We’ve officially entered the holiday season here in the U.S. As female business owners with families and professional ambitions, one question keeps popping up: How do we balance it all?
Work-life balance is a highly sought-after outcome among many of my clients and business friends. But what if the concept of work-life balance isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?
This thought occurred to me a few weeks ago, after a phone call with a friend from college.
I’d already put the baby to bed, changed into my pajamas, and poured myself a glass of wine when my friend called. It was one of those lovely warm nights at the tail end of autumn, so I decided to chat outside.
Imagine me, if you will, striding around the neighborhood in house slippers and oversized sweatpants, soaking up moonlight, sipping rose, and laughing my head off. All around me, presumably, reasonable people were winding down for the night. The occasional car slid past, and I saw someone walking their dog, but otherwise I was alone. It felt like I had the whole night to myself, and boy did I have fun.
By the time I got home, it was past my usual bedtime, but I was wide awake. I felt refreshed—nay, reborn!—by the extravagant silliness of parading around in pajamas, drinking in public, and goofing around with a friend late at night. It all felt so EXTRA, and in a good way. An indulgence of joyful insouciance.
Most of the time, women like you and I are encouraged to keep things in balance. We’re taught to moderate our indulgences, evenly manage our duties, and handle responsibilities like Lady Justice.
We get the message that we can achieve happiness and success as parents and entrepreneurs and leaders and change-makers and friends and spouses and partners and human beings, provided we give equal focus and attention each one of these roles and our obligations therein.
At this time of year especially, we feel the pressure of creating magic for our families and neighbors and friends while trying to handle the obligations and pressures of running a business.
Work-life balance may be at the top of our to-do lists, but it’s oh-so-challenging to achieve.
Balance implies equal measure, equal footing, a carefully managed effort that is impossible to maintain once you’re in motion. And our lives, especially our full and busy lives, are always in motion.
Plus we cannot possibly give our full hearts and minds to everything we care about as often as we would like. We lack the resources and bandwidth because we are human.
No wonder it feels so incredibly hard to create and sustain a good work-life balance.
For these reasons, the pursuit of balance can easily turn toxic. Work-life balance becomes just another unrealistic standard of expectation for ourselves and our performance. Another invisible, difficult, hard-won measure of success or failure that causes us to feel stressed and anxious because we’re not achieving it. Which really goes against the whole point.
Whenever I speak to a client or friend who wants to cultivate a better work-life balance, what she really wants is an approach and experience of life that allows her to enjoy the sweet fruits of all of the flourishing aspects of her world.
What she actually wants is to not feel so sucked in to the sinkhole of work and to-do lists. To not feel so drained and anxious and busy chasing after the many fires that require immediate putting out. To simply relax and spend more time at her discretion in the ways that feel really good and aligned and alive for her on any given day.
We call this work-life balance, but actually I think what we’re aiming for is something very different. That something looks like presence.
Being present means being right here, right now, and getting to feel the full weight and pleasure of what is right in front of you.
Maybe it’s the feeling of being in the same room as your child and having an unintelligible conversation with them, allowing yourself to delight in the silliness and wonder of what they are trying to say.
You’re not thinking about the future to any great extent. You’re not worrying about the past. You’re not thinking about the things left undone, which you would focus on if you were trying to keep everything balanced and even keel. You’re not even thinking about what opportunities you might be missing because you’re here right now.
Or when you sit down to eat a meal, you can constantly be rushing onto the next thing or you can take a pause and taste your food before you swallow it. Choosing to be present is about choosing to taste the food as it’s in your mouth, one bite at a time.
It’s in the present moment that we find ourselves centered, find our joy, and find that feeling of enough-ness that constantly eludes us when we are attempting to carefully manage the various aspects of our lives.
So if you are stressing about balancing work and life during this holiday season, here’s your permission to focus on presence instead.
The best part about presence is you don’t even have to dedicate that much time to it. Being present is more like a switch you can flip.
Presence is a choice you can make at any moment. All you have to do is say:
“I feel I am here right now. I am aware of my body. I’m aware of my surroundings. I’m aware of whatever small miracle is unfolding in front of me. I am in dialogue with my environment. I am a witness to myself. I am allowing myself to feel whatever is here. If it’s sadness or happiness or anger or frustration or ease or flow or freedom and exaltation, whatever it is, it’s here. It’s my life. It’s the unfolding of the page one page at a time.”
You can be present in the middle of a difficult work meeting, in the midst of a wonderful conversation with family and friends, after the final gift has been wrapped, and right before you take the first bite of food. You can be present anytime you choose. And when you do choose presence, you can drink more deeply from the cup of your own life.
When you make a conscious choice to flip the switch and become present to whatever’s unfolding in front of you, you dive into a deep place, far beneath the turbulent waters of your mind, where you are instantly reconnected with your power and your wholeness and the deep, abiding enough-ness of getting to live your life, just as it is.
Soon I’ll send you specific ideas for cultivating greater presence. Until then, I’d love to hear from you.
Does the idea of creating “work/life balance” make you feel pressure, or does it inspire and motivate you? Will you practice flipping the presence switch in the days to come?
