The Mystery of Work Life Balance
Kate is a hard-working manager working at a startup
company. She toils at work but gets that nagging feeling that she’s missing out
on living her life. And then perversely, when she’s not working, she tries to
switch off ‘work-mode’ to enjoy her passions, friends, family… but eventually
she finds that she just doesn’t have the energy.
Many people are like Kate, misunderstanding the true meaning of
work life balance. They try to keep ‘work’ and ‘life’ separate, but this brings
undesirable results.
Where
the Curse of Work Life Balance Begins
Those
who are trying to maintain a work life balance only by dividing their time – by
driving a sharp wedge between work-mode and life-mode – are inadvertently
dividing themselves.
When people juxtapose ‘work’ and
‘life’, they unconsciously think in terms of ‘work’ versus ‘life’ –
and are constantly forced to choose one at the expense of the other. In
this framework, a gain on one side is always a loss on the other side.
And so people start to see ‘work’ as the times when they are not
living their lives. ‘Work’ is seen
as a necessary evil that they must suffer through until it’s time to switch
off. But if you encode everything related to work as negativity and
suffering, while your ‘life’ strains under the weight of unrealistic
expectations of enjoyment, there really is no balance there at all.
Re-balancing work and life is possible by seeking out a new and
enjoyable job to a certain extent. But
no job is perfect. There are always going to be tedious aspects to any job. And
before long you’ll wind up on the same ‘life’ versus ‘work’ see-saw because you
haven’t changed the old framework.
The
Only Way to Break the Curse
The
true goal is to redistribute the positive (+) and negative (-) evenly across
life.
Most people try to make it all positive off work to compensate
the negativity at work like this:
If it’s all negative at work and all positive when the work mode
is switched off, the work performance will suffer – creating even more
negativity. People will lean heavily on their off-mode life for happiness, but
they can’t truly achieve happiness because they are not facing the problems at
work.
Conversely, there are those who do strive to put positivity into
their work life. Their work life balance looks like this:
Unfortunately, if these people are still stuck in the old on/off
framework, all the negativity will shift to their off-mode self, and their
relationships and health will suffer.
Very few lucky people experience positivity on both sides of the
equation, their work life balance looks like this:
If you are one of those who experience positivity in both sides,
lucky you! You are one of the less than 5% of the population.
For the rest of the 95% of the population, here is a cure to
having a realistic work life balance.
The solution is to recover the sense of a unified self.
When you do, you’ll dismantle the competing work/life binary,
and you’ll stop unconsciously labelling work as ‘suffering’ and life as
‘enjoyment’. Positive energy will begin to flow smoothly and effortlessly
through your life.
To recover the sense of a unified self, ask yourself: Why do I
really do what I do, in life and in work?
Your answer to this question make up your blueprint of a unified
self, charged with meaning that relates directly to who you are and what you
care about.
Use your blueprint now to examine your life at work, your
leisure time and your relationships and see if they align with each
other. The new framework is
no longer ‘balance’, but ‘alignment’.
This will reveal to you a number of things:
- There
are aspects of your work that are not suffering: Look again
and you’ll find many positive aspects that reflect what you care about.
For example, you may value creativity, and realize that you get the
opportunity to show it at work every day.
- Things
you care about at ‘work’ are the same as what you care about in your
‘life’:For
example, you may value friendship in your life, and you also practice this
value with your colleagues. Your values exist in all your interactions,
and serve your unified self.
- What
you do at work and what you do in your life support and enhance each
other:For
example, the same generosity you show your friends can forge good client
relationships when practiced at work. Your resourcefulness at work can be
used to solve obstacles in your personal life.
Crucially, you never need to use the on/off work model again
because you’re constantly acting in accordance with what you truly value. As a
result, you’ll find that your positive energy will not be subject to draining
or overflowing, off/on, but will instead flow consistently through all your
states of being in a perpetual positive feedback loop.
This is how a realistic work life balance is like:
A Life
Without the Distressing Curse
Your
renewed conceptualisation from ‘balance’ to ‘alignment’ is an inner
transformation that can empower you whatever your current circumstances are.
For example, it may reveal that you truly are suffering in your
current job. But now you can unroll your blueprint to identify the cause of the
negativity (i.e. what isn’t aligning with what you value?) and either remind
yourself why you’re really doing what you’re doing, or make a tweak… or indeed
change your job.
Even if the latter, you can still be sustained by positivity
until you find that new job. You may hate your everyday tasks, but one of
things you value is to be a good provider for your family – so you’re spurred
on, knowing that you’re doing that every day.
Or if you’re a workaholic, your blueprint may reveal that what
you previously undervalued as ‘off-mode’ (relaxing, having fun, pursuing a
passion, spending time with family and friends) actually contain a wealth of
values that support – and even enhance – a well-rounded working life.
A value-rich and optimally tuned work life alignment helps
maintain a flow of positive energy and happiness in all aspects of being. So go
ahead and make the blueprint of you.
Leon Ho
https://www.lifehack.org/611110/why-work-life-balance-is-a-curse-and-what-a-realistic-balance-really-is?ck_subscriber_id=168781672
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