Personal and Professional Life Balance
Life is all about balancing your work and time for your loved ones. All you need to do is to prioritize your work and family life hand in hand. For some people working hard is a priority as they have a family, EMIs, and their needs to look upon. You should not feel any kind of pressure while fulfilling your dreams. Love should come easily by maintaining equilibrium between both. It’s mandatory to give at least 1-2 hours to your family after coming home even if you are tired back from work.
It’s very important to understand what your family wants from you (Money or Time). If your personal life is good but there is no professional life, then you feel empty as you can’t buy anything for your loved ones. Also if you have Strong Professional life but zero personal life then there is no worth to the money you earn. It is important to understand that you are working hard to give a better lifestyle to your loved ones and yourself.
Slogging for 12-13 hours in the office and expecting others to understand it is very unfair. Having the interest to know about your family problems after work is a true balancer. That’s the only way your Family and your Work can have a common ground to be addressed. Else you can also reduce your working hours to 6-8 hours and earn less; enough to fulfill one’s basic needs.
‘A Pilot leaves all his personal worries behind before Entering the cockpit door as his profession demands him to have that balance.’
Five things to achieve good Personal and Professional Life Balance
- Attention to Physical Health
- Discuss with Family
- Change Industry
- Use less technology at home
- Never bring pending work at home
Attention to Physical Health
Health is a very vital part of the proper functioning of your body. If you neglect it, it will put your life at a toss. It’s been said ‘Health is Wealth’, only if you have good health you can achieve anything in life. It bears the power to face any situation in our life. If coming home from work is causing you tiredness, exhaustion, and drained then there is no point in working so much hard for it.
Like people who sit for long hours in front of their computers, there is a high possibility of having back pain, spondylitis, or even migraine. Hence after you come home you don’t feel interested to talk to anyone as you don’t feel fresh physically. So choose wisely what you need ‘Money or Health’. Money can be earned once you have good health, but health gone once is gone forever.
“Our bodies are gardens, and our Wills are our Gardeners”, said WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Discuss with Family
Family members are the closest ones whom we love unconditionally. They always pray for your happiness as they love you a lot more than anyone. If you feel you are not been able to give time to them discuss and communicate about it.
Communication is the only medium where two people can sit together and talk about the differences they are facing. If your family is agreeing to you working for long hours to give everyone a better lifestyle then it’s fine.
But if you have a family who is more concerned about your health and needs your time then give them time. As it’s been said ‘we are always rooted to our families at the end’. Also, remember a satisfied living lives life with basic needs while a selfish one is not happy in a bungalow too.
Change Industry
Work should not be a pain in anyone’s head or something that you wait until the end of the month ( for Salary). If you feel you are giving too much attention to the work and yet you are not satisfied with the salary then it’s better you drop that industry.
Work at the end of the day should make you feel happy a give you a sense of fulfillment. Choose a line that helps you to balance both your work and private life. For example, Life after the lockdown has changed for a lot of IT people, Digital Marketers, etc as everything was made online accessible. It was officially termed as ‘WORK FROM HOME ‘where you can work as well as take breaks to balance it with your family life too.
“Life gives you many options to choose it depends on what you prefer.”
Use Less Technology
People who are too much dedicated to their work are known as ‘Workaholics’. They cannot talk or think about anything rather than work. Also, there is another category of people who want their own personal time (Usage of Mobile phones, laptops for checking Emails, playing games on phone, etc) to be spent their way.
They only visit home to eat, rest, and get up another day to work. Your family worries for the entire day about how their sons/daughters might have a tough day at work.
They don’t expect something huge from us, but the only way we can share quality time with them is by sharing how was your day, what you did, any experiences you saw during traveling, and how the food in the tiffin was. These few moments of happiness are enough for them to feel wanted and loved back.
“Pray for your Family, because everyone is not lucky to have it.”
Never bring Pending Work at home
It’s important to prioritize your work but not always be on the verge of your family. Pending Work can sometimes be brought home if too much urgent, but not always. If you work in the office and also at home then there is no difference between both. People around will feel is the time in the office is not enough for you or that you are not efficient enough to manage both.
