Feeling overwhelmed? Stop it!
Here's a 5-minute exercise to help you deal well with pressure as we move into the swing of 2010.
Step one:
Think of times when you have felt really stressed and haven't handled it well.
Step two:
When you're really under pressure, what does your typical response look like?
Do you cry, scream, run away, flap around, get angry, depressed, sick or fearful? Do you head for the refrigerator? Do you not eat? Do you panic, freeze, stick your head in the sand, or blow your stack?
Take a few seconds to create a list of words that describe your existing 'stress antics'.
Step three:
Look at the words you've written down and be honest. How is this strategy working for you?
Is it successfully reducing your stress levels? Is it putting you in the best frame of mind to overcome your challenges? Or is it making problems worse?
Step four:
What can you choose to do in the future that will serve you better? Think of a time when you handled pressure well. What did you do differently then?
For each of your 'stress antics', come up with a 'stress fix'. Head straight for food? Go for a walk. Run away? Chunk the problem into baby steps. Flap? Breathe!
Start today
We all have a choice in how we respond to the challenges in our lives.
Next time something happens, stop for a few seconds and ask yourself: 'what simple next step can I take, right now, that is going to move me away from this stress?'
What's happening this week at WorkLifeBliss?
• We're putting together a series of brand new courses for 2010
• We're providing 18-page reports in response to our Life Balance Survey (see what the reports include here).
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Back to after-school activities - how much is too much?
Are you about to complicate your life and/or overwhelm your children with too many extra-curricular activities? With a bit of planning, you can strike exactly the right balance so that everybody is happy and stimulated. Here are our top tips:
• If your child is starting school for the first time, let them settle in to their changed routine before taking on extra activities.
• Find something they’re passionate about – don’t ‘flog a dead horse’ if they’re really not keen on practising that instrument or learning those Irish Dancing steps.
• Choose activities you can maintain as they get older – it’s cute to enrol a five-year-old in ballet, but make sure you’re comfortable with the increasing expenses and time commitment for upper levels to avoid disappointment later.
• Buy equipment and uniforms second-hand until you’re sure they’re going to stick at it. Young children like having a go at a variety of activities.
• Try to find a balance between physical activity and musical, artistic or dramatic or other pursuits.
• Be led by your child’s interests – avoid the temptation to re-live your childhood, or to assume that they’ll love something, just because their older sibling is great at it.
• Adopt a ‘fun’ mindset from the start and remove pressure to perform – remember that their prowess or otherwise is not a reflection on you, but your performance on the sidelines will reflect on them.
• Look carefully at the proposed schedule for the week. Does it work? Can you afford it? Is there plenty of ‘down-time’ for the children to rest, play and fit in homework? Is there space in the schedule for you and your interests? Families thrive when everyone is catered for.
For more tips on balancing work and family, including a free report on the ‘Top 5 mistakes women make when balancing work and family’, visit www.worklifebliss.com.au.
• If your child is starting school for the first time, let them settle in to their changed routine before taking on extra activities.
• Find something they’re passionate about – don’t ‘flog a dead horse’ if they’re really not keen on practising that instrument or learning those Irish Dancing steps.
• Choose activities you can maintain as they get older – it’s cute to enrol a five-year-old in ballet, but make sure you’re comfortable with the increasing expenses and time commitment for upper levels to avoid disappointment later.
• Buy equipment and uniforms second-hand until you’re sure they’re going to stick at it. Young children like having a go at a variety of activities.
• Try to find a balance between physical activity and musical, artistic or dramatic or other pursuits.
• Be led by your child’s interests – avoid the temptation to re-live your childhood, or to assume that they’ll love something, just because their older sibling is great at it.
• Adopt a ‘fun’ mindset from the start and remove pressure to perform – remember that their prowess or otherwise is not a reflection on you, but your performance on the sidelines will reflect on them.
• Look carefully at the proposed schedule for the week. Does it work? Can you afford it? Is there plenty of ‘down-time’ for the children to rest, play and fit in homework? Is there space in the schedule for you and your interests? Families thrive when everyone is catered for.
