Being a working parent can be a daunting task. It is like being pulled in a million directions while you struggle to accomplish your responsibilities at work and home. Something is constantly calling for attention, and the hours are never enough. Surviving COVID-19, lockdown, and remote work may be a feat, and yet many working parents feel that they are depleted. Most parents ask how to keep going in the coming months when feeling like they are driving on empty.
Daisy Dowling, the founder and CEO of Work Parent, a specialty coaching and advisory firm focused on working parents, advises how working moms and dads can make it through exhaustion and get the energy to feel recharged, as per Harvard Business Review.
Look back and check your accomplishments
Take time to reflect in your mind or on a piece of paper a list of things you have delivered for your work and family since last year. Resist the urge to downplay your accomplishments. Accomplishments can come as cooking for a family of four, then you have prepared around six 120 individual meals for your family. At work, it may be keeping the team's revenue despite the slow shipment from suppliers or managing that important virtual event that your company hosted a few months ago.
Give yourself the proper credit for your achievements, grit, and patience since last year, and pat yourself on the back.
Closeout the past to free yourself of what is coming
Try to think about the pandemic experience in phases and assign a label for each period. It may be divided into "I-can't-believe this is a busy period" or "Endless Zoom-School Winter." After going through the stages you have been through, put them in the phase you are entering or want to happen now. According to the Entrepreneur, working parents can use those negative experiences for learning and future occasions.
Ensure that the past is done and dusted, and you do not carry its weight around anymore. The exercise should make you feel like starting on a clean slate with new goals despite whatever you have been through in the past months.
Find your "Point of Control"
The coming months may be hectic and messy, but you cannot be the calm, attentive, and centered parent you need to be when you feel in total disarray. To prepare for what is coming at work and home, find your point of control, or feel "being on it."
Find the single, tiny part of your life that you feel you have control over, like keeping the car in excellent order, doing some five-minute exercise every morning, organizing your closet, making a terrific cup of coffee every morning, or a time to meditate or pray every day. Despite the chaos, your control point will allow you to feel like an in-control person, regardless of the circumstances.
Find your future anchor
Have a positive mental picture of where you want to be as a professional, parent, and person, months or years from now, and align your efforts. This would help you realize that all the work and hours, stresses, and challenges you have put through will lead you somewhere, Forbes reports.
Give your career some attention
Find at least 15 minutes of your time each week to turn your attention to your career or professional advancement. It may be looking at the LinkedIn profiles of people you have admired the most or reconnecting with past colleagues to refresh your network.
Share your talent with other people
Find another mom or dad who is a bit further back in the journey than you. It may be someone starting a job or had just become a parent, or whose kids are about to start school. Try to make a time-limited offer like spending at least 20 minutes together to share how they are coping, how you can help, and how you made it happen as a working mom or dad.
