Q: Guruji, I need your guidance. I am a mother and a wife, and I run a small school. There are times when things go wrong entirely, and I can’t concentrate or be myself at my workplace. How do I manage that?

Sri Sri Ravi Shankar: It is okay if it is only sometimes. But if it is often then we need to attend to it. First of all, know that as an individual, you have the capacity to multi-task.
If you think, ‘Oh, I am a mother, I cannot be good at the office. It is not possible for me’; or, ‘I am an office goer, so I am not doing justice to my children’, these sorts of conflicts weighs very heavy on your emotions and your mind. First you should know that you have the capacity to be a mother, a good wife, and a good officer or a good business women. Resolve the conflict right at the root, instilling confidence in your capabilities.
The second is that, it is the quality of time and not the quantity of time that is important in whatever you are doing. You don’t have to spend 10 hours with your kids. Even one hour that you spend with your kids, if you are there with them a 100%, that makes them more satisfied. The root cause of all this is stress. If you don’t relax and relieve stress, at least for a few minutes every day, whatever concepts you may have in your head, will be blown away by your emotions because our emotions are much stronger than our thoughts.
Many times we remain determined, but the surge of emotions, anger, frustration, desires, when they come, it just blows everything away. The intellect, or all our concepts, are like the gatekeeper of the house. Emotions are like the owner of the house. When the owner of the house comes in, the gatekeeper has no-way to stop him. You just have to let him in. We have to set right the emotions inside. That is where meditation, Sudarshan Kriya, pranayama, come very handy.