Family and Re-Entering The Workforce - 5 Things You Need To Know

Posted on January 04, 2016 by Gretchen Toolan, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

You took the time to enjoy raising your family full-time. Good for you! Now, for whatever reason, you are re-entering the workforce and are struggling to know how to do it all. The first thing you should know is that this is not unusual. Everyone making this transition goes through this phase. The key is to remember that it’s all about making the decisions that work best for you.

In 2009, I lost my job and had the opportunity to be a full time mother to my 4 children. The oldest was middle-school age at the time. As with my previous career, I immersed myself fully and worked to become an expert at managing the family activities. Three years later, with university costs looming large on the horizon, I went back to work. It was a shock both to me and my family. I would hear things like, ‘You’re never home anymore.’, ‘Why can’t you take me there?’, ‘Hon, can you do me a favor and pick up my shirts?’ I felt pressured to be a full time mom plus a full time wage earner. To deal with these pressures, both internal and external, I had to learn to make choices. The choices were not always easy, but I learned that I had to make the best decisions for me.

Along with learning to make the decisions, I found that this transition can be less stressful if you keep these five points in mind as you move forward:

• Work and family will never be equally balanced and that’s OK. At any given point in time, one will take precedence over the other. As you move forward, you will find a balance that works for your situation.
• Knowing your top values and reassessing them regularly will help you understand that while the values don’t change, their priority levels in your life will. This is normal. As Brian Tracy, best-selling author and speaker, says. “When you are absolutely clear about your values, it is very easy for you to make important decisions.”
• Keep your personal perspective positive. Having an outlook that says, ‘This will work’ or ‘I can do this’, makes decision making much easier as you move forward.
• Realize that you do not have to do it all. Being a super human is not part of your job description. Let others do for you. Take the time to review what is most important for YOU to do and delegate or hire out the other tasks.
• Be open to opportunities. Change is part of life. Just because something doesn’t work out immediately or exactly as you wanted, doesn’t mean that it never will. Look at everything with an open mind to see what you can learn.