The Single Mothers Survival Guide Series - Balancing Your Life

“Eventually, though, I had to listen to my body and go with my life’s direction.”

There are 24 hours in a day for everyone, but most single mothers definitely needs more. Perhaps 40 hours in a day would be more like it. Whatever the circumstances, it seems like there is never enough time to do everything. Just for starters, balancing life takes ingenuity, patience, and discipline.

What do you spend more time focusing on, your spirituality, your time, or your money? This seems to be a trade-off for most of us. The times in my life I had the most money, I had the least time. The times in my life I had the most time, I had the least money. To balance our lives, we need to first write down our priorities (I am great on writing things down) as mentioned in the previous article.

We should list them in order of importance; spiritual life, children, work, rest and relaxation, social life, doctor and dentist appointments, shopping, cleaning, and menu planning, etc. These should all be included and rated accordingly.

As you accomplish these things on your priority list, cross out what you have done, even if it’s just one thing; (been there, done that). Buy or make yourself a planner and block in where you are currently spending your time. Then go back to your priority list and rework it as needed. This will take a great deal of ingenuity because you will most likely have to change your mindset to what is important and those things you are currently holding onto that you can throw away or put on the back burner.

Stephen Covey in First Things First, states that if you had a jar with sand and rocks in it, most people filling up the jar would fill it with sand and then attempt to stuff the rocks in. The students doing this experiment could never fit in the allotted number of rocks. However, by putting the rocks in first and letting the sand flow over and into the crevices, the jar could be effectively filled. Rocks are our priorities and sand is the other stuff. We just need to determine what our priorities are and spend time on them.

Doctor appointments are down the priority list until you become sick and have to move it up to the top. If the kids all need their teeth checked at about the same time, schedule in one block of time for all of the appointments. Perhaps you could shop Online. It is safer anyway! It might be worth it. You could also teach the children how to menu plan thereby cutting down on your things-to-do list and teaching them a lesson in the mechanisms of meal planning at the same time.

As we make our list, we will be surprised at the changes we will want to make in our own world. My children were always a priority, and so was providing for them. These two priorities took up my whole life and were rocks that frequently consumed me. My challenge was to find a way to do both and fit this in with some of my other priorities. A shift had to take place and I knew it. Over the course of about five years, I started making changes and stopped trying to be super-mom. The process took time and patience, but little by little changes started to occur.

Along with incorporating the changes in the previous paragraph, you could take your children with you on any other errands. At home you can schedule small breaks where the bunch of you have a snack and drink and talk, read, or play a game. If you are constantly trying to finish something before you can spend time with your kids, stop in the middle of what you are doing and take a mini-break with them. You’ll all have fun and it will be like sand flowing around the rocks instead of the other way around.

Although the rocks are our number one priorities, by the same token, nothing is written in stone. What works for me is to go with the flow while maintaining as many of my priorities as I can. I found that I had to learn something each and every day or I would find myself going in ten different directions and then find two more. My friends say I am an adrenaline junkie so hopefully your experience may not be as intense or demanding.

Eventually, though, I had to listen to my body and go with my life’s direction. Years ago, I had an appointment with a trainer to set up workouts for four days a week. He said he would make my body sculpted enough to be in Sports Illustrated in the Swimsuit Edition. I was flattered and tempted. We were going to barter for services where I would do his marketing and he would be my personal trainer. I started the regimen with optimism. My ego loved the idea but my body didn’t. I listened to my body and after three sessions, I cancelled the rest of the program. It took up too much time—both with the exercising and with drafting up a marketing program for him. I really didn’t have any strong aspirations to be perfectly sculpted, so once again my focus shifted. I needed to have more time for me and for my children. Don’t be afraid to shift your focus if you need to.

Right after that a friend of mine called and asked if I wanted to join her two days a week with her personal yoga instructor and she would only charge $10 a week since her fees were already paid. This sounded much less demanding and I felt better in my body about this decision. A healthy body was, and still is, a priority for me; however, not at the expense of my peace of mind.

At the time, generally everything in my life seemed good, at least on the surface. I lived in a nice area. I had a good job and, with patience and persistence, I had made a lot of changes in our lives. I learned to strive for long-term goals and to delegate what I couldn’t do myself. I accepted my limitations and concentrated on the tasks ahead of me. For someone with very little patience initially, I learned to commit. I found that time and endeavor would eventually bring on the fruits or results of whatever task or project I was involved in. My problem was in trusting in this method and learning to let go and to let life happen. It always felt as if everything would fall apart if I didn’t watch over it every waking moment. The what-if syndrome started to nag at me. What if I lose my job? What if my kids are hurt? Patience and trust were hard to come by, but ultimately arrived.

I meet single mothers every day who are terrified of change. They are consequently stuck in their excuses of why they don’t accomplish anything. They settle for a low-paying job or live off the system. Right now with Covid-19 it is not uncommon to have to live off of unemployment but even in these times there are ways to make income online and off. Many people may blame the world for their problems. I am not saying using resources like public aid is bad, or that working at a low paying job is not good, but it should just be a means to an end. We all have circumstances in our lives at times that make it necessary for us to do things to survive. An exception might be a mom who has enough money from child support and only wants to work part-time or not at all while her children are younger.

However, not choosing to believe in what you can ultimately accomplish and not attempting it, could be a waste of your talents. Aid should be used as a stepping-stone towards a better future, not as a way of life. When we work in jobs that are not our ideal and use other resources to help us, we should know it is only a temporary means to an end and know that we will move forward to reap our rewards. Sometimes our ideal job and idea of success may be very simple. It need not require a college degree, but it does require a love of what you do.

There is no success without discipline Successful people do the things other people aren’t willing to do. This takes a lot of discipline. One of the biggest time killers I know of is TV. Television sifts our time away, like a visual sieve. Sidney, a single mother I know, raised two beautiful children. She once told me that she limited her TV watching time to 1 hour per day. This allowed her to have time to go back to school two nights a week and eventually, with patience and lots of studying, she got her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology. Mary’s accomplishments inspired me as my undergrad coursework at Chapman University for my Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology was almost complete. That is where I got my degree too. It was expensive but it saved years of time.

Discipline must come from within. Sometimes we must will ourselves to do things we don’t like to do. Once we choose certain areas in our lives and make them a priority, we must have the discipline to follow through with our plan. This is where accountability partners and mentors come in handy. When you start to structure time and discipline yourself to follow through, results will come. Start with something simple like maybe walking for ten minutes a day. Do it consistently and it will become part of who you are. Begin slowly and don’t try to tackle everything at once. Once you learn you can succeed at balancing one area or your life, choose a few more areas to work on. Sometimes things feel out of balance when change occurs. This is not unusual and soon it will feel balanced.

Just know that discipline in one area of your life does not equal discipline or balance in another area. However, it is a start. We all have strengths and weaknesses and a balanced life is a growth process, not a destination.

Loving and Emotional Practice:

Write down two or three priorities and focus on these until you feel consistent and stable. They can be as simple or as difficult as you can handle. When you have completed some (or all) of the priorities and feel you have mastered the technique, add more priorities to your list, even one. This will help you to not feel so overwhelmed and you will see that you do actually complete some or all of your priorities. This gives you faith in your abilities and a promise that things will get done and your life will be more structured.

Loving and Emotional Affirmation:

I have all the time I need to accomplish what I want. I am balanced.

This book is dedicated to all the beautiful and courageous women who have—in one way or another—ended up alone with a child or children.