Relationships matter - How to think about work life balance in 2021

The demands of a perfect static “work life balance” often feel impossible to achieve when you aim high. 

Remember when your life’s passion demanded you to be fully dedicated? 

Or when your relationships took all the attention you had?

And when taking time for yourself helped you jump miles forward?

Striving for the ideal balance of work and life is a stressful thing. Instead of finding balance often the opposite happens - we find ourselves feeling paralysed in the face of our inability to bring the impossible to a perfect symbiosis.

Is there a better way to think about balance?

If it’s quality of life we are after, it pays to move away from "work life balance" and think about relationships that make for a fulfilled life. The poet David Whyte calls them the three marriages: They are 

• our life’s work, 
• the relationships with our loved ones 
• and the relationships with ourselves.

Relationships are the better lens to measure our quality of life. Unlike a static balance they are fluid like water.

Relationships sometimes demand time and dedication, other times they just flow and open up space in other domains:

• At times, the full dedication to a cause or passion fuels a deeper quality of relationship with your life’s work. 
• Other times, your loved ones need all the care they need, while the rest of the world has to wait. 
• Even more importantly, only through nourishing the relationship with yourself - through retreats, self-reflection and distance - you will find depth, wisdom and fulfilment in the world.

Each of those relationships demands hard work, reflection and at times full dedication. Yet, if we miss out in finding depth in either, our quality of life goes down the drain.

What if instead of thinking of achieving a static balance, we could reorient our thinking on the quality of relationships instead?

The meditation of the week focuses on the most important relationship of your life - the relationship with yourself. 

The meditation is centred on cultivating your ability for self-enquiry. The method is usually more used by advanced meditators, but I see no reason why you shouldn’t benefit from this mental training earlier.

Wishing you a great week ahead,

Nikolas

(Taken from my weekly newsletter “a Mindful week", link to meditation below)