Do You want success, happiness, money, fun, family, holidays???..and the list goes on...
You grow up learning that you can now have it all, but if this desire for everything is not balanced well, you can be left feeling overwhelmed, overworked and underachieving in almost all areas of your life. More importantly, you may find your stress levels are so high that it impacts on other people in your life and you may find it difficult to even enjoy the fruits of your labour.
The expectations you place on yourself are often the keys to how well you manage your levels of stress and your ability to 'get the jobs done' well.
Being a working mother is a perfect example of dealing with high expectations. Mums expect themselves to be able to get the kids to school/daycare on time every day, organize their social lives (& their children's social lives), run the household, feed the family, look after their own (& their children's) health & fitness, get to work on time, achieve success at work/career and the list goes on.
The single mum can have it even tougher if she does not have great support financially & emotionally. She has the pressure of trying to look and feel good to support her kids and hopefully attract a new mate, whilst trying to look after her kids, work, cope with the side effects of separation and help her kids deal with the separation too.
The single woman has all the same stress and expectations, minus the kids & partner, but plus the need to socialize and look and feel her best in order to hopefully attract a suitable parter & often places more pressure on herself in terms of career success to ensure she can provide for herself now and in the future.
Men also have to deal with high levels of stress due to expectations to be fit and healthy, earn a substantial income, support a family/partner/kids, be a fun and supportive friend AND... Cope with the exceeding demands at work to produce more, work longer hours, be innovative and so on...
So in the midst of all these pressures and expectations from others, it's important to be realistic about what you can achieve within your constraints of time. Then it's important to communicate with others about your time pressures and ensure you and others also have realistic expectations about what is possible.
Being organized is also imperative, so take time to sort out your work and home life, so that you know where things are when you need them. Schedule time for you and with those you love - again within a realistic timeframe.
Being organized and realistic will assist you to stop berating yourself every time you fall short of your expectations and will also serve to help you reevaluate your expectations regularly to ensure you're not asking more of yourself than is really possible.
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