A Balancing Act: How Women Can Have it All

A few days ago I was listening to a podcast that talked about the struggle of balancing life as a woman. It's a hot topic and something that so many women have difficulty dealing with. The episode was very interesting and as I listened, it made me contemplate my own struggles I've had to balance motherhood, work and just recently blogging. It also made me ask the question can women have it all.

I've been blogging now for a little over two months and it's recently gotten more difficult to do so. There's so much work to be done on top of caring for my family and working full time. While I created content for a month and a half out for the blog, there are other things that I needed to do. Before I decided to blog again I already had a pretty packed schedule and routine for myself and my family. 3 times a week I’d hit the gym, cook on Sunday, Tuesdays and Thursday’s and meal prep Saturday evenings. It was summer so that meant time needed to be spent with my kids as well as my boyfriend and I had a set time and date for those moments as well. Work was another story. A few Saturdays out the month I’d going in to get caught up on work. Then there were just normal events with family and friends that occurred, which meant scheduling time to do that. Now throw blogging on top of all of that, LoL. All of those things kept me busy and for the most part, I was succeeding in those areas of life but not without having some trial and error first. 

Sometimes I came up short with the gym, family and friend time or with work. That's life though and instead of beating myself up for unintentional shortcomings I took a step back. I really thought about not only what was important but how could I show up more for myself and family without losing sleep or my sanity. As women, we sometimes have this overwhelming amount of guilt and worry about not be able to always balance life. We want to please everyone and strive to have everything even if it means we have nothing left for ourselves. So what can we do to fix this? There are several things we can do and I've come up with a few things that have worked for me and can work for you as well. 

Organizational Apps

For me, I had to adjust my schedule a few times before I found what worked. I did this by downloading a calendar app called Cozi. With Cozi, you can create multiple lists for different things. It will remind you of upcoming events, but the best feature of this app is its ability to share everything with your family members. This feature is great for myself and my two busy teenagers and boyfriend. If there’s anything they need to do, they can add it to the calendar and every in the family can see. 

Physical Planner 

This method of staying organized may seem prehistoric but trust me, ladies, this is a great back up for when technology does what it does best, fail. I use a planner because if I see anything written down the chances of me forget it is less likely to occur. 

Cut unrealistic expectations 

To answer the question of, “ Can women have it all”, the answer is yes, you can have it all just not all at once. You will come up short a few times, the key is to decide what areas are you willing to do so. Again for me, my family comes first. So that's an area that I'm not really willing to compromise on. I'm not perfect and I know that I won't always get everything right but I constantly remind myself that I'm trying. 

Scheduled ”Me Time”

Let's face it when we take time for ourselves we are much better for everyone else. Whether you're a mom or not taking time for yourself is extremely important. That means time away from work where you're not tuned into what happening there at all. Taking your vacation time to actually do something for yourself is so necessary. So outside of the gym, I take time monthly to do something relaxing and unplug from the world. 

Now that I've shared some methods I use to balance life, tell me what are somethings you do to balance out your life and whats your version of " Having It All"?