Finding balance in motherhood and business… WHAT balance!? Today’s biz-lady feature is a woman after my own heart. We click on so many levels, including our passion for creating a successful business around our lives, which includes our family and children. We’ve both embarked on the fruitless search for the elusive balance, and come out the other side. Mim Dart is one half of MummyCon, Mama Mentor and soon-to-be Soul Modes mentor, sharing her wisdom on finding balance in motherhood and business.
Enjoy! Rachel x
Finding balance in motherhood and business
Work/life, mum/life, work/mum balance. That thing that we strive for, the thing we think everyone else has achieved, the thing that makes us feel like we’re not doing as good a job as someone else or as we “should” be.
Why we can’t find balance in motherhood and business in the form we have been looking for it
Balance means having things in perfect harmony. Any dictionary definition of “balance” includes words such as perfection, even distribution, impartiality, stability, equally weighted….
But the work/mum/life juggle is never going to be equally weighted each way. There are ebbs and flows to the needs our children have, the demands of our business or career have on our energy, our need for self-care, and what time we’re able to offer our husbands/friends/loved ones. An ever-shifting and changing landscape of juggling motherhood and business and life.
So, the very definition of having balance means we have been spending our days chasing an unattainable, mythical feeling of every demand and thing in our life being perfectly sorted. And any mother, whether you work inside the home, outside the home or run your own business, knows that everything is not always perfectly sorted.
Redefining what balance means
Have you ever seen a juggler? Do they stand perfectly still while the balls move around them? No!
They shift and change to accommodate all the balls. Sometimes they’ll throw one or two higher to give them more time to juggle the couple in their hands. Sometimes they’ll be thrown an extra ball to juggle for a while and they adjust to accommodate it. Always adjusting, always shifting, sometimes dropping but never without movement.
This is what we need to be striving for. Shiftability and adjustability. And the acceptance that we are trying our hardest and that’s it’s ok to drop a ball or two sometimes.
It’s time to reach for acceptance and choice
For there to be perfect balance and harmony between two (or more) things means there needs to be a clear delineation between them. And this is where the magic comes in.
There isn’t a clear separation between you as You, you as Mum, you as Business Owner and you as Wife/Partner/Friend/Daughter/Sister. You are not a bunch of individual parts, completely separate from the other. You are a combination of skills, stressors, likes, struggles, passions and loves. You are not mum OR boss mama OR wife OR sister. You are mum AND biz babe AND wife AND….
So when we can realise and accept that they are all parts that each contribute to making us who and how we are, we can accept that sometimes one thing will need more of our energy than another thing. Each part as important as the others, but not always equally weighted and that’s ok.
That’s where the true balance is. In releasing the guilt that you “should” be doing life a certain way. And accepting that each part of you is just as important as the other parts. And there’s no shame in being any of those parts because each part comes together to create You.
Stop “shoulding” yourself
Stop hunting for this mythical perfect equilibrium of time, demands and energy that you believe you should be able to achieve in motherhood and business. And even if you were to feel like you’d achieved it, you can bet your bottom dollar that it’s right then that one of your kids will throw a new behaviour at you and throw your balance out anyway!
And that’s exactly what mothers are so good at. Taking those unexpected behaviour shifts or the unexpected deadline or the demands of a friendship or the crashing website that needs fixing….and catching that ball, throwing another a little higher to give you time to balance out the juggle and get all your balls back into flow again.
Know and accept that you are doing the very best you can, with what you have, in the season that you are in. That everything is not equally weighted. That you are allowed to give more or less energy to some parts of you at different times. And that there is no guilt in any of it!
And that acceptance, my friend, is where the true balance lies.
More about Mim Dart:
Hi! I’m Mim, wife to Ben, mama to 4 and lover of striped t-shirts and delicious coffee.
Motherhood is my passion. I truly believe that the more understanding mothers have about themselves and who they are, what makes them tick and what doesn’t, then the better we can show up for our children, ourselves and other mothers. We become better mothers when we know who we are!
My heart’s passion is to see mums feel confident. In themselves, as women and as mothers. I want you to completely trust your instincts, regardless of everyone else’s opinions of how you choose to do life and motherhood.
As Co-Founder of MummyCon, Mama Mentor and soon-to-be Soul Modes Mentor, I want you to develop your confidence, ditching the mum guilt, the “should” culture and the pursuit of perfection that exists in society around motherhood. You are allowed to be who and how you are!
Find her here:
MummyCon
Website: www.mummycon.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mummycon
Instagram: www.instagram.com/mummycon
Mim Dart Coaching
Website: www.mimdart.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/mimdartblog
Instagram: www.instagram.com/mim_dart