured time in the morning, there's work time all day and then there's
absolutely no work no matter what between certain hours in the evening.
Then, if mom and dad want to work a little bit later after they can, but I really try
not to. I really try to punch out right around 4:00. The other things that I do that help
me feel better so that I can be my best me is, I make personal time for me. I know all
these mothers out there that feel so guilty making personal time for themselves.
It's really interesting how we put ourselves in the back burner once we have children,
and that's a noble, wonderful cause. However, it might make us not be our best mom, or not
our best wife, not the best friend, not the best daughter or sister, because we're so
exhausted and depleted. We're running on fumes. Success in balance isn't about getting it
all done. It's about actually enjoying and living your life, not just surviving and existing.
Right? What I suggest is that you carve out personal time, and instead of looking at it
like an indulgence, look at it like it's mandatory to keep you balanced.
Because if you're not getting that massage every week or two, or going on that little
shopping excursion for just yourself, you're going to start to feel resentful. If you're
resentful, it's going to transfer, and it's either going to transfer to your kids and
you're going to snap at them and then, oh, there's that guilt feeling again. Or, it's
going to transfer at work and you're not going to get a project done, and then, oh, there's
that guilt feeling again. Instead of making yourself feel bad that you're
making yourself a priority, make it mandatory, make it a priority that you make yourself
feel a priority, so that you can be your best you all of the time.
I hope that this gives you some insight and some peace and some forgiveness, and so that
you stop beating yourself up and just that you know that you're doing the best you can,
because nobody can be a better mom than you to your kids, and you're doing a really great
job.