My kids never tire of me telling them they have a Billionaire Mom: each of them is so precious to me and worth infinitely more than a billion dollars. Which is why I chose to work from home and schedule my day around my family. For me, no longer having a boss breathing down my neck or second-guessing my decision to stay home with a sick child is what allows me to be the mom I want to be for my kids. And yet life is a lot more hectic than ever before.

The problem is this:

I’ll just take a few minutes to throw in a load of laundry.

How long will it take if I just peel and cut the veggies for a soup?

Hey! I forgot to eat lunch.

The grocery order. The doctor’s appointment. The “urgent” phone call.

There’s no better way to derail my thoughts and workflow than constantly interrupting myself during the time I’m trying to work. But let’s face it, it’s no small feat to carve out a life that balances all of a family’s many needs and responsibilities. When you have lots of flexibility in your schedule, it’s easy for that balance to be thrown off.

Moms are excellent at multitasking and can balance many different roles and priorities. The way I see it, the business of being a mom, provides excellent training for running a business, actually. In fact, I view my role of an entrepreneur as one of the facets of being a Mom—it’s one more role I play amongst the many.

I don’t have to tell you how it’s all too easy to get distracted by the million little details of keeping a home running—from the moment I open my eyes in the morning until I finally call it a night. For me, creating the right balance between business life and family life is one of the biggest struggles of working from home.

In today’s article I want to share some tips on how you can create more balance. Oftentimes when we’re feeling like a tightrope walker ideas won’t flow. So if right now you’re feeling like you need to take a break from tightrope walking, keep reading to learn how I create some more balance and you can too.

If trying to maintain balance in your life makes you sometimes feel like Terrifico the Terrified Tightrope Walker in the Circus of Life, working without a net while the crowd below holds their breath in anticipation of a slip, you’re not alone. These days almost all of us have so many demands placed on our time and energy, life can feel like a three-ring circus. And if you’re not up there on the tightrope, you’re down on the ground in the midst of tigers and lions, in charge of keeping a couple of dozen plates spinning in air.

Maintaining balance isn’t easy. It requires holding steady with the many responsibilities that are a normal and everyday part of life: home, family, friends and work, while at the same time recognizing and fulfilling personal needs and wants. Finding and maintaining balance when life can be so complicated and demanding is both an inside and outside job.

Inside—Only you can take care of yourself.

Consider how well you take care of yourself, both physically and emotionally. Do you eat healthfully and exercise regularly? Do you get check-ups and take preventative precautions? Do you set aside personal, quiet time for yourself? Do you make time to enjoy nature and art, filling yourself up again and again?

Outside—Reaching outside yourself gives meaning.

Think about how you reach outside yourself for sharing and giving meaning to your life. Do you spend quality time with family and friends? Do you give back to life through your time, energy and experience? Contributing to the larger world provides connection and purpose.

Renewal—The key to a rich and fulfilling life.

Living a life in balance means taking the necessary time to renew yourself. Renewal is not about searching for a mindless, purposeless escape. Rather it’s about building or renewing relationships with family and friends, recommitting to core values and restoring energy through rest and recreation.

When we’re pressed up against the urgent demands of daily life, it is normal to feel ourselves losing our edge, our energy and even perspective in every area of life. It’s like reading a run-on sentence that goes on and on forever.

Personal leadership is cultivating the wisdom to recognize our need for renewal. We renew the balance of the multi-dimensional roles we play, the impact of goals in our lives, our commitment to living for a higher purpose. And it empowers us to connect the dots between our responsibilities and create synergy.

Integrated Renewal takes that to the next level.

Whereas renewal by itself could mean devoting 30 minutes a day for exercising and 30 minutes a day for spending time with your teenage son, integrated renewal is combining the two and increasing the value of each of these activities.

When you do that, you look at all your different roles, goals and responsibilities as a whole, and that creates unity. Rather than feeling fragmented – the different slices of our lives conflicting for our limited time and energy – you feel intact. You shift from “either/or” thinking and view it all through the lens of “and.”

This creates inner peace, balance, richness – a mindset of abundance. Time may be a limited resource, but you aren’t. The more balance you create among the many responsibilities of daily life, the more of you there is to put into the time you have.

Try it, you might like it

To discover how well balanced your life is, keep a log of how you spend your time. In a little notebook you can carry with you, write down the hours you spend under the broad headings: “for me” and “for others.” Also make notes of requests for your time (from family members, from coworkers or professional obligations). Include “requests” from your physical and emotional self: “I wish I could take time to take a walk today.” Or “Gee, I’d love to take a nap.”

After a week or two, you can expect to have some pretty clear messages on where there is balance in your life and where there is not. You might also come to see what’s important to you and how you can make changes in your life that will create a life of health, well-being and joy—a balanced life.

My favorite renewal activity is organizing my weekly schedule. First, I simply jot down everything I’d like to achieve during the week. Then, I look at what I might combine. I don’t do this so that I can cram more activities in my schedule, but so that I can integrate the different parts of my life. So for instance, if I’d like to tune my voice before a speaking engagement, I’ll combine it with family time, gather my children around and have a singing session. They love it!

What aspects of your different roles can you combine? The possibilities are endless.