Work-Life Balance: Is It Enough?

 I've written a bit about work-life balance over the last week or so, but to be honest, every time I do, there's a part of me that protests.

And that's because, for women, especially, "work-life balance" often really means "work-family balance," which means that women get caught in a cycle of constantly taking care of either their business life or their family life. And that, as working women know all too well, becomes exhausting.

What's missing in the work-life balancing act is "self" or at least "self care."

Here's an interesting story -- or at least it was interesting to me. A while back I was involved in a political conflict in my town that was very distracting for me. Suffice to say, people were behaving badly -- unethically -- and I was upset about it. I thought about the situation  a lot; I emailed with friends about it a lot; I checked local on-line blogs a lot to track what was happening. It was really pulling my attention away from what I needed to do.

So I sat down one morning and wrote out my priorities for that day. I did this quickly -- no analysis, no fretting, just a gut check kind of thing. The priorities were: 1) take care of my children (e.g., provide food, loving attention, stability); and 2) take care of my work obligations (i.e., make a living). And then I added c) self care (food, rest exercise). I wrote out that third item because I didn't want this political situation to detract from the quality of my life. As in, "what's more important? Tracking a nasty liar on line or taking care of my health?"

I think we'd all agree that the latter is more important.

But as I wrote  that list I realized there was more to that third item -- that self care is indispensible to my ability to parent my children well and do my job well, that it essentially infuses everything else I do, that it can no longer be considered something I do if I have time or if everyone else's needs were taken care of first.

Next up: What do you need to round out your work-life balance?