People often talk about how to find the perfect balance between personal and professional life, in other words, how to “reconcile the goat and the cabbage " as both areas are equally demanding. Of course, it is not easy to achieve such a balance and there are no “recipes" in this respect.
Most of the people who run a very demanding activity in terms of complexity and duration hard work makes people feel they have no time for are very eager to reach this balance. themselves, no weekends and “life is living them ".
The balance between work and leisure time has a direct impact on personal life and family responsibilities. Stress associated to a demanding activity leads to a sensitive emotional state causing irritability, anxiety, tension, anger etc., which impacts directly one’s personal and family life.
Of course, each version comes with advantages and disadvantages, every choice involves consequences, better or worse for the one who makes the decision.
As some of these activities require time to be put into practice, time from your 24 hour day, I think the key point of a successful approach is to well manage the prioritization of the activities focusing on what you want to accomplish, both personally and professionally.
Everyone knows what’s best for them; nobody else does.
Life and career are not in competition; they are areas that should complement each other for the sake of personal and professional satisfaction.
What is to be done?
I‘m often asked this question: 'What can I do to reach a true balance between personal and professional life? My answer is: 'What are you willing to change in your behavior to get that balance? "- If you get to ask this question, the two areas are obviously unbalanced or in danger of getting unbalanced.
The solution can be found only by the person who wants to achieve this goal; I do nothing more than accompanying the person during the approach to discover what are the obstacles impeding the achievement of balance.
Most of the times, the person feels like living an inner conflict between two desires, the desire to be a performing employee who aims to build a great career or a manager/successful businessman, and the desire to have time off for herself and/or family.
I simply invite these persons to look at these two desires and ”reconcile" them, to choose what they are willing to do for balancing them. It is a choice, not a simple one, but worth making if the persons really want to reach in a certain period of time the desired balance between personal and professional life.
The approach of this difficulty is not our sole focus; there are several issues to be investigated in everyone's life, which ultimately leads to the solution.
I often noticed that such an inquiry can be the starting point for working with oneself, for personal growth or development. The individual begins to understand that ”to have" is something necessary, but not enough, because does not guarantee happiness or accomplishment, and then begins to move towards what means ”to be".
You might be surprised by what you will discover. You only need to be honest with yourself !
In conclusion, I don’t believe a perfect balance can ever be found between personal and professional life; however, I believe one can aspire to this balance with three main ”ingredients”, which are: perseverance, focus and dedication.