Struggling to find the balance between a successful career and a social life? Is it even possible to have both?
What’s more important to you; your career or your social life? Are we able to have both or is this just a dream? It may seem that having a good work life balance is way out of your reach and that you’ll have to let one slide if you want to be successful in the other area, but I beg to differ; I believe that if you are wise with your time, make sensible choices and look after your own health, a great work life balance can be achieved.
Sleep
Are you getting enough of it? It may seem simple but this one often gets neglected and we can’t function properly without it. Research shows that people who get less than six hours of sleep every night have more issues with concentrating and experience more mood problems than people who sleep 7-9 hours every night. You may feel like you don’t have enough hours in the day to get everything done and so must stay up later, but this is seriously damaging your health, and your career. This leads us nicely onto my next point.
Time management
It may feel like there aren’t enough hours in the day, but the fact is, there are. Highly successful people have mastered the art of managing their own time effectively to ensure everything gets done. A little piece of advice when you’re suffering with overwhelm is to write yourself a list with the most important things at the top work your way down. If you constantly flip from one task to another you’ll waste so much energy trying to work out what you’ve got to do and not actually get anything done. If you concentrate on one task at a time you’ll be able to focus all of your attention on getting it done quickly. Write yourself a list with the most important things at the top, if you don’t get everything completed at least you can go home knowing that all of the business critical tasks have been done and you can enjoy your time at home a lot more.
Switch off and unplug
It’s so easy to let an evening slip away from you because you’ve spent it checking emails; you end up going through the whole week practically working, eating and sleeping. It’s so important to make time for a social life and unplug from your career, otherwise you’ll end up working yourself into the ground and unable to keep up the quality. Set yourself a cut off time for checking emails and messages, and after that time stop thinking about work, find something to do, go out with friends, go for a walk. You’ll feel far more fresh headed the next day if you’ve actually taken some time for yourself and you’ll have more energy to focus on what needs doing.
Exercise
Like it or not, exercise is an important factor in living the successful and happy life. If you fail to look after your body and keep yourself fit, you’ll fail to have enough energy to keep up with your busy schedule. Make time for a workout; trade in your late night television session for an early night and then head to the gym in the morning. Getting the blood pumping in the morning boosts the metabolism and has actually been shown to boost creativity for a couple of hours after exercise! You might not fancy heading to the gym, that’s fine – go for a long walk, anything to get you more active and awake! Personally, I’m a fan of doing my exercise first thing in the morning; research shows that motivation is highest in the morning so if you’re one to put off the workout until ‘tomorrow’ doing it as soon as you wake up might be the key to keeping fit.
Eating well
Now this one goes hand in hand with keeping fit; there’s not much point in keeping the body fit if you’re not going to fuel it right. If you’re eating processed food and lots of sugary sweet treats, then I’ll take a guess that you might be feeling tired all of the time? Perhaps try swapping some of your treats for fruit, and making sure you get lots of fresh veggies in every day. There’s a lot of truth in the phrase ‘you are what you eat’, so why not nourish your body and look after your health. A healthy body is a happy body, and you can’t enjoy your social life if you’re in bed ill all the time can you?
Positive thinking
My last pointer is on positive thinking and I feel this one is an important one. It can become so easy to get bogged down with the stresses of life and work that we end up in a negative bubble which can in turn bring everyone around us down. Try practicing positive thinking everyday just by being grateful for three things every morning and notice how much better you feel. When you feel yourself slipping into a negative state of mind just be aware of your thought pattern and how it might affect you for the rest of the day, see if you can shift your focus onto something more positive and take note of how much of an impact it has.
These may all seem like pretty simple tips on getting your work life to coexist with your social life, but to be honest, it really is that simple. We all get so sucked in to the busy schedule that we forget to take a minute to just breathe and observe. Try putting these 6 tips in place for a week and see how much of a difference it has on your life; and if you liked this blog please share it to help someone else.
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