Ever feel like you don’t quite measure up?

• Your house isn’t clean or organized enough.
• You don’t feel thin or fit or young or stylish enough.
• Your kids or family don’t quite live up to the mark set by other families

Well, that’s because we tend to get convinced that getting organized, managing a home, raising a family, or anything else we do in our life has to look a certain way.

Like a production on stage, we only see the story others want to portray (or the one we choose to see.) But backstage? It’s chaos. Props everywhere, people scurrying around changing costumes – that’s what every human life looks like. It is always messy.

So how do we stop comparing ourselves to the unrealistic ideals others project?

We come up with our own formula by asking ourselves these questions:

• If I could wave a magic wand and life could look any way you wanted it to, what would it look like?
  
  
• What makes you feel really good? What does a really GOOD day look like?
  
  
• How much time do you personally want to reserve for home management? Parenting? Work or other commitments?
  
  
• What is your sweet spot? The ratio of time you spend in all your roles and responsibilities?

Finally, we need to address the elephant in the room… What will other people think?

If we break the mold and do things differently, how do we handle the judgment from others?

The truth is, most people are so caught up in their own lives and insecurities, they don’t have enough bandwidth to judge ours. And if they do, their judgment is more of a commentary on their own inadequacies than a reflection of anything about you.

Meeting other people’s standards can cause you to compromise your own. So why would you decide to have your life revolve around someone else’s idea of what “it” needs to look like, in the off chance that for one second they may look up from the chaos of their own life and judge yours?

Their judgment is out of context and off-based. So let’s not hold ourselves back for fear of phantom judgment that will rob us of the joy of living our own formula.

So what?

Is there a standard you are holding yourself to? Do you look at a certain person or have a certain idea in your head and think that is the way it needs to be? What parts of that are unrealistic? How is that not compatible with your life?

What is the _____formula? (Fill in your own first name here.) What do you need? What feels balanced? When do you feel in control? If it could look any way and still be ok, what would it look like?