The best option is to divide your work at the start of your day and prioritize the important tasks to be completed first. It is fine to complete less important tasks the next day even if they are pending.
Anxiety and Stress
Stress and Anxiety both are very powerful words that depict unstable mental health. Stress happens when you worry too much for your loved ones. Stress also happens due to Overthinking and congestion of thoughts. Stress may cause loss of appetite; in some cases, you tend to overeat, have sleepless nights, back to back thoughts running in your head, create a fictional scenario out of any given situation, etc.
Anxiety on the other hand is described as uncontrolled excessive thoughts that are beyond your limits. It is a broader concept that covers problems related to your mental illness. Anxiety attack often comes when you don’t share your negative thoughts with anyone (friends, family, counselors, and mentor).
So basically it is an outburst of all the thoughts that were unheard and unshared with anyone. On average, an anxiety attack might come once in 6 months and will last for at least 30 minutes. During these 30 minutes you will feel shivering, blurred vision, and difficulty in breathing, your bp might become low, and you feel like crying.
Basically, you will feel very uncomfortable and scared as you would not know how to deal with it.
Remedies to deal with Anxiety
- Relaxation
- Controlled Breathing
- Meditation
- CBT
- ACT
Relaxation
Every person has a different path to relax. Relaxation is not supposed to be done to rejuvenate your body but your soul also needs to relax.
Some find peace in listening to some spiritual mantras, others might listen to soft music, some like to read books, some might do yoga, eat chocolates, ice cream, sketch, write, and many other ways.
Divert your thoughts and involve yourself in something is the best way to escape from these unwanted thoughts.
“Even if you fly high, you have to come back to your nest to Relax”
Controlled Breathing
Whenever you get an anxiety attack you feel difficulty in breathing as less oxygen is supplied to your brain. At such times it is advised to take deep and long breaths. This will not only calm you down but help you to come out of it faster.
Meditation
Meditation relaxes one’s mind and helps one to be mentally stronger than ever. Meditation is a spiritual way of telling what difficulty you are facing and fighting every day. It also helps you to take controlled breaths and concentrate on your thoughts. It is a healing process that everyone some day or the other is going to follow their journey.
“A Meditating heart connects faster to the Almighty.”
CBT and ACT techniques
CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Technique) and ACT (Acceptance Commitment Technique) are the scientific techniques available for getting your anxiety disorders treated.
Both have effective and unique ways to be followed. CBT addresses more towards behavioral changes of a human being like anger, emotion, depression, and sadness. On the other hand, ACT helps you to accept the unfair things that have happened to you in your life. Both heal you to build a strong willed person out of you.
“It’s never too late until you realize”
Parental Control
Parents are the immediate ones we look forward to in difficult situations in our life. It’s very important for them to understand the process and guide their children when they need help. In today’s world, it is very important to have a friendly bond with our children. Building that kind of rapport will only help us understand our kids well.
But there is another category of parents who want to control their children’s lives as they feel they will choose the best out of the rest for them. This is known as ‘Emotionally Immature’Parenthood. You are not supposed to put your decisions on them as it will worsen their childhood and adulthood too.
Parents’ continuously blaming their children also creates a negative image of them in their minds. This will never make them competitive to face the outer real world.
Children on the other hand will start hiding things from their parents and will fall into the wrong things. It’s basically a fear that a child faces during his teen years and can’t even share the changes that he is going through. It’s always better to be a little lighter on our kids and let them live the way they want. If you have taught them good virtues, trust them nothing will go wrong.
“Let your child be free spirited, only then he will explore more.”
Bereavement
Bereavement is the sad and painful loss of your loved one. The death of a person is grief, sorrow, and loss of something that can never be replaced. It takes months and years for people to accept that emptiness in their life.
It’s very easy to say words like take care of yourself, please move on, everything will be alright. But it’s difficult to bear with it. It breaks a person emotionally, thinking that their dear one would never return back home.
Never feel they are not around us; they are always there to protect us and take care of us in some form or the other. It’s not necessary to move on from that grief. Rather talk about him as if he has just gone on a long vacation and you will feel of his presence around.
“People just leave their bodies, but their memories stay forever”
