6 Tips on Balancing Your Family, Career, and Your Anxieties

Reducing fear and anxiety can improve interpersonal relationaships within families. (Shutterstock)

It can be difficult for adults to take care of their families, careers, and stresses at the same time.

Many times, worry and fear can get the best of you when you’re overwhelmed with everything that needs to be done.

As a result, here are six work life balance tips on how to take care of your family and your career without getting overly stressed.

1. Set goals: An important way to remove stress is to set goals for yourself when you manage your family or career. When you get up in the mornings, try to set some daily goals for you to accomplish. When you accomplish these goals, you will feel happier and more confident to do more things.
2. Delegate: When taking care of your family, get your spouse to help you out. If your kids are older, get them to assist you. If you are at work, only take on what you can handle. Don’t try to do everything all at once. Learn to delegate and work with other people.
3. Evaluate your situation: If you try to do everything, you will get stressed out and anxious. A person can only do so much in a given day. Learn to manage your responsibilities. If you feel you are doing too much, then take a break and evaluate your situation.
4. Learn to calm down: Take a deep breath and try to find something to do to get your mind off of your anxieties and stresses. A person could take a walk, listen to some music, read the newspaper, watch TV, play on the computer, or do an activity that will give them a fresh perspective on things. This will distract you from your current worries.
5. Prioritize: Try to do things in terms of their importance. Let’s say that you have to clean the living room, go to the supermarket, and wash the dishes. You decide to go to the supermarket since that is the most important thing that needs to be accomplished. You make the choice to do the other two tasks later on. Determine what needs done right away and do those things first. It is much easier to accomplish something if you know what you are going to do ahead of time. Proper planning will help reduce your everyday stresses and help you to stay organized.
6. Communication is important: It is important to talk to your friends and family in order to avoid any potential problems. Get into the habit of talking to others in order to get things accomplished. Do not get upset when things don’t work according to plan. Learning how to work with others can save you a lot of time and prevent any worrying.

Worrying can make things worse. All you can do is to do your best each day, hope for the best, and when something does happen, take it in stride. If you still have trouble dealing with the stress and anxiety of everyday life, then talk to a mental health counselor who can give you additional advice.

Stan Popovich is a Penn State graduate with over 20 years’ experience in dealing with fear and anxiety. He is an award-winning contributor on the topics of fear, anxiety, and depression. Stan gives you many different ideas and options on how to overcome your mental health struggles. 

This story originally published on Managing Fear’s website.