For more tips on balancing work and family, including a free report on the ‘Top 5 mistakes women make when balancing work and family’, visit www.worklifebliss.com.au.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Get me the Epidural! - A chapter from Wits' End Before Breakfast! Confessions of a Working Mum
Childbirth is a beautiful thing, apparently.
I can’t quite see it myself. First time around the baby was upside down. Or right way up, in other words. Matilda was born feet-first via Caesarean section a fortnight early and before the sucking reflex had kicked in, so she was tube-fed. I spent the first twenty-four hours of her life staring at my newborn in euphoric disbelief, self-administering morphine and wondering if I’d ever get feeling back in my legs.
The second time the baby was the right way around, but took a wrong turn on the way out. This may sound implausible, but I was in labour with Ellie for five days. Yes. Pregnant women often ask me which was worse – the Caesarean or the natural birth. I tell them one way you can’t stand up, the other way you can’t sit down. It’s as simple as that. Or as difficult…
I started having contractions precisely 103 hours before Ellie was born. I know what you’re thinking – Braxton Hicks. This is an obstetric euphemism for ‘false’ contractions, named after the guy who discovered them. Only a man would claim to discover contractions and then downgrade their severity. Hicks notwithstanding, they registered seventy-five on the Richter scale and were strong enough to wake me with relentless monotony every five minutes for four days straight.
Then, on the fourth day, they stopped dead. Had I delivered the baby and not noticed? I sat on the lounge – a large, dormant volcano – reading articles on how to induce your own labour. Acting on the advice contained therein, I consumed vast quantities of raspberry tea and waddled back and forth to the toilet.
Mum stayed with me during this phase and to this day we talk about it as some kind of shared spiritual experience: the calm before the storm. It was a day of stalling off the inevitable, and of long walks, which, together with the raspberry tea, were supposed to do the trick.
At five in the afternoon on the fourth day, I was back on the boil. But it was worse this time. Like, painful.
I was more OK with the pain than a fourth consecutive sleepless night, so I decided to have the baby that evening. Accordingly, I announced to Mark and Auntie Rachel (my sister, who I’d lined up to video the entire thing) that we were getting this show on the road, once and for all. Mum and Dad were summoned to babysit two-year-old Matilda and we piled into the car.
Twenty minutes later, Mark lugged into the hospital the bag I’d packed full of items like Tales of the Wind acoustic relaxation music, massage oil and a tennis ball, which is indispensable for bringing babies into the world (according to parenting magazines). Rachel trotted in after us, video camera at the ready.
‘Hello,’ I said brightly to the receptionist on the front desk. ‘I’d like to have a baby please.’
Forty-five minutes later my request was denied: ‘You’re not in labour. You’re having strong Braxton Hicks contractions. Go home and take two sleeping tablets.’
There was nothing in the magazines about sleeping tablets. By the time we got home the contractions were three minutes apart and much more intense.
‘I’m serious this time,’ I announced. ‘I’m in labour. I think we need to go back.’
I rang the hospital. ‘Hello, it’s me again. The contractions are three minutes apart. I’m just wondering…’
‘Whether or not to take the sleeping tablets? Yes, take them. We’ll see you later on.’
Brushed off? Well! So be it. I took the tablets hoping I wouldn’t sleep through the whole performance and got in the shower.
I’d never taken sedatives before. I can report that you shouldn’t get in the shower after you’ve had two – especially when you’re in labour. The drug tends to hit with the unstoppable force of an avalanche. I grasped the taps, reeled out of the cubicle, partially dried myself and staggered two metres onto Mark’s side of the bed, where I fell into what felt like a coma.
Two minutes later I woke in gripping agony. What new hell was this? Straight after the contraction, I regressed into my drug-induced sleep. Two minutes later I was shattered awake again by pain – a pattern that was to occupy the rest of the evening
I vaguely recall demanding the microwavable wheat pillow and a rocking chair. My husband, God bless him, carried the latter down the corridor from the family room and, with some difficulty, ensconced me in it. There I sat in what I was sure would be a bearable position. And it was, for approximately half a contraction, during which I seized Mark by the scruff of the neck and bit out: ‘Take me to the hospital. NOW! I want PAIN RELIEF?’
