Work-Life Balance: Positive Practices
for Hard Times
by Molly Gordon, MCC
It's important to get a handle on mood swings or energy
shifts if you want to maintain your work life balance and be successful
in business. According to psychologist and researcher Martin Seligman,
some folks appear to be hardwired to respond optimistically and hopefully
to work life balance upset and life's ups and downs. Others are wired
for opposite responses. Fortunately, you do not have to settle for the
wiring you were born with. With practice you can improve your resilience
and your hopefulness by acquiring solid positive thinking skills.
I like to think of the process of building hopefulness,
resilience and positive thinking skills as an analogue to building physical
fitness: it takes attention, concentration, commitment, and repetition.
If you approach a workout program with those qualities, you can almost
always improve your fitness.
The first hurdle to get over is the belief that you
already need to be different in order to succeed. You don't. You are the
way you are and you can start from here, overwhelmed, worried, anxious,
whatever. Don't fall into your story about how you feel, but take a stand
for what you intend to accomplish to restore your work life balance and
where you plan to go. You do not need to feel better before you try these
practices -- do them now. Another caveat: Do not interpret your progress
in the short term -- measuring increase in strength and endurance after
a single workout would be silly.
Seligman points out that people with an optimistic approach
to life habitually accept positive thoughts and dispute negative thoughts.
Those of us who are wired to be more pessimistic tend to dispute the positive
and accept the negative. Optimists tend to assume that their life balance
will be restored, good events will happen again and that bad events are
an exception; pessimists assume the reverse. I am oversimplifying his
rigorously considered arguments, and I encourage you to read the book
if the science of this is important to you.
Here's a practice he recommends for shifting from hopelessness
to hopefulness. I successfully use it with my clients to help them restore
their work life balance. He calls it ABCDE for:
Adversity -- Beliefs -- Consequences -- Disputation
-- Energization.
A - Adversity
Start by spelling out the nature of the situation. Notice that you can
experience hopelessness in response to ostensibly positive situations
as well as to negative ones. For example, getting a new client or being
accepted into a final round of interviews can upset your balance and send
you into a whirlwind of anxiety and fear that produces just as much hopelessness
and overwhelm as not getting the job or not making the cut.
B -- Beliefs
This is your opportunity to spell out the thoughts and beliefs that are
fueling the negative response.
C -- Consequences
Look at the consequences of your beliefs -- what happened as a result?
How do you behave? What happened then?
D -- Disputation
Actively dispute the beliefs that break your life balance and send you
into the downward spiral. This is where you practice arguing with yourself
in a productive way.
E -- Energization
When you have been effective in disputing the problem beliefs, you feel
an influx of energy, a sense of renewed hope, or at least of peacefulness.
So, here's an example from my life:
Adversity:
I was excited about moving forward on two projects when I fell on my bike
and cracked my ribs. I was okay and working hard with this for almost
three days, then depression and anxiety set in and my usual positive thinking
ability left me. Instead of feeling like moving forward I felt like bursting
into tears.
Beliefs:
How will I ever restore my work life balance and get things done if I
can't stop these mood swings? Maybe I am just not meant to lead these
projects. I don't know enough and I can't seem to get started -- I probably
should have said no in the first place. It would be better to bow out
now, as embarrassing as that will be, than to keep going and have a bigger
train wreck later when I just can't make the grade.
Consequences:
These beliefs leave me feeling very sad and small, like a six year old,
and then I wonder how a six year old can possibly be a leader. I find
it hard to concentrate and I just want to hide.
Disputation:
Constant low-grade pain can take it out of anyone. The world is not going
to come to an end if you delay things because you've been injured. And
who says you have to do it alone anyway? Some of the problem is that you
don't have enough information to go forward. That calls for making requests
of others, not for blaming yourself. And when you're not leaning on yourself
so hard, your positive thinking ability starts coming back and your mood
lightens -- so maybe it would be smart to cut yourself some slack this
week after letting folks know what is going on. You don't have to crawl
under a rock -- you can reach out instead to restore your work life balance.
And even if some work projects end up being passed on to others, there
will always be other opportunities.
Energization:
I called and emailed colleagues to regroup. Not only did these conversations
relieve my anxiety, they made simple next steps quite clear. In one case,
my summary of a conversation ended up being exactly what our group needed
to move forward. Who knew? I had been worried about making things happen
on my own when all along my strength was in articulating and clarifying
complex input from many sources.
See how this works? I do strongly recommend the book
as there are many more practices in it that address different aspects
of overwhelm and ways to restore your work life balance. But if you struggle
with hopelessness and challenge yourself to work through this one exercise
on a regular basis (and if that means five or ten times a day, so be it),
your positive thinking skills will grow and you WILL get relief. Remember
-- don't measure change before it can happen -- keep doing the practices
long enough for significant positive shifts to take root and grow.
Here is the link to the book at Amazon.com: Learned
Optimism by Martin Seligman.
* * *
 Learn
more about Authentic Promotion - a comprehensive small
business marketing resource that turns marketing and self promotion into
a path of increasing self-awareness, authenticity, and right livelihood.
In particular, the strategies of maintaining your work-life
balance you learn to apply will build the solid foundation for your
authentic prosperity as an entrepreneur.
* * *
Contact an acknowledged expert
on work-life balance issues for small business owners Molly Gordon at:
Shaboom Inc. Life could be a dream…
PO Box 195
Suquamish, WA 98392-0195
mgordon@authenticpromotion.com
As a business coach and small
business marketing consultant, Molly Gordon, MCC, is available in Greater
Seattle Area and internationally |
