Are You Struggling with Work/Life Balance?
We’ve all heard of the elusive work/life balance and maybe felt some frustration about the difficulty in figuring out what that was or how to achieve it.
There’s a feeling among many that our lives are out of balance. For most this feels like work is taking over all of life. For some people it may be that life doesn’t allow for any work, personal or professional.
I’ve also heard the term work/life integration used instead. I’m not even sure what that means. Do you integrate one into the other? And if so, what do you consider your “base” state that everything is integrated into? Or are you just doing everything all at once without a boundary?
Recently another life coach suggested the term work/life alignment since balance is so hard to achieve and implies that they need to be equal to be in balance. She used the image of a teeter-totter and how difficult it was to attain and maintain a perfectly balanced state as a metaphor for the pressure that many people feel about it.
So with her model of work/life alignment, you align with your values as to how you want to weigh different segments. But, there are going to be times when our alignment has to change based on current circumstances. Does that mean our values have changed?
Also, what made the teeter-totter challenging and fun was not staying at the point of perfect static balance. It was in the fluid momentum. The way competing forces had to work together to achieve motion, taking turns, give and take, effort and release. That’s what made it enjoyable.
Our idea of work/life balance also feels stressful because it is nearly always, at the moment, unachievable. One more thing that we can never get perfectly. And even in the long run, it can still be woefully elusive.
Instead, I’m suggesting the term work/life calibration. Where the focus, weight, and attention fluidly shift between two (or more) dynamic forces. This feels like a more nimble way to dial up or down the time and energy spent as needed.
As one goes up, the other goes down and we need to calibrate the mix that feels the best to us, which is going to change depending on the dynamic pressures of needs and desires.
The idea of calibration reminds me of the chemistry lab in college. Each lab would start with mixing two acids together, heating it, and hoping the mixture doesn’t explode. If you mix them at the right ratios, you can create something new. At the wrong ratios….boom.
And our lives are kind of like that. Mix some work and life, apply some stress, and hope it doesn’t explode. Hope you get the right mix that can handle the pressure that life is inevitably going to apply. And if it threatens to explode, back off on the heat, change the mix and try again to get the right calibration.
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