Committed to Your Success Coaching & Consulting

Mary thought she had it all: a great husband, two beautiful children, the house of her dreams, and a great job.  As a manager of a retail store, she supervised 7 employees and was creating a great team.  But lately, she found herself very irritable, often snapping at her husband, her children, and her employees.  She also started having difficulty sleeping, often waking at night, only to find herself either thinking about work or doing some work.   Mary and her husband started to fight more and her children and employees started to avoid her for fear of her mood.

When I saw Mary, it was clear that she was finding it impossible to balance both her personal life with her work life.  During our sessions, and through assessment, Mary realized that she was unable to set her personal boundaries; Mary could not ask for help.  Having perfectionist tendencies, Mary felt everything needed to be done perfectly and immediately, both at home and at work, and that both her family and her employees needed to function the same way.  Mary was having great difficulty coping with life’s stressors.

The first thing I had Mary do was to list all the tasks she felt she needed to complete on a daily basis, both at work and at home.  Mary’s lists were huge!  She had at least ten to fifteen tasks on each list.  No wonder Mary felt overwhelmed!  I had Mary go back and prioritize each task in the order of importance.  Mary had the habit, like most people do, of placing high importance on a mundane task due to not wanting to face the perceived difficult task.  Once Mary prioritized her lists, I then had Mary pick the top five on each and then to prioritize those.  Once done, Mary then broke each task down into manageable daily action steps; I had Mary also set-up a daily calendar to chart her progress.  Another priority was to help Mary learn to delegate and “say no” (without feeling guilt).  One task Mary is working on is asking for help.  Mary has made progress but has quite a ways to go.  As the saying goes, “Old habits are hard to break”; but, with repetition and commitment, Mary will learn new “good’ habits and become successful with work/life balance.

There are some steps you can take if you also have difficulty in balancing stressors that occur between our work and our home life:

• Become more aware of your behaviors when you are feeling overwhelmed or overly stressed
• List all of the tasks you feel you need to accomplish for both work and home - just list them but not in any particular order
• Go back and number them in order of priority; be honest and objective when doing so
• Pick the top three to five tasks - don’t overload or overwhelm yourself
• Write down action steps for each task - this makes it seem less overwhelming and will spur you to take action
• When a step, or task, is completed, check it off the list - this will incentivize you to continue
• Don’t place any tasks on the list until you have completed one, or you find the list growing and be back to feeling overwhelmed
• Set up a reward system for task completion - rewards will give you something to work for; they don’t have to be monetary - you could reward yourself with a long walk, going dancing, or setting up a fund to buy yourself a big purchase, such as a vacation or that favorite outfit you’ve been wanting
• Seek help - if you feel unable to move forward, seek the services of a coach who can move you forward and overcome some of your cognitive barriers and help you see that you can have it all but within your own personal limitations.