Busy, Busy, Busy?
“I have been so busy lately. It seems like I am chasing my own tail. I start forgetting things, sleep poorly, I feel hurried and when I get home I have a short fuse, am argumentative or just fall asleep. I love my job. Really. I finally found my passion and things are starting to click. Now it’s just a matter of finding a good balance between work & life. Not easy.”
Work-life balance: what kind of bizarre notion is that? As if ‘work’ and ‘life’ are polar opposites that you have to try to reconcile with one another. As if ‘working’ is not ‘living’.
Do you live to work? Or do you work to live? There was recently an article in the newspaper saying that Belgians increasingly live from vacation to vacation. Vacation means ‘living’, as opposed to ‘working’.
Confucius once said: “Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life.” In that case, ‘working’ becomes a part of life. Fortunately it is possible.
But following your passion can also involve risks. You can get caught up in it, lose sight of everything else, become fully absorbed, or rather, obsessed by it and end up exhausted. Then the balance tips again to one side. A passionately committed workaholic is still a workaholic.
The main thing is finding a balance. Balance, equilibrium… a fantastic concept, and very sensible as well.
It is just that striving to achieve this balance, in my opinion, often guarantees disappointment. Life by definition is out of balance. Perhaps there are rare moments when the scale balances right in the middle, but it soon tips once again to one side or another. There is nothing wrong with this as such. These are but the natural waves of our existence that lift us up only to bring down a little once again. That is a law of nature. A sea as smooth as a mirror is a seldom occurrence, and when it lasts too long, we become afraid of falling into a boring routine & the daily grind. At that point we usually change something just in order to tip the scales. Sound familiar?
Striving to achieve balance is thus something like walking toward a Fata Morgana. Most likely you will never reach your goal, and when you think you are there, it dissolves right before your eyes. Wrestling with the desperate attempt to achieve a balance is not only exhausting, but also causes much stress and frustration.
Given that we are actually ‘out of balance’ most of the time, realizing that this is part of life is already a step in the direction of greater peace-of-mind. More ‘living’ in the work-life balance. But how do you make sure that you have sufficient resilience to cope at those times when the scale tips too heavily to one side, or when you have been pushing yourself to the limit for too long?
We will talk about that in the next article…
Source: San Vangenechten – Stress & Burn-out Coach – Business Trainer Triangis
