I know this doesn’t seem like a terribly original topic, but since keeping life in balance can be such an overwhelming challenge, I thought I might bring it up here this morning. Running a home business introduces an incredibly tough element to keeping family life in balance. Now, instead of being able to obviously separate “work” and “family”–everything is all smushed together! Hours overlap, work becomes something done at the dining room table or curled up on the couch, and family sometimes becomes part of your extended staff.
I was talking with a friend of mine this past week and we were trying to unravel that overwhelming feeling we get–you know, when you just feel exhausted and like everything is flying out of control and has become completely overwhelming? It may not seem on the surface like much has changed from one week to the next and suddenly, things seem really crazy. We decided that this is a good indicator that things are out of balance. A life too focused or heavy on work, play, self, family or whatever can make things feel tilted and out of whack, which in turn starts to make things feel out of control.
Of course, we thought ourselves very wise for coming up with this explanation, but that doesn’t mean that I’m any better than the next single-working-mom-building-a-home-business at keeping things in balance. I guess the first step is to figure it out and acknowledge that it takes focus to keep things in perspective. So what if the house isn’t perfectly clean, all the work on the to-do list didn’t get crossed off, and every single phone call didn’t get returned? It’s not supposed to be about perfection anyway! So, I’m giving you permission to sip that extra cup of coffee or tea slowly this morning and just try to focus on getting things back in balance…
See Also: How Many Hours a Week Do You Need to Get Your Work Done? and Setting Office Hours When You Work From Home