Balance: When Making More Money Is No Longer the Top Priority

Posted on November 26, 2015 by Cougar Brenneman, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.

What do you do when you suddenly recognize that the lack of balance in your life has taken its toll on your relationships—with your partner, your friends, your kids, and the rest of your family? What do you do when you realize that you don’t have time for relaxation, fun, inner peace and finding your life’s purpose? What do you do when you love your job and want to do really well, but taking time for yourself and your relationships causes anxiety? What do you do when seeking balance your job and your life leaves you feeling trapped between a rock and a hard place?

Step 1: Define Your Reasons

The first thing to ask yourself is “Why?” Are you driven by the needs or anxiety of an employer who is constantly fretting about the bottom line? Or are you driven by your own lack of confidence in your performance? You probably realize that you can’t just ignore the anxiety: That would be irresponsible. So the first thing to do is to explore precisely what message the anxiety has for you. Once you know that, it will be easier to map out some logical ways to reduce unproductive anxiety.

However, no matter how trapped you might feel, you’re personally responsible to take control of your own time. You’ll need to be honest with yourself—and with others—when work demands take precedence over your personal needs at an unacceptable level. Then you’ll need to negotiate between your personal needs and your work needs, between your anxiety and your need for release.

Step 2: Reduce Your Own Stress

Your next step is to negotiate at least a couple of minutes per hour to look up from what you’re focused on. This is hard to do, and even if you set a timer, you may find yourself ignoring it. When our minds are engaged, it’s difficult to disengage. It seems unnatural.

One way to learn to disengage our minds to relieve stress is meditation, such as focusing your attention on your breath for a period of time. As soon as you do this, you’ll notice that your mind returns again and again to the project and worries that you’re trying to disengage with. This does not mean you’re failing—it means you’re succeeding, because every time you return your attention to your breath, you’ve disengaged yourself from that addictive energy another time.

One good description of how this works is described by the book 10% Happier: How I Tamed the Voice in My Head, Reduced Stress Without Losing My Edge, and Found Self-Help That Actually Works, by the nationally known news anchor Dan Harris. (See www.goodreads.com/book/show/18505796-10-happier.) Harris became more committed to meditation, after having been a long-term skeptic, after having a nationally televised panic attack on Good Morning America.
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Step 3: Negotiate Structural Changes at Work

Meditation is a good start, but if you’re experiencing a work/life imbalance, the problem is probably also structural. If you can’t change the structure of your life, you may not have time for meditation or for other pursuits that feed your emotions and your soul. Creating a good work/life balance will not only transform your home and business, but also your spiritual and emotional life: Balance is necessary for enjoying nature, experiencing stillness, deep attunement, and focus on connection.

To restructure your life better, you may need to ask for all kinds of unreasonable things: an assistant, shorter hours, or longer and more frequent stress-release breaks. This can be especially challenging if your presence is needed for specific hours in sales, for customer service, or to manage others who have a fixed work schedule. But it’s even worse if you’re your own boss. People who work for themselves sometimes find that they’re always at work, that they never are free from the concerns of their business.

You’ll need to prove yourself or to your boss that reducing your stress will actually boost the bottom line and improve productivity. It’s not easy to argue that you might burn out, because that suggests a lack of confidence or even competence to some people. You may not even want to believe it yourself, and you may be so wrapped up in your work that it’s hard to justify not being at work to yourself. You might not even know what you would do with yourself if you had more time.

Prove Your Case

One way to do this is to enroll your employer in creating a healthier work environment for everyone on your team, which may be easier said than done. Doing it this way makes the goal be impersonal to you, and if you succeed, you become a valuable leader. Start by researching the topic, for instance, by watching the video at “How Stress Affects The Brain…and Therefore, Employee Performance” (See humannatureatwork.com/how-stress-affects-employee-performance.html.) or by reviewing the infographic at “Employee Stress Epidemic: Cost and Causes of Workplace Stress” (See humannatureatwork.com/employee-stress-epidemic-cost-and-causes.html.). Once you start chasing links on these pages, you’ll find no end of information that will help you.

The Future of Reducing Stress

If you’re interested in reducing work hours, you’ll want to investigate companies in Sweden that have been experimenting with a more relaxed work/life balance, in some cases, for decades. In the main, they have found that a better balance has far greater benefits than drawbacks. These companies have reported increases in profit with no change in salaries, higher work quality, workers who are more focused and productive, higher levels of mutual respect in their teams, improved patient care (among nurses), and less stress leading to less sick leave. (See the BBC report: “The truth about Sweden’s short working hours” at www.bbc.com/news/business-34677949.)

My Role as Your Coach

If you make balance a goal, you will be able to immediately make changes in your life that begin to accomplish this goal. But you may need help, because some of your personal patterns may be deeply established and resistant to change. As your coach, I can help you sort out and manage your priorities and the balance between your life and your work. Then I’ll help you put together a step-by-step program to gently move into a more balanced lifestyle that preserves your business or job. Finally, I’ll help you stay on track and avoid being sucked into unreasonable demands that have so disturbed your balance in the past.