If you ever feel like you are caught in a permanent tug – of – war between your home-based business and your home life, you are not alone. It is only natural to want to be successful at work, and it is just as natural to want to be a successful parent and homemaker. When you find yourself feeling down because you feel like you are not excelling in one or both of these areas of your life, it is important to take time to address those feelings.
Working through the feelings will eventually help you to feel better because you will figure out what you want to do about the things that caused you to feel that way. Also, if you try to forge on and ignore the feelings, nothing will get done to address the things that caused you to have the feelings in the first place and they will still be there and may even make you feel worse after a while. I have found that a good first step to figuring out why I am not feeling happy about the state of my work or home life is to write it down. Do not worry if you just write a few words on a piece of paper, or a couple of seemingly unconnected thoughts. As you think it through, your thoughts will become more coherent and a clearer picture of the situation will emerge.
Once you have arrived at a clear description of what is bothering you, such as not being able to work enough hours to pay the bills because of all of the other things that are expected of you, or being frustrated about having taken on so much work that you have had to cut corners around the house or spend less time with the kids, you can begin to form a plan of action for what you can do to resolve the problem. Come up with as many ideas as you can, and choose the one that seems to make the most sense for your life and your family. Perhaps your spouse and kids are willing and able to do more around the house and you simply have not asked them to do so. Maybe you have a friend that can help you to plow through the pile of work that you have right now so that you can get back to a more reasonable work load once some of those projects are off of your desk. Whatever you can think of that seems like it could work.
Next, select a solution from the list that you have created and put it into action. Creative problem solving is one skill that is an essential skill for home-based professional parents to develop, and it will serve you well in your personal and business endeavors. You deserve to be satisfied with your work life and your home life. There is always that tug – of – war between work and home, but fortunately you can get through the underlying issues that cause that feeling with a little investment of time and effort.
Photo by manicmorff on morguefile.com.