Achieving Work Life Balance To Enjoy Your Life Now

Many of us have difficulty balancing our work demands against our personal life because our work seems to constantly intrude on our own time. To address this issue, we use to do lists, agendas, cell phones, and blackberries to manage our workload. While this makes us more efficient, we become less effective because we ignore the core cause of the imbalance in our lives which is that we do not properly value some of our needs. This leaves us feeling frustrated, disempowered, dissatisfied, and stressed. The solution to this situation is simple. We must decide what we no longer want to tolerate and make changes and choices that fulfill all our needs based on clearer priorities.
The first thing we must understand about Work Life Balance is that it is a misnomer. Our personal and family life satisfy our need for love and self-care. Our professional life fulfills mostly our need for power. However, there is a third need at play here that underlay both of these and it is the issue of security. We often hesitate to rebalance our work and home situation because we see work as the source of our financial security and the satisfaction of this most basic need comes before the other two.
If this is so, we must first increase our sense of security before we can address the two other needs. We often believe that the threats to our safety are external when in reality our own inner anxiety and insecurities are what block us from making changes. So we must learn to befriend them to increase our tolerance to risk and change. We must also acknowledge our ability to survive and thrive that has allowed us to get this far in life. And if we find our survival capacity inadequate, we must then increase it thru training and networking.
Once we are ready to look at our need for power, we must decide which of three categories we fall into. Do we usually feel drained, squeezed, or powerful? Those who feel drained are individuals who give away their energy to other people. Those who are squeezed cannot say no and are often overcommitted until they have nothing left to give. The first type of individual is susceptible to burnout while the other is subject to breakdown. The last type is an individual who has clear boundaries and chooses to respect their sense of personal power and identity.
Some of the ways we can empower ourselves include identifying and plugging our energy leaks. By paying attention to our feelings and our energy levels we can learn to say no to people and tasks that leave us drained. Another approach is to claim our personal space by accepting and valuing our true worth with clear and strong boundaries. We must then learn to resist the pressure of others to fill that space so we can maintain control over our workload and pace of work. A third way to regain control is to plan and prioritize our work and life activities and then focus on one thing at a time. When we find ourselves always needing to multitask, it is because we are doing something wrong.
The last need we must address is self-care. The most important strategy to take better care of ourselves is to learn to slow down and enjoy whatever we are doing no matter how big or small, mundane or exceptional. We must realize that the degree of aliveness and joy we feel does not come from the activities themselves but from how present we are to them. This is where doing less and being more is critical to our self care. When we fill our time with constant activity, such a non-stop pace turns any pleasure into a chore and we become dissatisfied and stressed out.
Increasing your sense of security, power and self care can allow you not only to create more balance in your life but also more enjoyment. So what are you waiting for?