I, like Tim and many others, do what I do because I love it. While I’m lucky enough to create my income doing what I love, I do still ‘have’ to do it.

Ok, that’s a lie, too. I don’t ‘have’ to do it, but I choose to because the consequences of choosing not to are not attractive to me. (I’ve grown accustomed to my home, my car, among other things and Lord knows I’m not trying to live without my computer and Internet service!)

However, I think you made a very good point, Tim, when you said that when employers are yapping about work/life balance, most of the time it’s because they don’t want you to have any. I agree. But I think the bigger point is when you find yourself worrying about work/life balance, that means it’s already out of whack…like noticing you’re thirsty means you should have had a drink hours ago.

I think there are as many ways to get out of whack balancing work and the rest of your life as there are people on the planet. Loving what you do for ‘work’ doesn’t automatically make you immune to imbalance. On the contrary, I think it sometimes makes you more susceptible.

I don’t think Tim’s wife, at least on the evening mentioned in his post, thinks he’s got the balance figured out anymore than my kids did last night when at 9:30pm I was still absorbed in a new site I am building…lost in the bliss of “ooohh..I wonder if I can make it do this…oooh, I can!…then, I wonder if I can make it do that…oooh, yes, I can…so does that mean I can make it do this, too?…OMG…yes, I can!…”  I finally stepped away from the computer at 10, and that completed a 12hr stretch of design bliss.

Granted, not every day is like that for me. Not even most are…but enough are. My 16y/o cooks dinner more often than I do (like…a LOT more often!) And no, that won’t kill him, and yes, it’s good that he’ll go out into the world knowing how to cook…but it’s kinda not the point.

Of course, this example may not be the best one to use, because I abhor cooking dinner with a vengeance. I’d do a whole lot of things I don’t love to do to get out of daily chef duty.

Maybe I stress too much because now that I work at home, I get wrapped up in the illusion that my kids should get ‘more’ of me than they did when I was in the corporate world. Where’s the logic in that? I traded doing one job – granted, away from home and for extended hours each day – for doing ALL jobs related to my business.

I will say this: It’s a whole dang lot easier to keep track of them and be where they need me to be when I’m my own boss. And often, they’ve lamented that their mom is ‘all up in their business all the time’ because I’m not stuck somewhere downtown at an office all day long. Other times, and especially here lately, I think I’d be a whole lot less stressed if I didn’t have such a front row seat to what they’re up to.

So if I’m still working a lot of hours, what’s changed about the balance in my life? Am I still out of whack?

It’s all relative. My kids think it’s just fine if I spend 24 hours a day on the computer, unless and until they want something. Then I work too much.  What they’re really wanting to is to dictate even more of my schedule than they already do. If it were my attention they were craving, I wouldn’t get turned down for movie nights or family outings as much as I do because they’ve got ‘other plans’.

Even as I write that, I realize that what’s really different today (as opposed to the corporate days) is that when I’m not ‘working’, I’m not in a bad mood.  Used to be, I’d come home all jacked up about stuff at work and it took more than the drive home to decompress. The mommy time they got back then was polluted, if you will, with leftover work garbage.

Another thing that’s really different today is the quality of my life. It’s gone way up. WAY up. It’s filled with far less of the stuff I don’t want in my life and far more of the stuff I do.

For me, the work/life balancing act was made exponentially easier when I engaged in work I love versus the kind that made me want to stick needles in my eyes. But it’s still a balancing act.

But then, isn’t every aspect of life a dance in and around a proverbial sweet spot?

No related posts.

On the other hand, if you think you can do something, you’re probably more than willing to invest the time, effort and energy into it because you’re pretty sure you’ll get the result you’re after.

So what makes the difference between thinking you can’t and thinking you can do something? For most of us, it’s proof. Proof in the form of results, past results, most likely. Where does that leave you if you’re looking at trying something completely new? Empty-handed? Not necessarily.

Just because you’ve never done a particular thing before does not mean you lack proof of your ability. All you have to do is rewind back to the last time you had to do something you thought you couldn’t do, but did. Guess what? There’s your proof. We each have things in our past that we thought for sure were going to ‘eat our lunch’, but didn’t.

There was a time in my life that I thought there was NO WAY I’d be able to earn a living from home without a job. I have three kids, a mortgage and a car payment, for crying out loud, plus I’m single with no other income to rely on! Well, guess what I’ve been doing since December of 2002?

Maybe for you it’s your managing your website or blog, or writing effective marketing copy, or picking up the phone and reaching out to a prospective new client, or any number of other things that loom over you.

Matters not. You’ve got proof. And the really good news is that “proof” from one area of your life transfers over to any other area of your life, because the proof is really about all the times – in any situation or context – that you did something you didn’t think you could do.

What can you change your mind about today and think you can, instead?

Related posts:

1. I Beg Your Pardon, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden

We are responsible for the messages we send, but we are not necessarily responsible for how the message is received, particularly given how many ways and reasons there are for a message to be misconstrued. But in being responsible for the messages we send, we can’t turn a blind eye to the likely perceptions of others. And certainly, our words are not the only vehicle by which we send messages. We are responsible for all of the messages we send.

Are you skewing the messages you send verbally with behavior that says the opposite? Do your words say one thing while your actions say another?

Try stepping outside your own skin and seeing yourself through the eyes of others. Is the message you send the message you intend?

No related posts.