This whole ‘natural labour’ malarky was definitely not my thing. For the third time that week (I forgot to mention an earlier ‘false alarm’ on the Tuesday at about midnight), we dragged my parents from their slumber with a piercing phone call and headed for the hospital.
‘Oh! You poor dear!’ the receptionist sympathised upon my pathetic arrival at the desk – swooning one second, wincing the next.
FINALLY! Someone believed me! I was having a baby and this time I would not take ‘no’ for an answer. All I remember was being levered onto a bed atop a hot water bottle, which seemed to me to be the sweetest thing…
‘Do you feel something nice and warm?’ the midwife gently asked.
What was I? A six-year-old with a sub-normal intelligence quotient? ‘Get me pethidine!’ I gasped, ungratefully.
‘Yes, all right then. Roll over!’ she commanded.
Ah-ha! So this was her game. Little did she know I’d been involved in power struggles before. When I was a weekend sales assistant at the local bakery I had to fight the full-time staff for supremacy over the cash register.
‘I can’t roll over,’ I whispered.
‘Well, dear, you’ll have to have the pethidine in two shots – one in each arm!’
Was this meant as some kind of threat? I was in labour for heaven’s sake! I wanted to implode. I could hardly speak. The woman could take to me with a set of steak knives and it would barely register.
The pethidine went nowhere fast.
‘I want an epidural!’ I insisted, desperately.
‘Sorry, dear. You’re not dilating. You might still need a Caesarean and we can’t risk it.’
WHAT? Not dilating! But that’s impossible!
‘Can you have another look?’ I begged.
Hours passed. At one point Mark came near me armed with the massage oil, but I couldn’t bear the thought of it. Or him. Woe betide anyone who came near the black hole on the bed. No one could get near me. I was like a deranged psychopath holding hostages at gunpoint – everyone trying to negotiate with me through a loud-hailer – and not one of them bowing to my demands (like letting me go home, for one thing).
By dawn I wanted to be euthanased. The hospital staff met me half-way with the promise of an epidural. Apparently the old cervix had come to the party at long last and was dilating nicely. Better late than never, I suppose. I found this progress empowering and started asserting myself.
First, I sent Mark to the nurses’ station. I was convinced they were gossiping, instead of rousing the anaesthetist from the dead of sleep with the required level of urgency. Twenty minutes later the anaesthetist walked nonchalantly into the delivery suite. I flashed back to the day I fell head over heels in love with the lead trumpet player in the school orchestra. The doctor was tall. Strong. And, better than that, he was equipped with the little black bag containing the solution to all my problems.
‘Roll over,’ he commanded. And I did.
Within two contractions I was completely pain-free and he was my knight in shining armour. ‘I love you!’ I proclaimed sincerely. ‘Really, I love you!’
I’m sure he thought I was charming – beached on the delivery bed in my blue backless hospital gown and completely delusional after a week without sleep. He explained politely that he’d be a very rich man if he had a gold coin for all the times he’d received amorous advances from women in labour. Nevertheless, I was intent on marrying him, should an opportunity arise.
Finally, we got down to the business end of proceedings: pushing. And I worked out why they call it labour. The midwife was like the Phys. Ed teacher in school who used to holler at us out of the fog from the sidelines of the netball courts. ‘C’mon girl! Use the contraction! Use it!’ she urged. ‘You can do it! PUSH! You won’t come asunder…’ (Rash words, in hindsight.)
After about an hour and a half, with very little to show for my efforts, I decided that no, actually, I couldn’t do it.
‘I can’t!’ I cried. ‘I just can’t’
This seemed a reasonable enough deduction. I’d put in a big effort. Couldn’t I pass the baton to someone else now? Rotate onto the reserve bench for some frozen oranges? Wouldn’t someone rescue me?
