I am about to start
seeing a breathing physio.
Oh yes, amongst my many skills and talents, breathing
apparently isn't one of them.
How on earth can I
forget to breathe when at any given moment I only have a wordpress site to
build for my blogging 9 year old daughter on a mission to become a discovered
poet while getting a 6th round of toast for my unfillable 7 year old
son while reading the deeply
philosophical tome “Bees are Stripy” (so they are) for the 100th
time that day to my 15 month old (who has become rather Father Jack in her
single word demands of late ‘READ’ ‘READ’) while thinking about the
presentation I am giving tomorrow and the tweet I must send and the text I
haven’t yet answered to my best friend, stirring the supper while coming up
with the killer 48 point word on the ‘Words with Friends’ app on my iphone to
beat my adversary in tennis and words games alike (aka my Dad) while sorting
out the uniforms for the morning and testing the middle child on his spellings
while googling the address for his match on Friday and musing if we have enough
bedding to clean the blasted hamster who seemed like a good idea at the time
(whose early demise I secretly fantasise about) while on the phone to Mr D to
discuss the progress on the refund for the hire car idiots in Portugal who
thought it perfectly reasonable customer service to drag a family party of 6 to an industrial
estate in the middle of Lisbon post flight only to inform them they didn't actually
have the 7 seater we’d booked AT ALL but here, have a 5 seater, Grandma in the
roof-box, no problems and oh could he possibly stop and pick up a bottle of red
on his way home and and and…..and BREATHE.
Your 30s are, so the
research tells us, the busiest time in a woman’s life. Apparently there’s only
1 hour in every 24 that we have to ourselves. The ever present 21st
century juggle of work and family compounded by the multitude of communication
channels we wrap around us leaving us, literally it seems, struggling for
breath.
What to do? Employers
I think, nowadays, have an even greater responsibility to ensure their staff are
allowed to strike the right mutually beneficial balance between work and home,
and work extra hard to create positive brand centred cultures in their workplaces.
Putting employees first.
Mine? Well JM has
happily agreed to let my physio session take place in the office as Woodreed
live (and breathe!) the importance of looking after your employees to increase
engagement. (Although secretly I think she wants to chuckle at the ‘OMMMMMMMMMs’
that will invariably be emitting from the boardroom as I am finding the time to
learn to breathe.)
