Yesterday, I posted about the conversation on friendship that helped me to realize that I really do need to look at how I’m doing things in my life.

But that was the last straw.  There were other events leading up to that moment.  And it all erupted into yesterdays post.

It started when I attended a parenting session at Munchkin’s school.

Andrea Ramsay Speers, who I’ve talked about before, is a psychotherapist and parent coach.  She came to the school to talk about “The Crazy Pace of Life: The Effect on Kids and Strategies to Stay Sane.”  With two parents who work outside the home (one with a gigantic commute), we know how crazy life can be.

The biggest thing that I took away from this session was that we have make conscious choices.  Instead of getting caught up in everything we need to stop an evaluate if this is exactly what we want for our life.

There are many times where we are just going through the motions of life, trying to get everything done that life is just crazily going on it way.  I don’t want that.  My kids aren’t going to be little forever.  Now is the time to make sure that we’re raising our family in the way that they will be successful down the road.  Plainly going from task to task, event to event, isn’t going to turn out well in the long run.

Conscious choices.

The first one we made was that we need to focus more on each child, individually.  We’ll take turns doing an activity one-on-one with each child.  Also, we’re going to make family time more engaging rather than passive (ie. board games rather than watching a movie).

Then yesterday, I was asked a bunch of questions and I really didn’t like my answers.

Through the wonders of Twitter, I have met some amazing women.  Many of them are mom-prenuers; women who have started their own businesses.  They are using twitter to network and promote and are doing a fabulous job.  I don’t have my own business so for me Twitter is purely social.  (I do, however, help to promote @BigDaddyKreativ )

One of these amazing women, is @OptiMom. She is a life coach who focuses on helping moms live their “opti-mom” life.  She has different events and seminars to talk about issues that affect moms and to help motivate and inspire moms.  With the start of her Cogeco cable TV show, MomU, she has been asking her members questions about balance.

1. As a mom, do you think you’re living a balanced life?
2. As a mom, how do you prioritize your daily to-do list? Putting out the fires vs planning time for self-care.
3. As a mom, how much time do take for yourself every day?
4. As a mom, do you think you can make a commitment to yourself to do more to achieve a balanced life?

If you’re a mom, Laurel would love it if you could answer these survey questions. Thanks!

Trying to put myself first has never been something I would do.  I have always put others first…hubby, kids, family, friends.  It’s just who I am.

So here I am collecting all this great information and advice to make my family and myself better.  Add that to my whack on the head about friendships and I’m done.  I hit the proverbial brick wall.  How did I let all of this happen?  Unconscious choices.

Things really do need to change. I need time for my family, time for my friends and time for myself. My life needs to be balanced.  My kids and BigDaddy’s lives need to be balanced.

I know BigDaddy feels the exact same way.  We’ll be working at this like we always do: as a team.

My first step is to figure out how to tackle the day-to-day stuff to free up time for the fun stuff.  That will be my next post.

My question for other parents out there, how did you answers the questions? How do you feel after answering those questions?  Have you had to make any conscious choices?