Guest Author: Dana Look-Arimoto
Ditch Work-life Balance. Here’s How to Start Integrating Your Life.
COVID-19 is here. And it has forced us into varying degrees of isolation.
For many of us, this means that we are working from home, eating at home, shopping from home, and desperately trying not to climb the walls of our home.
Work-life balance has gone out the window. Any illusion of it smashed in the trying and troubling times brought on by a global pandemic. Trying to “balance” work on one side of a scale with all of life, wasn’t really feasible to begin with, and is now impossible. It’s all just one big jumble now. The different parts of life are intersecting and mixing together with very little distinction between them.
We need work-life integration.
It’s time that we stopped trying to balance the various facets of our lives, and instead, started integrating it all into a beautiful multi-sided gem that harmonizes what we want to do with what we need to do.
So, how do we achieve work-life integration?
1. Settle Smarter
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Work-life integration starts out with a concept I call Settling Smarter. Settling Smarter, simply put, is about consciously prioritizing your time.
Life is more complex than a scale with work and everything else in a teetering balance. It consists of five facets: career, family, friends, community, and well-being. And you only have a limited amount of time and energy to spend in each of those. No amount of time or money will change this.
You need to choose in which facets you want to spend your time and how much. Choose two or three that are most important to you and fill you with passion to focus on, and blend your life’s cocktail. Set the others as ingredients on a shelf for another day!
Be honest with yourself and trade-off what makes you unhappy. Be unapologetic about choosing where you spend and prioritize your precious time.
2. Stop ‘Shoulding’ Yourself
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You can derive joy from your everyday life. Yes, even now (though it’ll take a little more effort).
The only way to feel fulfilled at the end of your day, week, or month is if you are spending it mostly doing things that interest you and bring you happiness. There are some things that are unavoidable, especially during these times, but you need to strive to fill your day with activities that make you feel productive, passionate, and whole.
You can build this day by not “shoulding” it and yourself to death. I should be doing this. I should be doing that.
Should is just code for “I don’t want to.”
Do the things you want to do. Not the things you think someone else wants you to do and definitely not the things you think you should do.
3. Say No
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I know this seems obvious, but people have a tough time saying no.
Think back to a time when you said yes to something you really didn’t want to do. You didn’t have to think back very far, did you? Stop that.
Only say yes to the things that align with the priorities you’ve set for yourself. It’s easy to yes with more time on your hands while working and operating your full life from home base. Watch out for this and continue to NOT overcommit or take on activities that don’t energize you.
Things that drain you are simply a no.
4. Focus on Harmony
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There is no good or bad, right or wrong in work-life integration. So, don’t worry about that.
The only way is your way.
When you are in alignment with your values and spending your time doing things that are important to you, you’re in “the zone.” The highs aren’t so high, but the lows aren’t so low.
Harmony beats balance every time.
About Dana
Dana Look-Arimoto is an international speaker, author, and founder of the leadership and executive coaching company, Phoenix5 and settlesmarter.com. Her years of accumulated entrepreneurial experience launched a unique vision that ditches the never-ending search for “work-life balance” for integration in all areas of life, for all people. She is the author of Stop Settling, Settle Smart and the host of the “Settle Smarter” podcast.
She has launched her new weekly Podcast “Settle Smarter” where each week she presents the rethinking of the myth of work-life balance and shows you how to create true work-life integration through conscious choices. Her expert guests provide actionable insights and advice as to how to
navigate inside and across life’s key facets that we all have in common. Listen and learn from Dana’s simple and practical ways to make trade-offs and re-prioritize your life for it to become more joyful, productive, and valuable.
About the Book
Work-life balance is a myth.
It paints the ideal of the super-human who is able to have it all by doing it all. Well, reality begs to differ. Stop Settling® is a unique vision, devised by author, coach, and international speaker Dana Look-Arimoto, that helps you understand who you are, what’s important to you, and make conscious choices about where you want to spend your time. It’s all about knowing how to Settle Smart.
It’s not about balance. It’s about harmonious integration powered by what it is that you really want!
Get it here!
feature image via DANA
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