Achieving Work Life Balance
Posted on August 2, 2009 - Filed Under The Good Life |
Do you ever feel your work life balance is off? The key to living well is finding this balance. You may find one part of your life is going great, but another area is awful. You may even feel like you have it all, but feel confused by the fact you still do not feel 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.
It is important to keep your work life in its place. Your work is not really your life…unless you’re a nun. Many people fall into the trap of working hard and putting off living the good life until they have achieved enough or acquired enough money. The trap is: there is never enough.
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.
You must also get connected with yourself. Regardless of how much time you spend alone, you probably find yourself totally cut off from your inner world. Your brain will usually override your inner compass with a whole host of things you ’should’ be doing. Even if you do something else, the guilt you feel keeps you from really enjoying it.
You won’t realize how trustworthy your internal director is unless you are able to let go of your ’shoulds’. Until you stop ’shoulding’ all over yourself, you will find yourself out of work life balance.
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