Allow me to expose a complete myth we have been believing for several 100 years.
There is no such thing as work life balance.
It doesn’t exist.
The term was coined in the mid 1800’s by a chap called Robert Owen who stipulated that the ideal day was split into 3 blocks of 8 hours each:
- 8 hours of work
- 8 hours of recreation
- 8 hours of rest
Apparently ol’ Robert did not need to concern himself with childcare, washing, cooking, cleaning, dentist appointments, the weekly shop and a host of other elements that take up a huge part of our time.
So if you are constantly feeling the strain of trying to achieve perfect work life balance then please do not worry – you are definitely not alone and I can reveal to you why you never seem to achieve that balance.
Our life is in constant flux with ongoing changes; many of which we can never plan for so we have to make continuous tweaks to address our ever moving worlds.
So how do we handle this?
Instead of seeing your life as the classic image of perfectly balanced scales, imagine that you have 2 sets of balls which you are juggling. Each ball represents an area of your life.
The first set of balls you have are you crystal balls; these are your main priorities in your life and these balls can not be dropped.
If they do drop then they smash beyond repair and cause a negative impact on the other areas in your life.
For most of my clients their health and family priorities are their crystal balls as once these drop everything else is affected – often with a very negative result.
Many people say to me “Kate – my job is a crystal ball as without this I wouldn’t be able to pay the bills, live, afford to do XYZ”
Yet this is the ball that they are workings so hard to keep in the air and often the very last ball to get dropped.
However, what if we saw your job as a rubber ball – in the second set of balls you have to juggle.
If these balls are dropped then they tend to bounce back, they don’t break and can be put down and picked back up again.
I am not for one minute suggesting that our jobs are not important, however, we often drop other, more vital balls to accommodate them leading to severe detrimental effects.
When I work with clients we instead see their career as a ball and work to set strong ways of working thereby cementing boundaries with work so these balls are no longer an effort to keep in the air.
