Balancing Your Family and Your Career - Part 3

(If you're reaching this page from Hub Pages or a search engine, you're on Part 3. Click here to start at the beginning of this series.)

1. Schedule Your Priorities - If spending time with your family is important, then treat it as a meeting you absolutely can't break. Work the time into your schedule just as you would anything else in your life. You find time to go to the grocery store, time to wash your clothes or mow the lawn - treat time with your family the same way.

1. Don't Forget Some "Me-Time" - One of the biggest mistakes we can make is to neglect ourselves. Quiet time is crucial for your mental well-being so make that time just as important as all the other to-do's in your life. Even if its just 15 minutes with a good book, a hot bubble bath or a little quiet meditation after everyone else goes to bed.
2. Leave Work on Time - While you might "get so much done" in that extra hour or two, the rest of your life is suffering. Try it for just one week. Leave right when that clock strikes five and don't look back. No guilt. No anguish. Just relish the freedom for once.
3. Take Steps to Build a More Balanced Life - Remember that perfect life you created in Part 2? Start taking steps now to create it. The best time to start your own business for example is while you're still employed.It might just be part-time, but you'll slowly start to build a clientele that will follow you when you go full-time for good. This also givees you a chance to work out all the kinks and decide if your perfect life is really so perfect after all - and all while you're still getting those steady paychecks.
4. Practice Good Money Management - One of the things that keeps us from pursuing our dreams is the notion that we're trapped - we need to make X amount of dollars to pay for the expenses we've taken on. Sock money away in savings. Pay down those credit cards and start paying cash instead. The more financially secure you are, the easier it is to make a big change in your lifestyle.
5. Say Goodbye to Fear - What are you afraid of? Failure? Success? The unknown? The only way you're ever going to experience anything different than what you know now is to do something other than what you're already doing. Remember, the same behavior will always produce the same results. Want to change your life? Then change it. The only person that's stopping you is YOU.
6. Believe - You can't accomplish anything if you don't believe in what you're doing. Despite any pre-programmed notions that might be in your head at this moment, there is no written rule that says you can't have everything you ever wanted. Its not luck or fate or some pre-conceived destiny that requires you to stay stressed and unfulfilled. You can become whatever you want to be, do whatever you want to do and create any life you want to have. You just have to believe.