Features
Working mum burnout: Some coping advice to lessen the stress
Dealing with everyday life can be tiring especially if you’re a mum. There are so many things that you have to accomplish in a day. Add the stress and pressure, and you’ll surely burn out and would just want to sleep all day.
Luckily, there are practices that you can try. Here are some ways you cope with stress to avoid being burned out.
- Ditch perfection, welcome creativity!
Throw perfection off. Honestly, it’s getting you nowhere, and it’s a big action blocker.
Expecting perfection, especially when you have so many demands on your day, will stop good things from getting done. Committing to ongoing improvement doesn’t mean striving for perfection every moment.
Creativity, on the other hand, makes you think and act on better ways to survive and thrive as a working mother. It’s as they say, don’t work hard, work smart!
- Learn to trust your children
This one can be so hard but we have to trust our children out there and we can start by giving them the right tools. Drowning in responsibility can make you forget to trust your children and their ability to solve problems and enjoy themselves positively.
As parents, we are constantly trying to set up an environment where our children can thrive. But trying your best to set up ways where your children can develop themselves responsibly might not always end up as you had envisioned. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong! Parent the way that’s right for you.
- Thank your supporters and recognise when you have support
Luckily, the world is becoming a place where people start to understand more of everybody’s everyday lives. We are becoming more open to what others are experiencing thus creating countless support groups for every life aspect that we can think of.
Support for working mums is becoming more accepted. There are increasing numbers of advocates for working mums. This helps ease the burden and can even influence HR policies.
On the other side, if you’re in management ask: Will I recognise the signs of struggle when I am dealing with a working parent/caretaker? If I see a mum struggling at work, what am I doing as a manager or as an organisation to help?
From the answers that unfold, we can build a safe space where working mums and parents can feel safe at their workplace in every condition or situation.
By showing mums you care about their needs, you can help empower them to continue juggling their work and home lives in a way that works best for them.
- Be aware of what gives you energy
As a working mum, burnout is inevitable as you juggle work and chores the whole day. So we’ll need to recharge our energies and fill back your cup. It can be: Your children’s hug, a laugh with a co-worker, things that go right, good ideas for the job, nice and appreciated activities with your family.
Those moments can do wonders when you’re depleted. Try to find satisfaction and thankfulness for your job and your co-workers or people who support you in your job. If what gives you energy is to scramble for more flexible measures, then do it!
- Know when to rest and take care of yourself
This one is the hardest, both emotionally and practically. You can’t pour from an empty cup, and you know that. But at the same time, you might not know how to refill or step into a more balanced way of being a working mother.
There are many ways to take care of yourself: Take moments for yourself, rest, work out, empty your mind for some time, give yourself pampering sessions. Doing what you love and prioritise them. Always remember that it’s okay to preserve your energy! You don’t need to stress about being a working mum by doing everything.
- Use the skills you already have that are transferable
Successfully dealing with multiple priorities is a skill you learned being a tired working mum. It has been useful in both motherhood and even in the workplace but it’s not the only one you have! You possess: Patience, communication, problem-solving mastery, creativity.
These are skills you can use for parenting and working as well as for creating meaningful relationships with others. This is a huge emotional lifesaver you can use when you feel overwhelmed and exhausted! Remembering everything you’re capable of is an important mental safety net. Remind yourself.
Final Thoughts
Taking care of yourself, recharging, and giving yourself a moment of grace and self-rest is a huge ‘breathe in and breathe out’ reminder when you are feeling burnout. Being aware and connected to enjoyment in every moment pushes your creativity forward.
Being a mum is hard. Being a working mum is even harder. The world is changing fast, puts more demands, but opens new doors and creates more resources.
The employer mindset regarding working mothers is slowly changing, and different services are being created to support mothers and help them to adapt to new circumstances, from meditation apps to online scheduling solutions.
Allow the way you juggle work and motherhood to evolve as the world evolves. Using these simple techniques will help you to get a piece of mind and enjoy the most important and the most incredible job ever – being a mum of course! — lifehack.org
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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