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There are moments as a working mom when overwhelm just takes over, and you realize the boundaries between work and life have been significantly blurred. While work-life balance is but an elusive ideal, unclear or blurred boundaries between your career and life can spell havoc over your entire existence. This is when resetting your work-life boundaries is absolutely necessary.
Set a strong intention first
The process of setting boundaries is usually approached merely as a mechanical endeavor consisting of separating tasks, obligations, and commitments. Often, this is done without much thought or appreciation for the genuine intention (or the lack thereof) behind it. As a result, similar to New Year’s resolutions, these boundaries end up only surviving for a limited time, quickly replaced by the status quo in one way or another.
Setting a strong intention by questioning the “why” of your decision first can instead create a longer-lasting impact, turning an otherwise mechanical process into a flexible and malleable concept filled with meaning and purpose.
Define what your own work-life boundaries look like
So much has been said and written about the proverbial “work-life balance” that it has come to represent a blanket set of ideas around what work-life boundaries truly are. However, the reality is, every working mother’s work-life boundaries are unique. As each working mom has her own vision of living, parenting, and working, this vision permeates the very meaning, extent, and impact of her own boundaries.
This is especially relevant in this post-pandemic era when many, if not most women are redefining what their lives and work mean, and what success, fulfillment, and happiness look like to them on a daily basis. This is why subscribing to a general and falsely popular idea of work-life boundaries or balance can be detrimental. Instead, taking some time to reflect on what your ideal day, life, and work look like, can prompt you to define the best, clearest, and most practical boundaries for yourself and your environment.
Create a flexible routine of your own
This is where action meets intention, and where the true challenge of setting boundaries lie. It’s in the implementation and enforcing of one’s boundaries that many obstacles and challenges come to the forefront, highlighting areas to work on and constant improvements to be made. Working mothers, more than anyone else, are keenly aware of the beautiful pressure of juggling life and work, career and parenting, reports, and laundry.
This is where not just creating a routine, but crafting an adaptive, flexible approach, can pay immense dividends over time. For some, it may mean a different allocation of time and space. For others, it may entail hard conversations, difficult decisions, and renewed commitments. For most, it’s a hodgepodge of personal, professional, spiritual, and psychological elements, presenting new, exhilarating discoveries about oneself and one’s environment, highlighting new challenges, and overall creating new opportunities to grow and evolve.
All in all, being a working mother is a beautiful journey of becoming, growing, and juggling. It’s also one whose very beauty and integrity lie in the in-between creases of life, work, and everything in between. The work then, the challenging yet uplifting work, is in constantly ironing these creases, setting and re-setting the boundaries that keep us thriving, growing, and evolving in the fullness of all we are.
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