The secret to obtaining work-life balance.

OK everyone…are you ready for this?! Here it is…it is a MYTH! There is no such thing as work-life balance. You hear so many people talking about the importance of this elusive balance. I believe we all drive ourselves crazy attempting to find this ‘perfect balance’. Tell me…have you tried? How did it work out? And just so you know, I do expect people to disagree with the belief that it is a myth. Maybe you will tell me that you have found this secret ingredient to this balance. If you have…I beg of you that you share it with me and all the readers so we are all living beautifully balanced life as well. I am not being facetious. Please share your tricks of the trade in the comments.

For anyone else that has been trying to obtain this balance, and feeling like a miserable failure, listen up…I am going to take you back in time. The time where you made your decision for your career. You may currently be in the same career, it may have morphed into something else, or you may have recently changed careers. Regardless, I want you to remember why you chose this path? What about it excited you? What got you all fired up when you thought about living out your career? I remember mine. It was when I realized I have a keen ability to be of service to others, accept them fully for who they are at that very moment, as well as accepting them fully through all of their growing pains/edges while challenging them to grow. I feel completely fulfilled when I am loving others at their worst and their best, and all of the moments in between. My energy comes from being with others. I love getting up in front of a crowd and teaching others (though presenting was a huge growing edge for me!). And I love learning from others…always. If you are having a difficult time remembering what could have possibly inspired you to get into your current job, then I encourage you to follow the guidance below.

Still your body and quiet your mind. Turn inward. Search for your truth. Are you truly doing what you were placed on this earth to do? If the answer is yes, which I believe most of us are or else we wouldn’t have been called to it…or if your answer is no, maybe you just completely ignored your intuition and went a different direction. If this is the case, I feel sadness for you and for the world in what it is missing from you, and I sincerely hope you find the path back to your light. If you have found that you did follow your calling, and are unhappy, then maybe, just maybe, you have forgotten what sparks your fire in your career. In either case, if you want more happiness along your journey of life, I suggest the following:

• create a list of all of the tasks and activities that you engage in that inspire and excite you (aka. things you love about your job)
• create a list of all of the tasks and activities that you engage in that are a lot less inspiring and exciting (aka. things you hate about your job)
• identify the tasks you are able to delegate to others (aka. the things you hate)
• identify the tasks you are able to increase (aka. the things you love)-get creative in the ways you could possibly engaged in these tasks…it may even mean taking on more responsibility for the short run in order to get to your long term goal

So you see…it is not about work-life balance. It is about re-falling in love with the work the universe chose you to do. It is about implementing more of what you love into your work. We spend so much of our lives at work. According to Industrial and Organizational psychologist, Andrew Naber, the average person will spend 90,000 hours at work over a lifetime. According to another analysis from HuffPost Australia, people spend 328 days per lifetime socializing with friends, compared to 4,748 days (or 13 years) working over a lifetime. Think about it, we have “work husbands” and “work wives” and “work friends”. Why not remember what we love about work, so we are not forever trying to obtain this elusive work-life balance or always living to dread another day at work and only living for the weekends? At least give it a try and tell me how it goes!

Much love, LJ

So a little something more…while listening to one of my audiobooks by Marcus Buckingham-whom I adore because his focus is always on strengths-and Ashley Goodall. Marcus was talking about this exact thing in his book-the work life balance-now you see where I got my inspiration for this post! Anyways, he identified a beautifully talented ballet dancer who dropped out of ballet because he lost his passion due to all of the constrictions and rules of the ballet. This video is the dancer-Sergei Polunin, dancing again, on his own terms, and re-rediscovering the passion and love he was born with in dance. I hope you enjoy this as much as I do-chills and tears and that weird choking thing in my throat when I am trying to hold back tears!

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