When you have 1 sick kid and 15 unread emails

This is what you think about…

Be honest. If this was a Linkedin survey asking you to rank your priorities between family, friends, work, and YOU-time. Would you know the order of things?

I certainly don’t.

I am highly ambitious and an overachiever in EVERYTHING I do.

Not only in my work but also with my friends, partner, and children.

Living in today’s world it is so hard to pinpoint exactly what we care most about and where to invest our time.

On one hand, this is the time for me to grow my organization and develop professionally, and on the other hand, it’s the time to realize myself as a mindful, present mother and influence my young girls so they can grow into fulfilling their full potential. SO MUCH PRESSURE.

In the last two years, I’ve been on an ongoing journey trying to figure out how to arrange in my head all of those priorities and actualize them in a way that feels right for me.

That is super hard in the world we live in today. So much “background” noise about what others expect of you. My family, who raised me to believe I can achieve it all, and who I constantly feed the need to impress. My husband, who has his own dreams. And myself, who is constantly overthinking about the true meaning of being successful.

Between FOMO, the Israeli work mentality (fun fact- Israelis work an average 5 hours more a week in comparison to other OECD countries), the way the education system is built here (did you know there is a 66-day difference between how many days our kids get off from school vs how many parents get off work?) It is just too hard to align all of these needs and wants and come out on the other side feeling you have it all balanced.

The paradox is that the person that most often gets overlooked is you!

The one that set off to achieve everything ended up achieving nothing.

So I admit, after two years of thinking about it, I still don’t have a good enough answer.

I don’t want to wake up one day looking back, understanding I missed out on some crucial years of my daughters’ childhood, but neither do I want to regret not promoting myself and my work, and heaven forbid resenting my kids for it.

I wish I had an answer about what I should work to promote more- career or motherhood, relationship with friends, or my own passions, but for now, I guess I have to be OK with asking questions that don’t necessarily have answers.

Did you figure out answers to this struggle?