Work Life Balancing Act
Shane J
Read Time:
8 Minutes
July 26, 2018

With all the stuff going on in the world, and in life in general, we thought we would add in a feature every month to focus on balancing the work life adventures we all are a part of. Work is how we pay our bills and take care of our families. Life, on the other hand, I would consider to be everything else outside the work realm.

Why is the Balancing Act Important?

I ask myself this often when juggling the many things that both life and work toss at me. When we are not handling these properly our life can seem like its spiraling out of control. We can have panic attacks, severe anxiety and generally just burn ourselves out.

We need to have a feeling of control in both the work world and the life world or things will seem to fall apart. The balance is extremely delicate for us all.

When I speak of maintenance I am referring to taking care of yourself. I’ve been to a lot of groups and children’s workshops, as I have two boys which require a lot of work to help them along. I’ve been able to take away a great many awesome nuggets of information that I use in my own everyday life.

When I did the Explosive Child workshops I learned a lot about how children had what would be termed as a “yucky bucket”. Just like a real bucket it has a finite amount of stuff it can hold. When this bucket becomes full it overflows everywhere. It's messy its explosive and generally unpleasant!

No matter what anyone tells you, we as adults have “yucky buckets”. Our lives are stressful, fast paced and sometimes downright mentally messy. Just like back when we were children...

You can try and control every aspect of your life but let me tell you there are some things that you cannot control. For one, you can control yourself all you want, but you have ZERO control on how others handle the same situation. Each person deals with stress, and things they are working on differently. Nothing you can do will change that. NOTHING.

The content of the bucket is going to spew all over the place and you will just have to stand by and deal with the aftermath.

C’est la vie. No truer words in any language can be spoken. That’s Life.

This is just one example of why the balancing act is important. To help keep our “yucky buckets” manageable to deal with. We will most likely never have them utterly empty, but we can at least make it, so we don’t have it exploding everywhere all day long.

What can we do?

Well to start with, we need to stop putting so much unnecessary pressure on ourselves. No matter what anyone will tell you we are our own worst critic. We tend to rip apart, judge and struggle with our own opinions on the work we do. This needs to stop!

We need to calm down on what we feel about the hard work we are doing. Sometimes that can be as simple as taking a 5-minute walk outside. Take a few deep breathes and then go back to the work we are on.

A lot of what is shoved into our bucket some days we put there ourselves. Breathe people... nice and slowly. We need to get a hold of the stress and dial it back. Due to the high pressure lives a lot of successful people lead, their bucket on a good day is probably already half full the moment they get out of bed in the morning.

Maybe we need to change how we start our days? This could help with things like an early morning meditation, yoga, or even a walk outside. When I am especially wound up I find a nice quiet place and try to listen to some music. I find the melodies relaxing and I can get myself back to a more peaceful place.

Lisa, on the other hand, finds calm by going for drives. She has no rhyme or reason to where she is going its completely random. She just drives. This could be leaving an extra 10 minutes to drive before heading to a meeting or after a stressful day, just driving around beautiful wooded areas for an hour.

The key is you must find what works for you and stick with it. What works for Lisa and I might not work for you. Finding a good start for your day will help aid with the way the rest of the day unfolds. If you can have a way to get your day starting off calm and relaxed it.

Consistency is very important in the early days of setting yourself up for success. Pick the same time every morning and do not deviate from that time. I read somewhere once that it takes 30 days for something to start to be a habit and become a part of your daily routine.

Remember to work hard and keep at it. Start small and set yourself up for success.  and will go into more ideas in the work life balance world.

Till Next Time…

To read more about the Explosive Child check out the book by Dr. Ross W. Greene