Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance is something which would be bothering many of us with the blurring of lines between our work lives and our personal lives. The reasons for this imbalance is due to fast paced changes in the demands of business in the world where we live in during the past few years. Globalization is provoking increased competition, there is cost containment and downsizing which means work needs to be done by fewer people and also the technological advancement is making it so easy  for people to be available 24x7 whenever wherever without any boundaries. Everybody is busier than ever and there is too much to do in too little time. Customers, employers’ expectations are higher than ever and it is not always possible to keep up with all the expectations of various stake holders.

Robin Sharma has defined work life balance as a fluid balance between performance and pleasure. To get to world class in work life balance is managing performance on one hand with pleasure on the other hand. This he calls as platinum equation. Work-life balance is subjective and hence cannot be defined objectively. It is fluid because it is ever changing and varies from person to person. What is a balance for one person may not be same with you. It is something which each one of us has to work on each single day. It is a daily challenge, the real thing is to be aware of how to get to a better balance. The key is to have a balance of performance to pleasure.

A metaphor can be used to explain the platinum equation. Platinum equation is something akin to climbing a mountain and being able to strike that dynamic balance between keeping your eyes on the mountain top and still enjoying the climb. The mountain top in the metaphor are the “to do’s” and “your goals” those giant objective you want to get to, to live your dreams. And “the climb” in the metaphor is all about the journey of life, living in the moment and experiencing the pleasure so that you not only realized your human potential and played your best game and showed genuine leadership but you also had an amazing time doing it.

Performance balance with pleasure will take one to greatness and that’s going to give a work life balance. This balance is an ideal, it’s not easy and it’s a daily challenge, every day one will have to balance performance with pleasure and sometimes getting a little too far on performance side and on other day spending little more time on enjoyment and pleasure side, but with awareness and with the discipline to make those course corrections or those self -corrections one need to bring oneself back into a better balance.

There are lots of benefits of arriving at work life balance, some of them are given below:

• You will be more effective rather than being busy just for the sake of being busy as there is no point in being so busy climbing a mountain that when you get to the top you realize that you climbed a wrong mountain.
• You are going to be happier, you are going to have a better health and more energy in what you do. Energy is contagious, when you are a positive source of energy your team mates, your family, your friends will feel it.
•  You will experience a greater sense of control, you will not have that out of control feeling all the time.
• You will have a great time with your family and friends and will take time to do the things that makes you happy.
•  You will have a richer relationship at work and at home.
•  You will have superior connection with life and a feeling that you are in the game of life rather than falling into the trap so many people have fallen into and living by accident, being reactive rather than being proactive.

Given below are few ideas which would be helpful in  building a world class life:

• Devote yourself to daily self-care: This can be better explained with the metaphor of oxygen mask on an airplane. Essentially when you get on to the airplane, the first thing you hear from the flight attendant is “in the event of an emergency oxygen mask will come down from the ceiling, put the oxygen mask on your mouth before you try to help anyone else even your children.” The point of wisdom is pretty clear in this announcement, if you can’t breathe you cannot help anyone else. If you do not have any oxygen you will not be of service to anyone around you.A parallel to this can also be drawn from the fact that we all use mobile phones and we all charge the mobile phone battery daily for it to work for the day, similarly for human body to work at its best it is essential to charge your body every day. Taking care for yourself is a selfless act. Taking care of yourself allow you to be more for others. Too many people needs a crisis in their life for them to wake up to what is truly important and begin to care for themselves and focus on their inner work. Few tips for daily self-care can be, getting up early and take sixty minutes for yourself every morning, during that time work on connecting with the person you truly are, work on your character, think about your fears, think about your
  
  weaknesses.Write a journal, this will allow you to spot a pattern, it allows you to build awareness. After you continue the journal for a little while, you will start spotting pattern and you will start seeing the consequences of your actions. It allows you to put down the lessons you learn from life. Journal helps release negative feeling in a healthy way. Journaling helps in searching your beliefs. We treat the people we love the most in the worst ways.Get to a world class fitness level. Nothing is more important than health, it is more important than your family, because If you do not have good health, you cannot be there for your family, cannot celebrate with your family. Often we take our health for granted until we lose it. When we are young we would sacrifice our health for wealth and yet when we get old and figure out what life is truly all about, we would sacrifice every penny of our wealth for one good day health. To commit yourself for self-care take care of your health. When you are in really a good physical condition life is lot more fun, lot happier.

