Parenting and Ambition: How to make it work!

Here is a one million question: How can you conciliate between caring for a little tornado and, at the same time, aiming for accomplishment and prosperity in your career? The equation seems nearly hard to solve if it’s not hopeless. Juggling personal ambitions and parenthood is the upcoming mission impossible 7 y’all!

In fact, there is no self help book (none that I know of) that explains clearly how to both be successful as an entrepreneur and rock it as a parent. Why? Simply because in order to excel at something, especially if you are starting a business or trying to make a living out of something creative or even just learning a new language or improving a specific skill, tremendous effort and concentration are required, long hours of hard work are needed, and a pure devotion is mandatory. Unfortunately, the same goes on parenting, just replace the business or start-up with little monsters who are also eager to grow and thrive as well as learn and explore. Therefore, and since we are restrained to merely 24 hours a day, managing two projects equally and genuinely is a real headache.

This issue usually pops out right after the birth of the first child. New parents are promptly compelled to live a whole new lifestyle that completely interferes with their personal ambitions, and devastate their enthusiast to accomplish something other than caring for a little baby. Consequently, this period is generally associated with consuming anger and agonizing depression. However, it’s simply ridiculous to distress over achieving something throughout that particular first year, and this is for 3 reasons: 1- the mother’s body and brain go through a major recovery during this period, 2- the new born is completely dependent and experience multiple growth spurts in his first year and 3- give yourself some slack would you, it takes considerable time to adjust. Nonetheless, the struggle will still go on even if the baby grows to become partially independent. A child is an absolute time and energy absorber.

Thusly, the combination between the willingness to raise a well mannered and educated kid garnished with good values, and symmetrically, the thirst to achieve personal goals and fulfillments, might be utterly exhausting. It’s like being at once selfish and selfless, generous and greedy, or thoughtful and careless! The good news here is that what seemingly appears to be a hindrance can actually be the perfect boost and motivation towards the completion of the two purposes at once. In fact, one can fuel another; all what you need is: time, focus and consistency.

1-   Time

In average, a person can concentrate profoundly at most 3 hours in a row per day, which means that even if you have all the time of the world; chances are you’ll be highly productive for scarcely a few hours at once. Furthermore, there is a psychological rule that suggests the following: ‘The more options you have, the more restricted you feel’ In other words, if a person has the luxury of time and a total freedom as to how and when to study and work, he’ll be more likely to spend a lazy day than actually do something fruitful, and he’ll often have that puzzling feeling of not having enough time or enough motivation to achieve a certain goal. Therefore, being a parent is ironically beneficial on that matter; a full time parent has a really tiny amount of free time, usually during the child’s micro naps or night sleep.

Having a strictly predefined and limited period of time can actually help to organize the daily schedule, at least you know, for most of the cases, that the time from X to Y will either be efficiently exploited or vainly wasted, and there is absolutely no second chance. Wrestling to finally have that moment for yourself to do the things you are interested at can be thoroughly rewarding and increases the chances to make the best out of it; every second is thus precious and valuable.

2-   Focus

This being said, a second component, besides time, is extremely crucial to the success potion, and that is Focus, without it, time will just pass by unnoticed and fruitless. Focus is a muscle that needs to be trained constantly in order to make it sharp and lasting. Desiring to accomplish something so badly and having a strong motivation behind it can in truth help a lot. Nevertheless, it’s not sufficient; your purpose can easily fade away in the midst of the massive distraction nowadays. That’s why you need to keep a reminder close by; this could be a visible note with a list of your goals and ambitions, supportive people to remind you of your potential…

The point is to keep in your mind , for as long as possible, the next feasible step and address the different ideas and projects, so on the free time, you’ll be ready to start the work right away. With practice, focus will become gradually effortless until it will be a regular state of mind. Additionally, focus generates itself continuously; the more you are focused and determined, the more opportunities and possibilities will be unveiled, which will progressively help to structure a clear path towards your goals, and hence channel more attention and concentration.

3-   Consistency

Time and focus are the keys to an optimized and productive work, however, and since as parents we’ll definitely succeed to accomplish just little in a day, consistency and perseverance are magically capable to turn those tiny achievements into an overwhelming success. Yet, withal, keeping that excited and ambitious spirit alive till the end of the journey can be really challenging and tough sometimes; surrendering and giving up will seem more pleasant and dangerously comfortable. That's why it’s reasonable and judicious to set small and attainable objectives per day, you might outpace them occasionally and that will be awesome, but what’s essential is to keep an achievable minimum that’ll be hard to miss and will therefore enable you to stay always on track. Eventually your expectations will heighten and you’ll need genuine commitment to your purpose; deadlines are extremely helpful in that sense as they trigger you to progress steadily towards your goal. 

Being a parent and at the same time working on a personal project can mutually fuel one another; an exhausting day with the kids compels you to take full advantage of your free time, and similarly, a fruitful hard work towards your ambitions gives you energy and a sense of fulfillment that inspires you to give more love and care, and so forth. Surely it can be awfully tiring sometimes, but it’s the most rewarding and meaningful projects you can ever accomplish in this life.