Action for Everlasting Happiness

Getting a good balance of work and life is important for us in order to maintain a happy, and healthy demeanor inside and outside of the workplace. Being able to separate the two is where the journey begins to get hard. Like most things, there isn't one right way to doing this. People's work and family circumstances vary from how many children they have to juggle, their extra curricular activities/ hobbies, their ages, support from family/ friends, flexibility of their work schedules, etc.

The School of Life youtube channel relates the concept of work-life balance, to the popular car, the Audi R8. The video helps us understand the difference between having one goal to having many and why we can't be expected to be as efficient when were taking on so many "jobs" at once. If you're having trouble determining whether or not work-life balance will suit YOUR life, there are many resources at your disposal. If you're dealing with the stress of work, be sure to check out the Pinterest posting on 55 Tips to Manage Work Stress. These tips focus on how to cope with stressful situations with work, how to eliminate them from happening in the future, while also ensuring that your happiness is in check. How to Find Fulfilling Work is another video that The School of Life

has created to make sure we as students entering the workforce, know that being confused about our career choice is perfectly normal. For some, the understanding of balancing our work and our life doesn't come naturally. It's hard to comprehend the act of separating two huge parts of our lives, and somehow not blending them together. Hopefully with the help of the different articles and videos I have provided, you now have a better understanding of WHAT work-life balance is, IF it's attainable, and HOW to achieve it!

Chasing after Work-Life Balance.. Is There Really Such a Thing?

Now that we've explored the notion of work-life balance and how to attain it to better our lives, we also need to look at the other side of things. Answering those questions that linger in our minds.
Is it really possible? Do we really have a chance at finally finding it? Or are we just setting ourselves up for failure?

Though many people believe and strive for work-life balance, there are those who firmly believe that such a thing doesn't exist, or that chasing after it causes more stress, and imbalance. In some cases, the concept of work-life balance acts as quicksand in peoples professional and personal lives causing them to feel more frustrated, depressed and exhausted.

So why is it that our society is taught to strive for work-life balance in the first place? We seem to revolve around mastering this concept, expecting the promise of being rewarded for the hard work and sacrifices that we endured along the way. In reality, the concept aims to increase our productivity, while in turn minimizing our emotional/ physical well being. There are real-life examples which prove that work-life balance is just a fantasy that we're all living in. Shark Tank's Barbara Corcoran, explores the ideology of "chopping your two worlds in half". She believes that the only way you can separate those  two worlds is by leaving family at home, and work at work. Having proven this in her own life, it seems to be one of the only solutions for those who don't agree with pursuing the thought of work-life balance. To understand more about her thoughts and exploring this philosophy, watch her interview, There's No Such Thing as Work-Life Balance. Find out for yourselves if you can separate work from the rest of your life. While we can't all just automatically turn off our thoughts, can we make it a priority to regularly experience life outside of work? Take my poll to find out what the rest of us think!
Do You Think Work-Life Balance is Possible?

Me Time

A popular expression in life is that "there aren't enough hours in the day". Is this because we don't take full advantage of our day? Or is it because we're too busy dealing with the (what feels like) millions of things that need to be done? Sometimes It feels like were getting 25 hours of to-dos thrown at us every 24 hours. We have to remember that Superwoman-and Superman are fictional characters. Real people can't devote 100% to everything they do.

It seems that there are two main aspects associated with work/life balance. The first is lack of time and scheduling conflicts, and the other is feeling overwhelmed, overloaded or stressed by the pressures of home, work, family or friends. There comes a time in life where we all feel these things, and sometimes, all at once. Whether it's a role overload at work, work-to-family interference, or family-to-work interference, there's always some sort of imbalance in our lives. Some of us strive for that 40th floor, private office space with "Mark", or "Jessica" serving us coffee at our beck and call, and for that big family we've always wanted, with two girls and two boys. Trying to be that CEO and the perfect mother/father doesn't seem very attainable, does it? Well let's find out! Try this QUIZ, provided by the Canadian Mental Health Association. They found that more then HALF of us Canadians feel overwhelmed by either work, home and family, friends, physical health, volunteer or community service.

You CAN still give 100% with managing your family, and your career and feeling satisfied with both. You just have to allow yourself the time to breathe, and reflect. Allow yourself to appreciate and make the most of the personal time you have. If we don't take advantage of the time we have to ourselves, we'll become too burned out to fully appreciate any part of our lives.

Is Your Quarter-Life Crisis Causing an Imbalance in Your Work Life?

"You will never feel truly satisfied by work, until you are satisfied by life" - Heather Schuck, The Working Mom Manifesto

When I research "Work-Life Balance", most of the articles or web postings fall in the critical category. Not many people think that there is such a thing as combining your work and your life and doing it in the most productive way. Focusing on one thing to the exclusion of all others has it's costs. Society has set up the absurd idea that we can do everything and we can do it all perfectly. This ideology is one that many have taken on. Ever wonder why you sometimes see men and women trying to manage a million things at once? And have a hard time doing so? Whether it being their children and their careers, or their careers and their social lives, or their extra curricular actives and their careers? In today's society, we see these men and women but we also see students, being college and otherwise, trying to maintain a healthy balance of school, work, and their social lives. In some cases, these students are us. There is such a thing as having a melt down in your 20's. This is presumed to be a concept called aand it isn't new.

If you're consumed about questioning the direction of your career, relationships, and overall life purpose- don't worry. I think that it's actually more normal than not. Some of us feel that because we've graduated from some sort of college/ university with some sort of degree/diploma, that we need to find a job NOW. Like, RIGHT NOW. We keep fighting for that longing need to feel accomplished, like we didn't waste our time and money getting OSAP, or bank loans, or lines of credit, or basically ANY source of money-borrowing to get an education. These thoughts come to us when were stressed, when were trying to balance our workload, with our day-to-day lives.

Varci Vartanian says it best in her article, Powering Through Your Quarter-Life Crisis. She helps us (the struggling student population) to see that there isn't one set solution to figuring out our "perfect life path" but there are ways of achieving it with time and motivation. 

How I used to feel about Work-Life Balance

A couple of years ago I could have easily believed that there was no such thing as a healthy work/life balance. My life went from using every opportunity I could find to waste time (but if you're having fun while doing it, it's not really a waste of time right?) to juggling two jobs, and going to school. The transition was tough to say the least, and to my dismay, I found myself unable to balance my work and my life.

To sum it up, these were basically my thoughts on work-life "balance". I found that if I wanted to continue making as much money as possible, while still attending school, I would have to sacrifice something in return. That something quickly became my life. I wasn't seeing my friends anymore, and I was barely seeing my family, even though I still lived at home. I felt overwhelmed with school and work because I wasn't doing anything to take my mind off of these things. It started with noticing the little things like when I would do my laundry. I rarely saw an article of clothing that wasn't apart of either of my uniforms, or wasn't sweat pants that i regularly wore to school. It may seem minuscule, but it helped me to realize that even though I knew there were people out there who were juggling a MUCH heavier workload, I still needed a break from mine. 

Something that I wish I had stumbled upon when I was going through this imbalance, is the following article on entrepreneur.com, 5 Secrets to Achieving and Maintaining Work-Life Balance. Now that i've read the article, it all seems to make a little more sense AND it's not as hard as it looks! 

Now don't forget...