Between work, family and having a social life, it might often seem like you must sacrifice one aspect of your life to succeed in the other.
If your work life is thriving, you might have sacrificed time at home with your family, or if you are dedicating time to your children, your self care routine may have taken a backseat.
It is a struggle many go through and navigating to find work-life balance could be tricky.
Moms With a Mic's Julia and Marissa Bagg spoke with two moms, Michelle Lopez and Mia Fraser, to get their take on how they manage to find the balance between work and family life.
Get South Florida local news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC South Florida newsletters.
According to the Society for Human Resource Management, from February 2020 to January 2022, more than 1.1 million women left the labor force accounting for 63 percent of all jobs lost.
Fraser was a civil litigator at a major firm for 10 years before she left the workforce to care for her young daughter.
"It was high stress and lots of hours and when I had my first daughter, just because she was shy of two, I left," Fraser said. "I left and decided to stay at home for a little bit while I was looking for my next step and ended up getting a taste of being a stay-at-home mom and never turned back."
Fraser said that during the pandemic, many moms got a taste of what it was like to stay at home with their little ones and this likely contributed to them making the shift in their careers to something a little more flexible or to stay at home full time.
But according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, there was another reason for women leaving their jobs: burnout.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reported that in 2020, one in four women considered leaving the workforce or changing careers due to burnout and just one year later, in 2021, one in three women reportedly considered the same.
Lopez is a former colleague of the Bagg sisters and said covering news could "at times be very stressful and there are a lot of difficult things that happen every day."
While working in the news industry was doable when she was younger, Lopez, a mom of two, said she eventually decided to make the transition from news to communications and discovered that the shift suits her lifestyle.
"I was thankfully able to sort of take my skill set and pivot into another field and have been able to experience a hybrid schedule and have been able to spend time, go to PTA meetings, take my kids to school in the morning, and do a lot more with my family," Lopez said.
The key to work-life balance is setting your priorities.
Mental Health America is a nonprofit organization that has issued recommendations to help strike a balance between work and home life.
Among these recommendations are:
- Set manageable goals each day
- Be realistic about workloads and deadlines
- Take care of important tasks first and eliminate unessential ones
- Ask for help
- Ask for flexibility (such as working from home one day per week or working flexible hours)
Recommendations to consider at home were:
- Unplug. 24/7 use of technology could cause burnout
- Don't overcommit and don't be afraid to say no
- Stay active. Regular exercise can reduce stress
- Get help. Either chat with friends or family or seek mental health counseling
According to Lopez, you don't have to get the balance right on your first try.
"It's trial and error," said Lopez. "I think with balance, you're always kind of adjusting the scales to see where that perfect balance is going to be."
Fraser added that sometimes the solution to finding balance is to "do nothing."
"It's okay to just take that time, take a breath and just do nothing. It's okay to just rest," Fraser said. "It's important because if you don't, you don't fill your cup. You can't give to others, can't give to your kids, can't give to your family. You can't run on an empty tank."
