Passion seems to be the theme of the week. It’s a question I’ve asked myself and have been examining recently. When my friend sent me a Facebook message asking me how I manage being a mom and an entrepreneur I thought it was time to write a blogpost. It’s ironic she asked me how I do it all because I often have too much going on and have been thinking about what I need to drop. In reality, I don’t have motivation and passion for everything, I just power through that to get to the stuff I love to do. I certainly make an effort to publicize only the positive aspects of my life because no one wants to hear when you lose your drive or question direction. I reserve that discussion for my closest confidants whose insights I trust to build my decisions around. More often than not, I’m debating these things as I lie awake at night trying to relax and fall asleep. To read about the bumps in the startup road along with the lessons learned, check out the Cache Crew blog where I wrote and video blogged about the business.

Part of being discontent is losing sight of what your passion is in life. I think it changes over time and it’s important to assess where you are regularly to make sure your life is headed in the direction you were charting or even if that is still the direction you want to go. Personally, family and relationship is important to me and my actions never reflected that value because both have taken a backseat to traveling for my career. I realized that this aspect of my life really needs to be at the forefront of my decisions or my personal life will continue to suffer and be non-existent. Living and breathing work isn’t sustainable as you get older. I would rather build something with someone and have my family at my side than to build an empire alone. My struggle is finding out how to do this or make the changes in perspective so that it does become the priority.

Here are some questions to think about:

• Do you know what excites you?
• What would you do even if no one was paying you to do it? Is there something that people are always asking you to do that you love and can monetize?
• What do you constantly research, read, or watch?
• What do you like about what you are doing? Can you do more of that?
• Is there a growth path that you can take within your company that excites you?
• What do you dislike and can you delegate some of this to someone else?

If you determine you want to take the leap for something new, are you prepared?

• How much do you need to live on?
• Does your savings support making that leap now?
• If it doesn’t, how long do you need to make sure you have a financial cushion of a couple years to build the dream?
• Is there something small you can spin up to test if that’s what you want to do?

What are your answers to these questions? How to you balance family and ambition? Is there a way to have it all without losing your mind? Put in the comments I would really love to have discussion on this.