How to deal with 'having it all' guilt

I like the discourse on ‘having it all’. Fortunately, or unfortunately, the views on whether women can have it all are as many as there are people on the planet. But I particularly like something I read a few days ago. It talks about having it all encompassing a career or business, family, all the other things and most importantly, sanity.

But all these metrics sometimes come with the last dimension - the guilt. If you, say, have to go back to work after your maternity leave, the guilt is related to leaving a young child at home.

The same applies if you travel for work or out in late nights. On the reverse, if you choose to take time out from your career and take care of your children, you wonder if you will regret it down the line.

Identifying guilt

But guilt is destructive on many levels. It stops you from fully enjoying the moment you’re in because you always have the gnawing, nagging feeling that you’re slacking off somewhere else. But how do you stop the emotional roller coaster that it brings?

The first thing is to get to the root of it. Identify what is prompting the guilt - is it because you have some unfinished business to deal with or is it just something you indulge in because it makes you feel normal? Sometimes we allow certain emotions to exist just because we subconsciously feel like not having them means we’re uncaring about doing enough.

Deal with it

Say you feel guilty for leaving your kids home while you travel for work.

Dealing with this means getting the best child care that you can afford and creating a support system to ensure even while you’re away, there’s a close friend or family member watching out for them and who can be accessed at a moment’s notice.

The same applies to work, if you need to be away, delegate to someone who you have properly guided and can trust to exercise the best judgment possible. Of course this means you have to invest in training, succession planning and effective delegation.

Let it go

Guilt is not a useful emotion so work on consciously letting it go after you have dealt with the practical steps you need to deal with. This takes practice but you will find that you get better at identifying those nagging feelings and releasing them so that they are not holding you back.