The Five Truths About Work-Life Balance by Jae Ellard
Published by Simple Intentions
Publication Date November 14, 2014
Genres: Non-Fiction
Goodreads
Work-life balance has nothing to do with work. Really. It also doesn't matter what words you use to describe it. The fact is, most people share a similar desire to create easy joy and meaningful engagement across the roles, relationships and responsibilities that make up life. Our current habits and perceptions often get us stuck and prevent us from creating the life we desire. Get unstuck, learn the truths about work-life balance.
Guest Post
I’m very excited to host the Jae Ellard blog tour and share her excellent guest post on balancing it all.
TIME AND BALANCE
By Jae Ellard, Author of The Five Truths About Work-Life Balance, Simple Intentions Founder
As a teacher and speaker on the topic of imbalance, it’s very common for people to share their imbalance struggles with me. This includes challenges people face both personally and professionally. Over time, I have seen themes emerge that have little to do with geography or gender and more do with being human in the modern world. It is through these conversations, these shared struggles, that I find inspiration for what eventually becomes a workshop, a keynote or a book.
A common theme I hear is around time and the struggle to find more time to do more things – work things, personal things and chill-out things. People are often disappointed when I share with them that balance is less about actual time management and more about being very intentional in how you spend the time you have.
Once people realize that if they had more time they’d keep asking for more time, it’s easier to deconstruct how they actually spend the time they have. It’s simple math. Each person has 186 hours in a week. If you sleep eight hours a night, you have 130 waking hours each week. If you work 40 hours a week, you’re left with 90 hours of “free time” a week.
The path to balance then becomes being really clear about how you spend this time, through creating awareness around why you do what you do when you do it. For example, if you ask me if I watch television I will tell you I do not. In reality, however, I spend a couple hours a night watching shows –about 14 hours a week. