Get Some Work Life Balance
Some people find balancing work and other life commitments is like walking on a tightrope over the raging Niagara Falls – one false move and you drown. For others work life balance is easy, they are satisfied with their commitments and feel they have control over their lives. It is a fact though, that there has been a shift over the last 20 years with Australians now working longer hours, more women joining the workforce and on average, we are working 350 more hours per year than our peers in the Netherlands! No doubt other countries have seen similar shifts.
Although many women now work more than 45 hours per week, men continue to shoulder the largest burden of very long work hours.
Often with longer and longer working hours people become absent from relationships either with their partners, their children or other family members to whom they have loving obligations. Friendships, a great source of debriefing, can be diminished or lost altogether and people who experience a life imbalance are also often lonely and isolated. While relationships can and do breakdown, there is also the risk of waking up one day and realising that there is no-one with whom you have shared the recent trials and tribulations of life. No-one to whom you are genuinely connected. Relationships of all kinds may have become surface and business-like leaving only loneliness and emptiness.
There is no doubt that joy in life can be found in relationships and connection with others. Material possessions obtained through the high incomes associated with gruelling hours may bring only temporary pleasure and happiness – even though they are fun at the time. In fact, studies have shown that fathers’ relationships’ with their children is directly related to the hours that they work – more hours equals poorer relationships.
A work life imbalance occurs when one is overtaking the other to the extent that it is impossible to meet the time and energy demands in all of your life roles. It may be that you simply have too much to do; either at work or at home or both. Commonly work gets in the way of family and at other times, family gets in the way of work. Many people who are caring for children, particularly children with special needs or those who are caring for elders often find that those family needs make it very difficult to fulfil their work demands.
Additionally, there are people in our communities who play a number of significant roles that make life for the whole community what it is. These are the volunteers with clubs, service organisations and charities who often rack up many hours per week. Usually very busy people with a multitude of other caring roles, sometimes they burn out due to their multiple commitments and inability to achieve that balance within their lives and they are lost to this special work forever.
So take charge of your life and relationships and see if the following three tips help get your work life balance back:-
1. All Australian Governments have policies that support workers to achieve balance. Check out your employers policies and try to negotiate reasonable work hours.
2. Ask for help, even of you find that difficult to do. There are always people who want to help – give it a go.
3. Take care of yourself. It all starts and ends with you. If you are strong and looking after yourself, you have more energy available to help and support others. Do something nice for yourself every day.
Turn Your Worst Problem Into Your Best Opportunity
Many people have the aim in life to attract success like a magnet, however everyone has their share of problems that move into and out of life. What havoc or beauty they bring with them is really up to the individual. It is possible to choose your action or reaction to obstacles and adversity and determine how you will approach each situation. Take the negative view and see each as a problem, sometimes insurmountable, or the positive view that each is an opportunity that has a solution. It is all a matter of perspective.
First, try to understand how you normally react when you experience hardship. You must know whether you fall back and stay back and therefore see the situation as negative or whether you quickly recover, take a positive perspective and look immediately at solutions. The one thing that is definite is that overcoming hardship is a skill that you need to get through life. Positive or negative, you decide.
If you have taken note of how you react and know that you get up quickly and start looking at the situation as an opportunity and find solutions, then you are functioning from a positive perspective. Well done, stay on that path. You have probably also found how much easier it is to get around barriers when you are thinking about solutions and what it is that you want to happen.
If, however, you have identified that you fall away and stay away, reacting to adversity as if it is a problem then you hold yourself in a negative state and it is unlikely from this point that you are going to easily find ways to get on with what it is you want to do. No doubt you spend a lot of time thinking about what you don’t want, how hard life is and wishing that it could be a lot simpler. Well it can be and it is all up to you and how your choose to act.
Having identified that you see problems and not solutions or opportunities, take a little time now to start to work on changing that habit. First, make a pact with yourself to stop talking about problems and start talking about solutions. Language makes a big difference as does your silent mind chatter. If all that your mind hears is how impossible the situation is, then that is being reinforced continuously. If all that your mind hears is what you do not want, then that is what you will get. Remember, the powerful Law of Attraction says that you get what you focus on.
Additionally, the people around you will hear how hard it is and will reinforce that to you and to themselves and possibly even to your customers. Almost everyone these days is looking for what can be done, not what can not be done and quite frankly, if they are paying, then that is reasonable. So stop with the talk about problems and start with the talk about solutions.
Then, sit for a moment and write down a list of all of your problems. Alongside that, list all of the possible solutions, even if they seem a little crazy. Go over those solutions and see what you need to have at your disposal to make it work. Ask your self a few questions such as – can I get those things? What do I need to know to do this? How can I get that knowledge? Who do I know who has it?
Right now you are in solutions mode and doesn’t it feel great?
When you are swamped by a problem, seeing only the negative, you can bet it feels pretty bad. As soon as you move to solutions, you mood will lift, your brain will fire off ideas and you will start to get motivated. Great, stay with that.
