Episode 8 – Reframing the Work Life Balance Conversation

Hi and welcome to the Daring to Leap podcast. I'm your host, Loree Philip. I'm so excited to dive into this week's episode with you. So on this week's episode, we are going to be discussing work life balance and an important perspective I believe is missing from the conversation and how you can use this reframe to enjoy both your life and work more. 

So let's get started. The elusive work life balance topic. It is so personal. Nobody seems to have the same definition on work life balance even means part of that is just because we all have our own view of what we want in our lives. 

How much emphasis do we want to have on work? How much emphasis do we want to have on our lives and our families and ourselves? And so there isn't this hard and fast rule that this is what work life balance looks like and there's this mold that everybody will fit into.

No, I think that's part of the challenge. Everybody wants something a little different for them and that's what makes it so hard to tackle. And I'll just note that work life balance and this idea of having balance was so important to me when I was in my career, my first career in corporate, that I definitely saw myself holding back on my work goals and what I wanted to achieve because I was in fear of losing the balance that I had. 

So as I move forward in this topic, I want to give you the image of what I have right now when we start talking about balance and what I see is how it is for a lot of the people that I know, especially working moms, professional women, and how their day looks like. 

So here's the image I get. I'm walking on this tightrope. I get up in the morning. I have about 15 things I'm juggling, and I get on the rope, and I'm just juggling. And my goal is to make it across to the end of the day, across the rope while juggling everything and not falling off or not falling off too much. 

And at the end of the day, if I made it, that's success. I made it. I did everything I had on my plate. I held it together. I was successful, and I made it to the end of the day. Most of us feel like that every day, and it's exhausting.

And if that is the goal that we're just barely balancing, barely making it, there's no lot of room. That rope is very skinny. And that list of things we're juggling very long, well, it's kind of a depressing goal.

It's not really an inspiring vision of how I want my life to be. And if, at the end of the day, we feel like, well, we made it. But we were so focused and I want you to think about this. Were you so focused on juggling everything?

Not dropping a single ball, not falling off? And then at the end of the day, did you miss the plot? Did you miss your life truly enjoying ourselves in that day? And we just do it over and over and over again.

And you see, the thing with balance is there's no specific endpoint to having balance. There isn't like this balance goal. And you achieved it and you can check it off the list. No, it's constant, always there, and it changes.

So we wake up each day and try again and again and again, and the constant battle of it can be so exhausting. So in this episode, I really want to reframe this conversation with you. I would like you to consider shifting.

Making one shift. Shift from making it to enjoying it. What I mean is shift from making it to the end of the day without falling off, without dropping a ball, just doing everything. You're trying to be a great mom, a great career woman, a great friend, a great wife, all the things. 

And we end up just losing the day when you shift from making it to the end of the day and not dropping a ball to truly trying to enjoy it. And I say trying only because it isn't like this magic wand where all of a sudden you can just love every second of your day. 

That's not the reality of it. But if you're intentional about bringing in and thinking about how could I enjoy my work more? How could I enjoy my life more now? Enjoying making it across that rope and maybe it's not even a rope anymore, you just are enjoying each day. 

That is a goal I can get excited about that has some more inspiration to it. So what I want you to consider instead of this work life balance and again, like I said, I love being balanced. So I'm not saying that's not a great goal. 

But what I want you to consider here is work, life, fun. Where is the fun, the joy in all of this? What is the point? The focus is going to be how can we enjoy our work more.  How can we enjoy our lives more? 

In this perspective shift, we can move from constantly trying to achieve balance to adding in more enjoyment into our day and enjoying the journey instead of just trying to get to the destination. The other part of this is I want you to consider that we allow ourselves to fall off sometimes. 

It's going to happen. And so this allowing ourselves to do it, it's okay, we fall off, we get off balance, we drop a ball, but then we just pick ourselves up and keep going. So it isn't so much we're doing this big giant effort to hold everything up that we miss our life in the process. 

Some things will fall off and that's okay. As long as we are being more intentional about being there in your life in the moment. This week, my dare to you is to focus more on the enjoyment of your work, in your life. 

And I'll give you a personal example and this is more on the life side. So I was noticing that in the evening, after work, during the week with my kids is very busy. I go pick up the kids and then I start making dinner, dinner. 

And then my son Miles has homework to do and we've got bath time and there's a lot of busyness in the evening. And I was noticing that I was just trying to make it and in that I really wasn't there with my kids even at that time.

I was just thinking, okay, we're just going to go through the process and then I can go get that last thing or two done afterwards. But what I really do enjoy with my kids when I allow myself to do it, is to connect with them and have fun with them and laugh and giggle and be silly.

So what I decided to do and even if it's just a small amount of time, like ten focused minutes, where I'm just allowing myself to let go of the busyness of the to do list, to be present with my kids at bedtime or just laying around on the couch with them, giggling, tickling them, whatever it is.

Just allowing that to happen and allowing myself to enjoy it and intentionally thinking about it made a really big difference for me. And I still could get everything needed to get done. But it was a shift.

And my evenings aren't just about trying to get to the next day. My evenings are about also spending time with my family, connecting with them and being there with them, especially my kids as they're really young.

And so that's an example that I'll bring in. And my dare to you again is to focus on more on the enjoyment of your work in your life. What I'd like for you to do this week is just take ten minutes out of your time and think about these questions for yourself.

Are you so busy trying to make it that you're missing out on your life? How can you bring more fun and joy into your work? How can you bring more fun and joy into your life? What becomes possible for you when you start to enjoy all aspects of your life? 

I can't wait to hear what comes up for you on this. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you've enjoyed it, I would love for you to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a friend. Until next time.