It's A FLOW, Not A Balance...

Being the leader of your life requires you to be able to keep everything moving along at a productive and workable pace.  The culture of the world might try and make you believe that you should be achieving something they like to call ‘work – life balance’—if you are a well-functioning adult popular opinion says that you should be ‘striving to achieve this’. I call BS and for those of you that have been following me since I started the brand in 2014 you know that I am ALWAYS calling BS on this idea. There is NO balance and there never will be, you are chasing after something that cannot exist for you and then when you can’t get it you are upset and feel defeated and ineffective. STOP chasing after what isn’t real.

Instead let’s talk about what IS REAL—FLOW. Flow is a real thing; it means that there are times when you must go hard for a career/work thing and there are times when you need to go hard for a personal/family thing. At those times the other category will not get your full attention and that is OK. It is meant to be like that. The trick is figuring out the flow or balancing act that works for you. 

Sometimes you will focus on one thing and other times another, you may be on Zoom calls and then run to switch laundry over. Figure out what works for you and do that, stop trying to force yourself to live someone else’s version of your life.

Also stop fooling yourself into thinking that ‘multi-tasking’ is doing you any favors---when you multi-task none of what you are doing gets YOUR FULL ATTENTION. Your attention is life-giving and the things and people in your life deserve your full attention. We are all guilty of ‘half-listening’ to a friend, child or partner while checking email or answering a text. Continuously telling ourselves that we must get everything done, we keep trying to do ALL the things at the same time. Then we make ourselves wrong for not achieving perfect ‘work/life balance’. 

Our time here on this planet is limited—we don’t know when it will come to an end, yet we don’t live like that. We act like we have all the time in the world to make up for missed moments—we don’t.

Stop making the things and people in your life wait for your attention, stop telling yourself that after you are balanced you will pay more attention to your people. You are lying to yourself. You are racing like the hamster in the wheel and getting nowhere.

The laundry will still be there, the work project will still be there, the world will not end if you go color with your kiddo. LIVE in the moments people---stop pushing the moments aside with your quest for work/life balance and your multi-tasking nonsense.

Tis the season to BE—be with your people—be with people—give your time and attention, kind words, conversations—nobody cares about your busy schedule—they care about whether or not they matter to you. SHOW THEM. We are not here forever, let’s enjoy the ride—REALLY ENJOY it.

I leave you with a quote from Gary Keller,

“When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can’t cover. Even if you’re sure you can win, be careful that you can live with what you lose.”

See you on The Coffee Chat Show Saturday morning at 8:30am est.

** full bio and info on the weekly show can be found at www.revealingleaders.com