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Balancing Act

People often define work-life balance as having equal or sufficient time for all they want to experience: career, family, friends, community, and leisure pursuits. Searching for the point of equilibrium or balance can become all-consuming and nonproductive.

But take a different look—one that says balance isn’t an issue of time, but an issue of choice. You choose how to use your resources—what to do with your time, energy, and passion. Balance is more than an assessment of where and how you spend your time. It’s about living your values by aligning your behavior—your choices and actions—with what you believe is really important.

A useful metaphor to keep in mind is a balance ball—the kind used for exercise and yoga. It looks as if it would be easy to sit on a balance ball, lift your feet off the floor, and balance your body. But the first few attempts are usually comical, if not disastrous. Success depends on a combination of purpose, practice, and patience. Eventually, you get a feeling of being centered. With attentive practice, you will be able to find your balance easily without having to think about your position or each move. It becomes a natural act.

Achieving balance or being centered in your life works in much the same way. Being in alignment or centered in life is about making clear choices that support your core values. The act of aligning your values and your life choices will achieve the same results as being centered on the balance ball. Doing so implies a dynamic process, just like sitting on the ball. You must constantly reassess your life, your challenges, and the consequences of your choices.

Values are the beliefs or feelings that are important enough to drive our decisions about how we behave. For one person, creativity, following a passion, and self-renewal can be major values. For another, knowledge, discovery, and intellectual curiosity can be drivers. For yet another, the attainment of material wealth, power, and status are key motivators of behavior. This is not to say that one is necessarily better than another; there are often no right or wrong answers, no absolutes. Our values shift during the course of our lives. Accordingly, so do the choices that flow from our different values. When our lives don’t reflect the satisfaction of our values, we feel that inconsistency as some measure of imbalance.

Aligning your behavior with your values is much like any other developmental experience; the basic process involves assessment, challenge, and support. You need to determine where you are, define where you want to go, and then put into place the tools you need to get there.

Ann, a successful marketing manager, and her husband, Don, have two children under the age of five. Both Ann and Don are successful in their work, but Ann holds a senior position and earns significantly more than Don. They both travel a fair amount and rely on family and babysitters to help them. Each weekend, they sit down and plan their schedules for the week, determining who will run errands and pick up the children after preschool. Ann is grateful for Don’s support. Things run smoothly most of the time, but she finds herself getting up before dawn to do e-mail and staying up late in the evening to finish household chores. She frequently admits that she misses spending quality time with her children. They could live on her salary alone, but they have recently purchased a vacation home and two new cars. With college and retirement ahead, neither Ann nor Don wants to live on one paycheck.