Work/Life Balance is a Big Fat Myth!

Do you continuously seek that balance between work and life? Who would have thought, as a young child that we would grow up to be clowns in a circus of life juggling everything? Isn’t that what we do as women? As adults? Juggle, juggle, juggle! What happens when we drop just one thing we are juggling? Doesn’t this become a domino effect in our lives? Isn’t this where the image of the hamster going round and round in the wheel kicks in? This is why I say Work/Life Balance is a big FAT myth!!!

“My plate is already full.”

If this is true, why do we add more to our plates? How come this has become a societal norm? Visualize this: you are at a Thanksgiving buffet and piling food on your plate to the point where peas are falling off, and gravy is spilling onto the floor. You try to avoid stepping on the food that’s fallen off the plate, not to mention trying to hold this all together, so nothing else falls off the plate. Then you sit at the table ready to dig into the savory food in front of you, and you don’t even notice how much food there is. (Remember I said a mountain of food on this plate.) You begin looking for your vegetables which are at the bottom of the plate. To get to them, you have to push everything else off the plate onto your lap and onto the floor (what a mess). When you get to the bottom, the veggies are cold, soggy, moldy and disgusting. Gross! That is what we do with our lives!

Quite frankly, we should be the most organized creatures on this planet, we have every electronic, app, tools (pen/paper) J and such at our fingertips and we over packed, spinning like a tornado, busy and have no time…WTW? First of all, we have time:  there are twenty-four hours in one day, seven days in a week and three hundred and sixty-five days in one year! Wow, do the math! That is a lot of TIME! As far as the word busy goes, well that will be another blog! (Nasty four-letter word.)

Do we know ourselves so well? Maybe…

What are your vision, mission, and your why then your self-love can begin with personal boundaries! All companies have mission statements; the same should be for our families. When this is in place, then the boundaries can be set in place, and the words yes and no can be utilized. Here is an example:

Johnny has piano lessons from 6-7 pm two nights a week; now remember what the sole purpose of this is? Is it to keep Johnny busy, or is this to work towards something for his education in the future? You must understand the why, the purpose behind this and if you don’t then here is what will happen: the juggling, the stress and overwhelm will kick in with trying to manage everything else that you have allowed to creep in by saying yes! Then you become resentful of having to drive Johnny to his lessons, especially if you have had a long day and the weather sucks, and so on! All the mental BS and the ‘to do’ BS that we pile on our plates mean we start dropping commitments, are exhausted and miss out on other beautiful opportunities because we are so packed with bullshit! We are blinded by and clogged up by all this ‘busy-ness!’ No pun intended!

This is so WRONG!

People constantly making decisions for their business to improve their lives! NO!!! This is so lop-sided! And they have a why that lasts as long as a sugar high from a candy bar. NOOOO!!! The why is a quick fix to get somewhere fast-instant and no work involved-snap snap of the fingers. We have lost sight of our boundaries, our purpose and our passion by cramming, controlling, juggling, and creating unhappiness, stress, and disease. It is up to you to slow down and smell the roses, open your eyes to the beauty of what is right there in front of you. Staying curious instead of dreadfully running Johnny to his lesson. These are opportunities awaiting us! Take them or keep on keeping on being busy and exhausted!

Oh, and by the way, work and life are not separate. Work is just an entity of our life and we never achieve balance! It is all about negotiating and living by your boundaries. Just sayin…

No more trying to balance, negotiate like hell and stay true to your boundaries. That is all you need, WAIT and use the word NO!

 

Peace,

Kim