How To Create A Healthy Work-Life Relationship
Finding Balance In Your Work-Life Integration
Work-life balance – I’m sure you’ve heard the term before. While there are many different opinions and thoughts around this idea, I fully believe a balanced or healthy relationship between your work and life outside of it is absolutely possible. And within reach.
In today’s hustle culture, it can be much easier to overextend yourself and live life out of balance simply because that’s the norm. Others are doing it so why shouldn’t you? This is the main reason why my husband and I both work for ourselves – creating boundaries with work and life beyond work becomes easier as your own boss, but not without other challenges.
Instead of wearing that badge of exhaustion and burnout on your chest, I hope to inspire you to create boundaries and find the balance in your life that you desire. I hope to help you consider what you love doing and how to integrate that into your ‘work’ life.
So how do you create a healthier relationship with work, life outside of the office, and everything in between?
Understand Your Priorities
First, you must consider and understand your priorities. To create a healthy work/life integration, you need to reflect on what you want out of work, outside of work, and everything in between. This also means considering who you work for – whether it’s an employer or yourself.
My belief is that you can do it all – whatever that means to you. Your desired all and someone else's will differ, but you can achieve the life you want to live when you consider your options and evaluate what things must give. Be sure to consider all aspects of your life when evaluating how you want your work life to be structured. How much sleep will you get? Can you prioritize your health with your schedule? Do you have the time flexibility you want to spend time with friends and family?
Know your priorities and create a life that supports those.
Determine What Success Looks Like To You
This is another highly-personal question to consider but ask yourself what success looks like to you. Where do you want and need to spend your time and energy to achieve that success?
Based on your lifestyle desires, this may influence your career and work life. If you prioritize income, this means that your time may have to be sacrificed for work in other personal areas. But if you prioritize your family, a job or career that offers time flexibility may be a nonnegotiable for you.
Understand that your job title, income level, time freedom, and flexibility in choice are all a process and journey. It takes time to learn which of these items are your life priorities and which determine your success level.
Working For Yourself Vs. Working For Others
For me personally, the balance of lifestyle desires and income desires changed my perspective on work. While there are pros and cons to both working for yourself and working for others, I value the flexibility working for myself offers my family and me.
When working for yourself:
You can work smarter, not harder.
You can understand what really impacts the bottom line and eliminate busy work.
You manage how many meetings you do or don’t have daily.
You can create supportive systems that improve efficiency, reduce errors, and increase the bottom line.
You can determine your schedule with breaks, walking meetings, lunch break, 20 minutes of sun, quick workouts, and more.
If you work for someone else:
Boundaries with work hours can become blurred.
You are always accessible.
Taking vacation or PTO can become challenging.
As you read through these various challenges, I love considering what talents my clients have that could be turned into work they love doing. While this doesn’t have to be an entire career change, this mindset may open the door for you to make an income with talents you already possess in an easy to achieve way.
Ask yourself these questions:
If you didn’t need money to survive, what would you do throughout your days that you love, enjoy, or get lost in? This could be playing with your dog, sewing, working out, tinkering with electronics, or traveling and taking pictures of your surroundings. How can you do more of those things?
How can you generate an income from those activities?
How can you become a specialist at something you love and charge a fair price for your talents and expertise?
Times are changing – and it’s not the norm for people to pick a career, stay with it for 45 years, get a pension like it was with past generations. In addition to changing times, COVID has created an opportunity for new businesses to emerge, certain businesses to disintegrate, side jobs to flourish, and work from home hours to be a reality for many.
Create A Life You Love (It Is Possible!)
How can you create a life you love that doesn’t require you to wait until your few weeks of vacation to relax, unwind and feel it’s appropriate to rest, recover and do the things you love?
Consider others in your life who have a balanced life, and know that it’s achievable for you and your priorities. Remember that regardless of your age, career, family, and lifestyle desires, you’re never stuck and always have options in front of you.