As I think about strength­en­ing the har­mony in my life (and in help­ing oth­ers) one of the first things that comes to mind is the mul­ti­ple “hats” we all wear.

In my life, I wear the hat of spouse, mother, grand­mother (of eight and it is the absolute blast), daugh­ter, sis­ter, busi­ness owner, friend, gar­dener, Great Dane and cat care­giver, bird feeder, vol­un­teer and per­pet­ual learner.  Try­ing to fill the role of each of these can be a daunt­ing task.  Main­tain­ing bal­ance across all of them is dif­fi­cult if not impossible.

The Jug­gling Act

If I try to bal­ance all of them, I find myself becom­ing mediocre at some.  Medi­oc­rity across all the roles does not work for me.   It only causes more stress.  What I’ve learned is there is an ebb and flow to the level of my involve­ment in all these roles.  When I have to focus on cer­tain roles, I  remind myself it is OK to put oth­ers “hats” on the shelf for a bit.  (Obvi­ously, you can­not do this with your chil­dren, although you may like to.)  I’ve also learned that there are ways that I can incor­po­rate just a bit of time in my day for cer­tain roles like life-long learner.  I’ve learned to make use of drive time to lis­ten to audio tapes of things that inter­est me.  My car has a trav­el­ing library of audio tapes that I have to move when I put on my “grandma hat” and trade car seats for audio tapes.  I fill my iPod with edu­ca­tional pro­grams, sub­lim­i­nal tapes and med­i­ta­tion pro­grams and lis­ten at night while falling asleep or while I’m trav­el­ing on a air­plane, or walk­ing the dog.

What “hats” do you wear?.  How do you man­age your “hats?’  What tips or tricks have you learned that could help oth­ers?  Please share your thoughts so we all can learn.