Yin and Yang: How do you balance work and family?
I often say there is no such thing as balance. But rather how to bring myself back to a ‘pocket’ of balance for a short time. Everything that happens every day will often throw out what we see as balance.
The greater skill is how to bring ourselves back during the chaos, not achieving balance. Achieving the ability to ‘be’ in the unbalance.
I have daily rituals that help me cope with the changes in the day with better ‘balance’, and they include meditation, prayer and yoga. But other days I don’t get the opportunity to do this…so I find smaller ways to get my ‘pocket of peace’, be it a small 2-minute window sitting in the car after everyone is out and listening to the silence, or just cultivating silence wherever I can.
I also make sure that I have a desktop that I use in my home office and then I close the door and go upstairs to connect, make dinner and be with family.
Switching off devices and having no device time also helps.
The drive: What challenges have you overcome?
I have cultivated a skill called ‘getting comfortable with being uncomfortable’. It never gets easy being faced with challenges but what gets better is my ability to react differently with each newly presented challenge. For the only constant is change.
Everyone has a story. My story is full of trauma from childhood and into adulthood, so severe that I have evident brain trauma from it. The question is – ‘will I identify with that story and let it define me?’.
So rather than focus on the story, I focus on my ability to use the challenge as an assignment of self-development. Sometimes, I fall flat on my face and react to the challenge in old patterns and learned behaviours from my childhood. Other times I rise to the challenge and handle it with emotional maturity.
The skill is how to get better at my responses and not be hard on myself when I react, but to learn from it and do it differently next time.
For better or worse: What are the pros and cons of running your own business?
A big pro is that the highest of my values are met, which is freedom. I have the freedom to create, develop and to work from the intrinsic values of heart-based approaches. I also have the capacity to build something that will make a positive impact and something that looking back on my life I will be proud that I contributed to the planet in this way and did it with integrity.
The cons are the constant risks associated with running your own business and the lack of consistency and cashflow in the early stages, the sleepless nights and the all-encompassing obsession with my work, because it’s a passion and I love it, so it never feels like I have to push myself to do it – but sometimes I can’t switch off from it.
Hopes and dreams: What next?
We aim to reach over 2 million children and equip them with the skills to feel safe with their emotions, so they make healthy life choices.
Our school program is already rolling out internationally, but we would like to see our program in the school curriculum as an essential life skill for children and their parents.
Visit the Emotional Literacy and Mindfulness Academy website to find out more, and join their communities on Facebook and Instagram.
