Busy balancing career and family life, three women take a break for a makeover to make their fashion wishes come true. Scheduling is also important –with five children who each have their own activities, it helps to know everyone’s schedules so that we know when we can all be together as a family. Quality is better than quality –spending three meaningful hours with my kids doing a shared activity is better than spending the entire day at home but hardly interacting. If I don’t work out in the morning, I’m sluggish for the rest of the day.

I consider working out as my Pinky Hour –an hour or two I devote to myself daily. Being a successful executive and a devoted parent are not polar opportunities –they are two sides of the same coin and complement one another. Some of my most effective marketing campaigns have been formulated because of the insights I have gained as a mother.

Sometimes, we get so engrossed in our everyday lives that we forget what’s really important. Here’s how to reclaim the joys of today. Live the moment. You’ve heard that advice before, but what does it really mean? Devour a bag of cheese curls whenever you are craving? Max out your credit cards on whim? Do stop thinking for tomorrow. Living in the now means appreciating the present, warts and all, instead of clinging to an idealized version of the future. When you are waiting for the perfect house, mate or job, you can miss something wonderful right from your front of you.

For instance, if you’re set of buying a three-story, you might pass on a house that’s perfect in every other way. Likewise, your overflowing to-do list can keep you from savouring today’s pleasures. But the good stuff never happens because there’s always more laundry or something else to do.

Would it be awful for me to say, I want my own room? One of the hardest things to navigate in marriage is the craving out of space –personal space. Perhaps it’s because we presume that love is enlargement of many of our spaces –the spaces between bodies broken by children; spaces between hearts broken by vows of eternity; spaces between lives broken by intimacy; and even the space between yours and mine, broken by the shared bank account.

The romance of lulls us into thinking that we are one and that all sacred spaces are to be shared from this day forward. It was certainly something I bought into the first five years I was married. How I wanted to absorb myself into him and he into me. I’d like to think he felt the same way, in the beginning as well. But it’s been more than 10 years now and the gloves have come off.