How do I balance motherhood and business?

How do I balance motherhood and business?

Short answer – I don’t!

Of course, there’s always a bit more too is, isn’t there? Let’s talk about that. 

How I balance motherhood and business.

Being creative and ambitious AND wanting to be a present mother has created an intense internal struggle for me over the years.

Many times I’ve swung between the two extremes:

From pushing myself too hard in my business, over-committing and then burning out.

To feeling like I need to stop entirely to focus on my family.

Neither option feels good to me.

In seasons where I’ve worked my bum off and stayed up late or got up super early to fit in extra work around the kids; I’ve been tired and cranky and not the kind of Mum I want to be.

Then there are the times that I’ve put my business on the back-burner and a feeling of dissatisfaction lingers beneath the surface and eventually grows into a resentment that there isn’t anything in my life just for me.

Too many times I’ve thought “I won’t worry about that until they’re a bit bigger and can play independently.”

Or, “It will be easier to work on my business when they sleep through the night, I’ll just wait ‘til then.”

Or “I’ll tackle that when they’re in school and I have more time.”

And each new stage has brought with it, its own new challenge and honestly I think I could probably say these things forever.

I’m SO grateful to my past self for not accepting these thoughts and for continuing to keep working on things that felt hard at the time. 

I’m grateful to the me with a newborn and toddler who spent about half an hour each week to write, when at the time if felt pointless and like I wasn’t ever going to get anywhere.

I’m grateful to version of me who hired a university student to babysit for 2 hours each week so I could spend that time working on my business. (I had to talk myself into the fact that the $30 was worth paying for something that wasn’t earning me any money at the time).

I’m grateful to the past version of me who rocked my newborn in a carrier while editing yoga videos for the 40 minutes he would catnap.

Even now, with all my boys at school I find myself scraping together time for my online work. LOL at the past version of me who thought I would have WAY more time once my kids were in school.

At the moment I work a few days doing in-person counselling and the days I put aside to create content often get filled with going to the boy’s school and sporting events, sick days for the kids and now, joyfully, actual 1:1 time with my husband.

Life is definitely not as intensely physical as it was in those early years, but my weeks are still certainly FULL.

Time for my business never just appears. I continue to have to carve out the hours each week between all the other things.

I tell you all this because I want you to stop waiting for the ideal time to start that thing you’ve been dreaming about. Whether it’s learning how to balance motherhood and business like me, a creative project or planning an adventure. Stop thinking that you need to have hours of time to yourself to make any progress.

I often think about that saying – “We overestimate what we can do in a day and underestimate what we can do in a year.”

I’m forever writing to do lists that are overly ambitious, but I don’t let not getting to everything put me off or overwhelm me. I know that all I have to do is take it step by step. I only need to focus on the very next step.

Little by little these small actions grow into something bigger (even when it doesn’t feel like it at the time).

It blows me away that I now have an online yoga business that pays me a full time wage. A business that I’ve never given more than 10 hours per week, and often gets much less of my time each week.

If you’re in the early days of trying to grow or create something- don’t give up! It isn’t easy to balance motherhood and creative ambition but it is possible.

If you’d like to learn more about how I’ve grown my business, the strategy I use to create content that works for me to sell my offerings and how I balance motherhood and business, I would like to invite you to join me for Presence; an online course to help you grow your business, as you grow your family.You can learn more here. (We start on the 26th June!)