Achieving Work Life Balance Doesnt Have to be Hard

Although you want more balance in your life, does the thought of trying to achieve it fill you with dread? Does it feel a daunting task, just another thing on your to-do list? Even though you want to make some improvements to your work life balance, its easy to get overwhelmed by the thought of what needs to be done. This can lead to losing your motivation and you end up not doing anything.

There probably are a number of changes that need to be made, so how about making these changes in much smaller steps? Smaller steps feel more achieveable and can be built on over time. These small steps can add up to big changes, but they don't feel so difficult to take.

Lets say one of the changes you want to make to have better work life balance is to complete your days work within the working day and leave on time. Some people will just make that decision and follow through with it, however I've found that for many people this approach simply does not work. This is often because they haven't taken the opportunity to consider the consequences of their actions and identified what if anything is needed to ensure that this change is successful.

What often happens in this scenario is that within days of making this big change, they have missed some work deadlines, let down some work colleagues and feeling stressed by the tasks they're now not completing. This often leads to them deciding that achieving a balance between work and life is too difficult and they give up.

It doesn't have to be that hard though! Instead choose some small steps, take one step to start with and when thats working well, then add another small change in. Its easier to do, a feeling of success is achieved and any obstacles that arise are more easily handled effectively.

Lets stick with the scenario of completing your days work and leaving on time. For example, at the moment you're usually leaving work 2 hours late each day. So to break this into smaller steps you could decide to leave say 10 or 15 minutes earlier each day and do this for the first week at least. Once you feel settled into this change, then reduce your working hours by another 10 minutes or so. As the days pass, you're getting closer to your ultimate goal.

So, I invite you to first identify a small step that you're now committed to taking towards a better balance between your work and personal life. Before you take the step, identify what obstacles you may face. I suggest you write these down on paper for clarity. With the above scenario, some possible obstacles might be, how you will actually get all of your work done in less time, your boss or colleagues objecting to your leaving time or you needing to deal with your own feelings about not working long hours.

With any obstacles that you're aware of, I encourage you to identify some possible solutions. Some obstacles won't be obvious until you start taking the steps forward and this is where if you're only taking small steps, its much easier to handle as the obstacles are likely to be smaller. When you handle these smaller obstacles and handle them completely, you're then ready to take another small step. These obstacles may require you to learn how to work more effectively, communicate better with others or overcome your fears.



To learn more about this author, visit Wendy Hearn's Website.

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