This is critical.
Your life, your health, your happiness, your ability to show up as a mother, a father, a partner, and as the most aligned representation of yourself – depends on this. Work-Life Balance – Are You In or Out?

I invite you to read that again.

When you return to your work place, and everything that goes along with that – the travel time, the necessary preparation time for your meals, your food shopping, your training, your deadlines (all of these constitute your “up time”), where will you insert your “down time”?

This down time doesn’t fall in our laps. We might occasionally nod off on the couch, but nodding off out of pure exhaustion doesn’t count when it comes to consciously planting periods of rest, renewal, stillness and integration time within your schedule.

Would you believe that the same responsibility exists for those still working from home? We still wake with a set amount of hours laid out in front of us – what do we do with those hours? And in what order? With what level of awareness and intention, interest or respect?

This balance between “up time” and “down time” needs to be conscious. This work-life balance becomes clouded when work became accessible via our phone in our hand wherever we go. No more leaving work at our desk. But there could be – with self-created boundaries that separate and balance:

* Being contactable 24/7 with —> Deciding when you will be reachable by the outside world 

* Planning, achieving, processing and stimulating your mind with —> Mental space, mental stillness, mental quietness 

* Saying “yes” to please with —> Saying “No” out of respect for yourself and your family

* Working towards the health of someone else’s business with —> Working towards the health of your life which is your business

* Planning and creating (including meals and scheduling) with —> Allowing, adapting, intuitively choosing in the moment 

This is a matter of self responsibility. A matter of health. A matter not of opinion, but of fact. This is critical, and our lives depend on our ability to re-balance all of this. This is a journey back to simplicity, to choice and to discipline. We share this responsibility. We carry it together, for ourselves beside one another, and that is ever so comforting.

Author – Kelly Dalby