3 Reasons Why You Can’t Find Work-Life Balance (And You’re Not Gonna Like Them)
If I had a dollar for every time I hear “I want better work-life balance,” then I could buy the Class B+ RV that I’ve been fantasizing about.
My dream RV (photo from the Coachmen RV website).
That longing for a better “work-life balance” is the number one concern I hear from the 40- and 50-year-old GenX’ers that come to me.
Real talk: the phrase “work-life balance” makes me cringe. It’s one of those empty self-help terms that no one has clarity around; they just know it’s something they feel like they don’t have.
Often I’ll ask folks, “What would work-life balance look like for you.” And I’m usually met with an understandable deer-in-the-headlights look, followed by a response somewhere along the lines of “I’d like to work less and have more free time.”
My follow-up question then is, “What does ‘balance’ mean?” Deer-in-the-headlights again.
No one I talk to ever has a clear definition of what “balance” means for them. Logically, “balance” means some type of even distribution. But when that definition is applied to “work” and “life,” people often feel like it requires those two things to be evenly distributed. People then are confronted with cognitive dissonance because they feel like the scales tip in favor of “work” having a heavier distribution than “life.” Thus, they feel like they don’t have “work-life balance.”
But is it really true that the scales tip heavier in favor of the “work” side of the scale?
Let’s do some math.
Photo by Anoushka Puri on Unsplash
There are 168 hours in a week. A “typical” work week is 40 hours, which leaves 128 hours for the rest of “life.” If you’re lucky, you sleep 8 hours a night, which is 56 hours a week, leaving 72 waking hours of “life” per week.
So we have forty hours of “work” balanced against 72 hours of waking “life.” Seems like “life” outweighs “work” in the “work-life balance” equation, huh?
What’s the problem then? If you’re somewhere in the ballpark of my math calculations, you’re spending more time not working than working. In fact, the balance scale only tips toward the “work” part of the equation if you work 57+ hours a week, which leaves you with 55 waking “life” hours a week.
Some of you may be working 57+ hours a week. Some of you may not. Yet, people from both of those groups yearn for more “work-life balance.”
So, the issue doesn’t seem to the math (or at least, not just the math).
There are three reasons why you’re not finding the “work-life balance” that you desire, and none of them has to do with the number of hours you spend at “work” versus “life.” You may not want to hear the reasons; yet, if you stick with me, you’ll be glad you did.
Number 1: “Work-life balance” is bullshit.
GenX’ers in their 40’s and 50’s got indoctrinated with the phrase “work-life balance” thanks to seeing our Boomer parents work themselves to the bone. Being the rebellious generation that we are, we sure as hell didn’t want to repeat our parents’ toxic work habits. Nah…the free-wheeling GenX spirit wanted us to strike more of a “balance” between our careers and the rest of our lives.
Here’s the thing though: the phrase “work-life balance” is made-up crap.
That phrase creates a false split between “work” and “life.” You have one life, hun. And I don’t just mean “one life to live” like sands through the hourglass. I mean you have one big ball of stuff that is your life.
That big ball of life has all kinds of stuff in it: work, play, sleep, sex, dating, marriage, eating, friends, family, hobbies, vacations, Netflix, etc. But none of that stuff can be neatly compartmentalized from the other stuff in that big ball.
Whether you want to hear it or not, “work” stuff is not separate from the rest of the stuff in your big ball of life. How you’re feeling at work, impacts how you’re feeling in the rest of your life, and vice versa. If you’re someone who thinks you leave “work” at the office and slap on a happy face when you come home, I’m here to disabuse you of that notion.
Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash
Where do you think all the stress, anxiety, and tension of your “work” goes when you leave the office? Is there some magical little box on your desk that you leave that energy in when you leave your office?
Of course not. No matter how good you think you are at separating your “work” from your “life,” that stress, anxiety, and tension from work stays inside you–the big ball of energy, neural pathways, emotions, and thoughts that make up the physical matter that is you. And that “you” is the same “you” that shows up for the rest of your “life.” It’s the same “you” that leaves the office to go home, to kids’ soccer practice, to the bar, or to bed.
You are one “you.” You have one life. And what’s impacting stuff in one area of your life, impacts stuff in the rest of your life, whether you realize it or not.
Thus, my sweet GenXer, your invitation is to stop thinking that you have a “work life” and the “rest of your life.” Stop trying to divide your life and yourself. You are one big “you” and it’s all one big life. Thinking that all the stuff in your life can be neatly compartmentalized and, even worse, that it can somehow all be “balanced,” creates unrealistic expectations that you will never be able to meet.
So, let’s start with calling bullshit on the notion of “work-life balance” in the first place, shall we?
Number 2: External expectations leave you stretched thin or broken in pieces.
Since you’re now presumably on-board with ditching the false notion of “work-life balance,” the next truth bomb I want to drop at your feet is this:the problem is not that your one big life is unbalanced.
The problem is that there are a million different expectations either pulling you and your one big life in a million different directions, or breaking you into a million pieces.
It’s like you and your life are a ball of Silly Putty.
