An Imperfect Balance

A lot of the stress of life involves us not finding a good balance between our work, our personal life and our interpersonal relations and societal obligations.  (which I’ve written abouthere).  The other part is knowing when good enough is good enough.

The Harvard Business Review  had a great article about how balancing life is always an imperfect activity.  The lead quote  is “You can have it all. It just won’t be perfect.” (http://blogs.hbr.org/kanter/2012/08/the-imperfect-balance-between.html)

The article then talks about the need to outsource your tasks to free up more time for yourself and how that requires you to give up control. The article is also about how to not get stuck in the trap of thinking if everything in your life isn’t perfect all the time, you have failed.  It’s this last part I agree with the most.

Life is messy. It’s imperfect. Our solutions to the problem of finding work life balance is always going to be, to a certain extent, out of balance, requiring constant re-adjustment from us. And yes, this is frustrating. If you’ve ever played a Wii Balance game you know, you have to constantly re-adjust your balance to do well.

So instead of getting angry that you can’t set your life on autopilot in order to enjoy it. Accept that life requires your active and intentional involvement to work well. Not perfectly, but well. This knowledge will help you free up your mind precisely because it is reality based.

Saying Yes

Sometimes you gotta say yes!

At the beginning of August I wrote a post about learning to say no to save your sanity (see it here: http://humanisthappiness.blogspot.com/2012/08/just-say-no.html) Given that I am a big fan of saying no, why on earth am I writing a post about saying yes?

I’m glad you asked.  The say no post was actually about learning how to find balance in your life between your competing responsibilities. You need to balance your needs, against the needs of your family and the needs of your society.  But just because you need to take care of yourself first doesn’t mean you should always say no.

You do have a responsibility to others.  I say yes to a very inconvenient request in August. A woman called me on a Friday night asking if I could officiate her father’s funeral the next day. I had plans for the weekend.  But I still said yes.

Why? Because her need was greater than mine. She was in grief and in a panic because she had spent several days trying to find a non-religious person to give the service and had failed. No one should have to go through what she did while they are grieving.  My husband and my son gave me permission to leave them for the day to take care of a complete stranger. They understood. Her need for my time was greater than theirs.

I need to add that I have never done a funeral before, and I am not trained as a celebrant and so I was scared that I would do her father justice and help her. I helped her anyway. Her need was greater than my fear.

And in the end, it is when we are giving of ourselves to others to help ease their pain that we feel the most alive. When you are striving for balance, don’t use the need to find balance to become selfish. Sometimes you need to say yes, even though the thought of saying yes scares you, say yes.

Image: "Yes And No Buttons" by digitalart http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

Proper Planning is not Pessimistic

I am often accused of being pessimistic. The problem is that when I am planning a new endeavor, I like to plan for unexpected contingencies. I brain storm all the possible ways my plans can be thwarted and then plan for what I will do if those unfortunate events should come to pass.

People who have embraced the idea of positive thinking, think I am attracting negativity to me. I am not into the power of positive thinking. I am a Humanist; I am into planning for success. The way I see it, the more I am ready for the negative possibilities, the more the negative possibilities won’t trip me up on my way forward. I am ready for them, I have planned for them and I can overcome them.

I liken this attitude to wearing a life preserver when out boating. Lots of people don’t wear life preservers. They don’t think they are going to have a problem. However, I want to be prepared. I have a much better chance of surviving a boating accident if I have a life preserver on than if I don’t. Thinking of the negatives does not kill my enthusiasm. It has the opposite effect. It helps me feel prepared and thus more ready to tackle my problems.

It is only by considering the possible negatives outcomes that I can truly make effective decisions that will minimize the potential downside of any of my activities. Why wouldn’t I want to do that? The way I look at it, mitigating potential problems isn’t pessimistic. It’s optimistic.

Just Say No

Sometimes you just gotta
say NO!

A key to finding happiness is finding balance in our life. When we have too many obligations we get stressed out trying to find the time to fulfill them all. How we balance our competing responsibilities is something only we have the ability to do. No one can tell us what the right balance is; we need to find it for ourselves.  It is our responsibility.

I think most people understand that they need to balance their responsibilities. What they don’t know is how to do it. And that is because they do know how to do it, they just don’t like saying no. After all, if you reject a responsibility or obligation, then you aren’t being responsible. We all know that in order to be a good person we need to be responsible. Saying no is like abdicating our responsibilities. It doesn’t feel good. And this is what sets the guilt cycle in motion.

