3 Steps to Help You Achieve a Better Work-Life Balance
Posted on May 06, 2023 by Hitomi Taguchi, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
Maintaining a work-life balance is crucial for well-being, yet so difficult to achieve. Here are 3 steps to help you out.
Imagine you had to balance on one leg. You might be wobbling back and forth and flapping your arms wildly to stay in balance. It takes a lot of awareness (body coordination) and continuous effort to hold this pose.
Having a good work-life balance is similar—it’s not about reaching a specific point and being done. It’s about continuously staying aware and noticing when you are starting to lose your work-life balance, and then readjusting accordingly.
So, what can you do? Here are 3 steps to help you find and maintain a state of meaningful work-life balance.
Step 1: Picture Your Focal Point
You might know this trick about balancing: it’s easier when you identify and focus on a point a little farther away from you. It’s the same for work-life balance, except that your “Focal Point” for work-life balance is not a physical point in space, but your answer to this question: “What will I have/be doing when my work and life are balanced?”.
Make your answer as specific, joyful, and attractive to you as possible. The more clearly you can imagine your ideal future, the brighter your focal point will become.
Below are some examples of increasing the specificity and clarity of your focal point (“Generic answer” → “Specific, clear answer”):
“Spend more time with my family” → “Read a story to my baby every night before bed”.
“Get healthier” → “Go for a half-day kayaking every weekend with my friends”.
“Feel better” → “Weekly three hours spent alone to focus time on my business”.
It might take a while for you to find the one that makes your heart dance with anticipation. Take as much time as you want. Modify as many times as you need. Also, make as many focal points as you wish—the more, the merrier!
Step 2: Adjust to Disruptions
Expecting things to remain organized and under control can be unrealistic. One day your roof may start leaking. Or you might wake up to a power outage. Or you could get stuck in a transit airport. Life happens.
Be prepared to be pushed off your balance. It might feel like small pressure or a sudden big shove. When you notice you are losing your work-life balance, sometimes it’s helpful to accept that whatever that had happened (or is happening), couldn’t have been any different.
Simply breathe deep, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, refocus on your focal point, and restart. And don’t forget to give yourself a rewarding treat from time to time. :)
Step 3: Invest in Yourself
Consider this entire process of developing work-life balance as an ultimate course on growing and getting better at handling uncertainties in your life. Just like any course, you must invest your resources to reap the benefits of this course.
Invest your Money.
Show yourself you are committed to this process. It could be a journal, a frame with a picture of your focal point, or a book with inspirational quotes. Buy something that will remind you of this journey you have decided to take and that will help you through the process.
Invest your Time.
Use your time to reflect, analyze, and re-strategize periodically. This may also mean learning to say “No” to some things to make the time you need. Keep a mindset of experimental optimization, where you hypothesize, try it out, analyze, and repeat, until you feel comfortable. Being patient with yourself is also an often-forgotten key to success. You are working on something new, and failure is a necessary learning process.
Invest your Talent.
Take advantage of what you are already good at. Are you creative? Do you love problem-solving? Do you like flow charts? Are you good at making things? Are you good at asking for help? The more you can make this process your own, the easier it will be to maintain your balance.
Work-life balance is not a fantasy, but an achievable way of life that you can create.
If you are applying these three steps but are not seeing any changes or improvements in your work-life balance, go to my profile page and schedule a free consultation with me—let’s discuss what this article might be missing for you.
