Tips for Achieving Work Life Balance
Monday, August 3rd, 2009Ever feel like something is off? Finding life balance is the key to living well. Many people feel that they are really triumphing in one area of life, while another is falling apart. Others feel like they have it all, but still do not feel truly happy.
You may feel like the balls are all up in the air, between your spouse, kids, job, health, etc. If you are not careful, some balls are going to drop. Our society focuses heavily on success in some areas, while neglecting the importance of others. It is common for your career to become your identity. Regardless of how financially successful this culture is, it doesn’t seem to be a very happy one in general. It is commonplace to see people turning to medication, therapy, and even rehabs to deal with life.
Work life balance tends to be the most obvious area in need of improvement. The work you do requires a huge chunk of your time and energy. It can feel like it really takes over your whole life. You cannot allow it to keep you from attending to other critical areas of your life. Work really only provides two things:
–Money to fund the life you really want (live well, be with your family, vacation, etc.),
–You may get a sense of purpose from your work, particularly if it is a passion for you.
You have to keep work in its proper place. It is not your whole life, unless you are married to the church. You can easily fall into the habit of focusing on work and putting life on hold until you have reached some career goal. The problem with this is there is always another goal to achieve.
You have to start living immediately, as you read this. You will need a great deal of self awareness in order to fully live in the present. This is not easy in our society. You will find yourself eating, drinking, shopping, and working to keep yourself distracted from what is going on inside of you. It can be scary to even think of taking a look in there.
But being aware of your inner needs is critical to developing life balance. You must begin to use your internal compass to tell you when to play barbies with your child, take a nap, or pay attention to your spouse. It is easy for you to stay disconnected–isolation and independence are pillars of our society. Connecting requires a certain amount of vulnerability and openness. But bonding with others is a fundamental key to happiness.
It is important that you also truly connect to yourself. Even if you are alone most of the time, you are probably pretty disconnected to your inner world. When your inner compass is telling you it needs rest, your brain overrides it because you “should” go to the gym. Even if you end up relaxing, you are filled with guilt and cannot really enjoy yourself.
You would be surprised at how trustworthy your instincts really are when all of the ’shoulds’ are stripped away. For true work life balance you must start listening to your inner voice and vow to stop ’shoulding’ all over yourself.