Work And Life Balance: A Constant Battle
And it never ends.
Having a full-time job can be exhausting for sure. I recently found myself completely burnt out from my daily responsibilities.
Even though I sleep 7–8 hours regularly and take care of my mind and body, last week I almost fell asleep in the office (don’t tell my manager).
I work a 9–5 job, but more of a 2–10 pm job. Even after a whole year of having a corporate job it still feels like an impossible mission to find a perfect balance between your hobbies, work, social life, and other activities.
What is even a balance?
When I first started to take a serious look at my day-to-day activities, I wanted all of my days to look the same.
By that, I mean that I wanted to follow some kind of strict schedule that would remain the same as long as I have the same responsibilities over some period of time.
Now probably someone is thinking, why would anyone want to do that? I believe every ambitious person has fallen into this hellhole at least once in their lifetime, trying to succeed in every segment of their lives at once.
In my dictionary, balance was the same as perfection. If I was not consistent with my schedule and plans I would blame myself and feel like I am not productive enough or that every hope in the world is lost.
I experienced constant cycles of having a perfect time-blocked schedule for every activity in my life and exhausting myself, to the point where I would do the complete opposite — lose hope, completely shut down, and go into hermit mode.
It took me some time to realize that kind of lifestyle is not sustainable.
We are not alone in this world
As obvious as this statement seems, somehow I forgot to include multiple factors that could “ruin” my perfectly planned schedule and activities.
Yes, we interact with people daily, and obviously, all of them will impact our lives in some way, more or less.
Refusing to let other people and factors into the equation called my perfect and balanced life resulted in me being disappointed in myself over and over again.
I still struggle with this, but accepting other factors to change my plans for the better or worse has become more tolerable.
The permanence of balance
As mentioned previously, during my cycles from being the most productive person on planet Earth to turning into a plant, after some extensive journaling something just clicked.
I was torturing myself with my thoughts beating myself up for not being perfect and constantly giving up on myself for chasing something which is not possible to achieve.
If I failed to complete my tasks one day then all of a sudden I would think all the progress is lost.
Conclusion
I realized I was not chasing any kind of balance from the outside. Seeking balance within ourselves would certainly transform our outside world. I stopped looking at it as something permanent, rather something that should always be present.
Balance has no timeframe, it has no beginning or end.
Balance can feel good or bad depending on which stage of the process are we in, and there is nothing wrong with that.
At the end of the day, I wish all of us could always keep this in mind when we are beating ourselves over some minor inconveniences.
Let me know what you think about this!
