A Blueprint for Balance: Defining your Individual Course for Life

By Michelle Vandepol.  Michelle writes for the Agassiz Harrison Observer and magazines such as SUCCEED and Woman Alive. Her debut novel Mother Mexico will be published by iUniverse in early spring. Look for excerpts online at her blog www.nothisplace.blogspot.com.

Run a quick mental check: do you know anyone who claims to have the work/life balance completely figured out? Likely your friends are working it out the same way you are: doing too much one week, coming home late from work, being crabby at kids, and foregoing a needed shower to do one more household chore or work item and then crashing into bed. And then when exhaustion hits: lying on couch, watching TV, not getting anything done. The house a mess and you're feeling like you're doing the bare minimum at work. The swinging back and forth between excelling at work and excelling at home is what causes us to seek for a balance, hoping that balance will be an easier form of living that will have excellence stamped all over everything. It is a combination and a compromise of the two that will lead you to balance. It means realizing that there will be some days you will have to slow yourself and your schedule down and others you will have to kick yourself to get going and have enthusiasm for the life that's on your plate. Having both kinds of days and working with them; is in fact, balance.

Balance comes from working with the circumstances you have. Those circumstances might not change in a hurry, but that's okay. Even if they are franetic, you work on remaining calm and moving forward. Start focusing your balance scope right now on your own life situation. The biggest barrier to a balanced life is to try and balance it exactly like the most balanced woman you know. It will not work for you exactly like it works for her. She might have more challenges that force her to do things the way she does that you know nothing about. Or she might have more help than you do and is able to delegate a large portion of her at home workload, leaving you feeling overwhelmed in your efforts. While you can take example from an efficiently run life, you need to find your own.

The first step is to take stock of life as it currently stands. Writing down everything you are filling your time with lets you know where you have room to rearrange things later. It is similar to what people do when they find they are running out of money or calories every month. Track them to order them, the experts say. Accepting your individual circumstances let you let your life play out the way it was intended to. It is about purposing the things that are in your life for the best at any given time.

Raising children while working is multi-faceted. It is about providing for them and maintaining a sense of self; nurturing them and staying sane. Is it possible to do all that while striving ahead career wise. No one will know what success or settling or selling out will look like for you, but you. Write your home and work goals on a card that you can refer to and remind yourself of what your true goals are when you are in the thick of life and drowning in the chaos.

There will always be things you can cut back. There will be things you cannot. There will be things you do not want to do, but have to. There will be things you want to do and cannot. Do not be afraid of a little self-sacrifice. This might sound like a silly thing to say to someone who is already pulled in a thousand directions, but things that seem at first like sacrifice, may in fact later be recognized as freedom. Play the what if game in your mind. For example: what if I don't take this promotion yet? What if I can work through lunch and get off early? What's the worst that will happen if I venture off on my own and stay home with the kids? Say no to my boss on her constant overtime scheduling? In running scenarios through your mind, you will start to put potential results on the choices you could make, helping you see the big picture now. In multiplying your options, you run a higher chance of making it all work for you.

Balancing life with home might make you think about a languid pace. The truth is, while that might be true of a few select days, most of the time that pace will leave you with a hundred things yet to do at 10pm.Try the same list making skills that get you ahead at work and make a list of your home goals. Helping your child learn to ride his bike, finish his homework earlier, check out that new restaurant or catch a movie as a family, do a board game, go to the beach, make cookies. Then post those goals somewhere you will see them frequently and you will be inspired to take action. If you are regularly scheduling things that you know you and your family want in your life then you can also sort through what are your kids' genuine requests and what are their guilt trips. You will at some time have to rationally and calmly deal with the self-centeredness of a child who has spent an evening at the movies with you and is now tired and cranky and saying you don't do anything with her. This will happen because your children need help learning balance as well. They would sign up for a steady diet of fun and hot dogs if it was an option.