And that’s when it hit me. I was entirely on my own. No one else could get me out of this. I had never felt so lonely and overwhelmed. And, as most mothers will testify, that’s when you get your second wind. You demand things of yourself that seemed impossible only a moment before. For the rest of your life that resilience – when you were able to dredge strength out of nowhere – stays with you and works for you in other challenges.
At the eleventh (or, strictly speaking, the sixteenth) hour, the obstetrician sauntered in and perched himself on a front-row seat, poked around a bit, broke the waters and settled back. He folded his arms across his chest and waited with a critical expression plastered to his face while I finished the job and earned him a thousand dollars. I will concede that he very kindly sliced me in half at one point after I’d ripped in several directions anyway.
Ellie entered the world with her hand in the air, shoulder wedged beside her head, cord wrapped around her neck, and desperate for oxygen. She was alarmingly blue – head squashed, eyelids swollen – and generally traumatised-looking. In other words, she was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in my entire life … at least since the day two years earlier when her sister was born.
I was a trifle the worse for wear in comparison and was sewn back together, speechless with relief and accomplishment and reworking my definition of ‘exhaustion’. I was as ecstatic as it’s possible to be when you have nothing left to feel.
By the time the milk and the third-day blues set in, I was too miserable to get upset. I lay on the bed feeling the way I’m sure a corpse must feel, laid out in the morgue. Everything hurt. I knew if I cried I’d only feel worse. So I didn’t bother.
If only the same could be said for my precious baby daughter, who developed an ovarian cyst and gastric reflux and quite understandably screamed for three months, without drawing breath…
This is a chapter from my book book Wits’ End Before Breakfast: Confessions of a Working Mum, published in 2005 by Lothian Books, Melbourne (www.lothian.com.au) ISBN 0 7344 0830 7) available in bookstores throughout Australia. SOON TO BE AVAILABLE AS AN eBOOK.
I can’t quite see it myself. First time around the baby was upside down. Or right way up, in other words. Matilda was born feet-first via Caesarean section a fortnight early and before the sucking reflex had kicked in, so she was tube-fed. I spent the first twenty-four hours of her life staring at my newborn in euphoric disbelief, self-administering morphine and wondering if I’d ever get feeling back in my legs.
The second time the baby was the right way around, but took a wrong turn on the way out. This may sound implausible, but I was in labour with Ellie for five days. Yes. Pregnant women often ask me which was worse – the Caesarean or the natural birth. I tell them one way you can’t stand up, the other way you can’t sit down. It’s as simple as that. Or as difficult…
I started having contractions precisely 103 hours before Ellie was born. I know what you’re thinking – Braxton Hicks. This is an obstetric euphemism for ‘false’ contractions, named after the guy who discovered them. Only a man would claim to discover contractions and then downgrade their severity. Hicks notwithstanding, they registered seventy-five on the Richter scale and were strong enough to wake me with relentless monotony every five minutes for four days straight.
Then, on the fourth day, they stopped dead. Had I delivered the baby and not noticed? I sat on the lounge – a large, dormant volcano – reading articles on how to induce your own labour. Acting on the advice contained therein, I consumed vast quantities of raspberry tea and waddled back and forth to the toilet.
Mum stayed with me during this phase and to this day we talk about it as some kind of shared spiritual experience: the calm before the storm. It was a day of stalling off the inevitable, and of long walks, which, together with the raspberry tea, were supposed to do the trick.
At five in the afternoon on the fourth day, I was back on the boil. But it was worse this time. Like, painful.
I was more OK with the pain than a fourth consecutive sleepless night, so I decided to have the baby that evening. Accordingly, I announced to Mark and Auntie Rachel (my sister, who I’d lined up to video the entire thing) that we were getting this show on the road, once and for all. Mum and Dad were summoned to babysit two-year-old Matilda and we piled into the car.
