IN THE NEWS - "Finding Balance in Your Life"

Here is an article that I wrote for the August/September edition of Boston Women's Journal about finding balance in our lives based on the survey results for the Point of View section for our Parents for Parents™ magazine.







A Mother of Two’s Guide Series – Finding Balance in Your Life
By SK Joun

Balance in life. We all want it, we all crave it, and we all know we should have it, but we all cannot seem to quite find it. Balance in life is elusive and diverse as happiness. Like happiness, levels of balance - and the areas of our lives where balance is most needed - are different for everyone. And just like happiness, balance is not something we have to find only once and it stays with us. Something new always comes along and knocks us off balance and if we are not careful, while we are not looking, it slips away a little bit at a time. For the upcoming fall issue of the Parents for Parents™ magazine (www.ParentsforParentsMag.com), we conducted a survey of parents from across the country on the topic of finding balance.

When the parents were asked, “Which ONE balance issue is the most critical to you and your family?”

• 49% said Balance between work and family.
• 31% said Balance between self and family.
• 9% said Balance between immediate family (household) and extended family (parents, siblings, uncles/aunts, in-laws).
• 7% Balance between their wishes/dreams/goals and their spouses/partners’ wishes/dreams/goals.
• 4% said Other.

Since balance between work and family was the most critical to families, we asked the parents for ways they find balance between work and family. Their techniques were diverse and some quite simple. Here is a sampling of those techniques:

Keep a clear line between work and family. Try not to bring extra work back home. Establish a good schedule for kids. Then parents have more control of time.

I changed my work schedule to get home one hour earlier, but go in one hour earlier, as well. I stopped wasting time at night when friends would call every night just to chat and now limit it to only one night a week. I just let my voice mail pick up and don't call them back until the one night I chose to chat. I stopped bringing work home from the office so I could spend more time in the evenings and at night with my son.

Plan ahead, know each other's calendar and distribute the task; hire a part-time sitter

Learning to say NO to things outside our family that are NOT a priority and being OK with it. Being organized so that we have more time to do family things ...having a family meeting so we know what the week looks like and don’t add in things and overwhelm the family or the mom.

During dinnertime, we turn off the TV and talk together (like what happened in school or how to spend this weekend). This way, we can spend family time. Also I am trying not to say I am tired ... because that makes kids worry about me.

Both parents share the household work; we don’t bring office tensions back home.

We pick 2 nights a week as family night and play board games or go for a walk or to the park. My husband and I take turns spending one on one time with the kids.

We all like to get in bed together and watch movies on the weekends, which is the only time my husband has off from work.

As the above tips suggest –sometimes the little things are the things make us feel balanced. Many little actions and steps get us to the greater goal of finding balance in our lives.

Sometimes the big changes that are needed for balance in our lives do not happen quickly enough or sometimes are not even feasible (like not working, finding a full time nanny or taking long vacations). We can still get some peace and some sense of balance by tweaking small parts of our lives or starting something new. For example, in some years of my corporate career, I was rarely able to complete projects. Most projects were either very complicated and took many years to finish. Some projects morphed into completely different projects. I was feeling “out of whack”, fragmented, and downright cranky! I needed an outlet for my need to finish something. One day, I saw some yarn at a craft store and remembered that I used to enjoy crocheting as a child. I eagerly bought three rolls of yarn and quickly completed a scarf for my husband and baby blankets for my children. I was not a good crotcheter, but I got immense satisfaction in planning a crochet project and then looking and touching the finished product! Every couple of weeks (or months depending on my need), I finished a crocheting project. Eventually after a few years, I took the big step and started my own business (the big change that was needed) but in the meantime, crocheting was an excellent method of appeasing one of my basic core needs – my desire to finish something!

Once I interviewed a work life coach, Teri Heard Ralbovsky, for a radio show. She stated that balance in life is NOT a scale where things are equal on each side. Since we cannot possibly find balance in every aspect of our lives, we should look at what is important to us based on our core desires and needs and then taking steps to satisfy them. When we are balanced in the area that is most important to us, then we are balanced overall.

Read more about “Finding Balance in Your Life” in the Fall issue of Parents for Parents™. The magazine is available on www.ParentsforParentsMag.com, www.magazines.com and many retail stores.
If you have tips or thoughts that you would like to share with other parents, visit www.ParentsforParentsMag.com and post your ideas. Remember, other parents are the best resources - they are the real "experts" on parenting!