BALANCE.
Balance. Does anyone truly have balance when there's multiple things to juggle?
I used to have balance. Pre-kids. It was a period in my life were I was able to dedicate time equally to all areas of my life. When I was at work, I was fully focused on work, the same went for home life, and my time with my family and friends. My time was my own and having the then ability to soley focus on one thing at a time is without doubt the closest I've come to balance.
Fast forward to now and well, quite frankly, I feel a little all over the place. Recently my friend and I likened our minds to a computer with too many tabs open. I'm pretty convinced I'm a two tab kinda girl, so once I have multiple tabs open, I then turn into that computer that no longer wants to work. The computer that cannot be refreshed however many times you try, so you instead resort to shutting it off from the mains and praying when it reboots everything is still there. That, my friends, is my brain these days. The computer you wish you could upgrade but instead reboot daily.
I tell myself it's just a busy period in our lives and that things will get easier, but I'm starting to realise it's not about waiting for things to get easier, but instead changing my way of thinking a bit.
You see, I feel a right idiot even saying, waiting for life to get easier, because life is good, and when life is good, why on earth am I even moaning?! That's why I really want to adjust my way of thinking and my ability (or lack of) to juggle, because if you can't enjoy life when it's actually good, then what is it all about anyway? So these are a few things I'm implementing over the next few weeks in hope to gain some much needed balance.
FOCUS.
Personally, I blame the female brain for being too clever for it's own good. We are multitaskers at heart, and I've found since becoming a mum the multitasker in me has taken it up a notch or two. Now, when you're on the ball, multitasking is a excellent skill to have. However, I do feel it's dimmed my ability to focus on one task at a time.
Take working from home as a classic example. I sit down at my laptop, ready to work, but then spy from the window what a glorious day it is. Perfect washing weather, I think. I look back to my laptop....now where was I? Oh yeah, right....but the temptation to get that washing out on the line is too strong, a wash hung outside dries quicker, which equates to making my life easier. So next minute I'm knee deep in washing shoving it into the machine. I then sit back down at my laptop.....where was I again?
Now I know this comes as one of the downsides of working from home, but in no other job that I've had would washing even have crossed my mind. This is one example of a billion. Working from home is turning out to be a huge adjustment for me now that the boys are at school and I've been able to take more work on.
Therefore as of this week, when I open my laptop, that's me, I'm in work mode. No washing. No tidying. Just work. Look I'm even writing a blog post, and I've published it!! Focus is my friend. The same will for the other areas in my life. Focus on the task in hand rather than trying to do a million things at once.
* I'm going to blog more about working from home as I feel it's too much to squeeze into this post. Basically, I've been lacking, and in fact, craving for more structure. I want to document how I'm going to achieve that, especially as more and more careers are starting from people's homes it would seem, and if I'm struggling with it at times, no doubt others are too.
SAYING NO.
Ugh I'm so bad at saying no. Call it FOMO, which I only figured out the meaning of recently. Call it a weakness, but the word no just doesn't sit right with me. I feel a huge guilt whenever I say, no, or this feeling like I'm not living my life to the fullest if I don't say yes to everything. The thing is, saying yes all the time can be exhausting, and lead to doing things that you sometimes don't want to do. Therefore, I'm going to learn to say no more.
STOP TALKING ABOUT BEING BUSY.
Oh I'm a broken record on being busy. We're all busy. Life is busy. We get it. The more I talk about being busy, or correction, moan about, the more I feel my anxiety levels increase. So this is a simple step for me, I'm basically going the shut up about being busy, and instead pour that energy into focusing on the tasks in hand.
I'd love to hear how you achieve balance in your life. Any tips or tricks share my way! I think it safe to say balance is something you have to work at and will be an ongoing process for me.