Twenty minutes later, Mark lugged into the hospital the bag I’d packed full of items like Tales of the Wind acoustic relaxation music, massage oil and a tennis ball, which is indispensable for bringing babies into the world (according to parenting magazines). Rachel trotted in after us, video camera at the ready.
‘Hello,’ I said brightly to the receptionist on the front desk. ‘I’d like to have a baby please.’
Forty-five minutes later my request was denied: ‘You’re not in labour. You’re having strong Braxton Hicks contractions. Go home and take two sleeping tablets.’
There was nothing in the magazines about sleeping tablets. By the time we got home the contractions were three minutes apart and much more intense.
‘I’m serious this time,’ I announced. ‘I’m in labour. I think we need to go back.’
I rang the hospital. ‘Hello, it’s me again. The contractions are three minutes apart. I’m just wondering…’
‘Whether or not to take the sleeping tablets? Yes, take them. We’ll see you later on.’
Brushed off? Well! So be it. I took the tablets hoping I wouldn’t sleep through the whole performance and got in the shower.
I’d never taken sedatives before. I can report that you shouldn’t get in the shower after you’ve had two – especially when you’re in labour. The drug tends to hit with the unstoppable force of an avalanche. I grasped the taps, reeled out of the cubicle, partially dried myself and staggered two metres onto Mark’s side of the bed, where I fell into what felt like a coma.
Two minutes later I woke in gripping agony. What new hell was this? Straight after the contraction, I regressed into my drug-induced sleep. Two minutes later I was shattered awake again by pain – a pattern that was to occupy the rest of the evening
I vaguely recall demanding the microwavable wheat pillow and a rocking chair. My husband, God bless him, carried the latter down the corridor from the family room and, with some difficulty, ensconced me in it. There I sat in what I was sure would be a bearable position. And it was, for approximately half a contraction, during which I seized Mark by the scruff of the neck and bit out: ‘Take me to the hospital. NOW! I want PAIN RELIEF?’
This whole ‘natural labour’ malarky was definitely not my thing. For the third time that week (I forgot to mention an earlier ‘false alarm’ on the Tuesday at about midnight), we dragged my parents from their slumber with a piercing phone call and headed for the hospital.
‘Oh! You poor dear!’ the receptionist sympathised upon my pathetic arrival at the desk – swooning one second, wincing the next.
FINALLY! Someone believed me! I was having a baby and this time I would not take ‘no’ for an answer. All I remember was being levered onto a bed atop a hot water bottle, which seemed to me to be the sweetest thing…
‘Do you feel something nice and warm?’ the midwife gently asked.
What was I? A six-year-old with a sub-normal intelligence quotient? ‘Get me pethidine!’ I gasped, ungratefully.
‘Yes, all right then. Roll over!’ she commanded.
Ah-ha! So this was her game. Little did she know I’d been involved in power struggles before. When I was a weekend sales assistant at the local bakery I had to fight the full-time staff for supremacy over the cash register.
‘I can’t roll over,’ I whispered.
‘Well, dear, you’ll have to have the pethidine in two shots – one in each arm!’
Was this meant as some kind of threat? I was in labour for heaven’s sake! I wanted to implode. I could hardly speak. The woman could take to me with a set of steak knives and it would barely register.
The pethidine went nowhere fast.
‘I want an epidural!’ I insisted, desperately.
‘Sorry, dear. You’re not dilating. You might still need a Caesarean and we can’t risk it.’
WHAT? Not dilating! But that’s impossible!
‘Can you have another look?’ I begged.
Hours passed. At one point Mark came near me armed with the massage oil, but I couldn’t bear the thought of it. Or him. Woe betide anyone who came near the black hole on the bed. No one could get near me. I was like a deranged psychopath holding hostages at gunpoint – everyone trying to negotiate with me through a loud-hailer – and not one of them bowing to my demands (like letting me go home, for one thing).
By dawn I wanted to be euthanased. The hospital staff met me half-way with the promise of an epidural. Apparently the old cervix had come to the party at long last and was dilating nicely. Better late than never, I suppose. I found this progress empowering and started asserting myself.
