Your Life Balance Between Work and Home--Is It A Management Nightmare?

Of all the issues that women face, life balance-- balancing a career life and a home life is by far one of the most challenging. When I consult with women in the workplace, inevitably questions arise about how can a woman attend to her career development goals and be a working mom ? How can she handle all of the pressures of raising a family, being a good wife, keeping a model household and/or taking care of elderly parents? Something has to give, and often the woman with whom I am working, feels guilty that she can't do it all. Time management is always a challenge. We as women, have very high expectations for ourselves, and sometimes the expectations need to be brought back to reality.

As women, we wear many hats—having many roles to handle on a daily basis. We are involved in family activities, work activities, personal health activities, etc. Some of the activities that consume our attention may not be the most important aspects of our lives, over the long run, but still have become important in our daily time allotment. For example, we may spend a lot of our daily time working over-time at work because of the immediate needs of a client deadline looming over us. Limited time can be devoted to family, friends or our own personal health. But this is a temporary inconvenience.

Balancing the many responsibilities we have and personal happiness do not necessarily depend on earning more money at work or buying more luxury items for the home. Other things can have a more important impact on our well-being. Our age and the stage of life we are currently experiencing--whether we are teens or early thirties, midlifers or seniors-- affect our perspectives. What makes us happy or stressed at one stage will differ in another. Our genetic make-up, personality and upbringing also affect our perspectives on life's challenges, stresses and satisfactions. Life balance is always changing as we navigate through our world, and much of the aspects that we need to address are largely ignored as we place major emphasis on making appropriate career choices. Consequently, throughout our lives, we don’t address the issues which actually determine our personal life balance and happiness. Yet, life balance and happiness can be managed and attained, if we know the components and the causes of our own well-being. Life balance can, therefore, be understood, planned and achieved, just like any other important life’s aim.

Life balance is easier when we understand the stages needed to be taken to achieve it. As we go through our lives, new challenges and experiences change the relative importance and mixture of these factors. The better we understand the changing needs of our life balance, the better able we are to achieve and maintain them. Life balance is a personal thing. It must be what works for you, not what works for someone else, or something which someone else decides for you. That is when stress creeps into things. When your life is out of balance, you can become anxious, you can feel tense and you can feel stressed.

Check out the exercise I have included about the Wheel of Life. Life is very busy. Every day there are conflicting demands on your time from work, family and other sources. How do you find a lifestyle that is time managed well and works for your? Complete the exercise associated with the Wheel of Life. It helps you see how you spend your time and then, helps you reprioritize your efforts so that you can spend your time on what matters most to you. Stress can be reduced when you are comfortable with what you are doing, what goals you are trying to achieve and that you stop blaming yourself because you can't do more.

I know from my own experiences that I had to stop setting standards that were physically exhausting, anxiety producing and realistically unattainable. By constantly raising the bar of how I defined success, I fell into the trap of thinking that I was a failure because I could not be something I was not. Rather than moving up a corporate ladder by changing job locations within a company, I realized that I wanted to stay in the same geographic area, because that is where I felt most comfortable, and it was more important for me to feel a part of the same community than making more money as I relocated every few years. I changed my perspective and shifted the goals I was trying to achieve which eliminated the guilt-induced perspective I had previously held. I set my own standards rather than using someone else's. You can not be everything to everyone so stop, take notice of who you are and decide what you can be to yourself first. Then, and only then, can you share yourself with others.

Finding Life Balance During Midlife Transitions

Return to Stress Management Home Page