How do I find a better work-life balance?

Work-life balance is at once an overused, worn out cliché and the holy grail that we’re all seeking.

It feels like everyone is looking for work life balance. Whether you’re a student, teacher, sales leader, founder, or even looking for work opportunities, we’re all trying to navigate that tension between work and personal life. Rarely are the two interconnected. And when they are – through remote work, digital nomadism, working with a partner, or simply being so into your work that it becomes a lifestyle – there’s still further tension here. Tension around whether it’s swinging too much into one side and not enough on the other. Tension around whether we’re neglecting our health, our loved ones, or our kids, or whether we’re falling behind at work. I see it all the time.

The thing is, with such a clichéd problem, we often resort to clichéd answers. 

We might think, “I’m working too hard clearly and my health is suffering. So I’m going to cut back on my work hours, try to get some boundaries in place, and leave my work behind at the office. I’ll make my time there a clear boundary, so that I can come home, drop everything, and focus on my rest, health, and wellbeing. I’ll wake up earlier, meditate more, hit the gym more often, and try to make healthy lunches.”

But, in the process of implementing all these great changes, the work begins to suffer. We end up falling behind because we’re suddenly putting in less hours, leaving earlier, or starting later. Or we get more stressed, because we’re adding yet another to-do item on our long list of things to check off, as well-intentioned as they might be. Rather than helping ourselves, we seem to be inadvertently adding more to our plate. Of course, needless to say, often it doesn’t work out and things don't get done. So we feel worse about ourselves (“I failed! I’m no good at changing bad habits. I’m useless, I can’t do this, I have no will power” etc etc). And so we throw ourselves into avoidance patterns – perhaps more work, or more self-flagellation, to get ourselves through the guilt we feel for not achieving the work life balance we seek. 

Equally with our partners. Perhaps we’re not home enough because we’re at the office too much, or we’re working late into the night so we can’t have the date nights that we want and need, in order to connect. Tensions start to build in the relationship. We feel bad, want to fix it, cut back on our work, and tend to our relationships more. This then makes us feel anxious, nervous. We’re behind on our work, we’re not as productive as we’d like to be, the to-do list at the office gets bigger and bigger, and we’re irritated, not present, and distracted with our partners. The partner senses we’re not fully there, gets annoyed with us, and an argument ensues. We can’t seem to win. 

I get it. Work life balance, with all its mythic glory, feels like an impossible feat to achieve these days. With remote work, hybrid arrangements, longer hours, more responsibilities, less pay, less resources, inflation, recession, lay offs, job uncertainties…it’s grim.

So what does work?

Figuring out our needs. And solving for them.

To me, that’s the silver bullet of work-life balance. Truly. It might feel simplistic but often the solutions to the hardest challenges in life are. 

As I write in one of my course materials for my coaching clients:

“All human beings, animals, plant life -  every living organism has needs. Some of these are basic needs like food, water, shelter, but others are more complex. The more psychological needs within us are often formed at a young age, and dictate parts of our personality.”

The original concept of ‘basic human needs’ stems from humanistic psychologist Abraham Maslow. He identified them as the below, in this respective order:

• Psychological needs

• Safety and Security

• Love and Belonging

• Self-Esteem

• Self-actualization

Maslow explains that every human being desires, on a subconscious level, to meet these needs and argues that we spend the bulk of our existence working to fulfil them. As such, a deep core need will drive how we behave, which over time, informs our personality.

By knowing what our needs are, we can understand our personality better. Once we understand our personality better, and we are familiar with our needs, we can work to fulfil them. When we don’t know our needs, we risk neglecting or abandoning ourselves. Even worse, when we don’t know them, we can ignore or stifle our gut instincts or our body’s trying to get our attention to their fulfilment.”

As such, being able to identify our needs can help us create more work-life balance – however that might look for us. 

So, as a founder, leader, or high-achiever, you might feel driven, motivated, inspired, and excited about your work and your impact in the world. Perhaps you have a burning need to get your voice out there, make your mark, build that vision. And that’s okay. That will likely be fuelled by a subconscious need for something, which I work on figuring out with my clients. Once you understand what that need is, you can look to meet that need in other creative, perhaps more nourishing ways.

It might be that you continue your work habits but you also fill that need in a way that aligns with your partner, and their needs. Or, it might be that you identify your needs around work, and identify your needs around relationships, and come up with a creative solution that fills both cups. Collaborating with your partner to identify both of your needs can also be helpful, and support you in finding creative ways to fulfil yourselves through joint activities that can make work-life balance become a more seamless, integrated reality.

I could write for days about needs. For me, this has been the biggest game changer in my relationships, in my work, and in my wellbeing. Once I got radically clear on what my needs are I was able to start to navigate my life forward in a way that work-life balance became an automatic, autopilot thing I just didn’t have to think about. At times, I can work a 12 hour day and feel utterly rejuvenated. At others, I get drained by 3 hours. It all depends on my core needs and the extent to which I am solving for them.

By being in tune with those, through the art of self-connection that I am so passionate about helping my clients learn, we are able to build lives that are relentlessly nourishing and uplifting, rather than exhausting. Instead of constantly fighting for work-life balance, it becomes something that simply falls into place.

If you’re curious about learning more about how I can help you with this, connect with me on a connection call or email me.