{"id":869,"date":"2016-09-13T14:25:28","date_gmt":"2016-09-13T19:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thepurposeinst.wpengine.com\/?p=869"},"modified":"2019-06-18T15:58:03","modified_gmt":"2019-06-18T20:58:03","slug":"forget-work-life-balance-think-self-other","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/forget-work-life-balance-think-self-other\/","title":{"rendered":"Forget Work-Life balance. Think Self-Other."},"content":{"rendered":"

The idea of achieving work-life balance<\/em> never really squared with me.\u00a0\u00a0 For those of us that spend the vast majority of our waking lives at work, the idea of trying to balance time between work and personal life seems like a losing proposition. Even when I can<\/em> manage to \u201cbalance\u201d my time– spending equal parts of my day on work-related issues and personal issues — that isn\u2019t necessarily a formula for happiness.\u00a0 Sometimes those balanced days<\/em> leave me utterly exhausted.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The term \u2018work-life\u2019 balance also seems to suggest that one\u2019s real <\/em>life is somehow happening outside of wor<\/em>k life. But when you think of work as a calling\u2014finding meaning and joy in what you do for a living \u2014work\u00a0 is every bit as much of your life as anything else is. \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For all of these reasons, I had pretty much scrapped the idea of work\/life balance a long time ago.<\/p>\n

Then I met Lisa Leit, founder of the Happy Whole Human program, who introduced me to a new way of thinking about a balanced life.\u00a0\u00a0 She too rejects the notion of work-life balance.\u00a0 Instead, she asks people to think about the balance between attending to Self and attending to Others.<\/p>\n

How much time are you dedicating to nourish and care for your SELF?<\/p>\n

How much time are you dedicating to nourish and care for OTHERS?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Caring for the self isn\u2019t just about taking time off to relax on a beach. It\u2019s about taking the time to invest in yourself, to grow, to learn new things, to do whatever it is that brings you to life.\u00a0 When you do that, you\u2019re in a much better place to give back and help others;\u00a0 and that\u2019s ultimately what gives life meaning and helps create a sense of significance.\u00a0 Lisa\u2019s work shows that this Self-Other balance is frequently out-of-whack and getting it right is absolutely essential for long-term well-being.<\/p>\n

This self-other framework has been incredibly useful in calibrating my own life.\u00a0\u00a0 When I feel myself beginning to throw a big ol\u2019 pity party about how much I give for my clients, my children, my teams, my partner\u2026I know that my little bucket is empty and I need to stop and take care of myself so that I can come back with renewed energy and actually have something valuable to give.\u00a0 (As any flight attendant will tell you, put your oxygen mask on first before you go to help others<\/em>.)\u00a0 If you don\u2019t take care of yourself, if you don\u2019t invest time and energy into your own personal growth and development, you\u2019re going to start feeling dead inside.\u00a0\u00a0 Self-care isn\u2019t selfish \u2013 it\u2019s necessary to be in a good place — mentally, physically, spiritually, creatively — to give back.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 As my positive psychology teacher Tal Ben-Shahar says, it\u2019s not selfish time, it\u2019s self-FULL time.<\/em><\/p>\n

That said, it is<\/em> possible to become too<\/em> focused on your Self \u2013 at the expense of getting things done or being there for the people depending on you.\u00a0 When you\u2019re too focused on your Self, you\u2019re likely to see relationships deteriorate and people at work actively avoiding you.\u00a0 And too much focus on the self will ultimately be a dead-end on the road to significance.\u00a0 At some point, you\u2019ve got to use your well-honed talents in the service of others if you want to truly feel good about yourself.\u00a0 As Ghandi put it, the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. <\/em><\/p>\n

The real challenge becomes creating a balance between self-care and caring for others\u2026 between personal growth and personal giving back…between filling your own cup and filling the cups of others. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"upwardspiral\"<\/a>And, of course, the more you attend to your own needs, growing and developing into the best person you can be, the more you have to give back\u2026 and the more you give back the more you\u2019ll want to grow and develop to be able to give back even more \u2026and on and on it will go creating a virtuous upward spiral of growing and giving.<\/p>\n

Where Lisa\u2019s work gets interesting (and challenging) is that these self-other imbalances often arise from having either a narcissistic or codependent personality type.<\/p>\n

Being chronically overworked, constantly putting your own needs aside is probably a boundary issue and a sign of codependency. While you may complain about your work life being all-consuming, secretly, you may like<\/em> feeling like you\u2019re the ONLY one that can take care of something, that others need you and that everything will fall apart without your involvement.<\/p>\n

Conversely, narcissism \u2013 which at root stems from low self-esteem \u2013 might drive a commitment to self-improvement that, unchecked, becomes self-absorption that ultimately alienates others and hinders one\u2019s ability to be a vital and contributing team or family member.<\/p>\n

If you recognize either of these tendencies in yourself, best to deal with them first as doing so will be critical to the development of a healthy Self\/Other<\/em> balance in your life.<\/p>\n

Next time you\u2019re feeling like your life is out of balance, ask yourself:<\/p>\n

Have I been too focused on taking care of others to the detriment of my own wellbeing?\u00a0 [Yes.] What can I do to fill up my own cup?
\nHave I been so focused on myself that I\u2019ve let my work and my relationships suffer?
\n[Yes.] What can I do to fill the cups of others?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The idea of achieving work-life balance never really squared with me.\u00a0\u00a0 For those of us that spend the vast majority of our waking lives at work, the idea of trying to balance time between work and personal life seems like a losing proposition. Even when I can manage to \u201cbalance\u201d my time– spending equal parts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":872,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[70,69,16,71],"class_list":["post-869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-purpose","tag-happy-whole-human","tag-lisa-leit","tag-tal-ben-shahar","tag-work-life-balance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thepurposeinstitute.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}