How to juggle multiple roles without going nuts

I’m of that generation that so many of us baby boomers find ourselves in – sandwiched between our roles as spouses, parents, grandparents and increasingly, caretakers for our own elderly parents, all while still actively pursuing our careers.

On some days, it can be crazy making. Not that my adult kids, thank goodness, need any parenting at this stage, as I am blessed that they are all self sufficient and independent, though unfortunately that is not the case for many of us, and wasn’t always that way for me.

It seems to me that the crazy making is not so much born of others’ demands on my time and attention, but rather on my own relationship to it all.  It’s about my own rather unrealistic and demanding desire to be there 100% for everyone in my life 100% of the time, and the reality is that there is more to attend to than there are available hours to do it in.

What to do then? I’m thinking back to Rory Vaden’s decision-making options – ignore, prioritize, delegate, postpone…. When you are a first-born and suffer from the Responsibility syndrome, (you know the one I mean?) it’s easy to get caught up in the compelling feeling that you have to do everything for everyone, perfectly, all the time. So it’s been really helpful to put these strategies that I usually apply to business decisions, to my personal life.

Ahh, just stepping back enough to realize I have choices brings relief. Asking myself these questions helps me to feel a sense of control over my life.

–      What can I scratch off my list?

–      What are my priorities?

–      What can I delegate to someone else? 

–      What can I postpone to a better time?

And let’s certainly not forget self-care. It’s all so easy to neglect when you are feeling pressured to take care of so many things, but it is so vital to make your own well-being a priority. Taking that hike. Having dinner with a girlfriend. Going to bed early. Meditating.

Are you in the sandwich generation dear reader? I’d love to hear your tricks for staying sane!

Leisure is not the goal – What?!#

After having busted the myths of the dubious virtues of claiming too much busyness and the erroneous notion of balance, I somehow wasn’t too surprised to read Rory Vaden’s next exposé on another of our cherished notions of time management.

I mean, isn’t that the American dream? You work like crazy for 40 years, sell your soul to the man, and then finally retire in your golden years to a leisurely life of hobbies and travel?

Well, as most of us baby-boomers have to face, things aren’t quite working out that way that anymore. In fact, traditional sources of income (think social security, retirement pensions, return on savings) are dwindling, retirement costs are rising, our life expectancy and health care costs are rising, and the reality is that we will have to adjust our vision of our “golden years.”

So, before we all sink in to doom and gloom, let’s look at it another way. As Rory Vaden states, it took him spending time with those successful people he refers to as the “Multipliers” to realize “that work isn’t something to be endured, that we should try to avoid whenever possible, and it isn’t something that should be a finish line that you race to so one day you can stop.”

The key to embracing this new reality, I believe, is doing work that we love, that we are passionate about – then work is, as Vaden states, freedom and joy.

So if you are, like me, one of those baby boomers who are in the process of amending our expectations of those golden years– then let’s get busy finding that passion and purpose if we haven’t already, so we can be fully engaged in our glorious, productive, passionate lives – today and tomorrow.  Think?