Work/Life Balance – NO SUCH THING!
We know we should be treating this as a top priority for both us and our people and we really do mean to but if we’re honest, are we really looking at it as a priority as we struggle to maintain and grow our small agency?
Like every other subject of note there are a million pieces of advice you can access in this area, and you’ve probably read your fair share of articles on how to make yourself…
- Less stressed
- More fulfilled
- Less angry
- More Zen
Some really important things you need to know will have been covered by these worthy pieces of content and all point towards the way to be happy….
Well, let me chuck my hat into the ring here.
There is no such thing as work/life balance, there is only BALANCE!
Only you can find your own balance, there are no magical top ten tips that will balance you. There really aren’t.
The Problem starts with the expression of work/life itself – as if your life is something you get to live after you work – well I’ve never met an agency boss who finishes work so how does that work in practice?
The Problem with Generalized Advice
I’m a person who hates to be categorised. To be told I am something and that I must do anything I don’t want to do is anathema. That’s why It hink I struggle to call myself a coach –
ME – “I’m not just a coach! I do other things for chrissakes!!”
MY WEB GUY – “Yes but think about the SEO issues if you call yourself a coach/mentor/ sounding board/therapist/ bass guitarist”.
So, when anyone who doesn’t know me advises me on the best way to make my work/ life better, I resent it. I can see the sense in a lot of it I mean I kind of already know that I should be eating better food, moving more, not binging Netflix every night until 3 am, making more time for loved ones, stopping smoking etc. etc. etc. ( BTW I do none of these before you question my authority in this area – but I used to!)
I can try to adopt these things, hell I may even buy into the general advice but how does the advice to ‘do more exercise’ ( great advice in itself of course) get me into the gym?
It’s too generalised and doesn’t consider the nuances of anyone’s life and needs at any one time…. and balance is all about YOU as an individual.
Find a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life
I always come back to that maddeningly brilliant piece of advice that comes from no one knows where…Confucius? Mark Twain? A Princeton University professor in the eighties?
Whoever it was I say….”Easy for you to say – whoever you are!”
What I take from this is that you shouldn’t have to balance your work and your non-work life because you are able to naturally flow from one to the other in the understanding that both are vital to your overall well-being.
The Key to Achieving Balance
My view on balance is my life view really and it comes after a life to date full of the triumphs and disasters that life naturally brings to us all.
I think the greatest way to start to achieve balance is to be open to what happens around you, to step back from the fight and view it as an onlooker might and if you can get bought into mindfulness, then this will help in that endeavour. I can recommend some great places to start.
But really if you want to change the way you feel about your life in total you have to be ready…if you’re not ready it just won’t work….take smoking as an example….I gave up a few years ago now and I should have stopped earlier but I simply wasn’t ready…I tried a number of times but I didn’t really want to, I thought I should and so I couldn’t achieve it at those points. I got there in the end with lots of different factors thrown in to help.
That is the key and I attribute this to the late great Allen Carr the smoking cessation guru – You succeed in spite of willpower not because of it. I think this applies to the subject of balance in general.
So really what I’m saying is try to free your mind to think about what you want and when you want it and be gentle with yourself.
Don’t drive yourself mad but try to isolate those things that are important to you and those you care about and have responsibility for both at work and outside of work and in TOTAL.
You are more than capable of knowing that you should eat more greens, play with your kids, don’t sweat the small stuff etc etc…so you just need to be ready.
Now feel free to go back to the advice of others and view it in a way that is designed to unlock your balance and ultimately your freedom and happiness.
Sage Advice from Dad
I’m going to end this piece by quoting my dad the late great Allan
Russell who offered me this in the way of sage advice as I faced one of
my early challenges….
“The nasty stuff will never stop raining down on you. It’s how big your
umbrella is that matters”.
Let’s talk about Umbrellas!
This piece went a different way to how I planned it when I sat down to
write it and this is the way our lives so often are…if you’d like to talk more
about any of the stuff I’ve meandered on about here or need some
pointers on anything balanced why not book a free intro meeting…no sales…no
obligation….just a chat which we both might find calming and I can give you some other classic Allan Russell quotes.