A Working Parent – How To Manage It All

INTRODUCTION

Are you the caregiver in your household? Are you struggling to balance the demands from home and demands from your business? This episode is for you! It’s for the person who is either staying up to 3:00 in the morning with a child who’s sick, a teenager in drama, parents who are either in a nursing home or in your home, and you’re taking care of them. You’re a caregiver, you’re a provider.

TOPICS DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

Don’t Compare Yourself To Others

For me, it was like I am trying to juggle the world. I had the world on my shoulders. I feel like I’m battling bitterness, anger, and frustration. I’m sluggish because I’m mentally and emotionally exhausted. There’s just not enough hours in the day. A tiny part of me, either before I’m peeing, after I finished showering or right when I’m parking my car, was daydreaming about the me that I could see that I believed to be in my future. But all I could say to myself every day was, “How the flip am I going to get there? This seems so damn impossible.” And what’s real for me, is that not only was it impossible, but I just got more and more frustrated the more I looked at how other people were living their lives.

I had old friends from high school, or I had people who I saw and I’m looking at their life and I’m looking at my life and I’d be like, shit. This is so frustrating because I just feel like I’m alone. And if that’s you, I want you to know that not only are you not crazy but that there’s a way out and you’re the key in the answer. But I want you to understand that it’s going to be a matter of you putting some things in place, being clear on your truths, and making a simple game plan just to get to the very first level of alleviating pressure.

ALLEVIATING THE PRESSURE

Number one goal is to alleviate pressure, understand where the brunt of pressure is coming from. And then once you identify, then you can go, okay, great. If I alleviate this pressure, X happens and then it will free me up to do Y. That is the key. Once I started assessing what was creating the pressure for me the whole game changed. If you want to play the bigger game, you have to drop the weight that’s holding you down.

IT’S NOT ALWAYS GOING TO WORKOUT – BUT THAT’S OKAY

It doesn’t always work out the way we think it’s going to work out. It doesn’t always happen like that. That’s just not the way this thing goes. And the sooner that we’re willing to understand that and own that fact, the easier life becomes because we don’t set ourselves up. Because we have to know the process.

UNDERSTANDING THE TIME YOU HAVE

Next lesson, I had to look at my time and go, okay, great. Where is my number one time? What’s not getting done? What makes me feel heavy? I felt like I had to get out of the feeling of being a failure as a mom. I felt like I sucked city because not only was dad gone and I had no answer for that, but the house was a wreck. Now I could go and clean my house and spend six hours. I don’t have the time for that. I can’t do that. But guess what I did? Instead of doing that, I was like, well, how much does it cost me to hire a maid? That was step number one. And I found a maid, I started asking around instead of going online or in the yellow book, I started asking around to people I know.

I know there are things that you do that take a ton of time. Getting rid of the things that mentally take you or that make you feel inadequate is step number one. When you alleviate the time, you have more time to focus on the things that make you money. I’m not going to clean my house because for the time I could spend cleaning my house, I’m going to spend putting into making more sales so I can make more money.

SETTING ASIDE TIME FOR YOU AND YOU ONLY

You need time. For me, it was at night. I decided to have my kids go to bed at around 9:00 o’clock. It was tough to get us in this routine, but it allowed me to have my time. And unfortunately, during that period of time, I made a commitment that from about 9:30 to 12:00 was my time. I took a tiny little part of my world. I just got committed to every single night, no matter what, this was my time.

And it wasn’t my time to relax. There was no time to relax during those days. No, that was Saturday and Sunday stuff. This was my time to sit down. I went through all of my proposals. I prepared the next day the day before every day. I prepared where I was going to cold call. I prepared the proposals I was going to give. I typed up the letters.

FIND A DEDICATED PLACE FOR YOU TO WORK

You can’t be working all over the place. You cannot. You got to have a tiny spot that’s just your own where you can work and you can work silently, in peace, and keep all of your things there. It’s so important to have clarity in where you’re working.

The truth of the matter is that you have a responsibility, 100% you have a responsibility to yourself to make it easy for you to win. And setting up these tiny pieces of the puzzle, make it possible.

DON’T TAKE PERSONAL CALLS DURING THE DAY

I for sure did not take personal calls during the day. No matter what. Mom, dad, cousin, sister, aunt, uncle, did not take personal calls during the day. Any time from 8:00 to 6:00. I had to treat my job like a job. I had to treat my business as a job. I had to treat it with respect. Because if I didn’t treat it with respect then no one else was going to treat it with respect. I had to be conscious of where I was spending my time, energy, and effort. No matter what.

INDULGE AND DON’T APOLOGIZE

You have to allow yourself to indulge and not apologize. Whatever it is that gets you to the next day. This is not about you doing something dangerous, it’s not about you endangering your family, your children. No, but don’t feel like you spending half the day in your bathtub with bath salts is taboo and you shouldn’t do it. Don’t let anyone make you feel like two glasses of wine is going to be the end of the world for you. Don’t let anybody make you feel like you listened to hardcore rap music by Tupac Unedited is going to be a bad thing. I really truly mean you have to do, this is just about keeping your MO, your motive, your mojo, and its prime every single day and indulging.

You do not have to be a superwoman. You do not have to be Superman. You do not have to figure everything out, but you definitely have to take care of you. You’ve got to put yourself first. You can’t take care of others without taking care of yourself first. Period.