Creating a Healthy Balance Between Work and Personal Life

 Relationships  No Responses »
Dec 102011
 

You work all day long and sometimes in the night to meet the set targets and earn your money. You earn a handsome paycheck and are progressing in your career. Your career is just perfect; the way you had always wanted it to be. But you fail on one front. Your job has created a distance in your relationships, you feel separated from everything. You have soaked yourself so much in work that you cannot remember the last time you had paid a visit to your granny’s place and have also forgotten the name of some distance relatives… Your friends are complaining that you don’t have time for them, and your relationship with your partner is worsening due to lack of time. Do you feel familiar with the experience? Such a scenario is hugely prevalent these days and there are many working professionals who find it difficult to find the balance between relationships and work. Even I find it hard to hold this balance and sometimes end up forgetting a close friend’s birthday only to face the reasoned bashing from him/her after some days. Isn’t this embarrassing? Have we become so focused on our own progress that we don’t have time for our close ones? To avoid circumstances like these you should learn to keep a healthy balance between work and personal life. I have learned it successfully, so can you. Some effective tips have been discussed through this article.

How to Create a Healthy Balance Between Work and Personal Life

Understand Your Priorities and Work on Them
Your work is definitely your first priority but remember that it is not your only priority. Relationship management is equally important. After all, it is your friends and relatives who will be there to help you in crisis. This being a valid reason, there are many other reasons you should be social in the circle of your near and dear ones. It actually conveys that you still care and know the significance of caring and being in touch. Maintaining a healthy balance is basically the sign of a professional and is the correct attitude we all should learn to imbibe.

Learn to Manage Time – It is the Only Way
When a person finds it difficult to manage his life and career, and ends up faltering on both fronts, it means he lacks on the time management and organizational skills. If we learn to manage our time fruitfully we can definitely be successful in creating a balance between work and personal life. For this you should design a proper schedule and then should try to follow it. There should be a cleverly thought out segmentation for every activity; definitely work has first priority in the schedule. What I am talking about is fruitfully utilizing your weekends, holidays and non working hours. Be social with your friends and relatives and take time out to catch up with your friends when you have time. Let laziness not distract you. This you can do, only if you are giving your hundred percent at work so that you don’t have to work on the weekends trying to finish the targets.

Kick Your Stress Out – You Will Feel Better
Let stress not affect you. More often, a person experiences crisis that are common during that period. To counter the stress, activities like meditation and Yoga should be part of your routine. This will help you to deal with relationship complexities effectively and would keep the negative energies away. To spend time with your loved ones you can also indulge in some activities with them, like you can ask your friends to join gym with you or you can play some sports together. This will serve dual purpose – you will stay connected with your friends even on working days and also reap the benefits of a workout. Keep stress at bay and learn to create a balance in life.

Enjoy Your Life – The Time Never Comes Back
Prevent yourself from being an over workaholic. No I don’t mean to say you should stop working; but you should not soak yourself so much in work that you fail in handling your relationships. You will later realize in life, working to fill your pockets, you ended up missing the thrill of enjoying life in the twenties. Same holds for those who are married. So spend time with your loved one(s), party on your weekends, go shopping, watch a movie! Do not forget to take a long vacation periodically so that you can catch up with your distant relatives and faraway friends. Enjoy the satisfaction of working hard and living life to the fullest.

Last but not the Least – Be Visible on the Internet Scene!
Internet is definitely a boon on us, least to say. So to be connected with your school friends or relatives who are far you can harness the power of the social networking site. Even if you access them once a week, you can do much to keep a track on your friends lives. A simple hello or a message will keep them happy and it will also help you in staying in touch with them. Take time out to gift your friends or write a letter. Such small things do count in managing relationships.

So, these were some tips you should remember to achieve a balance between work and personal life. One should always remember that keeping relations is very important and so is dutifully doing the work. Be a professional at your work, work hard, but do not fail to manage your relationships, they are equally important for a happy and balanced life. Do not miss on anything…!

