The biggest issue people have when trying to schedule their upcoming week is they are attempting to bring this “Work-Life Balance” theory into the realm of reality.
The thing is, this “Work-Life Balance” notion is a completely hypothetical theory – and not a fact-based practice. Believe it or not, motivational speakers can make a handsome living simply by inserting the words “work”, “life”, and “balance” into any seminar title. I receive phone calls regularly from people who want me to help them achieve this critical balance between their work and their lives.
It seems that balance is something that most people are looking for, but that few have found. Have you ever wondered why?
I’m going to let you in on a very guarded industry secret, and dispel one of the biggest myths out there. It’s all a sham! I’m not kidding. There is no such thing as achieving “Work-Life Balance”. It really doesn’t exist. If you attempt to separate your “work”, being Monday through Friday, and your “life”, being only a two day weekend, you will, unfortunately, never find balance. Regardless of what some may have you believe, five days will never equal two.
You must view your time at work as a functioning part of your life. After all, by the time you meet your maker, you will have worked at least seventy percent of your lifetime! If your “work” and your “life” are separate entities, then we have a big problem – because seventy percent of it just went out the window.
Your quest in life shouldn’t be about finding a balance between the time you spend working and spend living. The two things are one in the same. For most of us, we can’t live without working, so to try and separate the two is impossible. To give your life balance as a whole, you don’t segment it – you make it seamless. Instead, you should be focused on finding happiness regardless of where you may be, and whom you may be with.
And in the end, life should be viewed the same as the old campground rule: Leave this space better than when you first arrived. We have two ways to leave our mark on the lives of others, positive or negative. It’s your choice which path to take. Look at the people in your life and enrich their lives. It can be helping them by telling them they look good, or they make you feel good, or paying someone’s bus fare when they are short. No matter how you do it, every day, pick someone that you know (or even someone you don’t) and just help them!
The wealth of happiness, fulfillment, and opportunity for personal and professional joy that spurs the energy, strength, and creative process of an individual in every role in life is infinite. It comes from remembering and fostering our Emotional Intelligence, the heart of us that we is sometimes lost as we grow up and develop into people of the workplace. We need empathy and it is my dream to teach inspire, and remind people that they can achieve productivity, balance, and health through empathy.