•  Enrich your human connections: So many people in business spend most of their waking hours in building their careers and becoming successful so that they can get to a point where they can have fun, pleasure and enjoyment with people they love but the tragedy is once they get there the people they love are no longer there with them. There is no point of being really successful but all alone, without family and friends alongside of you as you journey to the mountain top. Love and belonging is essential to realize your best on the pleasure side. We need to connect with human-beings to develop ourselves as human being and realize our potential. Building relationship and feeling a sense of belonging and a sense of community, a sense of love our thinking and our very perception of reality can be altered. Most of us are out of balance on the pleasure side of the equation and big piece on your pleasure side is enriching your human connections especially with your family.
•  Get brilliant at life planning: Failing to plan is planning to fail. Nothing will so focus your mind than a clear plan. Every one of us in the planet today could do extra ordinary things with their life if they had clear plan and then took focused and consistent action to execute nearly flawlessly around that plan. Most people have no idea about the fullness of their human potential and the real challenge most of us face in this wired and uncertain world that we find ourselves in is that we are trying to be all things to all people and as a result we end up being nothing for anyone. It seems so obvious yet most people do not plan for what they want to create. They are very good at being busy but they are not aware that they are busy climbing the wrong mountain. A plan relieves you of the torment of choice and a plan also gives clarity.
• Practice gratitude and celebrate more: It is very common to postpone living, it is very common to say that when I retire I will celebrate more, travel, give more and enjoy my life.  It is essential to celebrate while you climb to the mountain top. Go out and play out your best but enjoy your journey, celebrate the little things while you reach your bigger goals. Practice gratitude, keep a blessing list, write down all things that you are grateful for. Our lives becomes what we think of because our action determines our destiny. Focus on good things, good things
  
  will happen because good things would drive actions which would give good results and you should celebrate and pay gratitude.  Always be thankful for everything and say 'thank you' a lot.
• Make the time for fun and adventure: See the life as lot of fun and adventure. What is the point of achieving great things and realising your mission if you have not enjoyed it along the way and not had fun along the way. You need to take time to laugh with team mates, go out with family for a funny movie, life is not more than a one giant adventure, you are meant to experience good seasons as well as challenging seasons. Life is meant to be lived fully. Life is like a river, as you go down the river you would bump against the two banks, on one side would be the bank of joy and on the other side is the bank of sorrow, every single one of us will reach both the banks from time to time, the real key is not to be stuck on either bank for too long. See life as an adventure, the person who experiences the most wins. Collapse the timeline by experiencing more.Build micro-adventures in your schedule, try different food, go to see a foreign film, go to see a senior citizen home and talk to them to understand life better, pull out some music you loved when you were growing up, this is essential as human brain craves novelty.
•  Focus on impact and meaning: What is most important in life is not what we get from life, it is what we give to life. Ultimately what fills our heart with greatest happiness, joy, fulfillment and sustainable happiness is what we have given back to others and the contribution we have made to people around us. All great lives has been defined in so many ways with the impact they have made to the lives of the people. Living with a sense of purpose, making a difference each day, making a difference to the people with your presence, leading by example, being a world class human being and have an impact on the people around you.

Taking the above ideas, if you were to improve the way you show up to the pleasure side of the equation, only 1% improvement every day, in 60 days you will see 60% improvement in that area. Life you are living today is not necessarily the life you are going to be living in the future. If you keep on doing the same thing that you have always done, you are going to see the same results you have always experienced. But if you make changes, you can be living at a whole new level professionally and personally in a matter of time.

As Confucius said, “the journey of thousand mind begins with a single step.” Better awareness, leads to better choices and when you make better choices, you will see better results.

Source: Learning from Robin Sharma's audio sessions