 Posted by at 6:27 pm  Tagged with:

How to Manage Work and Family Life

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Dec 052011
 

There was once a young man who was unable to manage office and home together. He was plagued by deadlines he had to meet at work, and he always saw his children only when they were asleep. He did not know what to do! One day, the young man’s father visited them. The young man told his father about the problem. The father smiled and promised to bring him a solution. The next day the father turned up with a colorful coleus plant. The young man was puzzled. The father said – “Tomorrow when you leave for work, simply touch the youngest of the coleus leaves and say ‘To you I leave my household woes, for now I am a man of the world’; and when you return from work at night, touch the same coleus leaf and say ‘I am returning to my wife and kids – let them both find their husband and father respectively, and not a man troubled by his work life’.” And as sure as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, the young man regained balance in his life.

If only everyone could find a coleus like that! But the essence of the story is – problems are a problem only till we treat them as problems! Here are some easy-to-follow tips to manage work and family life.

How to Manage Work and Family Life – 5 Feasible Tips

Questions like how to manage work and family life, how to choose between career and family, are always tough ones to answer. Hopefully, the tips given below will sort you out.

#1 – Don’t Bring Work Home
This is probably the gravest mistake a man / woman can make as a partner, a parent and a family person – bringing work home. It just spoils everything! Your wife is not going to be happy with it, your children are going to miss their Dad, and heck; it is going to kill your sex life too! On the other hand, if you are a woman, you are going to kill yourself by bringing work home! Your children need their mother even if she is the CEO of a really big and important company. It is never a good idea to bring work home. The best thing to do if you have pending work is to reach office a little early and leave a little late, rather than carry work home. That way, you can be completely there for your kids and for your partner once you are home.

#2 – Don’t Carry Family Problems to Work
Just as it is important to not bring work home, it is also important to leave family problems and tensions home, before you step into the office premises. Carrying family problems to work is totally unprofessional and can hamper your performance. If you are going to come to office and still be stuck up on your child’s homework or the bank loan for your house, your boss is not going to like it. Plus, it is not a professional who mixes work and family – nah uh! Agreed, not everybody is affected as much by family problems, and there are people who can segregate the two easily and effectively, but there is still that subconscious load that we always carry. The best way to take care of this is to completely immerse yourself in the task at hand, so that you can block out anything else that may prove as a conspicuous (or even subconscious) distraction.

#3 – Two Different Phones
This is probably the best tip I can ever give – use two different phones, one for your professional life and one for your family and friends. Make sure you do not exchange the professional number with any family members or friends, and do not exchange the personal number with any people at work. That way, you can ‘choose’ who you want to be available to at what time in the day and on what days of a week. At the same time, you can inform maybe 2 or 3 of your closest family members and closest colleagues about both the numbers, in case it is absolutely necessary for them to reach you. A mobile phone can be as much of a bane as a boon! It is in our hands to be able to manage the device rather than turning into a slave of technology. Take charge, and turn things around.

#4 – Weekend is ‘Me n My Family’
The weekend is the one time in the week when you can totally be a family man / woman. Kick back and relax. Do not attend to any work related calls. The call of duty should not only be professional but should also be personal. If you plan your work well, you will be able to meet all deadlines and still be with your family without feeling guilty of having left work undone. It is all only a question of managing your time. If you are unable to give your family time during the week, then segregate the week into working days and weekends, and do justice to both of them. Be a complete professional during the week, but when it is weekend, forget you are the GM of your firm, and be the father / mother your kids want you to be, show them your love and affection. Be the husband / wife your partner needs you to be, and let him / her know you still haven’t forgotten how he / she likes to be touched!

#5 – Talk to Friends
The thing is, we get only one life. So we can never be ‘prepared’ for certain things. We do not have the experience of becoming a parent when we become a parent for the first time. We do not have the experience of being married when we get married for the first time. Sometimes, this is why certain situations in life overwhelm us. But if not your own, you can definitely learn a few things from the experiences of those around you. So do not shy away from talking to your family, friends and relatives. Do not feel like it is a failure on your part that you cannot manage to do something. Many around you also probably couldn’t manage to do it the first time they tried it too. But if today they have succeeded in doing something, so can you. Take inspiration, and grab the bull by its horns!

The biggest of our follies is that sometimes we fail to realize the fact that we do not always have to choose between two things; sometimes the solution to a problem is to choose both things. There can be a win-win answer to such questions; if only we look for them sincerely, they will enlighten us. Follow these tips as sincerely as you follow the company employees handbook. Just because nobody is going to penalize you for not giving your family time and attention, does not mean it is not going to have any effects. In fact, you get sacked, and you can still get another job; but a broken home is one that is almost impossible to fix. So take the time out for both the things, as they are both important in life. All the best!

