Work-Life Balance: Get in the Driver's Seat

Work-Life Balance: Get in the Driver's Seat

By Kristi Daniels
Work-Life Balance Examiner

Gaining greater balance between your work life and your personal life isn't just going to happen to you. You need to get in the driver's seat and take control.

Do you blame your boss or colleagues on the night's you need to stay late at the office? Or do you blame an inefficient work environment where there are too many meetings, too many distractions and not enough productivity to get the job done during office hours?

Stop.

Quit blaming others or the situations that are "happening" to you. When you engage in victim thinking, you are giving your power away. You're also not engaging in activity that will help you improve or solve the situation.

In his book The Success Principles, Jack Canfield offers two critical rules to help you move out of victim-hood and into the driver's seat.

•    Take 100% responsibility for your life. You, and only you, are responsible for your actions and the events and situations in your life.

•    E + R = O. An event plus your response to that event yields an outcome. Like any equation, if you want to change the answer you're getting, you need to change one of the factors. If you don't like an outcome you're getting in your life, you may not be able to change the event itself. But you can change your response to it.

It's also important to draw a distinction between reacting to the event vs. responding the event. Knee-jerk reactions come from a place of fear or uncertainty. When you react you are not aligned with your values and succumb to whatever emotion arises. Reaction is also a motivation from the past, something that you've experienced before. You respond to an event based on your values, your truth. A response is well thought-out because it is knowledge you already have; you know what is important to you.

How can you apply these principles in your life to achieve greater work-life balance? Where in your life are you acting like a victim? How can you reverse your thinking and get into the driver's seat?