Silly Putty has amazing chemical properties that allow it to do a couple of cool things. First, you can stretch and stretch and stretch Silly Putty without breaking it. When you do that, you creates thin little strands. The more you pull these strands, the thinner they get, and the weaker they get, but you can keep stretching and stretching them.
Second, you also can break Silly Putty apart with a quick and forceful tug.
You and your life are like Silly Putty. External forces have been constantly pulling on you all of your life, leaving you feeling stretched too thin. And, once in a while, those external forces exert themselves on you with such a force, that you feel like you’ve been broken into pieces.
Although there are different types of external forces, I want to focus on the force of external expectations — like the expectations from parents, society, culture, friends, coworkers, bosses, church, and advertising that we’ve devoted the first part of our lives trying to uphold.
Spending the last 40 or 50 years trying to live up to other people’s expectations has left you feeling stretched in a million directions and, sometimes, broken into pieces.
So, the problem is not that your one big life is unbalanced. The problem is that the external expectations you’ve tried so damn hard to uphold, have left you feeling like your one big life has never been yours. The problem is that you have never been you.
And now, after 40 or 50 years, you feel like worn out Silly Putty.
The only way to put that Silly Putty back together into the resilient and strong ball of fun that it was when you took it out of its brightly colored egg packaging, is to begin to alleviate the force of the external expectations that have been pulling at you and breaking you apart.
Start by asking yourself some questions:
“What external expectation am I trying to meet that is taking the biggest toll on me?”
“What is it going to take for me to stop tolerating the toll that this expectation is taking on my life?”
“What am I afraid will happen if I stop trying to meet this external expectation?”
“What is one small step I can take to stop putting so much effort into upholding that expectation?”
You don’t have to toss all expectations out the window all at once. And definitely don’t toss out expectations like “don’t hurt people or steal.”
The invitation here is to become aware of how external expectations are tearing you in a million different directions or breaking you apart. And then take one small step away from letting those expectations dictate you and your one big life.
Number 3: Stop trying to find balance; find your center.
Again, balance connotes equal distribution — a concept that doesn’t work well when applied to your one big life and all the stuff that’s in it.
Let’s go back to the Silly Putty. Even when the Silly Putty is being pulled in different directions do you know where it’s the strongest?
At its center.
Or let’s take another blast from our 70’s and 80’s childhood: Weebles.
Remember this:
“Weebles wobble but they won’t fall down.”
The reason Weebles don’t fall over is that they are grounded and weighted into a center mass at their bottom.
Be a Weeble: grounded and weighted into your center mass.
But what’s your center mass?
It’s who you are at your core.
Photo by De'Andre Bush on Unsplash
As you’ve spent the last 40 or 50 years trying to meet all the external expectations of success, you’ve likely ended up burying a lot of who you really are or wanted to be. You’ve also buried a lot of what is deeply important to you.
That’s normal. That’s what happens as we spend the first part of our lives trying to construct a life that fits within those external expectations of what “success” looks like.
We go to fancy schools. Get good grades and all the degrees. Strive for all the achievements. Go into the “right” profession. Buy the house. Either get married or stay independent. Maybe have kids. Wear the right clothes. Act the way we’re “supposed” to act. Buy all kinds of crap that society tells us we should have.
But ask yourself this:
“Where am I in all of that?” “What happened to me along the way?”
In meeting all of those external measures of success, where did you go?
Photo by Sarath P Raj on Unsplash
As you’ve lost yourself or parts of yourself along the way, you’ve gradually become uprooted from your center mass. You’re no longer rooted in what makes you, you.
Re-rooting yourself in your center — in who you are at your core — allows you to be guided by what deeply and fundamentally drives you. And from that place, you’ll be amazed at how little tolerance you have for being pulled in a million different directions or broken apart by external expectations.
From your rooted center, you can connect to who you are and what matters most to you. You’ll be able to let go of the notion of “balance” because you’ll know that as long as you’re rooted in your center — in who you are and what matters most to you — that you may wobble, but you won’t fall down.
So, my last invitation is to reflect on:
What parts of yourself did you bury along the way because you were afraid or told they weren’t acceptable?
When and where do you feel most out of place or not yourself in life?
Where do you feel disconnected from yourself?
What’s one thing that feels deeply important to you?
Final Thoughts
It’s understandable to want to find more “work-life balance.” It’s a notion that we GenX’ers in our 40’s and 50’s tattooed on our minds and hearts as we were entering our careers.
I hope, however, that this article has sparked some insights in you about the ways in which that phrase may be doing more harm than good. My deepest wish is for you to become more aware of the external expectations that you’ve been unconsciously (or even consciously) upholding . . . the ones that leave you feeling stretched thin or broken in pieces.
And may you — today, in this moment — reconnect to something deep within you that’s been buried or lost along the way . . . something that shines the light on who you are — at your core — and on what deeply matters to you.
Keep checking this space for more topics that speak to the forgotten GenX’ers who have spent the first part of their lives forging a path to success, only to now realize that they’ve lost themselves along the way. I am passionate about guiding those lost 40/50-year-olds back to themselves and what deeply matters to them, so that they can forge a brave new path forward. If you like this article, please consider sharing it or even supporting my work by buying me a coffee. And come join the Life From The Summit journey to receive weekly insights, resources, and tips.