What is an Elegantly Balanced Life?
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What is an Elegantly Balanced Life?
In today’s episode, I’m continuing a short series that focuses in on work-life balance.
It has been over two years since I wrote a post defining an elegant balance. Today, I want to dig into this concept and share my perspective on work-life balance in general, define an elegantly balanced life, and then share some simple steps you can take to create it.
Work-life balance receives a lot of negative attention. Some people take offense at the notion that the phrase “work-life balance” implies that work and life are diametrically opposed. Others hate the fact that the word “balance” implies that work and life need to have equal time and energy focused on them in order to achieve balance. If you listened to last week’s episode, you know that work-life balance is not something that you can ever really cross off our list, but it’s really a journey where we continually learn, grow, and adapt.
Let’s unpack these two misconceptions of work-life balance.
First, the phrase work-life balance was never meant to indicate that work and life are opposed. Yes, of course your work is a part of your life. That makes sense, right? It’s an experience we have while we are alive. The thing is, the concept of work-life balance in rooted in the workplace trying to make employees’ lives better. Hence, the term work-life balance. Although the term didn’t come around until the late 20th century, the idea of work-life balance dates back to the early 1800’s. During the Industrial Revolution, it was normal for blue collar employees to work 16 hours a day, 6 days a week without any paid vacation and with very few breaks. Many sources credit Robert Owen, a Welsch manufacturer for creating the concept of work-life balance. In the late 1700s he decided that working conditions were too demanding and started advocating for a more balanced day of “eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” So, you see, work-life balance was never intended to indicate that work was equally important as life, instead it was intended to recognize that employees are people who have lives outside of work and they have a right to live them!
Let’s look at the other misconception – that “balance” implies that work and life need to have equal time and energy dedicated to them. Balance can be defined as a condition in which different elements are in the correct proportions. This definition says nothing about the different elements needing to be equal, they just need to be in the correct proportions. The good news? You get to define what those proportions are for yourself. We all have different values, demands, and are in different life stages so our preferred proportions will likely look different from person to person.
So, what is work-life balance?
Work-life balance can be defined as “being actively engaged in and having a sense of competence and satisfaction across life roles in accordance with personal values” (Hirschi, 2020, p. 2).
An Elegant Balance
Now that we’ve discussed work-life balance in general and hopefully cleared up some confusion, let’s chat about what makes an elegant balance. Elegance refers to the beauty of something unusually simple and effective. When we apply that concept to our own work-life balance we end up with a work-life balance that is beautiful in its simplicity and effectiveness. An elegant balance is about rejecting the notion that having a career and children must be overwhelming and stressful. Sure, we all have our moments, but we don’t accept that as our fate. Instead, pursuing an elegantly balanced life involves defining our ideally balanced life and pursuing it passionately; curating each aspect of our lives so as to maximize simplicity, beauty, and joy.
How do we do that?
In this next part, you might want to download the Elegant Balance Workbook because I am going to walk through it step-by-step and help you get started creating your own elegantly balanced life. It’s completely free and can be downloaded here.
Step 1: Your Ideal
On pages 3 and 4 in the Elegant Balance Workbook, we start our pursuit of an Elegant Balance by defining our ideal work-life balance. Close your eyes and imagine a perfect week. What does it look like? What are you spending your time doing? How much time are you spending on the different areas of your life? Maybe it involves shutting work off at a certain time. Maybe it involves making time for home cooked meals with your family around the dinner table. Maybe it involves a morning workout routine or evening bubble bath. This is your perfect week, so dream big! This ideal work-life balance is going to be your guide as you start your journey towards an elegantly balanced life.
In the workbook, you will see that there are three questions with space for you to reflect on three areas of your life: your work, your family, and yourself. Take a few moments to reflect and fill it in. You can’t create your elegantly balanced life until you have clarity around what you want to create.
Step 2: Your Reality
Now that you know where you want to be, you need to take inventory of where you are currently. What is your current reality? How is it different from your ideal? Pages 5 and 6 in the workbook address this part. Take a moment to reflect. Be honest. It’s okay if your current work-life balance is out-of-whack. That simply means that you have room to improve! The most important thing is that you are recognizing it, taking action, and intentionally designing the life you want to live. In this step, I find it helpful to consider an average week. We all have crazy, out-of-balance weeks here and there where a big project is due at work, or we go on vacation with our family.
In the workbook, you will see that there are, again, three questions with space for you to reflect on the same three areas of your life: work, family, and self. But this time, you are reflecting on how your current reality is different from your ideal. Take a few minutes to fill this in before moving on to the last piece.
Step 3: Your Plan
You’ve probably already realized this, but an elegantly balanced life doesn’t happen by accident. Is it possible? Yes, absolutely. However, it takes intentional action on your part. When you start intentionally pursuing that ideal work-life balance you defined in Step 1, amazing things happen.
In this step, you are going to make a plan to start aligning your current reality with your ideal. This section is covered on pages 7 and 8 of the workbook. The best place to start is to simply brainstorm some practical actions you can take this week to help move you closer to your elegant balance. Keep in mind that this will not happen overnight. There may be some super simple ways that you can create a better balance such as starting a weekly planning routine, scheduling focused family-time, or adopting a new skincare routine. However, depending on your situation, there may be more difficult tasks that need to be done (e.g., discussing a flexible work arrangement with your boss, finding an equitable division of labor with your spouse, or sticking to a physical exercise program).
Use page 8 in the workbook to brainstorm at least three practical actions you can take in each area of your life (i.e., work, family, and self) that will help you start making progress towards your ideal work-life balance.
At the end of the workbook (pages 10 through 12), I’ve included some of my favorite planning templates to use along with the practical actions you just identified. The first gives you space to brain-dump all of your to-dos for the week. The second allows you to outline your week and figure out where all of those tasks fit. The third is a template to use for each day. They’re undated, so you can use them over and over again. Print them off and put them in a folder or a three-ring binder. Or if you have tablet, I love to use them with my Goodnotes app.
It is my deepest desire to help you create an elegantly balanced life – a life filled with simplicity, beauty, and joy. I don’t want you to live in a constant state of overwhelm, chaos, or stress. Indeed, life has its difficult moments but designing your life on purpose, living in accordance with your personal values, defining the correct proportions of work and life for yourself is so powerful.
If you feel like you need more guidance and want an in-depth, research-based, systematic approach to creating an elegantly balanced life, you’re in luck! I have spent the past two years creating my online course, The Elegant Balance Academy, and it is going to be launching soon. If you’re even the slightest bit interested, I encourage you to join my VIP waitlist. As a VIP, you will have access to the course before it goes out to the public and receive an exclusive discount of $200 off. You can join the waitlist here. Hurry and get on there soon because the course will launch in the next few weeks!
Have a beautiful, joy-filled week friend!
If you’re interested in creating a work-life balance characterized by simplicity, joy, and beauty, why don’t you start by checking out my Elegant Balance Workbook? In it, I help you define what work-life balance looks like for you and share some tips on creating that balance. I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it – Balance doesn’t happen by accident.