Living to Work or Working to Live?

Attending a training this week, the speaker said, "After all, we are working to live - not living to work, right?"

This is a statement central to the idea of work/life balance and even in the title of the topic "work/life balance," we can note that work is addressed first. As more and more of us work online full time, the inner call to maintain availability into the evening hours, sacrificing family and relational time may come up again and again strongly.

Here, I offer a transcendence from this struggle for time utilization - work/life synchronicity. While industry to industry, role to role, this formula will look different, that very difference is the very point. Using intuition and logic in a balanced relationship is the very inner dynamic that manifests itself in the outward emanation of work/life balance.

Maybe I schedule my day (if able to do so) in 30 minute increments the night before to allow time to be away from devices and dings. Maybe I have a set end time each day that remaining tasks are set aside in a non-negotiable manner. The way this works will be individual; the point is, does my work (in my mind) register as a time of disengagement with mindfulness, self-care and totality in being both a physical and mental/energetic being?

The Zen master Nansen was asked by a monk, "Is there a teaching that has never been spoken?"

"There is," Nansen replied.

"Tell me, master. What is that teaching?"

"It is not words, it is not Buddha, it is not things."

Don't look for hacks in life. The only way out is through the experience itself. See your ideal day to day life and begin to embody that in this moment - today. Then, from that place of your ideal self, create the situation, schedule and decisions that self does to create, sustain and thrive in your work, your recreation and your life.

The key is simple - the breath. The body. The Being.  ??