Work, Work, Work, Kid, House, Cat, Fish… How the?

Hi Lizzy,
Bill told me about your site.
What do you think about working mothers? I think I work too much and make too little. Sometimes I think it would easier to not work and be a bum. That’s not going to happen. How do you suggest I balance work work work and having a house, a kid, a fishtank and I cat to keep up with?
 

Dear Beth,

Thank you for coffee talking with me! Balance is a thorn in everyone’s side, if you are winning one battle, you feel like you are losing another. Just like in war, if you fight one battle at a time, you have a better chance of winning. As with most parents you are constantly walking the line between providing financial stability and emotional stability.

Raising your child is your most important job, but that requires money, and as attractive as becoming a bum may look today, pushing a shopping cart down Main Street with a kid, a fish tank and a cat, just doesn’t paint the picture of what anyone wants for the future.

Divide your life into Categories

When you try to make everyone happy all the time, no one is happy, and everything seems to be “half assed”.

Even though you have a business that you are running, make yourself an employee, set times to be at work, and times to leave. Literally and Mentally “Clock Out”. This will allow you to give work 100% and your family 100%.

This is quality vs. quantity, the age old crisis, quality always wins.

You deserve quality, so does your child, and your company, if you spread the peanut butter too thin, it turns out to be a dry crappy sandwich. When you are at work, work hard, when you are at home, love hard.

Stop Keeping up with the Jones’s

Decide what is important to you, write it down on a piece of paper, and hang it on your fridge. This way you think about what you want and stop working for things you don’t want. In today’s society we have a tendency to “keep up”, therefore we lose sight of what is important to us, and our children. We were dirt poor when I was a child, and I can tell you now, I am thankful that my mom didn’t give me everything I thought I wanted. All my friends had the latest Nintendo, beautiful cloths, and money to do what ever they wanted, the only thing they didn’t have was a mom that loved them like crazy, and knew them as a human. These days we want to give our children every “thing”, when they truly don’t really need “things”, they need love, and a little food every once in a while.

Which brings me to sports, hobbies, and commitments, these kids have a busier social schedule than I did in my early twenties (which was outrageous, I could show you ATM receipts). It is important for them to be involved, but not in everything, let them pick one thing that they really do well, and help them perfect it. We wonder why this newest generation has no focus, but we put them in the position of being a jack of all extra curricular activities and master of none.

Again its quality vs. quantity, quality wins again.

Mothers Unite

There are others like you, in masses. When I was little, I remember a constant circle of “family” friends, one day we would go to a lady named Connie’s house the next we would be at my house, the next at my Aunt Katie’s. My mom formed some sort of mother coalition, so she and her girlfriends got together and helped one another. You are not weak if you ask for help, you are smart. The thing you are searching for is time, quality time. Find a group of mothers that are in similar situations as you are, and present a “Network”. This will allow you to gain some “quality time” for yourself, and give your child the experience to grow up with some other perspectives. There are all kinds of resources, the school, daycare, church, bar, or anywhere else there are humans that struggle with time, and that is everywhere. Have a “girlfriend” coffee talk or wine night, and present the idea of a Mothers Network, these women are struggling too.

Don’t Over Commit to Anything

“No thanks”, the two best words in the English language for freedom. We are not obligated to do anything, stop emotionally attaching yourself to “no”, it’s not a bad word, and it’s not offensive. The fact is, it’s a misconception that the world wants us to do everything, yet we crucify ourselves mentally for not being able to. Just STOP doing everything.

Failure

Stop the “guilt” and it will stop “stopping” you. Guilt is something of a mystery to me, we are the only species that feels it, and it has no positive repercussions on our actions. If you are being the best mother you can be, and the best worker you can be, and the best fish owner you can be, let yourself be.

Final and most important

You gave me several categories of your life, and balancing the kid, the work, the cat, and the fish, and like most women you forgot the most important category, YOU.

This is the best advice I can give you, and I truly believe the most productive, TAKE YOU BACK. Beth, take one hour a day to yourself, I don’t care if you have to get up at 5:00 in the morning to do it. It will be worth more to the quality of your life, than anything that you could do. Think about yourself, how you feel, what you are, and most of all think about the fact that you are the most important thing to take care of, your child, your work, your cat, and your fish all depend on you, and without you taking a little part of you back, none of these things get a quality of care.

Reward yourself with an hour a day, and that hour will reward every single other category in your life. Have a cup of coffee, and realize why the hell you are doing all this to begin with…

My heart is with you on your journey, and I commend you for being a strong woman. Thanks for the Coffee talk, I look forward to next time…. Lizzy