There are over 1.7 billion results on Google when you search for Work/Life Balance. It’s no wonder we think it is something to strive for!
While this is a noble goal, it’s not a possible one. Perhaps you love your career, and it feeds your soul in a way that going to the gym or spending time with family and friends doesn’t. It’s okay to unbalance your life if doing so provides you with a level of satisfaction that you can’t find anywhere else. We too often feel guilty when we do things that seem to go against social norms or what we think is expected of us. Let go of the guilt and focus on what fills your buckets of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health.
Life isn’t about neatly separated boxes. It’s about intertwining circles that we should strive to have all spinning in a way that makes us feel like we are living our best life! Nobody can tell us what that looks like. What works for me may not work for you. We need to find that truth within ourselves.
We tend to think of balance as a noun- “a condition in which different elements are equal or in the correct proportions.” A thing that we can have. It’s impossible to have complete balance between all areas of your life, yet we believe that we should strive for this even as unrealistic as it is.
Your goal then is not to find balance but to find the best life for you! Pay attention to your energy levels as you go about your day. Those times you lose track of the hours going by, love what you’re doing, and learning comes easy are clues to where you need to spend more time. We all have individual strengths that make us who we are. For most of our lives, we are told that we need to work on our weaknesses. This is incorrect. Our greatest areas of potential and growth are in doing the things we love doing and are already good at. We need to learn to manage around our weaknesses with family members or co-workers or simply by figuring out a way to get through those dreaded tasks that suck the life out of us.
These are all very personal choices for you. Perhaps you’re a stay-at-home parent and love every second of it, yet society tells you that you should be out working and “contributing.” If staying at home with your kids feeds your soul in a way that no other job could, then you are doing exactly what you are supposed to. Conversely, if you would like nothing more than to be working out of the house in a career that lights you up, then, by all means, figure out a way to do that!
Perhaps it’s time to start thinking of balance as a verb – “to arrange, adjust, or proportion the parts of symmetrically.”
Try this – stand up, lift one foot in the air so that you’re standing on one foot. What is the foot on the floor doing? It’s not perfectly still, is it? It’s making tiny movements to help you maintain balance.
What changes can you make in your life to make you excited to jump out of bed in the morning? When you let go of striving for the impossible, everyone around you will notice the change, the new lightness in your step, the huge smile on your face, and the light that you are shining on the world. Let’s face it; life is short – You owe it to yourself to make it the best one you can!
At The Strong Impact Academy, we help people discover their unique talents and strategize ways to lean into those for continued growth, joy, and success. Want to learn more? Book a virtual coffee with us!
