Strategies for Achieving Work-Life Balance: Nurturing Well-Being and Productivity in a Demanding World
Anything done in excess is living out of proportion and can disrupt one’s harmony in life. This only makes it more essential for us to take a step back and evaluate how we can bring the elements of our professional, personal, and spiritual lives into a more harmonious and well-balanced state.
We all want to thrive, giving our best in our professional and personal lives. Sometimes we become entirely absorbed by one element of our lives and end up ignoring the other significant aspects that are crucial for a thriving state of being, such as:
“Have you ever noticed that if you are not very committed towards your physical health, you stop exercising when things get a little overwhelming around work or at home?”
Work-life balance is a concept that promotes the idea of finding balance in all aspects of your life; living a life that represents a picture of a wholesome life where you flourish in all areas of your work and personal life and have the space to evolve as a well-rounded person.
Work-life balance often gets disrupted when one part of your life overlaps, such as your professional life takes precedence over your personal life and vice versa. With the new work-from-home concept growing after Covid19, the intersection between work and life has become more beclouded. According to an article by Society for Human Resource Management, “Research shows remote employees are working longer, spending time in more meetings and having to keep up with more communication channels.”
Living a holistic lifestyle, such as work-life balance, refers to presenting the best version of yourself in your professional and personal lives, maintaining a harmonious balance between both while prioritizing self-care and self-development. Doing this requires conscious effort and energy.
Setting Time Boundaries
The overlap between both segments of life happens as the intersection between the two gets muddled. It is essential to establish clear boundaries, especially when allocating time to each crucial component of your life.
You may have the drive to excel in your projects, but you must be aware of how putting in overtime affects your personal or social life. Mainly, if you have a home office and you are a work enthusiast or an entrepreneur, you must set a schedule and allocate a dedicated number of hours so you don’t end up working 15 hours a day. Not only does this impact your personal life, but it also drains your energy and could affect your creativity, productivity, and health.
In some cases, the inverse also has an adverse effect. Taking your personal life to work is never a good idea. You will feel distracted, unfocused, and you will end up multitasking poorly on both ends.
The Best Version of Yourself
To excel in both aspects of your life, simply allocating time is not enough. It requires conscious effort, mindfulness, and being present. Showing up with the best version of yourself wherever you go. This means not taking the work energy and work mindset outside your work and not allowing your personal life to affect your work.
Have you ever noticed days when you are exhausted after work and have no energy to spend with your partner or children? How are you contributing to your relationships?
Or if you have been partying until 2:00 am on a weekday, how miserable is the next day at work, and the version of yourself that you are presenting at work?
This shows us how one part of our lives can impact another. On the surface, this might not seem a lot, but in-depth, behavior patterns are developed over time, and when done repeatedly, the part of our life we are giving less attention to becomes depleted or out of proportion.
To flourish in harmony, you must make a conscious effort to become and present the best version of yourself in every version of your life.
Show Up for Yourself
As important as it is to show up for your career and your loved ones, it is equally important to give yourself the same attention, compassion, and care that you have for your loved ones.
At first, it might seem overwhelming to segregate your professional life from your personal life and carve out time just for yourself, but if you think about it, you are already at the center of it. Your work and personal life only cease to exist because you live these aspects and many others, playing your role. A wholesome work-life balanced life refers to giving enough time to your work, your family and social life, and creating time and space for yourself. This includes your wellness, your vitality, and your health.
When you are overwhelmed with work and personal life, do you ever notice that you come last?
A harmonious work-life balance also emphasizes taking care of yourself and your needs and balancing your personal and professional roles.
If your professional life is leading to a poor work-life balance, it could look like this:
Putting in overtime more often than not
Working on weekends more often than not
Constantly working
Neglecting personal and social relationships due to work
Neglecting health and well-being due to work
Missing holidays and festivities
Burn out
If your personal life is impacting your professional life, it could look like this:
Lack of focus at work
Need to meet deadlines
Taking sick days more often than not
Being late at work or not being able to complete your task
Lack of aspirations or growth mindset
Lack of self-care and wellness
The work-life balance concept promotes a harmonious and balanced relationship between professional and personal life in which both aspects of life thrive in parallel. The idea is that no part of your life should capture all your efforts and attention. Instead, you ground yourself in the center of your life, nourish and grow in all aspects.
If you are a HerMeNow participant or alumni, book your free coaching session now through the HerMeNow website https://www.hermenow.com/wellness.
 | Anam Anjum Wellness Consultant +971 52 629 9656 anam@hermenow.com almawellbeing.com |