First, I sent Mark to the nurses’ station. I was convinced they were gossiping, instead of rousing the anaesthetist from the dead of sleep with the required level of urgency. Twenty minutes later the anaesthetist walked nonchalantly into the delivery suite. I flashed back to the day I fell head over heels in love with the lead trumpet player in the school orchestra. The doctor was tall. Strong. And, better than that, he was equipped with the little black bag containing the solution to all my problems.
‘Roll over,’ he commanded. And I did.
Within two contractions I was completely pain-free and he was my knight in shining armour. ‘I love you!’ I proclaimed sincerely. ‘Really, I love you!’
I’m sure he thought I was charming – beached on the delivery bed in my blue backless hospital gown and completely delusional after a week without sleep. He explained politely that he’d be a very rich man if he had a gold coin for all the times he’d received amorous advances from women in labour. Nevertheless, I was intent on marrying him, should an opportunity arise.
Finally, we got down to the business end of proceedings: pushing. And I worked out why they call it labour. The midwife was like the Phys. Ed teacher in school who used to holler at us out of the fog from the sidelines of the netball courts. ‘C’mon girl! Use the contraction! Use it!’ she urged. ‘You can do it! PUSH! You won’t come asunder…’ (Rash words, in hindsight.)
After about an hour and a half, with very little to show for my efforts, I decided that no, actually, I couldn’t do it.
‘I can’t!’ I cried. ‘I just can’t’
This seemed a reasonable enough deduction. I’d put in a big effort. Couldn’t I pass the baton to someone else now? Rotate onto the reserve bench for some frozen oranges? Wouldn’t someone rescue me?
And that’s when it hit me. I was entirely on my own. No one else could get me out of this. I had never felt so lonely and overwhelmed. And, as most mothers will testify, that’s when you get your second wind. You demand things of yourself that seemed impossible only a moment before. For the rest of your life that resilience – when you were able to dredge strength out of nowhere – stays with you and works for you in other challenges.
At the eleventh (or, strictly speaking, the sixteenth) hour, the obstetrician sauntered in and perched himself on a front-row seat, poked around a bit, broke the waters and settled back. He folded his arms across his chest and waited with a critical expression plastered to his face while I finished the job and earned him a thousand dollars. I will concede that he very kindly sliced me in half at one point after I’d ripped in several directions anyway.
Ellie entered the world with her hand in the air, shoulder wedged beside her head, cord wrapped around her neck, and desperate for oxygen. She was alarmingly blue – head squashed, eyelids swollen – and generally traumatised-looking. In other words, she was the most beautiful thing I’d seen in my entire life … at least since the day two years earlier when her sister was born.
I was a trifle the worse for wear in comparison and was sewn back together, speechless with relief and accomplishment and reworking my definition of ‘exhaustion’. I was as ecstatic as it’s possible to be when you have nothing left to feel.
By the time the milk and the third-day blues set in, I was too miserable to get upset. I lay on the bed feeling the way I’m sure a corpse must feel, laid out in the morgue. Everything hurt. I knew if I cried I’d only feel worse. So I didn’t bother.
If only the same could be said for my precious baby daughter, who developed an ovarian cyst and gastric reflux and quite understandably screamed for three months, without drawing breath…
This is a chapter from my book book Wits’ End Before Breakfast: Confessions of a Working Mum, published in 2005 by Lothian Books, Melbourne (www.lothian.com.au) ISBN 0 7344 0830 7) available in bookstores throughout Australia. SOON TO BE AVAILABLE AS AN eBOOK.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
The Perfect Couple
I read an article in the Saturday papers that quoted Michelle Obama as saying, "marriage is hard but, going into it, no one ever tells you that. They just say, "do you love him?'"
It's so encouraging when fairytale couples expose themselves as human, isn't it? Particularly if you're having a rather 'human' time of it yourselves.
Have you ever had an argument in the car on the way to a party, then emerged at the venue - a perfectly united front of marital bliss? While you're sitting there at the party - disguised as someone who isn't internally fuming - others are watching you, thinking, 'wish we were as happy as they are.'
