I know how hard it is juggling so many balls at once. It’s enough to make a sane gal crazy. Multi-tasking in business may work some of the time but mixing business with pleasure or family time is as volatile as a Molotov cocktail.

One of the most important things that I’ve learned as a businesswoman with a family is to never overlap the two lives. I know it’s a common tendency to want to multi-task and to do some harmless social networking or send an email or two, while you cook or do something else once you’re home, but that only breeds resentment in the family.

As a woman running a multi million dollar real estate business from two homes, I was always trying to fit my work related activities within the bounds of family time.

In fact I was so driven to always be productive that when I first began meditating, I felt that I couldn’t do it without a pen to capture ideas. If I went on a walk with the kids, or my husband, I would always bring along a pocket recorder to catch those floating bits of inspiration. I was always “on”, and functioning in business mode. I had no idea how to turn off Power Andrea and move into Mom or Honey mode. Let’s not even talk about Diva mode. Because I was so clueless of how to manage myself beyond my business, because most of the time I couldn’t relate to or control my husband or my family, I kept doing what I knew best, which was to work and pour myself into my Power Andrea role which only kept me busy and drove a bigger wedge between myself and my family.

At the point when my personal life fell into crisis, I consulted a business coach who was also my NLP instructor, Kevin Creedon. He explained to me that if I wanted to have a happy home life and run a productive business, then I had to set the two apart from each other and define each role more clearly.

He suggested the following:

Ink it, Don’t Think It – Schedule work, family and personal time. Personal and family come first. Each week block off time on your calendar when you will devote yourself to whatever you need to do to keep you in the zone; meditation, manicures, massage, lunch with friends, yoga, church, whatever gives you the inspiration to keep it all going.

Next focus entirely on your family and your husband. Think of this as bound by steel girders. No cell phones, blackberries, texts or anything business related is allowed to taint this special time. Schedule movie nights, walks, dinners, anything related to family and hubby. How about instead of fumbling with Facebook while cooking, you channel your inner diva and heat up the evening by wearing a feather boa and a tiara? Now that’s really stirring up some passion. As a happy hubby, your fella won’t even care if dinner is on the table. And if you need time to work later, there won’t be any arguments.

Next on the agenda, schedule the time that you must spend doing business, networking, marketing, speaking, or anything you do either working out of the house or at home working. If you do work from home, let others know that you’re not available until later. There’s nothing like a closed door to send a powerful message to both you and your family. This is sacred time for being productive. No interruptions, no irritations, just you working and really getting things done in your business.

Watch your energy – Determine an optimum time when your energy is high and you’re feeling great, to do creative work. Then later in the day when your energy dips, if you can, do something less mindful like handling the mail, checking your messages, responding to emails or filing.

The power of 5 – It’s amazing what you can do with 5 minutes. Take 5 and reorganize your desk, handle some filing, or jump onto Facebook or any other social networking site. If you do something to interrupt the pattern of whatever you were doing previously, this change in activity will give you a quick lift. If you want to take 5 minutes and set up your tweets in advance, visit http://www.socialoomph.com With a great paper-free software filing system like paper tiger, you’ll never have to worry about paper clutter again.

Get physical – Define Physical boundaries – clear all evidence of work related items from your family space. With a laundry basket, go through each room in your home and collect all mail, computers, books, papers, CDs, equipment and anything else related to your business and bring it to a separate area in your home; either your home office or a separate storage area. Out of sight, out of mind.

Change Hats – Dress for business. In order to put you in the mindset of being able to be flexible and change hats once you come home, change clothes, and get comfortable and wear something that you would never wear for business. This is the Personal Gisella. Whenever you wear these clothes, you’re ready to play and enjoy some family time.

Then if you do work at home, each time you cross the threshold and step into your home office, dress appropriately or at the very least put on a pair of business shoes and some earrings or a necklace to remind you that you’re working. This way you can mentally slip out of Personal Gisella and slide into Power Gisella.

Make sure that you wear something here that you would never wear at home. Annoying I know, but until your brain gets the distinction, and you begin to clarify in your mind, “Now I’m Personal Gisella vs. Now I’m Power Gisella, you will always have a tendency to want to wear both hats at the same time, building that family resentment.

In NLP this is called anchoring. You are setting anchors or boundaries in your brain making it clearer to understand to yourself and others when you’re ready to work vs. ready to play.

Plan Ahead – In the same way that you can schedule your tweets and plan them ahead, you can handle dinner that way also. My suggestion for dinner in a snap is to put it in the crock pot before you leave for the day, then by the time you’re home, you can take off your shoes, pull on your slippers and magically turn back into Personal Gisella’s “Mom or Honey” mode. Believe me. It’s not easy to make these changes, but it is possible.

I completely rely on and I teach all my clients how to use a fabulous stress relief process called Emotional Freedom Technique. It guts out the core of negative emotions that keep us in unproductive patterns that sabotage our success. When I first began to input Kevin’s suggestions, I had so much resistance to doing things differently. Then once I started working on untangling the emotions that kept me stuck in the Power Andrea mode that nobody at home could relate to, it became a no brainer to want to reconnect with my family and make the change.

I hope this helps. Have fun & let me know how it goes.

Many warm regards,

Andrea