Listen to the UpgradeU Podcast | Ep. 2 Rhythm > Balance for details on the mindset for finding your rhythm. Click here to listen!
If you think about it, work-life balance is a strange aspiration for a fulfilling life. Balance is about stasis: if our lives were ever in balance — parents happy, kids taken care of, work working — then our overriding thought would be to shout “Nobody move!” and pray all would stay perfect forever. This false hope is made worse by the categories themselves. They imply that work is bad, and life is good; we lose ourselves in work but find ourselves in life; we survive work, but live life. And so the challenge, we are told, is to balance the heaviness of work with the lightness of life.
Yet work is not the opposite of life. It is instead a part of life — just as family is, as are friends and community and hobbies. All of these aspects of living have their share of wonderful, uplifting moments and their share of moments that drag us down. The same is true of work, yet when we think of it as an inherent bad in need of a counterweight, we lose sight of the possibility for better. That’s why we need to remove the term work-life balance from our vocabulary completely. It’s time to make this term obsolete.
Work-life balance is a corporate buzzword used to absolve men of their guilt from their focus on productivity over everything else.
Cindy McGhee, UpgradeU Podcast | Ep 2: Rhythm > Balance
It seems more useful, then, to not try to balance the unbalanceable, but to find the rhythm that makes millions in your work, and makes time to enjoy the fruits of that hard work. Seeking to find the rhythm reframes the concept altogether. If we liken the many facets of our lives to the rhythmic track of our favorite song, we know there are more than just two sounds that create the songs that we often find stuck in our heads. Even if you isolate things down to just the percussion, you’re likely to hear the kick of a bass drum, the hit of a snare, the clack of a hi-hat, and the clang of a cymbal in any great song; not to mention the other instruments and vocals that bring the song to life. Similar to the different pieces of a drum kit, and elements of a great song, there are way more than two pieces called work-life that embody an empire-building woman. Plus, just like the rhythm ebbs and flows to create the perfect song, the rhythm for an empire-building woman will evolve to fit the season in which that rhythm applies. The culmination of the varying rhythms over time result in the soundtrack of your life. That approach to managing all the things sets the right mindset for All. The. Things.
How to find your rhythm
Let’s use the drum set as the model for establishing the rhythm we need using 3 simple steps.
1. Name your drums
Using the picture below you’ll re-name the pieces in the drum kit to the 7 most important things in your life.
These are the drums that will consistently carry the beat. At times the beat may have a pounding bass drum named "faith," followed by an extended snare solo named "work project", then a lot of clanging cymbals named after your kids. No matter the changes in the beat that come with each change in life’s season, the rhythm will always incorporate what matters most to you.
2. Name the accessories
Think of percussion instruments like the triangle and chimes. They’re not present in every song, but they are a great addition to the right rhythms. These should be the things that could easily get lost when the rhythm has heavy bass, but that help pull the rhythm back to a light and airy vibe.
3. Review your soundtrack
Setting the intention to name your drums and find your rhythm is just the beginning. Finally, you’ll want to schedule a consistent time at the close of each week to evaluate the soundtrack from the prior week. Confirm the rhythm was in alignment with the 5 main pieces in your drum kit, determine if they rhythm has become focused on one drum much too long, or if accessories are due back in the rotation. Invite someone you trust to review your rhythm with you to help you stay on beat.
Using these steps, you can stop the unending chase for work-life balance and start finding your own rhythm. Contact us at info@theupgradeu.com with questions, and drop us a note on IG @theupgrade.u to let us know you completed your homework.
Contributing Source: https://time.com/5601671/work-life-balance-advice-love-loathe/