10 REAL-LIFE WAYS FOR THE WORKING MOM TO LIVE A HEALTHY LIFESTYLE
Balancing work and family is no easy task. As women, we are expected to give 100% to everything and everyone, all the time. If you're not taking care of yourself, you're going to burn out pretty quickly.
“The struggle between work and family is not new. It is one of the most common causes of stress in working adults. More often than not, they are unable to find the golden balance between both. Given different circumstances, there is always a time when either family or work takes priority.”
These are the words of Rosette Obedoza, a blogger, entrepreneur, mother, and the loving wife of a military man. When asked about how difficult balancing work and family can be, she says “…really stress is an understatement when women are the subjects, or much better let’s just say victims. The tussle is often associated with dysfunctional outcomes including poor physical and mental health, ineptitude at work, and strained family relationships among many other upshots.”
Laura Probert of Huffington Post says "If your expectation is that you must work harder and do more to get what you want, you will have to work harder and do more, which will lead to burn out." And she's absolutely right!
Now Rosette and Laura are women we can both give the tag “badass mompreneurs”, of course in their own different and little ways. And here’s a list of the things that help define their success stories.
1. Talk With Your Family
The first thing Rosette speaks of is open communication between yourself, boss at the office and of course the people you love back at home, your family. Listen: “Often I thought I did not need my husband and child to solve my work versus family concerns but I was wrong. So I decided to try and the more I did, the more I realized there is no way to get things done right if you only rely on what you know. For me, this is magical. I think that if you can make your entire family know about your obligations both at home and at work then they can be more understanding. The other bit is your boss. If s/he can understand a little more about you, certainly you hit the first step to a healthy lifestyle.
2. Respect Your Priorities
If possible, get very clear as to how much time you need off and the impact it bears on your fee. Priority is the other thing. And it is one we know too well. We have stickers all over or don’t we? And in them we have our day’s schedule. So what really is the problem? Well, it happens not all of us respect our schedules and priority lists and yet we need this to be successful mompreneurs!
Sarah Krieger, a mother of three and dietitian in St. Petersburg, Florida says her priority list is a combination of things to be done over the week including; children stuff, business and personal needs. At the end of the day she ensures all is done in good time. Alice Garbarini, a freelancer in New Jersey on the other hand says her to do list is only complete with both work and fun slotted.
The one significance of making a to do list is that we are able to think well and make appropriate decisions before we act; with it you will be able to act on issues much proactively than reactively
3. Create Time For Sleep
According to a recent post by Daily Mail, lack of sleep is damaging mothers’ lives. It affects the productivity of close to 82 percent of working moms, makes some 55 percent of them vexed with their babies, and about 70 percent off sex. Perhaps you’re part of the statistics but you want out. It’s simple, create time for yourself either during the day or at night and get a nap. It’s important.
The fact of the matter is that in the short term, good sleep will help improve your ability to learn and retain information, your mood during the day, and your judgment both at home and at work while also helping you avoid little misfortunes, could be errors in the office or knife cut at home.
This in essence will not only make you more efficient but also more productive, not to forget that in the long term a good 6-8 hour sleep guarantees a healthy lifestyle.
4. Set and maintain time for Routine Exercise
There’s a physical, mental, spiritual and energetic toll taken from you whenever you work, birth, work and raise children. The toll is huge for any one of these things. Combine them and you’ve got a sure-fire recipe for burn out. The only way other than sleep to recharge your batteries is to formulate a simple exercise routine you can maintain. For more fun, get your partner to try it too.
5. Make Easier Mornings
Still at home, try not to get yourself worked out in the morning by making relevant preparations for the day the night before. Pack the kid’s lunches, lay out their clothes, and have them shower. You can also decide what to make for breakfast, repack the diaper bag, purses, backpacks and or the work bags to be placed by the door, alongside the keys so you can grab them on the way out. The importance of a light morning is that you leave to work with enough energy and good mood.
6. Seek Help Where Necessary
Now if you are working 60 or more hours a week, there’s the alert. Even though you still manage to keep together a family despite all the work, you need help. And this again is what Laura speaks of, the expectations we have as women. The society expects us to be 100 percent mothers, wives, and still get a similar score at work. Yet, how are we supposed to do that?! According to Rosette, one day you’ll be 100 percent mother less other expectations while other days you’ll be 100 percent other responsibilities less a mother. In the end, for a healthy lifestyle, it is only mature to admit there are times you need to be assisted. It's all about balancing work and family. So don’t waste a lot time listening to those saying you are lazy. Some of my favorite resources are Amazon's Prime and Prime Now. And of course I love Freelancer.com to help out with all sorts of odds and ends!
7. Let Go of Negative Energy
It’s hard to please everyone, in fact, it’s impossible. Sometimes you’ll hear things; good and bad, if not how you’re not doing this right then it’s how you’re doing that wrong, sometimes from the extended family, sometimes from colleagues at work. This is part of life. Quite a normal thing in the life of both gender, but more especially for working moms so expect it and don’t allow it in.
According to Chris Talambas of Lifehack.com, negativity affects ourselves and everyone around us. It limits our potential to become great and to live a fulfilling life. Also it has a tangible effect on our health. Now, when we let it go, positivity comes in and then we begin to encounter other situations and people with more similar attitude and thus we begin to live happy and healthy lifestyles.
I am not shy about telling you how much I love this guided meditation. It focuses my thoughts and efforts and shows me how to forgive myself for my failings (and there can be many!
8. Listen to Your Body
Unfortunately what needs to be done can be so overbearing that we lose ourselves in it and fail to listen to our bodies. Laura tried to do it all and when she pushed herself harder, the body jammed then she realized you don’t have to sacrifice yourself in the process, you can do it all yes but save yourself; tomorrow needs you. She says, If you feel that you are really tired, run down or a little achy and that you need a vacation — take it because this isn’t a should, it’s a must for self
9. Let Loose At Times
In Texas, a group of working women (bankers, nurses, and doctors) often let loose by organizing a roller derby. This is a game in which the members of Texas Derby Divas often laced in skates’ takes down local opponents of similarly organized groups and that’s it for them. Kerri Gathright, a member of the divas team says skating is her outlet, that if she’s often in a bad mood whenever she doesn’t go out. Like her Carrie Dopoma, who’s a flower mound mother of two often goes out and for her it’s another role with an added tag, ‘Baroness Von Booty’. She says, “I’m one person at home and a different one on the track. Well, like these diva moms, at times you can go out and let go. Like sleep, letting loose will help you become more productive by improving your mood thus keeping you on the pathway to a healthy lifestyle.
10. Celebrate Little Successes
Finally, there are so many ways celebrating little successes in our lives matter. Whether this is a promotion at work, beating a deadline, completing a task/project or just getting a good feedback from your manager, it’s important to acknowledge and celebrate success, however little. See, the whole point of putting in all that effort - working longer hours than normal and really stretching yourself to getting both done right is so you can enjoy the satisfaction of attainment. Otherwise, you’ll be robbing yourself the feeling and sending the message that really your efforts don’t need to be recognized. When we celebrate, we get ourselves ready for the next big job, project or goal.
Briefly, other ways to work and live a healthy lifestyle includes finding quality childcare, having some “you-time”, staying connected with your partner and other family members during the day, creating special family bonding sessions whenever time allows and finding the balance as well as setting boundaries between work and family, not to leave out creating more time for your partner.
Which of these working mom tips are you committed to implementing? Let me know in the comments below!
