This morning, I attended my son's class Christmas party at school, and I'm beyond grateful for the flexibility to be there. I still remember when I was in my 9 to 5, Graham walked up to me and excitedly asked, Mommy, can you come to my Christmas party? I replied, I wish I could, buddy, and I watched as his wide eyes and big smile faded. I tried to explain. Mommy has a really big meeting at work. It's been planned for a long time. Mommy has to present at this meeting, and I can't get out of it, but I promise I'll make it up to you. We'll do something else. Do you understand, buddy? And as most kids do, he said yes and moved on.

 

I can't help but think about how he felt that day when all of the other parents showed up and his wasn't there. And this morning, I was reminded of that as I sat across the room and watched another kid holding back tears. So many parents were there, but this little boy looked around and his parents weren't there. It made me all the more grateful that everything has changed for me. But before we get to that part, looking back on that day that I had that meeting and missed Graham's class party. I was sitting in the meeting, and my phone buzzed as I sat there. A friend of mine with a child in the same class was nice enough to text me some photos from the party without me even asking. She noticed I wasn't there and decided to send some my way.

 

I should have been grateful, but in that moment, Envy took over. I wanted nothing more to be there for that moment instead of stuck in this meeting. Seeing party and then hearing about it from Graham later wasn't enough for me. I wanted to experience it firsthand, but here's the thing. I also wanted to Grow in my career. I wanted to grow professionally. I have some pretty huge dreams, and I've always loved the sense of accomplishment that's brought on by work. I've always been driven and motivated to do something more.

 

In my 9 to 5, people depended on me, Clients, employees, the owners of the company that I worked for, and I didn't want to let anyone down, not them and not my kids. So I felt guilt when I worked. I felt guilt when I was with family. I felt like I couldn't win. Maybe you feel that way too. Maybe for you, it's not mom guilt, but struggles with dividing time to spend with a spouse or friend, other family member, or even to get a few freaking minutes to yourself. If you're anything like I was, I bet you may be thinking, Hey, Catherine. It's not just one of those things, it's all of the above and more.

 

Maybe you've put some other things on the back burner too, your health, whether physical, spiritual, emotional, hobbies that you used to love, cleaning the house, volunteering, Sleep? And maybe you're thinking what I was before. I used to think I always had to sacrifice something that I couldn't have it all. It was like I thought of my life as 1 big pie chart, and every single time I gave more focus to one area, Another area suffered. That sounds logical. Right? We only have so much time and energy, And we talk about priorities all the time, but you know what? We talk about them all wrong, and we make 3 big mistakes. The first is that we pretend like it's possible to give 100% of the pie to everything. But guess what? The word priority was never meant to be plural. If everything is a priority, then nothing is the priority.

 

Think about that. If you have multiple priorities, which is really the priority? It's impossible to have multiple priorities, and it leads straight to burnout. So instead, align your yeses with your values, Figure out exactly what your values are and use that as a guide for what to say yes to, what to spend your time on, and then use those same values as a filter for when to say no. The second mistake that we make is that we create silos instead of synergy. Instead of distinct pie pieces, the various areas of our lives can overlap in such a beautiful way. Your activities day to day can accomplish more than 1 goal at a time, so take your spouse Out of town to that personal development conference with you. Work out with a friend. Call your family members to catch up by phone while running errands.

 

Listen to that podcast while you do your makeup in the morning. Journal while sitting at the kids' practice. There are ways to stretch your time and to overlap the things that you want to do in your life. Building that synergy creates time. The 3rd mistake that we make is that we let other people define success for us, whether they put the pressure on us or we put the pressure on ourselves, which is probably more common. Either way, We try to measure up to others' definitions of success in every single area of life instead of focusing on our own desires. In other words, we make the pie pieces bigger or smaller than we want based on what we think other people think we should do or want us to do. We create this ideal woman that we've literally just dreamt up, and then we compare ourselves to her.

 

Instead, we need to decide who it is that we wanna be and stop worrying about this ideal woman or anyone else for that matter. Who cares what someone else would do? What do you wanna do? That's the only thing worth striving for, the things that you want. So if you're thinking that you can't have it all, I encourage you to really take a look at what all means to you. You may need to redefine it because Maybe you can't have every single thing that every woman wants, but you can have all that you want. Today, for me, having it all meant going to Graham's Christmas party. It meant taking that time out, showing up, participating in the silly games that we did in the classroom. But what it didn't mean for me is checking him out of school early like most of their parents did for their kids. Sure he asked, but I let him know that today wasn't the day for that.

 

Instead, I had a lunch date with my husband. I ran some errands, And then I met with my assistant to make sure everything was on track in my business. That's what felt right to me. You may have chosen differently, and that's okay because there's no right or wrong, but whatever you choose, you can have. So define all for yourself, Align your yeses to your values and create synergy. And when you do that, you can have it all.