Do you need a work-life mentor?

With all the roles we tend to juggle -- mom, employee, fitness guru, and friend -- there is often little time left to be most importantly a healthy, relaxed individual. Managing multiple roles can leave you feeling pushed to the brink of sanity. Although there are innumerable resources available in the form of books and websites, a personal resource can be a very effective solution. Any counseling relationship between two people with differing levels of experience is a mentoring relationship. This helping partnership, even as informal as two friends, can be very effective in transferring skills and coping mechanisms to help one better balance multiple roles.

If you are looking for an informal mentoring relationship, you probably already know your potential mentor. Consider your own challenges in life and begin to look there for your mentor. Remember, each person’s roles and challenges in life are different. You are not looking for someone just like you to solve your problems, but a successful role model, who has faced similar situations as you having achieved optimal results. Look for someone with similar roles, challenges, or priorities as your own.

• Roles: a mentor juggling similar roles as your own can speak to how they have found balance in their own life. Look for other parents at work or other volunteers at soccer practice who may share other roles in common with you.
• Challenges: a mentor who has faced and surmounted similar challenges as your own will be able to guide you toward successful coping mechanism and problem solving techniques. Determine where you struggle the most and look for others to build a relationship. There are likely other moms at your child’s daycare who have struggled with the guilt of leaving a child. There may be others at work that have negotiated a flexible schedule to fit their needs.
• Priorities: a mentor with similar priorities will be able to help you find solutions that honor your values and priorities. There may be someone you run into often at the gym that has struggled to find time each day to exercise. Or look for someone from church to help you honor your spirituality throughout life’s other roles.
  

Once you have identified a like minded individual strike up a conversation, ask questions about their experiences juggling multiple roles and finding appropriate solutions. Ask them directly if they are willing to support you in your own efforts to manage life’s challenges. The helping relationship will benefit each of you as your mentor revisits and reevaluates past successes and current coping skills.