Even if you have little time for traditional me time, there are still ways you can practice self-care. The most basic is to take a moment to consider what adding more obligations to your life will be like before you do it. When you do sign up for new things, do it for a trial period. (eg. To your child, we'll try karate in our schedule for one month to start – maybe book a workshop instead of an entire set of lessons; for a volunteer position, I will help this one time instead of signing up for the committee with regular meetings) Just like signing up unnecessarily for regular monthly payments on something new when it's not necessary, we can do the same draining thing with demands on our time.

Balancing life is a daily thing. Even if you find your time used inefficiently, your money being wasted, and your stress level sky high and you read an article in a simplifying magazine about how to do it the right way from an organizational guru with happy kids, trying to implement it over the weekend and expecting balance by next week is not realistic. Balance for the working mom is doing a lot of things at the same time, and well, but not perfect, and doing them while feeling not hurried most of the time. If you are feeling hurried the majority of the time, you are likely taking on more without cutting back in another area.

This concept is also easily compared to what happens if you keep shopping for things for the house without making regular trips to the thrift store to get rid of the things the new stuff was supposed to replace. It can quickly get out of control. Stay on top of both the possessions and obligations you have by tackling things in a little by little way, and you won't be as derailed when you inevitably get sick on the weekend you were planning to finally tackle the mess or the work.

A note on the subject on getting rid of clutter: for the record, anyone who suggests working moms should hold garage sales to get rid of the stuff in their houses and make a little extra money should be stopped. That sort of thinking is what leads to an overburdened schedule. Why add another time consuming activity in an attempt to regain balance when there are many more valuable uses for your time? Keep a small shopping bag in each closet of the house for purges as you come across them – clothes that your kids don't fit, things that look horrible on you. If you find yourself stockpiling things that break to be repaired, unless you actually do it, throw the broken stuff away. Same with the chipped knick knacks. Your home will thank you and you will not have to give up a whole Saturday to act as a retail outlet.

Your calendar is an easy way to see if your life is in balance. Move things from your career goal list, family list, me time list, and grocery list all on the same calendar and don't forget to plan for the things that take the time we didn't budget. Changing the oil before a car drive out of town, making the cookies with the kids for the class party, buying your mother a birthday present are all things which will need some of your time. Writing it all down will help you say no to things you cannot fit it, if all the details of your upcoming week are laid bare before your eyes.

The calendar can also do financial duty. A few days before payday, take stock of disposable income and upcoming obligations (gifts, outings with family, car oil change, meal to bring to potluck following week, getting the kids swimsuits before lessons start etc.) and sprinkle both money allotted and days on which you can accomplish the errands on the calendar. Then think of the girlfriends and their kids or play dates you owe or places you promised to take the kids and throw those in on the matching day. Getting the car's oil change with reward of taking kids to dollar store after where you can pick up small items for gifts, gift wrap, and disposable dish for potluck and then heading to play center to let kids run off steam while you catch up with girlfriend, read magazines, sit in the ball pit, or make another list (this might count as me time if you settle for less than the spa).

Working mothers are all too familiar with days that seem like weeks for all the activity they cram into them. I recently emailed someone to ask her how her week had been and she reminded me that it was only Tuesday. It felt like late Thursday or Friday to me. I knew it was time to slow down. The calendar is also helpful for this sort of scenario, reminding yourself of all the current day's components. Another popular way to do this is to have a done list separate from your to do list on which you list those things you did regardless of whether they were on your list. Reading to the kids (check), bagging all the recycling (check), ordering more business flyers (check). You'll quickly see what needs a few more minutes tomorrow and what you have covered already.

For all you super housekeepers, you can spend your whole life cleaning if you want to, but a balanced life begs you not to. Pat yourself on the back for what you can accomplish with your family's help and hire someone if it still falls short of what you can live with. Then rush outside and play with the kids.

Life can also be hit off kilter by overindulging the kids you felt you didn't spend enough time with in the week come payday Friday, but blitzing on them will only create new forms of stress. A balanced life still includes the unpleasant bits such as putting your foot down and saying no sometimes.

Stretching out work and reward for both you and the family over the calendar will make for pleasant memories and accomplished tasks. In enjoying both, you will teach your children about a balanced life so that they will be armed with the skills when its time to run theirs.