Surviving in the Mompreneur Circus

By Ruth Sirman

Business. Children. Partner or Relationships. Parents. Home. As women entrepreneurs we juggle all of these (and often more…) in our ongoing efforts to keep everything working and get everything done that needs to be done. Of course it's a challenge to keep all the balls in the air and avoid the trials and tribulations that we experience should we drop any of those balls causing some area of our lives to crash. It is more than a full time job – it is more like holding down multiple full time jobs. And while we love our kids, are devoted to our partners and want our business to thrive, our home to always be neat and clean and our families to be happy and proud of us – it all comes at a cost! For women entrepreneurs the challenges inherent in holding it all together can create a level of stress that can leave us feeling that we are under siege.

So what happens when this delicate balance is thrown into turmoil through an unexpected event, conflict or business problem? For example – we get offered an amazing contract that will take our business to a whole new level but it will require an extra investment of our time and energy….

Or our aging parents experience a medical crisis and require additional care… often leaving women with the challenging task of managing both their own children and their parents personal and medical needs…

Or we decide to hire someone to help take on the administrative load – and take some of the pressure off us… And 3 months later we realize that this new employee is not measuring up in terms of their ability to function effectively in their job – and so we're still doing the work despite our expectation of relief!

For many of us, the work / life balance is tenuous and fragile and the equilibrium we have struggled to achieve can easily be disrupted when there is any sort of calamity – in any aspect of our lives. We have a choice at that point whether we let the disruption become a major crisis and send us into a tailspin with long term implications for our lives or whether we can put some effective coping strategies in place that can help us regain our equilibrium and get our lives back on track.

It is often difficult for women to ask for help for many reasons. Each woman has her own way of handling crises and challenges and there is no formula or recipe that can predict how a woman will react to those challenges any more than there is only one right response.

At one point in my life I was juggling four children aged 7-15, 2 businesses, a court case and a small farm with100 turkeys and 150 chickens, a whole field of sweet corn. In my spare time (between 3am and 4am I would often lie awake trying to figure out how I was going to keep all the balls in the air at the same time and not lose my sanity. Strangely enough, acknowledging that I was in over my head and could not possibly do everything that needed to be done by myself got very little air-time in the conversations I had with myself. It was all about getting more organized, how I could save a few minutes here or there and how it would all be easier as soon as things got back to 'normal'.

So how do we get caught up in the seeing ourselves as women with infinite capacity to handle everything life throws at us? And what is the cost – to ourselves, our families, our relationships and our businesses? And how do we begin to change our outlook on things if we feel that we need a reality check on this one?

Well we all have a default blueprint for how we handle stress, conflict and tension that we have been refining all of our lives. The experiences we have had, our interpretation of the events we have lived and the strategies we have used in other situations all work together to create this blueprint – which tends to operate quietly in the background often without us even being aware that it's there.

So like all other children I watched those around me as I grew up – parents, relatives, siblings, teachers, friends, friends' parents and others who came and went in my life. These people create the 'reality school' from which we have all graduated. As children we watch people with different personalities, abilities, skills and resources move through their daily lives and we create a story for ourselves about what works and what doesn't. Children process a lot of information over the course of their childhood using the child level tools they have available to them to make sense of what is happening – and their interpretation of what they are seeing and experiencing is often vastly different that what adults see and experience.

And these stories we tell ourselves have powerful potential to influence the choices we make and our view of the world. They help to write the script for the dance we dance as we move through our lives. For me, the story I told myself was that I needed to prove to everyone that I was capable and competent (having lived with a lot of negativity about how incapable and incompetent I was). I don't think there was ever any malicious intent on the part of those in my life to derail my confidence but they certainly succeeded and it took a long time and a lot of work to come to the realization that I have the potential to succeed in anything I do. So if I need to prove my competence – what message would I believe I would be sending if I asked for help? – exactly the message that would prove that they were right – that I am not capable or competent!

In reality, it takes a lot of courage to ask for constructive help - to request someone's assistance with a problem without moving into that powerless victim mode that takes it to the other extreme and asks to be rescued.

There is no doubt that it can be tough to look at our lives and determine what our priorities are and how we should orchestrate the achievement of those priorities! Part of this assessment process needs to include an objective assessment of:

-          what story is operating in the background of our life that is driving our choices and actions – and what has contributed to the creation of that story?

-          what attitudes we have adopted that we use to rationalize our actions and behaviour (and which may be a major contributing factor to our reality)

-          what habits we have and whether they are supporting our success or getting in our way

These 3 questions are pivotal in determining what comprises our default blueprint and the degree to which it will operate in our lives. They are also questions that we rarely ask ourselves or invite ourselves to answer objectively. In some cases we may not even be able to honestly evaluate the influence of our attitudes and habits without outside assistance from someone who can provide us with constructive honest feedback. Of course we also need to be able to hear what they are saying – hopefully without 'shooting the messenger'!

The 2^nd step is to take an honest look at what our commitments and obligations are – and at which level they exist. The 5 levels I have come to recognize in my life are:

1.      Non-negotiable – those obligations that truly must be done and which no-one but me can do! Examples would be: exercising and looking after myself, being ultimately accountable for what happens in my business (NOT the same as "being the army-of-1 who is the only one capable of doing anything in the business")

2.      Essential to do – important issues with long term implications if they are not addressed but which others can also contribute

Examples would be: spending large quantities of quality time with our children to help them learn the life skills they require; marketing the business to ensure its ongoing success; working to build relationships on a personal and business level

3.      Want to do – things that I enjoy and which I choose to put as higher priority

4.      Nice to do – Less important work that may be nice to have done but which does not have a long term implication or major impact if it is neglected and which can be done by numerous others – but which we often take on for the 'optics' of it all

5.      Fluff – Superficial "busy work" that we can get caught up in to avoid or procrastinate tackling some of the more important (but often more challenging) work and which solely for how it 'looks'.

The next step is to objectively assess:

-          what resources (people, money, time, energy, etc) we have available to us and whether we are actually using them effectively

-          what resources are available to us that we are not aware of (or are choosing to ignore) – and how we can add them into the mix

The challenge here is that often we have not taken the time to objectively assess the leverage points in our personal and business lives and then integrate the resources we have available effectively to optimize the our energy investment and ability to succeed in all the circles of our lives.

We have an obligation to ourselves to maximize our ability to care for ourselves. Without the queen, the hive will die. Women are a significant part of the glue that holds our families together and as more and more women take on the role of 'Mompreneur', the impact of our success or failure on ourselves, our families, our communities and our society increase dramatically.

Ruth Sirman is a professional mediator, trainer and speaker who is also the single mom of 4 amazing young adults. During her 'Mompreneur' career she has built 2 successful businesses, survived 28 years of 'mom-ing' and earned a PhD from the "Reality School of New Business Owners Who Know Nothing About Running A Business". She now shares with her clients and her audiences the knowledge and wisdom she has gained in managing conflict, dealing with crises and thriving through it all. For more information, check out her website at www.canmediate.com.