Back when I was in corporate America, the term and concept of work/life balance didn’t really exist. It’s why people like me put in 80+ hours a week and then crashed and burned. I had to learn the hard way how to get my life back, and it is that journey that inspired me to help others do the same.
When we don’t have work/life balance, we are stressed, plain and simple. We either are bringing home our work frustrations, or we are showing up to work exhausted and sick…or both. No one wins, and we can ultimately pay the price with illness and disease! We are paid to perform, and our employer should get what they hired us to do. Our family deserves our best, not our leftovers. How exactly do we juggle all of this? We must understand that work/life balance is up to us. No one else can bring balance to your life except you.
Too many people sit in the backseat of their own life and let circumstances drive them around. They then are extremely upset when they don’t end up where they wanted. What did we expect? We must be in the driver’s seat of our own life, and we need to take responsibility for managing our emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual health.
Think of those four areas as tires of your car. If one blows out, your ride is going to be bumpy. You lose two, and you’ll probably crash. Every day, we should be inflating those tires by re-focusing our minds, re-grouping our emotions, re-energizing our bodies and re-connecting with our Maker. How you do these things is up to you, and you must find out what works.
To be honest, I didn’t know what worked for the longest time because I never gave any thought to it. My parents never sat me down and gave me the “stress talk.” You know, the one where they say, “Sweetheart, when the stuff hits the fan, here’s what you do.” No, I was flying blind! I was ill equipped with no tools on my belt to help me. Maybe you can relate.
The good news is we can take charge of our life, one good decision at a time. We can choose to put our own well-being as a priority so that we may succeed at work and engage with our family. Through my journey, I came up with 101 ways to lessen your stress by creating more balance in your life. These are in my first book, A Healthier, Happier You, and you get suggestions by each of the four categories. It’s an inspirational, light read, but it is chocked full of ways to improve the quality of your life. I encourage you to get a copy!
I can also offer life coaching to help you create life goals and move toward better work/life balance. Give me a call! Next week, I will offer some difficult questions for you to ask yourself. If you do the work, you just might get to the root of your imbalance. That’s the first step, isn’t it…acknowledging what is wrong? “I have met the enemy, and it is me.” Here’s to a healthier, happier you!
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