As long as I can remember, life has been busy. From working at my family’s restaurant at a young age, juggling 2 jobs and an internship with an overpacked college schedule, to launching into a grinding media agency career—work has proudly been a part of my identity.
Fast forward to present day, a new categorization of “busy” has been introduced to my universe beyond my own personal and professional ambitions. I now claim proud ownership of my role as a wife and mother of 3 year old twins.
As a mother, work-life balance has taken on an entirely new meaning. Admittedly, I’ve always struggled with hitting the abort button on work. It used to be if I pulled an allnighter, only I would pay the price (and felt it was justified if the work product shined). Well, that mentality shouldn’t fly for anyone and it most certainly doesn’t as a parent. In reality, if you as a parent aren’t balanced, your family won’t be either. Despite this truth, I continuously find myself doing whatever it takes to maintain balance for my family and work, even though the actions and energy to do so may create imbalance for myself personally.
So you may be asking “Why?” am I even writing about this subject. I would respond with “Great question—I feel like an imposter!” What I can say is that luckily there are some wonderful methods that even the worst work-life balance offenders can embrace to achieve life harmony.
The Harmony Model
Steps to Reaching Your Harmony
A New Mission
The Harmony Model
My business partner, Catherine, introduced me to a beautiful Japanese concept, Ikigai, that means ‘reason for being.’ ‘Iki’ means ‘life’ and ‘gai’ represents your value or worth (you can
check out Catherine’s blog post here to learn more).
Inspired by this philosophy, we created a Harmony Model that places more emphasis on values rather than just focusing on life & career.
Lucky for you, the model and our accompanying workbook are free and available for download (file below). Pending your preference, the PDF also includes an editable Canva template of the exercises.
Achieving Life Harmony © Rocketry Group
.pdf
Download PDF • 1.54MB
Steps to Reaching Your Harmony
Here are just a few highlights from the workbook on how to achieve harmony...
Step 1) Complete Reflections
Reflections are introspective questions you should continually ask yourself (at least once every 3 months). In order to get close to your purpose, it's important to understand your "why". Many times we don't check in with ourselves to see how we feel and if our thoughts and actions are continually in sync. Our workbook provides some questions to help guide you in addressing values for each section of the Harmony Model.
Step 2) Craft Your Harmony Statement
Your purpose provides you with a sense of balance and harmony. Your harmony statement provides clarity around what you want to accomplish, a sense of direction for where to start and the motivators needed to make it happen. Our workbooks will help you craft your statement in present tense and with proactive language.
Step 3) Practice Makes Perfect
As mentioned, we recommend revisiting your harmony model at least once every 3 months to ensure focus areas still resonate with your purpose. We encourage you to create new reflection pages and harmony missions. Remember, there is no right or wrong answer in creating your purpose and harmony statement.
A New Mission
When I came across Persian poet Rumi's quote, "Love is the energizing elixir of the Universe, the cause and effect of all Harmony", it reminded me of the values and intention of my Harmony Model. I’ve also come to a realization that, as a parent, you’re not only managing your own model, but you also hold the keys your family’s harmony, too. The beauty vs weight of this reality is that your success can be fueled by love.
As a parent, you will go to the moon and beyond for your children—the love that consumes your heart is of another galaxy. For me, I’ve challenged myself to not only leverage that love to achieve harmony for my family, but to allow that love to create a shift in energy for the harmony I also deserve, prioritize and create for myself.
For all the parents out there, keep raising up those kiddos to the stars, but also remember stargazing is meant to be shared together.
