About Work-Life Balance

Join us on the road to overcoming overload

Do you want work-life balance?

I did a simple google search on “work-life balance.”  It returned more than one billion pages.  On the other hand, doing a search on “work-life balance is a myth” returned more than 42,000,000 pages. What does this tell us? Simply put, most of us are in search of this elusive work-life balance.

I do not think God designed us to have work-life balance; rather His desire for our life is to have balance in all aspects of our life. In seeking work-life balance we create a win and lose competition between work and life. In this model the winner gains at the expense of the other.

In seeking life balance we look at all of life as good work and see good work as the privilege of living. In both work and life, there are aspects that energize us and other aspects that drain us. I know some people who love their work and find their roles extremely energizing. I also learned that sometimes areas of our life that God designed to energize us become most draining.

Achieving life balance comes from being intentional about the input and output of life. How do you do that? The secret is balancing energizing time and activities in response to the draining ones that will most certainly happen.

For example, take the Christmas holidays. As the song says, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year.” It is a time for love, joy, and peace. But, for many  “It’s the most stressful time of the year.” Why?  We can argue and blame work, family, society and even the government. This will not lead us to achieve life balance.  The truth is that, like many aspects of life, we have allowed Christmas to become the most stressful time of the year.

Do you want to achieve life balance? Start this Christmas. Start by balancing the input and output of your life. For practical thoughts and tips check out “De-cluttering the Holiday”.