Recently, I had the pleasure of sitting down and talking with my good friend and colleague Joanne Sapers, the founder of Go Deep with Love, about a topic that I have been thinking about deeply for a long time. We talked about work-life balance and if it is realistic to expect that we have a balance between our professional life and our personal life. This question has been weighing on the minds of a lot of people lately, as more and more we find that our society is a 24-hour Society. Forbes just recently put out an article stating that it might not be realistic to expect a work-life balance in today's work culture. However, I don't think that's true.
While work-life balance may not be possible in the traditional fifty fifty way that everybody strives for, I think it is incredibly realistic to be able to find a balance between work and your personal life so long as you find what that balance looks like for yourself. Work-life balance looks different for everyone because life is fluid and always changing. I know what it looks like for me; and in my conversation with Joanne, I was really looking forward to hearing her perspective on what having a work-life balance means for her. Joanne mentions that for her, starting her mornings connecting with her spirituality is very important.
“When I start my day, I do meditation I do journaling I do beautiful exercise I do total silence I do anything and everything that is going to say yes to me and remind me, because I go deep on the spiritual level, that everybody is one everything is one and as I wake up in the morning I’m part of this oneness.” - Joanne Sapers
Work-life Balance depends heavily on the things you want and need out of life. Spirituality is a major component in Joanne’s life and what she needs to feel fulfilled each day. For me, art is my spiritual practice and in order to feel balanced, I need to take the time to be creative. However, there was also a time in my life when I was growing my business while keeping a day job. Work-life balance for me then meant that my previous full-time job was work and my life was my business; and that is what felt right to me. Work-life Balance is all about perspective. It is important to think about what is right for you personally not only in the present moment in terms of what you want to create and self care, but also in the long term. Without finding a balance that is true to us in the long term, we may not be able to achieve all of the things we want to do in life.
Lacking a balance in our professional and personal lives also can negatively impact us emotionally. Before we started working together, a client of mine was stretching herself really thin working and volunteering for a bunch of different organizations and causes. Even though she cared for these causes and places she worked, she was also a painter who didn’t have the time to paint. Because she had so much to work to do and so many responsibilities to her family, she wasn’t painting anymore. That imbalance in her life resulted in her becoming resentful and snippy with her loved ones. Without the balance between her work and her passions, she was caught in a cycle of anger and energetic exhaustion, unable to really engage in her life.
Together, she and I had to figure out what the balance between her responsibilities and her painting looked like. We realized that she needed to have a certain number of minutes in the studio everyday in order to feel like she was living the life she wanted to live. As we slowly began building time for creativity back into her life, she was able to start letting go of the negative emotions she had been holding onto because she was doing what she felt she needed to do in life. By releasing these emotions, she was able to clear her mind and make better decisions for herself. She was able to say no to work and volunteer opportunities that she did not have the time for, in a way that was compassionate towards herself and the other person. Now, she is able to create paintings regularly and recently did a show where she sold every painting she had.
Once you start feeling more pride in who you are and what you do, you realize that you are worth taking care of and saying no to the things that overwhelm you. We might not believe that the “me time” and the life part of the work-life balance scale is important, but it might lead us down a journey we could never have imagined. So I encourage you to take the time to really discover what you truly need to feel that sense of pride and fulfillment in your life.
If you are struggling with visualizing what you need to do to connect with that sense of pride, I have created a virtual workshop just for you called, How to Create Everything You Want in 2019, on December 1st at 11AM. This 2 hour workshop is designed to help you discover what you truly want in life, set realistic goals that will move you forward towards the life you truly want, as well as address the negative setbacks and challenges that can get in the way so that you feel confident in your ability to achieve your goals. Sign up and learn more by clicking here!