“Work/Life balance” – what is that exactly? It’s a tough thing finding balance in any form, whether it be balancing work and home life, your job and fitness goals or family commitments. And we don’t help ourselves. Now, the latest buzz phrase “work/life balance” is adding even more pressure to our non-stop lives – and what does it actually mean?
For some it might be working 100 hours a week on their own business leaving what’s left for family, for others it could be working part time with some hours free for fitness and kids. It could simply be all their hours committed to family and home.
The common factor for everyone is trying to find your own balance, waking up to the fact that there can be a balance for everyone, we just need to realise it and make some changes to create the new balance.
I’m sure many will know the phrase “if you don’t change, nothing will change”?
I was recently taken by a story reported about a lady writing on Facebook about watching another lady cross a bridge on the writer’s commute. For years the same distinctive lady was seen first with prams and a puppy and more recently kissing her youngest child goodbye for school while her dog slowly walked beside her.
The crux of the message was that seeing this lady spending time walking with her children made the writer realise that perhaps she needed to take a look at her own situation. She wanted what she had seen over the years, she knew she had missed out on some key milestones. So she promised herself that she’d make some changes and now has managed to reduce her hours resulting in more quality time with her kids. A great result.
The message was so personal and infectious that it made me think how many of us are influenced by others we admire, lifestyles we see others living and wish we could have the same. And by the way, in my opinion there’s nothing wrong with that. Having a few people we admire whether they be successful business people, sportspeople, family or even strangers, it doesn’t hurt to have a goal of where you want your life to be.
It does, however, need to be on the more realistic side of your own situation (when I was young I wore a long white scarf round my head & pretended one day I’d be Agnetha from ABBA – it was never going to happen, least of all because of my singing voice!!).
But just like having business goals, having plans/goals/visions of how you’d like to live your life can really help in the direction you take your business, how you work your business and how you see your perfect work/life balance.
When you’re looking at your business goals, make sure they work towards your life goals too – are you finding time for your family commitments? Do you want more time for those things? Are you finding you’re constantly preoccupied with your business and can’t stop thinking about it? It probably means you’re doing too much and aren’t organising your day with focused activities, but ways to do that will be for another day.
So I guess the message is find those ‘heros’, the ones that drive your motivation, keep you inspired, that live a bit of the life you’d like to. Add them in to your goals, and work on those aspects to find your own work/life balance. Because there’s no one else that can know what your balance is or find the changes you need apart from you.
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