Your career used to be the only thing you had. It was just you. You had your ambitions. You had as many hours as there were in the day. And you were willing to work–incredibly hard, do anything–to get ahead.

But now you have a family and now there is tension. Time you spend on airplanes or at meetings is time you’re not spending with your kids, time you know you’ll never get back. So naturally, your career suffers a bit. Certainly, the studies show that women’s careers suffer the most this way–missed opportunities, months or years away from the career ladder as they give birth or take maternity leave. And this is unfair and painful.

Yet we also have to understand that we have an advantage now that we didn’t have before. It’s not just that we have these wonderful humans who bring us joy, it’s not just that we have a spouse that supports us (and talks sense into us) or even that we have perspective now, and something that really motivates us to succeed (since we have those new mouths to feed). It’s actually something simpler: Now we have a sense of urgency–one that we simply could not have conceived of when we had all the time in the world.

Get out of here with that request for a 2 hour meeting–we get it done in thirty minutes. A call on a Saturday at 9 p.m.? Not appropriate, not gonna answer. No, we don’t need to fly all the way out there just to meet face to face, no that conference is just an excuse to get drunk in Las Vegas.

You know what’s important now. You’re an adult now. You can’t get away with poor boundaries, nor are you able to be so easily bullied. You’re a pro at multitasking, you’ve got a stomach of iron and you can operate on no sleep…and a bad case of the flu. You’re stronger than ever with more perspective than ever. And you’re much better at managing (and protecting) your time…because you know what’s at stake.