 Posted by at 6:23 pm  Tagged with:

Monogamy and its Advantages

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Dec 012011
 

According to the general convention these days, monogamy refers to having only one sexual partner. However, monogamy implies a lot more than what the word is defined as. A believer of monogamy essentially expects his/her partner to live with him/her and cooperate with him/her to make a life (social monogamy). He/she also expects to be the only one that his/her partner has kids with (genetic monogamy). This in turn implies that the partner should not be sexually involved with anyone outside the relationship (sexual monogamy). Finally, a significant proportion of monogamists want to get married to their partner (marital monogamy). Now those may sound like a lot of restrictions or bondage. But most of the people who believe in monogamy expect all the above without ever voicing their expectation. It is like an unsaid code of conduct of monogamy.

Monogamy – Choice or Obligation?

As is the case with almost everything in the world, monogamy has its believers and critics, and monogamy has its polar opposite – polygamy. Many people believe in polygamy rather than monogamy. As a person, it is strictly their choice, and none of our business to poke our noses in their decision. But if you are someone who does not believe in monogamy but is still being pressurized or pushed into it by whatever moral or social or personal pressures, beware! This could be a recipe for disaster!

Whatever we choose to adopt in life, be it a dressing style or a lifestyle change, should not be a choice made under the burden of obligation. Most of the time in such cases, we eventually resort to our original preference, and then there is a huge chaos. If you want to live as a polygamist, choose to. But having chosen to become a monogamist, do not falter. Embrace the concept with complete understanding of what it implies and what your partner might expect from you.

Benefits of Monogamy

Taking a decision need not always be as easy as it seems to be, as I have tried to illustrate above. Moral, societal, familial obligations may not always be the right reasons to take a decision. So it is important to think a decision through before you actually implement. Here are some of the benefits of monogamy – I hope they help you take the right decision!

1. Monogamy means Security
Monogamy spells s-e-c-u-r-i-t-y in ways more than one. Monogamy spells emotional security. You always have someone you can count on in difficult times. However, this should not be one way! Both partners should stand by each other. Monogamy also spells social security. Economic security is also a part of monogamy, if worked out wisely by the involved partners.

2. Healthy Children
No child in the world deserves a broken home. Monogamy will make sure that your kids grow up in a secure and safe environment. The number of institutionalized children is alarmingly large, and one of the reasons children need to be institutionalized is divorce. One of the major causes of divorce, in turn, is cheating in a relationship. It is a vicious circle, which can be avoided if one chooses to abide by monogamy

3. Emotional Stability
Monogamy holds the family together as an entity. A ‘family’ means the partners have each other, the kids have both – a father and a mother. The polygamous nature of one of the two partners might create friction between the partners, if their ideas, beliefs and boundaries about the concept do not all match. They may eventually lead to conflict. Even if the children are not directly involved in such conflicts, they do not escape burning their hands in the fire. The emotional consequences of these are great and deep. One cannot even imagine in how many ways divorce can affect children.

4. Less Risk of STDs
Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) can be greatly curbed by adhering to monogamy. Switching partners or keeping multiple partners can give rise to all kinds of STDs, many of which are fatal. Even with the use of protection such as condoms, STDs may still be passed on from an infected to an uninfected partner; the chances cannot be completely ignored.

5. Attachment
Every human being has the undeniable need to be physically and emotionally attached. It forms an important factor of many/most relationships. Monogamy lets you enjoy the feeling of attachment. Of course, this is healthy attachment I am talking about. The other types of attachment may not always be beneficial, but healthy attachment is indeed necessary.

6. Company
It would be nice to have company when you are old and your hair is gray, isn’t it? Monogamy means you will not be alone when life is not as exciting or as busy as it was in your yesteryear. Old people often crave for company, more so if they are alone. Won’t you like to spend your old age in the company of someone you really love?

The aspect that speaks most strongly of monogamy is that it is the best and most secure kind of atmosphere for children to grow up in. It ensures balanced physical, mental and emotional development of children. Given the kind of fast and hectic lifestyles we all have these days, doesn’t that make you feel nice? It is really important that children be brought up in the right kind of atmosphere for them to grow up into responsible individuals of the society. Hope I have been able to convince you of the benefits of monogamy. Ultimately however, the choice is completely up to you.

 Posted by at 6:17 pm  Tagged with:
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