It is all about finding balance – a way that works for us as individuals
These days, I am already spending a lot of time looking at childcare options. I know that you might think why so early as my child is still very young, but I found for myself that I am not the only stay at home mum, but I need a balance for myself between being a mum and having a career. Generally, balance is playing a big part in our lives as we can fill several roles at the same time and need to make sure we take the time to play all of them at some point.
Generally, I like to think that our life is made up of several pillars. There is our family that we should be there for and our role as parents. Then, the next pillar is our job and career aspirations where we are challenged and can find purpose hopefully in one way or another. The next one is our finances that should be to have a calm and happy life. Another pillar is then our social life with friends where we enjoy our precious time out with them and socialize. The last pillar is mindfulness, or some people even argue spirit or religion here. This is the one people very often oversee or don’t recognize. However, it is one of the most important ones. Our mindfulness can influence all the other pillars and is very important to also focus on from time to time. With all those different pillars now, that describe different roles we play in our life, the are is to bring them in some kind of balance.
However, this is the hardest thing to do and quite honestly a mission impossible, so forget the idea of all these pillars being perfectly aligned very quickly. You will never get there so don’t even try. However, try to get as close to a balance of those that works for you as possible.
There will always be periods in life when one of those is going to play a bigger part than the other pillar. For example, as a new mother now, for me the family pillar is more dominant than the other ones now. That might change again when my son is older and maybe then the career pillar is playing a bigger part again. However, while it is fine for a time for one to be more prominent than the others, it is not fine to then ignore the other completely. I cannot ignore, my career while being a new mother and should stay in touch with my employer. I also must make sure that I plan in me time and take care of mindfulness. At the same time, socializing as a mum is also vital to not feel isolated and lonely in the house all the time. This is really what we mean when we talk about finding that balance that works for us.
The emphasis is also placed here on works for us, as each one of us has a different balance of those pillars according to their individual needs and preferences. Some are true socializers while others are very money minded or are more careers driven then enjoy spending time with the family. Each one of us therefore must find a way of those pillars that works for them, while understanding at the same time that we will never have the perfect balance where all of these are perfectly aligned. This would be paradise and unfortunately does not really exist. If those are perfectly aligned, it will always only be for a very short moment, until something changes or happens in our dynamic lives that pout this perfect balance back into turmoil.
It is however still definitely worth trying to find that balance that works best for us as happiness and fulfillment await with a balanced life at the end. The art is therefore to find that balance of those pillars that works best for us as individuals. However, it will constantly change as we go through our lives and its different phases.
