(Read on if you love reading, but, if you want the video version, click here to head to YouTube!) Every year I worked in corporate I got the same question this time of year. Are you working Christmas week, or spending time with your kids? The worst part about this question is that assumes these two things are binary. It is an either or, not a spectrum for both. It’s as if working in December means you’re neglecting all possible fun and connection with your family. I have this visual of my boys standing alone in a gray dull window waiting for Mom. The flip side is burning the office down as your first holiday tradition so you and your family can have cocoa by a bonfire. It seems like no matter what you choose you’re balancing grace and accountability to your work and your family on a razor blade. There was always a judgement behind that question too.
Some people are silently rolling their eyes at the moms who took vacation to mirror their children’s winter break. They prompted me to work ahead in case I changed my mind. Do they think I couldn’t make a balanced decision that accounted for my responsibilities? Others were appalled to see moms still working after the holiday and would jump to a rude question.Who’s watching the kids?! You only get so many years. I never worked this week when my kids were home. Of course I wanted to be in two places at once. Worse yet, many people need to be in two places at once this time of year. Well, I can’t stop Peggy from making snide comments, or get you a clone. I can tell you that there is a way to balance grace and accountability this holiday season, in all areas of your life.
Remove their priorities from your head
First and foremost, I need you to understand that you are not accountable for Peggy’s opinions, or anyone else’s for that matter. Not your boss, not your mother-in-law, not even your spouse’s. You are accountable for your own opinions, thoughts, and priorities. Please read that one more time through to make sure it is really in your brain. Now, that being said, you only need grace from those you’re accountable to. So who are you balancing grace and accountability with? Yourself.
No matter what time of year it is or what other demands are on your plate, you don’t work for them (at home or in the office). If you need a personal reminder on this exact point, see this blog where I reveal my breaking point on this exact issue. You can’t be everything to everyone so you need to know where you stand. Breaking free from the expectations of meeting everyone else’s expectations and asking for grace when you fall short of that impossible standard, is not easy. If you’re not accountable to them and their demands, how do you make progress? How do you pick your goals much less hit them!?
Photo by Alan Retratos on Pexels.com
Understand your vision for your life
What would it mean to you to actually know where you’re going long term? I’m not talking about this time next year or even 10 years from now. That is like having the map to your city or even your state loaded into your car’s GPS. You might be confident that you can get where you need to go in the area you’re in, that space might even feel big at first. But, if you were presented with a map that allowed you to drive with confidence all over the world, what would that mean for you? I’ll tell you what it means, it means endless possibilities. It means you don’t have to make your plan day by day or week by week as you choose the trips you can take. Those are all places you can get in a weekend. You get to plan a big, expansive expedition. One with all of the excursions, food, time, and people that mean the most to you.
When you cast a vision for your life, you get to see the snapshot of that expedition. It might be 20, 30, or even 40 years long, and you’ll enjoy every minute of it because it’s the journey you chose. All of your day trips, your short term goals, now have new meaning. Now, they support this bigger, and more expansive vision. You get to live and breathe this adventure every day. You’re accountable to yourself to make this beautiful, vivid plan a reality for you. Suddenly, a decision like whether to take time off this month is so easy and clear that you don’t even understand why Peggy would ask. You’re so aligned with your over all ambition in life it’s no longer balancing competing priorities. Decisions like that are simply diving into what will take you closer to that vision you laid out for yourself.
Align your ambitions
If you want this level of clarity and certainty in what you want, please take this free video masterclass. Aligned Ambitions takes you through an exercise coaching clients do in their first weeks of coaching. It’s designed to help you find that exact perfect vision of your life, then build out your priorities and goals to support it. The beauty of this exercise is that you never have to ask the hard question of ‘this or that’ again. You know exactly where you’re going and what will get you there. You can make the spectrum work for you. Maybe next week you work hard 3 days with zero guilt and take two days for sledding, movies, and cookie decorating without ever checking your email. Or maybe you do go all in on one or the other. Either way, those raised eye brows from your MIL and coworkers never phase you a bit. Get access to your free masterclass here and align your life to fit your ambitions.
Balance grace and accountability because you were made for growth
If you haven’t aligned your ambitions yet and you want some support for the here and now, I have you covered. If you’ve been following along for any amount of time, you know that we are striving for growth, not perfection. There is always room for growth no matter where you are in comparison to where you want to be. I like my clients to have get out of jail free cards. Quick phrases that they can keep in their mental back pocket to keep them going as needed between sessions. One client’s get out of jail free card is, I can make an impact from here. We don’t need to get to the root of how we got here. We just need to move forward from where we are.
That is how I want you to think about growth. It is making an impact from exactly where you are. That means you’ll need to accept where you are right now, and hold yourself accountable for where you want to go. Just like a flower. They want to grow up toward the sun, reflecting their beautiful pedals toward the sunshine. Do they stress about coming up in the sidewalk crack? Absolutely not. They simply accept where they are and move where they want to go.
Grace and accountability over time equals growth
That is a pretty flowery metaphor, (pun totally intended). But there is an actual equation for this too. That is grace, plus truth, over time. That is the equation that produces growth. If all you got was constant reminders of the truth of your accountability, you’d beat yourself down. That flower inside you would wilt down until all the pedals were scraped against the sidewalk. If all you got was grace, you’d become complacent in your current situation and the budding seedling would never put the effort into becoming a flower. You need both but it doesn’t happen in an instant. That flower doesn’t sprout, grow, and become the beautiful daisy all in one day. It requires time to expand and reach it’s potential. If a daisy in the sidewalk needs each of these components, how much more so do you?
The growth equation provides so many of my clients and participants in the workshop feel a sense of peace. This is exactly where you are meant to be and you can absolutely make an impact from here. It keeps you looking forward with what you can do rather than looking back at things you can’t change. The real magic comes into play when you combine these practices. Create your own personal vision for your life and keep growth = grace + truth, over time, in your back pocket for any time doubts, stress, and anxiety start to creep in. It’s almost like we’re already working together, you get your own get out of jail free card to take with you moving forward.