The Problem With Work/Life Balance

I sing a lot. Always have, probably always will. My kid and I sing around the house a lot too. We are always coming up with fun or wacky harmonies to songs on our playlist. At one point, while bored waiting in the car, we started harmonizing with the damn beeping noise the car makes when we unbuckle our seatbelts. I think I'm always looking for harmony in one way or another and one of the ways I express that is through song.

Like most women I know, I manage a lot of moving parts. I'm a single parent with a teenager visiting colleges. We have family activities, I'm launching a new business, my first book is being published in Dec, and there is always something that needs to get done. Navigating it all can be a challenge. Many would say I need to find a better work/life balance but I don't think that's true.

Work/life?balance?is about finding some equal distribution between the time you spend on your work and the time you spend on your life. One challenge with that thinking is that it positions work and life in opposition to each other - with you rationing time between the two. You find yourself adding time to one which requires you to add more time to the other. This creates an escalating drive toward balance which can stress you the heck out, defeating the purpose. I much prefer thinking about building a life in harmony instead.

Your life includes many elements, your work being just one of them. Your work is a key element to building the life you want but it isn't a separate entity of its own. Harmony is the layering and blending of elements into a form that is pleasing - something that sounds good, feels good and right, and hopefully inspires you to sing along. The blending and layering ends up creating a tapestry that is strong and can hold the weight of all that your life entails.

So, I'm ditching balance and working toward a life in harmony. Dissonance still pops in and out but I get better at navigating it day by day. How are you working to create your life in harmony?