Have you ever felt the fatigue and the long hours of work get in the way of your personal life? Maybe we’ve all faced this wide-ranging problem these days. In a given period, this becomes a significant part of our lives. Driven and motivated by money or the path of “success”, we forget that we may need to take time for our well-being. Globally, only 15% of people feel satisfied at work. What is the root cause of this startling data, is difficult to establish. It is certain, however, that 85% of those working in a job in which they are not engaged will not have a fulfilling life.
How we can strike a balance in our lives, and how to improve our lifestyle, we’ll see below.
The reason we ask ourselves the question of work-life balance is, because we don’t enjoy what we are doing for a living
When our work is pleasant, we do not think so often about the rest of our life, which we need to look at. Usually, then we forget that we work. We start to think that we need to have more balance in life when we work long hours of work that we don’t like. Either way, however, we need to rethink our way of life. Quite often successful, wealthy people of the high-class regret that they have not spent more time with their family, traveling, etc. Very often we regret that we have not made full use of our time, but have wasted it in inaction.
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Dale Carnegie
Why do both types of people regret their decisions in the past? One reason is perhaps that one is never satisfied. Another reason is that none of them had a balance in their lives. One has given all his time in the name of success and money, and the other has wasted it on entertainment, pleasure, and the search for short-term happiness.
We can argue, who had a better life, but the truth is, it’s better to see the mistakes of both types of people and learn from them
Quitting a bad job
This may be one of the first things we think about doing when our work interferes with our personal lives in a bad way. We can leave our current job and try a new one that’s right for us. In the early years of our lives, it’s easier to do it. Later in life, it becomes more difficult to change jobs. Bills, commitments, and a family that relies on us will make it harder to start a new job that may not be secure.
Later in life, we may need more preparation before we leave our current job, to have greater security. Preparation is always welcome, but when we are younger we can risk more as we have fewer responsibilities and time for mistakes. Either way, getting ready wouldn’t hurt us. One way to leave and find a job that we’re going to like is to find a way to do (easier said than done) something we like.
To have a good work-life balance we need to pay attention to our hobbies (the things we would like to do even without being paid for them) they are necessary for our well-being, and maybe a way to get out of work that we don’t like.
Hobbies аnd passions
Perhaps the majority of psychologists would agree that having a hobby is beneficial to a person’s well-being. This is more important when we work a job from which we are not satisfied. A person, to feel good, needs time during the day to do something he loves. To have a meaningful life, we need to do something we deeply care about.
We need to use our innate or developed qualities in the world in some way, to feel like full-fledged people. Some people feel the need to use their creativity more than others. But all people need to express themselves in some way. If this need for us is not satisfied with the work we do for a living, we will need more personal time in which to express ourselves and use our creativity in some form.
Above we looked at that, to get out of the current job, one way is perhaps through our hobbies. As well as making us happier, fuller people, hobbies enable us to find a job (or work for ourselves) that satisfies us.
This can be a long process in which we will not go into details at the moment. Simply put, we need a hobby where we are good enough to start making money from it. Hopefully, replace the work we want to leave.
We looked at one of the reasons for the unsuccessful work/life balance, was that we are working a non-satisfying job in the first place. We will now look at some other aspects of life that contribute or do not contribute to a full balanced life.
Too much free time is bad – Being busy helps improve happiness
Many people indeed need free time, but some of us have too much and do nothing with it. When we have free time we can use it for something significant to us rather than watching (constantly) Netflix.
It’s better to be busy with goals we want to achieve in life. The time we have one way or another will be used. We’d better fill our time with things that are important to us. When we have too much free time and do nothing with it, we start to overthink. Life is short, as we already know, we have limited time on this earth. We have to use this time properly. We should be filling our time, not trying to find free time for a “rest” that actually tired us.
An awareness of one’s mortality can lead you to wake up and live an authentic, meaningful life.
Bernie Siegel
Bad usage of our leisure time can contribute to stress, boredom, and reduced ability to focus. Some of us may have noticed how a lot of people with more free time than we need, are depressed. This also applies to people who are too busy and do not find time to relax.
To find a balance in anything, we need to constantly rethink and adapt to the circumstances.
Realising our potential
As life progresses, we can sometimes forget who we are, and what we wanted to be in our childhood. An overly busy lifestyle, or its complete absence, can cloud the idea of who we are and forget our purpose in life. It’s good to try new things in life and be busy with our goals, but we also need time to reflect.
Can you imagine again the person you once wanted to be? What we wanted to do when we grew up. All of this may have been stuck somewhere in the bottom of our subconscious. Many superficial things have protected and diminished our chance to remember our true purpose in life.
We need to remember who/what we wanted to be, to realize our strong and weak sides of ourselves. What we’re good at, what motivates us, and what we enjoy doing in life.
By discovering how our minds work, we can improve our learning power and unlock our true potential.
Robert Winston
Whatever we do and decide to be in life, there will be difficulties, but when you know that this thing is meaningful to you, the difficulties are easily overcome.
Take a time for (yourself) self-awareness, pay attention to your emotions
Those of us who do not have time to stay alone with ourselves will have to take the time to pay attention to our thoughts and emotions. In this way, we will be able to better understand what we need. Otherwise, we run the risk of being someone we’re not. We can ignore ourselves and listen too much to other people’s opinions about what we should be. To have a fulfilling life, we need to listen to ourselves.
Meditation, diary, asking a lot of “why” questions, would help with that.
Human connection and relationships
We are social beings, we need connections with people we can rely on and share experiences with. In most people’s idea of what a balanced, fulfilling life is, it includes family and human relationships.
Many of us don’t find time for our friends, for family, or for the beginning of new relationships.
However, we need to pay attention and take time for this part of our lives, where the relationship with the family and the creation of new relationships is important to us. It is easy to get into the wheel of life (we often make this mistake) and forget about our relationship with people.
We can spend at least (hours of a day) one day a week creating and maintaining our relationships. If we don’t have friends, we can find ones by going to places where people have similar interests to our interests
Know your priorities
Maybe you haven’t thought about your priorities in life before. Most people don’t think deeply about them. It’s instinctive to prioritize your family, it doesn’t take much thinking about it. However, there are other priorities in life that we may have, but fail to see.
Мany of us ignores our priorities in life, quite often. How often did you “have to” stay overtime at work, for which you missed an important moment in life, be it with the family or something else that was important to you? This is happening systematically, other things that we think are important to us may take our time for the really important things for us.
It is much easier to make decisions in life and be more convinced of them when we know our priorities.
Take a moment aside and think about a piece of paper, what are your (things that are important to you) priorities in life.
Adaptation to new
We need to be ready for new things in life, if we want to have a balanced fulfilling life. Life changes, our understandings, our priorities too. Sometimes we have to work hard, towards a goal, but sometimes we have to make quick decisions in life and adapt to the new circumstances.
In our personal and professional lives, we are constantly hit with one adversity after the other, most of which we have no control over. But the four things we have total control over is how we react, how we adapt, how we breathe, and how we take action.
Diamond Dallas
Bottom line:
We know what we need in our lives, to feel that our lives are full and balanced. The difficulty is to act on the necessary changes or new things that we need to do to have a fulfilling life. Realizing our needs of who we are, as individuals, is one of the first steps toward a more balanced fulfilling life. If change is needed, it can be a difficult process, but it is the difficult things in life and the efforts that give us more strength to deal with the difficulties of life.
Any new start is difficult, but when we start with small steps, it looks significantly easier.
A balanced, fulfilling life is often a life in which changes are needed, and a constant review of your life to date.
