How do you balance being a “Lady Boss” with having a healthy relationship? Our guru has four tips to help you excel at both. Our relationship expert, Christy Haas MA, LPCC, CST, shares four easy steps to having it all!
This is the age of girl power, lady bosses and the renaissance woman. Not only do we want to achieve it all, it has becoming an expectation. As women, we wear many hats: wife/girlfriend, nurturer, career woman, friend, daughter, sister and many of us moms. How in the world are we expected to manage all of these things?
Here are a few tips that make balancing ambitious career goals with maintaining a fulfilling relationship a bit more manageable:
Realize you Don’t Have to Choose
Repeat after me:
“I do not have to choose between being a career woman and being in a relationship!”
With a few adjustments and exceptions, you can achieve both. In the home, it is important to be able to delegate tasks with your partner. Decide which household tasks each of you are good at, create a chore chart together, all the while making sure that it is a fair division of labor. Or you can outsource: hire a cleaning service, employ lawn care specialists, ask for help from friends and family. It takes a village!
Boundaries, Boundaries, and more Boundaries
We may be able to do it all, but we can’t do it all, all of the time. It is important to set boundaries with your time, energy, relationships and expectations. Create a time boundary for work. For example, after 6 PM there will be no work emails, calls or tasks. During work hours, maybe you and your partner decide not to exchange texts or call one another unless it is during lunch or a short break. That way the time that is spent together is fully focused on your significant other and not spent distracted by outside tasks.
Prioritize
We are living in the multitasking age. But research actually shows us that there really is no such thing as multitasking, its doing a little of something and then a little of something else. Research also tells us that when we do this our result is much weaker than if we fully focus on one task at a time. Get organized, make a list and decide what needs to be done right now, at some point today, or by the end of this week. This goes for work life and personal life. Scheduling date nights, important conversations and, yes, even sex, are an important part of managing all of life’s offerings.
Be Gentle with Yourself
One of the most challenging AND most rewarding life skill is learning to be kind to ourselves. We all make mistakes in our work lives and in our personal lives, but beating ourselves up about these mistakes afterwards accomplishes absolutely nothing. In fact, it makes everything that much worse. Learning to accept mistakes, learn from them and move forward is success. Work on changing the negative self-talk that is on repeat in your brain. You know, the one that says: “you’re such an idiot, why did you do that?” Replace it with loving, constructive words: “I may not have made the best decision but I am learning and I did the best with what I had.” When we are kinder to ourselves we make it possible to be kinder to others at work and in our personal relationships.