How we Build our Perceptions:
We learn from our surroundings, our parents, friends, workplace, and culture. We start adding our meaning to these learnings and start building our assumptions and perception of life. It becomes our reality and gets ingrained in our heads, acting as a background filter. Many of us picked up that women are meant to stay at home and men to work. While this may have been a social model a few centuries back, but the women of today are working. They work not only for the income or for the family, but they also work by choice to achieve and enjoy it. Unfortunately, the residue of the past image of women, in men’s heads and even in women’s, comes in the way of achieving success and happiness for women.
What we Think becomes our Reality:
If we think of ourselves as capable, able to manage our family, and have a successful career, then we can achieve it. But if we look at work as a burden, life becomes stressful as something we are just doing for monetary gains. If we want to be career women on the one hand but keep telling this story in our heads that it is a man’s world, and life is unfair, you build on your perceptions and may struggle as a result. I am leaving you with a link to an article on perception vs. reality concerning working women. Enjoy the read. https://wearethecity.com/perception-vs-reality-powerful-women-in-business/
A Winning Mindset:
Maybe women have to work twice as hard to prove a point. So be it. If you start adopting a positive attitude, you may still have to work twice as hard, but you will enjoy it. It is finally about our philosophy in life and accepting life and then taking it up as a challenge and driving it forward. That is a winning mindset. It makes you more enthusiastic and makes you feel light and happy and capable of tackling all the stress and challenges in life. Who said life is easy. But you can still be happy and be successful. It is the attitude you wear that counts.
Is that Easy:
I also grew up almost automatically thinking that men are the providers and women don’t necessarily have to pursue a career. I am talking of this perception when I was just in middle school. Thankfully, my parents helped me see otherwise, provided the support and love, and cared for me to nurture my career path. Later on, my husband and children being the most significant support in my journey. I learned to face any challenge that came my way with a ‘Yes, I can’ attitude. I, of course, failed many times, got stressed out, had trouble balancing work and family, but I kept up my curiosity and learning attitude to find my success and happiness.
Are you Stressed out with Work-Life Balance:
So are you successful at work, and then your other priorities like family or social life take a hit. Or are you the type that gets so engrossed in your day-to-day mundane things and can’t focus on the bigger picture? Are you getting overwhelmed doing so much yet unable to achieve?
What are your Boundaries?
Here is one place to start. How good are you at setting your boundaries, at saying NO? Do you say yes many times, at work and home, and then you feel so stressed doing that work which you didn’t want to do in the first place. Maybe at work, you said yes because you don’t want to be seen as being less efficient. At home, you say yes to your children and your spouse because either you feel guilty as you assume as a woman it is your job to cook and clean and help with your kids’ homework, and you didn’t even think you could ask your husband to help out. Sometimes you can say no to work in the office if it is more than what you can handle. You can either ask for help, ask for extra time, or say that you just can’t fit it in. Same at home, you can ask your children to help you out or your husband to help you out. Sometimes if you cannot handle it, you can say no in a friendly way, and it’s OK. People will respect you more only if you respect yourself, your time, and your dignity first.
Time Management as a Confidence Booster:
Time management is another area to help with stress and work-life balance. It is a great confidence booster. I take an hour or two of my weekend to plan my week. I make a list of crucial and urgent things that have to get done, and I allot them to time slots in that week. I also make a list of things that are not urgent but important. I put them second on my priority. I also leave time slots for surprises like urgent emails that suddenly crop up and need to be answered. Remember, your boundary management also helps you here. My list also contains what I would love to do but are not helpful. So put them as ‘pending,’ and I may do it if I have time or may not do it. This exercise makes me less overwhelmed and more confident when I know my week is all planned and sorted out.
Appreciate More:
One easy tip to be a stress-free 2.0 Version of you: Learnt to appreciate more. It just lifts your mood as the other person is happy, and it makes you happy. We are always misers with appreciation and keep looking for blaming others at work and home. Also, appreciate yourself for your excellent work with small rewards. For example, every 2 hours of focused work, give yourself a coffee/ chat break with a friend as a reward. It helps excite your brain to do more.
Focus on the Learnings:
To change our perceptions we have built over the years, we have to practice these new behaviors, new ways of being, till they become the new useful perceptions, helping us handle the stress in our life with ease and achieve success in whatever we seek.
Interested in the transformation into 2.0 version?
Have a look at ‘5 Tips to reduce Stress’
Available from my resource page :