The elusive idea of maintaining balance between work and life may seem unrealistic or just an unsubstantiated theory. Those who are striving to excel and progress in their career may even feel that it is something they need to sacrifice in pursuit of career goals. However, from my perspective, balance in work and personal life is an important tool that helps people succeed in life. And without it, success is always incomplete. As an entrepreneur, I learned quickly that the role one plays in their career, whether as a leader or an employee, they are closely related and supported by their personal life. Think of it this way, if your career is a journey towards a destination, then your personal life is your companion. Therefore, it is fair to state that acquiring balance between work and life is a necessity, not an option. And the best part of seeking and finding balance in life is that it can come at no cost. No need for you to visit seminars about managing life or find a Guru, just adding a few things to your priority list like me, and it will do the job just fine. Let me break it down for you.
Being Aware Of Your Needs in Life/Divide and Conquer
I learned from my father at a very young age that awareness and acceptance are the first and second steps of a three-step process to build a happy and successful life. A did not grasp the entirety of the meaning that time, but later I felt that really makes sense. Everyone in this world has a shot at winning but the confused one. Work is very important of course, it fuels your dreams and creates the vision for your future. However, it is equally important to accept the importance of your personal life. It will help you be better aware of what you need from life. What I like to do is create a plan to spend time on doing things that I am passionate about, getting away from work for a few moments. And it works like a charm! Dividing your work and personal life pursuits will help you to focus on both, without ignoring one in favour of the other. It could be enjoying sports, delving into literature or spending time with family. Taking time apart from work will re-prioritize your life goals and allow you to remove stress of work from the equation. As a career oriented professional, you must have endless priorities and an ocean of work, but you must believe that carving out time from work for personal pursuits is always possible. And you will start to see a more calm and composed version of you working towards success while enjoying life in all its entirety.
Managing Goals & Priorities
It doesn’t need to be explained that performance is everything when you have a vision for the future. Sure, you have developed a strategy to pursue your vision, but lack of performance can see you settle for mediocrity in life, in place of greatness. However, in some cases business goals do become extremely demanding. It leaves no extra space in your life for personal requirements, and as a result, stress and frustration seeps into our lives. Like every entrepreneur, I have soldiered through such an experience as well. What I came to know from my experience is that work stress is not always a direct result of work pressure. I trust that we all can work under tremendous pressure for something we deeply desire in life. However, what differentiates success from failure at such circumstances- are moments of reprieve. Stress builds up when you deny yourself a few moments of relaxation in life, which can be easily achieved by focusing on your personal needs.
Take it from me, managing your goals and priorities can help you to identify your priorities to maintain a positive attitude. The first step to manage priorities would be to-
Prioritize your time by dividing your work in 4 parts:
This will give you a clear-cut action plan and if efficiently executed, I believe this process can even help you to carve out time from work for personal growth.
Inspire and Delegate
As an entrepreneur and veteran business owner, I completely understand the urge to take on all the work to ensure perfect execution. Every ambitious entrepreneur who has a vision for his/her business, feels this pull to dive into every assignment. However, as I felt that it is practically impossible to do all the work by myself. And even if you try and start to see expected results, it won’t be long until you lose the vision of the bigger picture and get tangled into day-to-day work. Thus getting more stressed out and losing your chance of finding balance in life.
To solve this issue, I personally feel it better to communicate my vision to teammates and inspire them to uphold high standards in performance. It always works well, offering my teammates an understanding of my business vision and building trust within the team. Following this process will free you up from taking on day-to-day tasks, and give you perspective to guide your teammates while carving out personal time to bring balance in life.
I do understand that directing the team is easy and following the path to success is often hard. However, I believe following battle tested paths rules out the chance of confusion. So, I welcome you all to seek ‘synergistic harmony’ between professional and personal life, and it will empower you to win in life and experience the entirety of life without regrets.