Last, and most important, take action. It is not enough to see a way around a problem or to see any event as an opportunity. The next and sometimes most difficult is to get active. Go and get those things that you need to make something start to happen, persist, do not give up, every day decide what you will do towards your solutions and just keep on it.
Stay with the basics – decide what you are going to do, take action every day, persist and keep an eye out for when you have succeeded. Celebrate that moment.
Take a Moment to Walk in Another’s Shoes
I have been guilty myself of making judgements about another person in a moment of annoyance or in anger for something I think they have done. That was the case quite recently when I was surprised by the behaviour of some work colleagues who had cut me off without so much as a word and refused to speak to me. For weeks I tried to understand what had happened and why they might do such a thing; looking inside myself for what I may have done to bring this upon myself.
It was not until recently that my attention shifted outside of myself to wonder what might have been happening for them to behave in that way and in that moment, I put myself into their shoes. I gave some thought to their lives at that time and came to understand that a particular set of circumstances that they were experiencing would have been very difficult and who could guess how anyone might behave given the same thing happening. This exercise just let me have a little bit of empathy for those people and I found at that point, that it was easy to move on and accept what had happened.
It is a part of the personal growth experience to accept things as they are and move towards what you want for yourself. I now know that one of the things that I want for myself is to have empathy and concern for others, regardless of how I am affected by their actions. This was just another opportunity to move closer to who I really want to be.
An Excercise in Gratitude
I was recently tooling around with Entrecard and read a blog (unfortunately I did not keep a record so that I could acknowledge it) and the writer was going to blog on what they were grateful for every day until Thanksgiving. Now since we do not have Thanksgiving in Australia, I decided that I would do something slightly different until Christmas Day and create my own gratitude list.
So I am writing on Facebook about what I am grateful for every day until Christmas Day. And I would love it if you would join me and add your own gratitude list. Lets create a few great vibrations for peace and goodwill on earth.
My thanks to whoever owns the blog, who had the good idea.
Have Fun And Create With The Law of Attraction
I came upon this article by Russell Yarmel, The Success Man and it is so good that I decided to post it for my readers to see. Enjoy!
It seems to me that a lot of you are “busy trying to master the Law of Attraction”.
You’re running through your daily affirmations.
You’re reminding yourself, “be positive, be positive”.
You’re asking yourself “how can I look on the bright side here?”.
You’re reading books, following advice, trying, trying, trying… while the rest of the world is running by you, laughing at you for staring in the mirror and reminding yourself how great you are, like you didn’t already know it.
It’s about this that I’d like to talk to you today.
Remember Why You Learned About LOA in the First Place
What is your goal? Stay focused. What is it that you want in your life?
Do you want to be able to tell everyone about how every little thought is creating and contributing to the Universe? Is that really the most pertinent thing in your life right now? Or do you want some money, so that you have the time to study the things that interest you?
Or do you want to lose 40 pounds, so you don’t have to worry about your heart failing while you read?
You’re Playing Your Cards All Wrong
What does LOA say?
What you focus on, you create.
When you focus on your “need to master the Law of Attraction”, you’re thinking about your lack of mastery of LOA. So really, while you’re sitting there thinking you need to do this and need to do that and “oh, why aren’t things manifesting in my life instantly already?”… you’re actually pushing yourself farther and farther away from this desired “mastery”. Truth is….
You’ve Already Mastered the Law of Attraction
That’s right. You already have LOA down, 100%. Everything you think about is being attracted to you, and if you’re thinking about how you WANT to master LOA… you’re really only thinking about things that you don’t have, simply because you’re telling yourself that you haven’t yet done it! Bizarre it is, but it’s the truth. You do not need to put any effort into mastering this fine art, as it’s a gift given to you at birth, something inherited, which you carry deep down inside of you.
The Solution
Rather than trying to master LOA, accept it as a fundamental truth, and move on with your life, knowing that you have this wisdom. Make a decision to go out, do the things you enjoy, make decision, decision, decision, take action, action, action, enjoy, enjoy, enjoy. Go out there and get the things you love. Hold on to the image of the things you want in life, and feel the feelings associated with having them.
The worst thing you can possibly do is get caught up in the “how”.
Don’t worry about “How do I change myself to make this work more in my favor”.
Rather, decide to make prompt and decisive decisions, and allow the “how” to come to you.
If you really believe in LOA, you know that you do not need to waste your time trying to learn it, rather just focus on what you want, and only then will you see how fast it’s actually working.
Nobody’s enjoying watching you sit there and wondering “how” to run.
Rather, we’re all cheering you on as you take the first step of that sprint…
Everyone who I’ve tagged in this note is familiar with LOA…
and isn’t wasting time tying his or her shoes!
Keep on running, my friends!
Much love,
Russell
p.s. Quit being so hard on yourself! There’s no need to repeat the mistakes of others! Have fun and do what you like, it’s what you’re here for!
