People Get Work-Life Balance Wrong, Here’s Why
You're responsible to find the best possible emotional outcome for yourself
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Work-life balance has been a thing for a while now. It’s common rhetoric in offices nowadays. “It’s important to have a healthy life and have work-life balance” Yeah right… Look don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate work-life balance, I just hate how companies are throwing this rhetoric around. It’s frustrating. Companies say they understand and want to give employees a work-life balance. Honestly, I don’t see it that way.
What do you mean by work-life balance?
In my opinion work-life balance is a state when we manage to balance our activities within and outside of the office well. In a sense, you have a “life” outside of the office. Because you have that “life”, you better be taking good care of it. My main beef with companies throwing this jargon around is that I don’t believe it’s their right to decide what work-life balance is for all of us. Simply put, we must define it ourselves. Only we can decide what work-life balance means to us personally not collectively. We all have different lives, we all have different interests. To be honest it’s kind of unfair to have companies generalize and decide this for us. I mean going home at 5 doesn’t do much if you were really bummed out at work. The point of having work-life balance is to leave all thoughts about work at work or when you want to think about it. If the work you do drag out your emotions all day long, what’s the point?
Define Yourself
Then what should we do? Well first off, you have to understand that you have control over your life, not others. You can choose to work miserably for a company/with colleagues that you demise or you can choose to do better. This may sound easier than done but I believe work-life balance should be sought after before you enter a company. You must understand beforehand what you need in life, what you already have, and what you must do onward. Have you ever heard stories about people that hate their job end up being abusive at home? Well, there’s more truth to that than you think.
I’ll give you an example if a mother is looking for a job and if she wants to have a work-life balance she should keep her children in mind. Rather than getting a job with the highest bidder, she should pick a job that suits her life the most. To busy at home? Maybe it’s better to take a less stressful job. It’s better for you and for the people around you.
What happens if you’re already in a job but you want to start a family? Consider this, if you are really busy with your current job and so is your spouse. Would it be a good idea for you two to have children? Well, it’s up to you, but I would say a child needs his/her parent’s attention especially when growing up. So either you get another job, don’t have kids or maybe don’t have a work-life balance at all. This premise assumes that having quality time with family members is your work-life balance goals. If you think a work-life balance has nothing to do with the family then it’s up to you, I am not going to decide for you.
The point of the matter is we should define what work-life balance means for ourselves and maybe approach the next chapter in our lives carefully, keeping that in mind. This advice might sound a bit generic, but I see it being ignored by the people around me. Some people say they want a work-life balance, yet they don’t know how to prioritize.
I firmly believe that we are responsible for how we’re gonna live our lives. We must think about life decisions thoroughly and actively. Even though we can’t control every aspect of our life at least we can control our own decision making, and most of all we can define our own goals.
