The modern day is a stressful, complicated place. We are wearing so many proverbial “hats” and are constantly pulled in tons of different directions. We want to focus on our career, but we also want to be good parents. We want to take time to experience life, but we also want to make money and prepare ourselves for retirement. All of these things add up to a lot of stress and a lot of seemingly contradictory wants and needs.
One of the hardest things about modern life is learning how to achieve that elusive work-life balance. Being a workaholic may seem like a fairly innocuous trait, but it can sap you and ultimately leave you wishing you had taken more control over your life when you had the chance. What follows are just a few ways that you can work towards obtaining that elusive balance so many of us are looking for.
Leave Your Work At Work
This is really hard for people to do. For some, they literally take work home with them. They spend their evenings filling out paperwork or catching up on correspondence. For others, even when they leave the office, they are still thinking about whatever it is that they were working on. What this ultimately means is that you never stop working. As difficult as it is, you have to be able to leave the “work you” at the office and not bring it home with you.
Take Time for You
This is probably the most crucial element of obtaining a work-life balance. You have to be able to cultivate elements of your personality and interest beyond work. You have to find ways to de-stress and to leave work, well, at work. For those of us who have spent our entire adult lives so career focused, changing that aspect of ourselves is not easy, but it is worth it. Too many people regret, at the end of their life, that they did not work harder to cultivate themselves.
Do not just let your vacation time pile up unused, you are given it for a reason. Vacation is the reward you give yourself for being a “good adult” and keeping up with your responsibilities. Hobbies are a great way to keep your mind and body active when you aren’t at work. Nobody wants to be “hollow” or “one-sided,” but this is exactly what a workaholic is.
Whether it is a physical activity, you join a club, you start meditating, you paint, travel, whatever – these activities will not only help reduce your stress, they give your life meaning beyond going to work each and every day. These are things that you can do with your friends and family, or as a means to meet new people, bringing greater intimacy and companionship into your life as well.
Delegate
This is something that many of us could do a lot more of. One of the stressful things about modern life is that we have simply added more to our to-do list. Mothers who work are still just that, mothers, which means their job doesn’t end when they leave work at the end of the day. This is why it is important to delegate tasks when you can. Giving the children a list of weekly chores not only instills in them an understanding of work ethic and productive activity, it also means that you do not have to do those things.
Split the chores up between the whole family and suddenly everyone has more time, without sacrificing the cleanliness of the home or at the expense of necessary errands. In the end, delegating is good for the whole family. It teaches children responsibility and allows a little bit of extra time for the parents.
Modern life isn’t going to slow down to wait for any of us to catch up, no matter how much we wish it would. We are tasked with trying to live two, three, or more different lives in one lifetime. We are mothers, fathers, managers, scientists, artists, fixers, etc. This can make the modern day world incredibly stressful for people and often, they get a singular focus and become obsessed or insanely focused on just that one aspect of their lives.
For many people, that is work. Work becomes all-encompassing and it consumes us. It does this at the expense of our families, our friends, our hobbies, and the rest of our personality. Finding a good work-life balance is difficult, but it is certainly not impossible. Simple things like leaving your work at work, delegating chores, making time for hobbies or other non-work activities, can make a huge difference in the quality of your life. You will find that you have more time for experience, for companionship, and you feel all-around less stressed out all the time.
References:
http://www.webmd.com/women/features/balance-life
http://www.salary.com/14-steps-to-achieving-work-life-balance/
Author Bio
Kelly Everson is an American author and having MA in English literature. After spending time as a writer in some of Health Industries best websites, she now works as an independent researcher and contributor for health news related website like Consumer Health Digest. In her spare time, she does research work regarding Beauty and Women Health, Fitness and lifestyle blogs, which acts as a fuel to her passion of writing. When she is not researching or writing, you can find Kelly staying active, whether it be practicing yoga or taking swimming classes. Connect with her on Facebook and Twitter.
Cognitive Dimension 