How to Achieve Work-Life Fulfillment with Values in All Areas of Life

Read Time: 4 Minutes

A big thanks to this community's People and well-being leaders?for their amazing focus on supporting their organizations that have brought this work to life.

It’s a collective effort to realize well-being in the workplace, promote mental and emotional health for performance, and end the culture of chronic stress and burnout. #Wellbeing is the new performance?

Join us on LinkedIn on July 19, 2023, at 12 PM PT / 3 PM ET for our next Workplace Wellbeing, Performance, and Recovery Support for People Leaders

Key Highlights:

• Set and enforce boundaries to protect and gain awareness of the needs across your life?
• Determining and expressing your values in all areas of life to prevent starving needs in any other certain area
• Develop health habits and incremental actions to build positive momentum in each area of life?

The theme for this week’s community support is life-work integration and fulfillment.

You might be wondering, does Work Life balance exist?? The simple answer is it can, but for most of us in the developed world can be very difficult if not impossible.

It really comes down to our modern-day demands and pace.??

Unlike when the idea of balance was considered during the early days of industrialism when life was much slower - think pre-internet, traditional mail, shopping malls, and libraries?

We could get things done, bake a casserole, rest, and still have the mental and emotional capacity for more things to do?

Today we have instant messaging, near live news, and same-day if not same-hour delivery service.? We believe that doing things faster with low resistance, somehow means we should and can then do even more.

This happens and compounds in all areas of our lives: career, family, relationships, health, growth

How can we navigate this moving forward when we no longer have a clear foundation of what a healthy pace of life looks, sounds, and feels like?

1. Setting and Enforcing Healthy Boundaries

When technology makes doing work a lot more frictionless, it can also have a side effect of rolling through our personal boundaries we didn’t even know we needed

As a result, it might feel like the world is happening to us and we are the collateral damage.

Over time, people and certain personality types that don’t recognize boundaries will begin to mirror these behaviors and cause us to collectively experience chronic stress and burnout.

Being clear with your priorities, helps us to find more effective ways to get things done without stressing out.

We can automate work.

We can delegate work.

We can slow down work.

We can even be more self-aware not to take things on that we can’t fully process and complete.

Most importantly, we can set the tone and pace and be in better control of what we need to accomplish.

Setting boundaries also means respecting all other areas of your life and not letting one area bully or power trip on another, ultimately creating unresolved conflict?

2. Fulfilling values in all areas of life?

There’s no secret we need to begin moving away from external motivation: penalties and rewards, especially as we’re knee-deep in a hustle culture.

Achieving goals and feeling empty and unfulfilled inside is painful.? Achieving for the sake of achieving in a fast-paced world is also unsustainable.

Today, we’re not short of what we could do, we have a clear challenge of what we should do - that ultimately brings us a sense of happiness and fulfillment

So how does that work?

It starts off with our values - what’s important to us and making sure it covers all areas of our lives.

If you’re wondering how to determine your values, you can follow the procedure in Part 5 of my free workplace well-being and burnout response playbook.

First and foremost, don’t violate any of your driver values, that’s a surefire way to create pain and conflict in your life.

Secondly, don’t ignore or starve out any area of your life. Many times one area of life is unfulfilled and we double down in another area.

Career sucks? Double down on your children.

Relationship sucks? Retreat into work.

And the day your children grow up, or you may lose your job, your life implodes and you go into a crisis.

Just like how you want your personal values in your career to align with your work, repeat the same exercise with all areas of your life.

3. Building healthy habits and systems?

Don’t make fulfilling your values short-burst high-intensity one-time activities?

It’s stressful, and usually a sign you’re doing it to get out of a deficit.

Instead, adopt healthy habits, slowly and incrementally.

Each area of your life: career, relationships, family, health, growth

Have successful models and specific strategies that lead you to the results you’re looking for based on your values, goals, and natural strengths?

The skills you need to learn at work

The diet and exercise programs for your health

The relationship principles for healthy relationships?

Make time an asset on your side.

Habits make for competency.

Competency makes for confidence.

As you develop consistency and growth, fulfilling your values in all areas of your life, you’ll feel alive, turned up, and turned on

Most importantly, if one life area hits a low, other areas of your life can gracefully support the needed recovery and learnings that come from it

You’ll not just experience a life worth living for you, but one of no regrets - with full mistakes and all.

Whenever you're ready, there are 3 ways I can help you:

1. If you're still looking for personal recovery and support for your well-being, I'd recommend starting with this affordable course that's helped hundreds of people and their organizations, here.

2. If you’re struggling with a crisis of burnout and looking for an effective way to recover quickly, consider a life-transforming Burnout Retreat for your next vacation, here.

3. Build out Workplace Burnout Responsiveness and Recovery in your organization by booking a strategy call with me, here.