OK, this is going to be an interesting one – because I don’t have a straight-forward position and / or simple answer to give you on this!
We are told we can have it all.
We are told we can’t possibly have it all!
We are told we should want it all (‘don’t hold yourself back, you can be an amazing parent and brilliant employee / worker!’ etc.)
We are told we definitely shouldn’t want it all (‘don’t put yourself under unrealistic pressure, something has to give!’ etc)
We are given a picture of what society might expect us to aspire to by certain times in our lives (career, marriage, home ownership, children) but not how this might actually look in real life (and most importantly, in your life).
You get the idea. Just where does this leave us with the ‘having it all’ dilemma?!
What do we mean by ‘having it all’ anyway?
To me this is something along the lines of having more than one identity – be that loving parent, attentive carer, valuable employee, or striving small business owner etc. But then perhaps the correct term is ‘being it all’ rather than ‘having it all’ in this context. Suddenly that sounds less appealing than ‘having it all’, (which sounds somehow aspirational doesn’t it?).
This begs the question – “what is the ‘all’”, closely followed by “do we want it?”. Ah, now it gets interesting!
The most common context I think we can agree we see the term ‘having it all’ come up is in relation to trying to blend parenthood with work. Parenting is a huge new identity to adopt, to claim space in your already busy life of employee / worker / family member. This ramps up a notch especially for women considering their return to the workplace after becoming a mum – just how is this going to work? Can I really do ‘it all’? Do we have to push ourselves to the brink to do the job we love and do the school run and not do a less than awesome job of parent and worker?
And now we are talking about ‘doing’ rather than ‘having’ – again, this sounds less appealing. Doing it all brings up the idea of capacity, limits, responsibility, and priorities. But perhaps this is actually helpful and a better reflection of what life looks like in reality. ‘Having’ is passive, it also sounds like something to acquire, end of story. We know that’s not how it works – in the context of ‘having it all’ in our lives anyway!
Being, doing and having it all: now, later, continuously?
I think it is helpful to sometimes change up the word ‘having’ for one of the other options of being or doing. Now let’s go back to those two questions – what is the ‘all’, and do we want it? Then we can work out how we manage it – i.e. is it an impossible dream or not?!
The truth is, your ‘all’ will look very different to someone else’s, if we are honest about it and are true to our wants and needs. You might love the idea of home-educating, and need your work to be flexible around that. You might baulk at the idea of home-educating and want to be back in a workplace to have a distinction between your home and work life. Or various other combinations or possibilities, none of which are ‘wrong’ or not ‘it all’. You decide what it ‘all’ is.
The other thing to note is that your view over it ‘all’ can change over time. I see having / doing / and being it all as something to navigate over time, not to see as something to tick off once and it's done. I also believe that compromise is a healthy way to look at managing this ‘all’ in your life – it can be damn hard to be the best employee / dedicated worker you may want to be when you have another huge responsibility to accommodate like a young child, and one who will be unwell from time to time, or struggling to adapt to a new environment like nursery or school.
Our situation and circumstances (and therefore the context into which the 'all' fits) will adjust over time, allowing us to reassess, make choices, and adjust our course. If having it all means that everything is in perfect balance all the time, then I’m sorry, I think that is a fallacy!
I’m wary of using the term 'sacrifice' when it comes to having it all, but I think it also pays to be realistic. For example, can you still work late in the office like you used to pre-parenting? Probably not. But can you still be a valuable employee? Yes, absolutely. It might just look and feel different to how it used to.
Being, doing and having it all (once we know what that is for our current life chapter) is also ideally supported by others, rather than battled alone. Supportive family members and an employer (if relevant to the all in question), is really important. There are so many factors beyond your direct control in to this mix of ‘all’ – by its very nature! It’s not just how personally determined, resilient and resourceful you are (which you are) that results in you ‘having it all’. Inescapably your time is finite, and so to a degree is your energy. It’s about navigating, accepting, assessing and choices (and repeat!).
Do your best, be all the facets you want, imperfectly and sometimes imbalanced, and you will have a fulfilling (and sometimes challenging) life. That’s my version of ‘having it all’ anyway – not so impossible, but also realistic and probably a bit messy. Perhaps having it all is more about the mindset of how you will approach your life rather than the precise contents of what you ‘have’ at any particular life stage.
Supporting people to have their version of it all
Supporting people, women especially, to determine just what they want in their lives, or more or less of, is a core part of what I do as a life coach – and working out how to get there. We start with a reality check of exactly what 'is' right now, warts and all. We accept the context, the reality, the struggles and the necessities and then we look forward to the 'what next', your thinking around it and the actions you will take. If you’d like to know more, please book in a complimentary clarity call with me here, no strings attached!
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