A perfect work-life balance is a chimera, something that exists in our imagination, but that’s usually not achievable in reality. You have to ask yourself, are you living a life that’s capable of being balanced? Does your working environment support an equitable work life balance?

There’s a long list of factors that shape work-life balance, from the type of work we do, to our family situation. Some of these are easier to manage, whereas others, such as the company culture, or a demanding manager are outside our sphere of influence.

What would an equitable work life balance look like to you?

For most people, work-life balance is not about the even distribution of time, but creating a lifestyle in which we’re not exhausting ourselves through overwork. An equitable work-life balance allows us to have time and energy to be present for our families, to see friends and to do the things we enjoy. It’s not just the binary relationship between work and non-work.

The word ‘balance’ itself can make us think of everything being equal, or being evenly distributed, but life is generally not this neat. Balance is fluid not static. Like life, there are cycles and constant change. Rather than seeing the relationship between work and personal life as a seesaw, a more apt analogy is that of an orchestra that we get to conduct.

Redefining work life balance

In metaphysics, balance is a point between opposing forces. However, I don’t like the idea of work and life being in opposition. Whilst we can explore blending work and personal life commitments, what I’ve come to realise is that today it’s simply about balance. How balanced do I feel in the moment? When we contemplate balance, we can think of inner peace where no forces are in opposition. Perhaps that’s the way forward, to aim for feeling centred and aligned, and drop the focus on the unattainable goal of an equitable work-life balance.

Work-life balance is not a one time, get it sorted activity. It’s not even weekly or daily, it’s moment by moment. Like autopilot on an aeroplane, it’s not fixing all the controls in place, it’s honing our awareness, making constant adjustments, responding to changing circumstances and external conditions.

Balance is for the brave. We have to be daring enough to design our life in a way that works for us, courageous enough to find wiggle room to centre ourselves in the midst of the competing demands of life. The constant striving for an unattainable ideal is exhausting, so let’s cut ourselves some slack when we fall short, embrace the imperfection because we can always try to rebalance ourselves tomorrow.  After all it was Einstein who said that “life is like riding a bicycle. To keep you balance, you must keep moving.”

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