Try breaking it down into daily bites.
(It helps if you sound curious about how their amazing brain works, not dictator-like.) Remember, you don’t have to fix things to help them feel better.
Most high school seniors get hung up on the future…
“Will I make friends in college?”
“Will I get into my first choice?”
“What if I can’t get in the school I want?”
Or they get stuck in the past…
“I can’t bare to leave my friends.”
“Things will never be this great again.”
Take a deep breath.
You can’t experience the past right now and you can’t experience the future until it gets here.
All you have is now.
The rest are just thoughts about the past or the future.
And thoughts, you can change.
Here is the truth, friend…
There is no such thing as life balance.
You can balance a checkbook or a teeter-totter, but you can’t balance life.
I know it seems like you should be able to. Western culture is very fact driven. We like to quantify and allocate and check things off.
But life isn’t that clean and compartmentalized.
Life is messy and fluid and rich.
And that’s okay.
Because you don’t really want to balance your life.
What you REALLY want is to feel good about what you are doing right now.
Life balance is a feeling, not a state of being.
You can’t divide your time equally between family and work and friends. It doesn’t operate like that. There is an ebb and flow.
What causes you pain is thinking that you should be doing the other thing. The thing you’re not doing right now.
If you are working out-of-town and think you are missing your sweet baby’s first step, that’s what’s causing your pain.
If you feel badly for taking a yoga class when your husband wanted to go out to a movie, that thinking is what causes your pain.
There will always be something else you could have done. That’s the mercurial nature of taking an amazing ride on this big blue marble.
And that’s what will drive you bananas if you let it.
You can choose to feel in balance. No matter how many things are on your to-do list.
You can choose to feel the wonder and rhythm of each moment you are in.
Some people call it mindfulness.
Some people call it flow.
I call it being totally engaged with life at each moment.
That’s the real goal.
The goal is to have such an awesome time with your family while you’re with them, that no possible award at work could measure up.
The goal is to feel so engaged with your work, that you know you are benefiting the greater family of your work community, no matter what is going on at home at that moment.
And what’s more, it is detrimental to feel out of balance.
If you are not happy at work, your family and friends can tell. It bleeds into everything you do.
And vice versa.
If you are trying to spoon strained prunes into a tiny human at the same time you think you need to be finishing a proposal, it’s a lose lose situation.
The first step is to decide what you are going to do for just this minute.
And commit to it.
Give it 100%. Embrace both the fun and the grittiness with all your senses.
Love the moment you are in.
Give yourself permission.
Then decide what you are going to do next.
And repeat.
If you want to jump on the phone and talk about your life and balance, click here to pick a time. I’d love to chat!