Your Choices, Your Life

Could you be closing yourself off to aligning family and work without consciously knowing it?

A few years ago I would never have imagined growing my business to where it is today and having the quality of time and relationship I have with my husband and children.

I used to believe…

I had to work relentlessly to grow my career
I had to catch up with friends every weekend
I had to make home cooked meals everyday
I had to have an immaculate home
I had to throw regular parties and dinners
I had to volunteer for everything at my children’s school
My children had to attend every party they were invited to
​​​​​​​My children had to do sport on the weekend

And because everyone else around me was doing this, I believed this was the way it had to be.

Today I believe..
I can expend less energy working with more impact
I can have social free weekends to just hang with my family
I can take shortcuts on meals (we have meal delivery service 3 days a week)
The dishes can wait if it means I can have a longer cuddle with my boys
I can throw parties when I feel like it and it’s a joy
I can volunteer for the things I’m good at at my children’s school
My children can attend parties of friends that they are close to
My children do what interests them and that may or may not include sports on the weekend

Confirmation bias theory suggests we have a tendency to search for, interpret and favour information in a way that confirms our pre-existing beliefs. Research also suggests confirmation bias contributes to overconfidence in personal beliefs and can maintain or strengthen beliefs in the face of contrary evidence and can lead to poor decisions due to these biases.

So what does this mean for our beliefs about family and work?

Well, we could be making choices to confirm beliefs that may well be outdated. The beliefs we grew up with may not be the best ones to support us today.

​​​​​​​“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results”   Albert Einstein

Today, working parents are time poor and energy depleted, working hard to meet their children’s needs as well as the demands at work in a 24-7 technologically-on society. The cracks are showing with the growing number of overwhelmed, stressed out parents, anxious children and the search for alternate solutions. Choices have to be smarter to keep up.

Where might you question your existing beliefs about family and work?