Balancing your personal life with your professional life is key to sustaining your motivation. Your home life and work life must balance perfectly. Make sure that what you’re going for in your career complements your home life. Make sure that what goes on at home complements your career. One won’t work well if the other doesn’t.
For example, a woman gets into work early in the morning and is the last one to leave every night. This goes on week after week, month after month. It doesn’t seem like she gets that much more accomplished than anyone else. As a matter of fact, it seems like she’s using the office to escape from home. Something’s wrong there. Something needs to be fixed. Chances are, whatever is bothering her at home is affecting her work, too.
Or think about this. A man is always late for work. He always takes off during the middle of the day to go home. There always seems to be some sort of emergency to tend to at home. He takes long breaks. He leaves work early. He’s not getting his work done in record time. In fact, he’s not getting anything done at all. Chances are, he’s using the emergencies at home as excuses to stay away from his job.
If something is wrong at work, fix it if you can, or look for your solution elsewhere. If something’s wrong at home, fix it. If what’s going on at home is the result of neglect, admit it, then fix it. Pay greater attention. If you need to go to counseling, go to counseling. Talk with your minister. Talk with a trusted friend. But remember that whatever the problem is at home, it probably didn’t happen overnight. So make sure to give your problem time to heal. Be patient.
There must be a balance between work time and home time, professional time and personal time. They both have to be working well in order to maximize your motivation. Problems at home affect work. Problems at work affect your home life.
Even when things are going well in both areas, special circumstances may, at times, call for work to take away from home time. If that’s the case, make sure everybody at home knows when to expect the light at the end of the tunnel. If that extra project is really taking away time for the family, make sure your family knows that their time will be paid back with interest.
Psychologists have found two major things that we, as human beings, get the most happiness and satisfaction from. Number one is our work–our contribution to society, our continued progress toward reaching our goals, our area of influence and power.
Number two is love, the love we receive from our spouse, our children, our parents, our families, and our friends. Knowing that one person, or several people, care about us and want to spend time with us is an important factor.
The professional goals that you’ve outlined for yourself take a lot of work. They require constant learning to improve yourself and develop your skills. Don’t expect that your achievements will come to you on a silver platter. Don’t work on the wish-hope-and-prayer philosophy. You know that your goals require constant attention and discipline every day. Otherwise, they’ll never come to you at all!
You can’t just expect to come home at night after a long day and expect your family life to be improving all by itself. You can’t just expect that your personal life will grow and flourish without attention, without you taking the time to feed and water and weed out the negativity that happens while you’re away. Creating the perfect personal life takes just as much attention as creating the perfect professional life. It takes love, nurturing, kindness, sincerity, and caring.
And that’s one of the biggest mistakes that occur today. People spend all their time, focus all their energy, and give everything they’ve got to the job. It can’t work that way. Your family requires more than that.
The investment you initially made to your personal relationships is the investment you must continue to make. The more you give, the more you get. If you stop giving, guess what–you’ll probably stop receiving, too.
So keep your investment in relationships and family active. That’s part of the good life. What good is a mansion on the hill if you’ve got no one to share it with? What good is an investment portfolio worth millions if you’ve got no one to share it with? What good is working so hard day after day, month after month, year after year… working, working, working until you accumulate everything you want… and in the meantime, your family leaves you? It all loses its value.
Work hard. Play hard. Life has to be balanced, or your motivation will suffer along with your lifestyle.
Life without balance can cost you your relationships. Life without balance can cost you your health. Life without balance can cost you your spirituality. Life without balance can cost you your wealth and your happiness. So find things to motivate you from all areas of life. Your success depends on it.
* Source: Leading an Inspired Life by Jim Rohn