Work Life Balance
I recently discovered the best work life strategy that I’ve ever come across, one that will propel your business and give you more time to be yourself with your family and friends.
No, I wasn’t reading The 4 Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris. Yes, the four-hour work week sounds lovely, but is that the reality for a small business trying to make it in 2013?
Didn’t think so.
It's one of the hardest things in the world to do, probably because it runs so counter to our powerful and primal need to feel safe, loved, and successful.
For most of my life, I prided myself on relentless perseverance in the face of obstacles, and a refusal to give up on any goal or client I was pursuing. Letting go felt like failure or rejection, and both were nearly unbearable to me.
As we move through 2012 under a gathering cloud of political and economic gloom, I urge you to maintain a positive attitude. It seems to me that our politicians, economists and business leaders, through their negative outlook, make hard times a self fulfilling prophesy. It is up to all of us to engage in positive self talk and to project a positive attitude.
Over the summer I had an early morning conference call with another consultant and one of his clients. As we were wrapping up, I asked the other two people where they were calling from. One sheepishly said that she was vacationing on the Jersey Shore with her family and had sneaked out early to make the call. The second person admitted that he was on vacation in Martha's Vineyard and had done the same thing. I then confessed that I was calling from western Massachusetts where my family had rented a lake cottage. After a moment of silence, one of us said, "Boy!
A while back I invested in a home study course that looked promising. Once I had “consumed” the material by writing in the workbook, I couldn’t return it. Of course, if I was considering a return, I should have gone through the DVDs before doing that, to see if they were as valuable as I expected.
According to the annual Conference Board job satisfaction survey, more than half of Americans (52%) say they are dissatisfied with their jobs. But it's not the work that's makes us unhappy - it's how we deal with it while we're there. Boredom, perfectionism, anxiety, and impatience make us hate what we do. And feeling physically bad - from sitting too long, caving in to stress, and eating poorly at work - just make things worse.
