Stepping Into Your Destiny

Everyone has a destiny, a life path that she should follow. Unfortunately too often we get carried away with the obligations that satisfy the needs of others. When it comes to other people women are fixated on being "good," doing the "right" thing but readily mistreat themselves. How many tired, neglected working mothers have we seen on beauty make-over shows. These women are so busy tending to everyone else that they have not realized that it has been years since they thought about their own needs. In the interim they've gained weight, not taken care of their appearance, in some instances even failed to see a physician or a dentist. How can a woman who is has placed herself last---thus assigning her life no value be a good mother, a good partner or a good employee? Who will care about a woman who doesn't care about herself? Here's a link Beauty on a Budget to some budget-friendly suggestions to maintaining your looks

Learning to put yourself first may be the most important step to finding peace and balance in your life as a working mother. Our responsibilities may seem legitimate since they are often associated with our children, partners, bosses, church, community. But are these activities "supposed to" items that we do because they're expected to do them or because they are or what "good" women (or women in my network do) or are they activities that bring us true joy and self-fulfillment? Our goal should be to fill our lives with life affirming activities and people. In doing so we need to develop exit strategies from the obligations and people that don't bring us joy or an added sense of personal worth.

Our instincts always tell us what the next step on our path ought to be. However we frequently override our internal compass with a host of excuses based on external demands for us to act a certain way. Letting go of the obligations that weigh us down is not necessarily easy because fear guides many of our actions. By releasing life-draining activities, you are allowing yourself to be guided by Universe/Divine Spirit/God and thus you immediately set yourself on the path to living a happy, abundant and harmonious life.

Exercise:
Look at your personal and work schedules for the rest of the week or month.

1) On one list write out the activities that you love and in another list, the ones you find draining and stressful.

2) Brainstorm about ways to eliminate the joy-killing activities.
Maybe you can give notice that you plan to resign from a committee/activity in several months---this gives the group time to find your replacement. Perhaps another family member can be assigned to tackle an item. Can you afford to pay someone to do the task? In terms of work, if you are unhappy maybe it's time to have a conference with your boss to see how you can re-tool your job description or duties. If that's not possible, and your job is stressing you out, it's time to begin the process of looking for another job or investigating how you could create your dream job through entrepreneurship.