“Balance is not something you find, it’s something you Create.”
Jana Kingsford
In the last two years the pandemic has turned our work-life balance upside down. Suddenly our work life and home life were merged into work-from-home setups. This may have sounded like a dream come true at first (and for some it was), but in most cases, it ended up being a struggle in dividing those two worlds.
Many of us are now working from home. As a result, it can be difficult to detach our work life from our personal life. This creates family tensions and depreciation of both the quality of work and family time.
So how do we fix the balance?
The truth is that work and life are two peas in a pod, so they don’t need to be balanced. They rise and fall together—increase your life’s overall well-being and you’ll also be more effective at work. The we can “have it all” and we can “do it all” mindset is a recipe for disaster. The key word here is to “prioritise”, it is all about give and take.
Work and Life: our Yin and Yang – these are opposite/contrary forces that may be complementary, interconnected, and interdependent in the natural world, and how they may give rise to each other as they interrelate to one another.
Perhaps we should rather see work and life as an integration; a symbiosis, where the interaction between life and work should be to the advantage of both. We don’t have to choose between success in our work and success in other parts of our lives, but rather accept it as the flows of life.
There is no manual or “5 easy steps” to accomplishing work life balance. Set those boundaries. If you are working somewhere that doesn’t respect those boundaries, find something new. I believe it starts with you – you are the change you’ve been waiting for.
It is all about making decisions and sticking to them.
Dr Suess once said:
- Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.
- Why fit in when you were born to stand out?
- You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself any direction you choose.
- Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
- Today I shall behave, as if this is the day I will be remembered.
Now these are rules to live by!
