The Indian Working Super - Woman
In India, all mothers are working mothers. But if a mother also happens to go to office or, run a business, then she is forced to become a super-mom.
To be a wife, mother and sometimes dutiful daughter-in–law is taxing. Added to that is the problem of the support systems - always falling short. Ever tried to grab a birthday present at 9 p.m. after work? Or find a plumber at 6 a.m.?
The demands of family life are usually stressful. Most working women confess that, once they reach office, the de-stressing that commences is noticeable. This is because, at home, there is always a need for multi-tasking, which can be extremely demanding. Cooking, wiping a kid’s tears, listening to your husband’s office woes for the day, fixing that button on your dress, helping with some homework. All this means that, your brain has to keep switching on and off from one task to another. This may result in tiredness or stress.
Don’t be too hard on yourself!!
How to survive being a super- mom requires you to be a little more attentive to your human needs and a lot more forgiving about not being perfectly efficient.
To survive being a good super –mom, you have to give equal respect to all the things you do and make sure that there is a harmonious balance between home and office life.
The most important aspect of life that every super mom needs to develop is her relationship with her spouse. Unless there is a sharing and caring relationship that permeates into every aspect of life, a woman would be short-charged emotionally.
Be it your career or you home, success is never about hard work but about a wholesome attitude and approach.
Business trips, field trips and trips to the grocery store. Dry cleaners, clean laundry, cleaning house, house warmings and open house. Phone bills, billable hours, hours and hours of homework, and work to do at home. Today’s woman is spread thin with responsibilities and stretched to the limit with the demands of family, career and home. She has been conditioned by traditional upbringing to conquer their household chores: cleanliness is next to godliness. Their hearts tell them to be a good wife, a good mother and a good daughter, and at the same time, their minds require that they be intellectually stimulated by a challenging career. In many cases, economics require that the woman hold a full-time job outside the home.
If you are one of these women and you feel as though you are about to self-destruct, you are not alone!!! Many women feel that they are doing a lot, but not doing any one thing well. Day by day, they are confronted with challenges that seem to pile up. There is an overwhelming sense of feeling incomplete, of not finishing what is started, and of feeling insecure about her accomplishments. They know that they take on too much, but they do not know how to make life’s hectic merry-go-round slow down enough to get off.
The Corporate Woman Challenge:
Weekly Staff cutbacks in many organizations have pushed managers and individual contributors to the brink of their abilities to produce work in a timely manner. She has to balance an overload of work at work, and a million personal priorities at home. This overload is multiplied by the constant flood of news and information from web sites, blogs, news feeds, social networking sites and Twitter.
Are you drowning in a sea of tasks??? Is your inbox raging out of control???
The balancing act:
Gone are the days when employers would scorn at the concept of work-life balance. However, experts point out that there are several employees, despite innovative efforts made by organisations, who find the task of striking a chord between work and personal commitments quite excruciating. The need, therefore, is to understand that without work-life balance, your best-laid plans ought to go wrong. Afterall, you cannot conduct a flawless business presentation if you haven’t slept for three days.
Are you working towards a client presentation when you know your child needs help with his studies. It’s your wedding anniversary tonight but you have a business dinner to attend. In ones corporate life, we have all encountered situations like the above when we were compelled to make a choice. The process towards prioritising responsibilities is not easy. This brings to light the biggest issue that most employees face on a regular basis: work-life balance. It is a well-acknowledged fact that having a good work-life balance is essential for the well-being of an organisation and its employees as is crucial for employee engagement and productivity.
Many organisations have introduced several policies to help their employees balance their professional and personal lives. Initiatives like flexi-working hours, telecommuting, paid leaves, work from home, etc help towards achieving just that. But experts opine that the responsibility to maintain a healthy work-life balance rests on both, the organisation and employee. The organisation needs to support its employees by creating an environment that enables them to maintain a healthy balance. The employees, on the other hand,need an attitudinal shift and a mental discipline to ensure that priorities are set right and adhered to.
Work-life balance is a growing concern in India and experts say that a constant struggle to balance both, will have serious implications on the health of an employee. Giving enough time for professional and personal chores and keeping both separate is of utmost importance.
Stress experienced during various gynaecological challenging conditions:
Women with conditions such as infertility, endometriosis, fibroids and recurrent miscarriages go through significant stress, which not only may undermine her confidence and affect the qualtiy of her life, but is also an obstacle to the treatment process. Menopause is another period of life when women are subject to overwhelming stress. Every woman has to deal with it!
For example, women may not respond to ovulation induction treatment (development of eggs) for infertility. Stress is an important factor for failure of test tube baby. Stress has a significant role to play in recurrent miscarriages.
Striking a chord between work commitments and personal priorities is no cakewalk. However, there are ways through which you could master this art, through stress management.
Stress management for women teaches women to say no, to make time for family and themselves, and to eliminate negative forces from their lives.
If you implement stress management tips, you will find that your day-to-day stress level can be significantly reduced. That will leave you with the maximum resources for dealing with life's "big stressors."
What we offer at GyneGuide:
Personalised Stress management sessions designed by our clinical psychologists, suited to your needs. The sessions would incorporate yoga and meditative techniques combined with the use of simple tools which you could incorporate into your day to day life to help you with:
Time Management, prioritisation
Work Life Balance, Organisational Skills
Delegation, Setting boundaries, Multitasking
Dealing with your own expectations and others'
Coping with conflicts in your inner and outer world
Supporting lifestyle changes
Handling stress associated with various gynaecological challenges
Taking care of any individual psychological barriers to the above