I am here to tell you don’t need to feel guilty about not being able to do it all. Sometimes the responsible thing to do is to say no. Your responsibilities are to yourself, your family and your community in that order. If you burn yourself out, you aren’t going to be of value to anyone so you need to be responsible to your needs.

Once you understand and accept that it is your responsibility to find the right balance between your obligations, it is fairly easy to do. It is empowering as well precisely because it is so responsible.  Yes, you need to fulfill societal obligations. That is part of what it is to be an active and engaged citizen of the world. But you also need to take care of yourself so that you can help make the world a better place.  That is what being responsible is all about.

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To learn more about how to live life more effectively - check out my 6 week course - http://humanisthappiness.com/

Image: "Business Man Concept Stop Hand" by t0zz FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My Happiness Project

Finding balance between work
and family is the key to finding
happiness.

I was talking to a friend the other day about balancing work and life. We are both self-employed stay at home moms. A big part of the reason we choose this path for ourselves is so that we can have more time with our families. We are also both encouraging our husbands to make similar choices.

Why? Because money isn’t everything.  We need enough money to live off of, but we would rather not accumulate money at the expense of quality family time.  Why?  Because I married my husband because I actually like spending time with him. I like spending time with my son too.  Excessive work gets in the way of that sometimes.

We both realized we are embarking on a personal happiness project. Our goal is to find a balance between work and family that works for us. I don’t want to have it all. I want a little of everything and that requires me to make choices that will help me realize the balance I seek.

And yes, it does mean I’m not looking to make a 6 or 7 figure salary. Mid to high 5 figures is fine with me and much more realistic a goal anyway. As long as my chosen career affords me the time I want to spend with my family – I’ll be happy.


Image: "Businessman Thinking" by 89studio FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Pick One

One of the topics that comes up during the Q&A after my talks is how to not get overwhelmed. Once you start feeling compassion for everyone on the planet, the challenge becomes how to not let all the bad stuff that is happening to all those people overwhelm you. Related to this is how to survive emotionally amongst all the requests for assistance. There are so many good causes to get involved with and they are all worthy and they all need help. How is a good person supposed to maintain balance in the face of it all?

My advice? Pick one. You can’t do it all, but that shouldn’t stop you from doing something. So pick something that matters to you and that you think you can make a difference in. It really doesn’t matter what it is. Just pick one, get involved and try to make things better in that one area. Not only will you be more effective if you focus your efforts, you will also be happier.

We all know intellectually that we can’t do everything at once and be everywhere simultaneously and that we shouldn’t even try to. The problem is convincing our hearts, which bleed with compassion. Just remind yourself that there are in fact people working on those other issues and their work frees you up to focus on the one issue you have picked, safe in the knowledge that those other issues are indeed being worked on.

If that doesn’t do the trick, I will absolve you of the sin of not being superhuman. There - now you have my official permission to pick one without feeling too much guilt. So go forth and help make your corner of the world a better place.

A Delicate Balance

I have been helping a friend of mine from Bahrain edit an essay about Humanism. I am loving the essay. It continues to astonish me how people from all over the world manage to reach the same conclusions about life. Anyway, he said I could share some of it with you and the bit I want to share has to do with balancing the competing aspects of the Humanist philosophy. As I agree whole-heartedly I am sharing it here.

He quotes Barry Seidman who is a writer, producer and Humanist who wrote in an essay titled Imagine All the People the following statement.

If we cling to atheism as the basis for our behavior in society, then we may become what I call, "atheist avengers," putting our energies in debunking God while leaving social justice issues behind. If we only focus on science and skepticism we risk the twin evils of elitism and arrogance, finding more strength in attacking religionists or debunking the masses, than in making the world a better place to live. And if we focus only on social justice issues and ignore the problems of supernaturalism and the tool of science, we can find ourselves trapped in the labyrinth of postmodernism, and wind up building our societies on the fallacy that humans have free will. - Barry Seidman

My friend, A.R.M. of Bahrain, sums up the various aspects of Humanism thusly “So humanistic thoughts mostly concentrate on living a peaceful life, doing good, research, critical thinking, social justice, making the world better place to live, free will, and democracy.” Now that’s what I call balance.