It’s Perfect Couple Syndrome, (closely linked to Perfect Parent Syndrome), and it can unnecessarily damage your self-esteem.
Start today
Find something small that you can do today to positively influence your relationship (even if things are going really well).
Rather than ask what's wrong with your relationship, or with your partner (or with your date, if you’re single) make it your goal to come up with at least one thing that you can do this week to be a better partner. It doesn't have to be a big deal. Just a small change that might spark off a chain reaction. It could be as simple as making sure you say 'hello' and 'goodbye' properly each day, or finding ten minutes to sit on the couch talking, or simply thanking your partner for something you’ve been taking for granted, or giving an overdue apology.
Whatever it is, make it a step in the right direction.
It's so encouraging when fairytale couples expose themselves as human, isn't it? Particularly if you're having a rather 'human' time of it yourselves.
Have you ever had an argument in the car on the way to a party, then emerged at the venue - a perfectly united front of marital bliss? While you're sitting there at the party - disguised as someone who isn't internally fuming - others are watching you, thinking, 'wish we were as happy as they are.'
It’s Perfect Couple Syndrome, (closely linked to Perfect Parent Syndrome), and it can unnecessarily damage your self-esteem.
Start today
Find something small that you can do today to positively influence your relationship (even if things are going really well).
Rather than ask what's wrong with your relationship, or with your partner (or with your date, if you’re single) make it your goal to come up with at least one thing that you can do this week to be a better partner. It doesn't have to be a big deal. Just a small change that might spark off a chain reaction. It could be as simple as making sure you say 'hello' and 'goodbye' properly each day, or finding ten minutes to sit on the couch talking, or simply thanking your partner for something you’ve been taking for granted, or giving an overdue apology.
Whatever it is, make it a step in the right direction.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Having it all! The top 5 mistakes women make when balancing work and family
A mix of the same issues crops up often when I'm working with clients, so I've put together a special report identifying the top 5 mistakes women make when balancing work and family. You can access the report for free on the WorkLifeBliss website or email me to receive a copy.
Monday, January 4, 2010
Family Capers
Here's a link to a great parenting website, Family Capers.http://www.familycapers.com.au/ The site links family-friendly businesses and employers with parents and offers a heap of forums on a wide variety of parenting topics. I'll be providing professional advice on work-life balance in their forums - looking forward to it.
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Mamma Mia
I took my mum, best friend, sister and two daughters (eleven and nine) to see the musical Mamma Mia in Sydney just before New Year (that's me in the hat).
Mum is in her late seventies and thought the show was far too loud and a little raunchy in parts, but otherwise enjoyed herself!
Mum is in her late seventies and thought the show was far too loud and a little raunchy in parts, but otherwise enjoyed herself!
Adorned in my hot pink feather boa - my kids sporting pink and purple cowboy hats with glued on tiaras - I thought I was fairly obsessed, as ABBA fans go. Then l I sat down beside a little old man who had driven up from Bathurst for the show.
‘I’m eighty-nine years old,’ he revealed. ‘I was wounded in action at Bougainville in 1945. I love ABBA! They were the best band I’ve ever known. I used to run a car workshop, and I’d play ABBA all day...
Then he started telling me about a water dam project in Arizona and got a little bit off the track, but when the lights dimmed, he proceeded to clap, tap his feet and sing throughout the show and, as I dragged him to his feet so he could dance with the rest of the audience for the final rendition of Waterloo, it occurred to me that we can learn a lot from his unbridled enthusiasm.
So what if he was the only World War Two veteran in the audience? So what if the men were completely outnumbered? He had a ball!
Is there something you’d love to do, that you’ve been putting off because you’re ‘too old/young/responsible/unfit/busy/etc’?
Does the phrase, ‘what would people think?’ ever get between you and flinging yourself at life ‘like nobody’s watching’?
Think of something that you can do this week to ‘spice up your life’. Then go and do it, no matter how big or small it seems, whether people are watching or not.
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