Getting Unstuck #20 Balance: Does it Really Exist?

Regardless of how hard we try, we can never completely separate our professional life from our personal life. I tried and failed miserably. Both parts of our life need attention for a happy life. ~ Frank Zaccari, CEO/ Author/Speaker

#stuck #inarut #spinningyourwheels trusttheprocess #makeachoice #quicksand #personallife #professionallife #relationshiplandmines

This is an excerpt from my #1bestselling and award-winning book: Business & Personal Secrets for Avoiding Relationship Landmines.

It is also a portion of a talk I give to businesses, organizations, colleges, and universities.

For those of us who invested in our education, are now, or were strapped with student loans and doing our best to not only survive but thrive in our business career, leaving our work at work is challenging. Every organization talks about supporting a work/life balance. Some even put that statement in their annual report and recruiting material. It is the right thing to say, but it is not reality.

Corporate America will take every second of every minute of your life if you allow it to happen. No one I know started their career wanting to put in twelve-to-sixteen-hour days, or be on the road every week or finally going home only to spend more time on zoom or answering emails or working on your laptop. Yet, it happens far too often.

The job taking over your life creeps up on you. It starts with trying to meet short deadlines, major projects, managing a team, and more travel. Before you know it, you are sabotaging your relationship and family in the name of providing for them. It makes no sense, right? It is almost like an addiction that you think you are controlling, but it controls and destroys you. Your spouse grows frustrated, your children feel abandoned. The stress from work and house is driving you to the breaking point.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see where this relationship was headed. The wife found someone who would listen and give her support and comfort. It started as a one-time cry for help and evolved into a relationship that ended the marriage/relationship. I have been there too many times in my failed relationships and marriages.

So, how can you reduce the potential for your relationship to fail because you can’t leave work at work? I am not a Ph.D. or counselor, or licensed therapist, so I can’t give you therapeutic or clinical data. What I can offer are suggestions that may help.

1. Stop thinking you must be involved in every aspect and every work decision. Yes, you are ultimately responsible, but that doesn’t mean you have to do everything.
2. Micromanagers are anything but helpful, suffocating creativity, productivity, and morale. Stop checking so often. You may think you’re useful, but no one else does. Trust your team’s abilities... Delegate until it bleeds. You will be surprised how people rise to the challenge. - Richard Moran
3. Create an environment of trust at work. Your ability to build trusting human connections with the people who report directly to you will determine the quality of everything that follows. – Kim Scott – Radical Candor. It will also give us control freaks, the peace of mind that the world won’t end without us, and we can spend quality time with our family.
4. Make a schedule and stick to it. I go in at this time, work like hell until that time and, then go home.
5. Build time to unwind. Do something that helps you to relax and decompress. It can be anything like listening to music on the drive home – or in the COVID world before you walk out of your make-shift home office. Work out immediately before or after work. I went to an aerobics class at 5:30 in the morning before work and run 20 to 30 minutes on a treadmill immediately after work; in the COVID world, I put a “Total Gym” and treadmill in my house. It cleared my head, helped me stay healthy, and allowed me to be more present at home.
6. As soon as you walk in the house, ask your spouse and/or children, “Tell me what made you happy today.” It can become a ritual everyone looks forward to. As your children grow and have after-school events, make it a weekly ritual to attend. Your children will roll their eyes as they become “tweens,” but it will become a fond memory.
7. Create a daily gratitude journal. If you don’t like to write things down, then spend 5 minutes before you get out of bed or go to sleep to reflect on the things that make you and your family happy.
8. If your job requires you to travel, make sure you call, zoom, or face time daily with your spouse and children. Talk about their day, how much you miss and love them.
9. Put on the calendar a “Get Re-Acquainted” night with your significant other. Not doing so was one of my major failures. I always found time for my daughters but did not make the same effort for my wife.
10. Do not assume your loved ones understand being the “workaholic” is for them. They won’t understand. All they see is their time isn’t significant enough for you.

I hope you discover that no job or title or income or fame is worth clawing your way to the top, and then once you arrive, there is no one who matters standing with you. Believe me; professional success is not worth a shattered life. Let me end this chapter with this:

Professor Stewart Friedman of the Wharton School teaches leaders how to balance work and life because his research proved that leaders without balance make crappy leaders and crappy life partners.

Stepping Stones to avoid landmines:

1. How is your job/career taking over your life?
2. Are you balanced, or are you tipping away from your personal relationship?
3. What steps are you taking to make time for your family?
4. Was your professional success worth the price of a shattered life? What did you do to rectify the situation before it was too late?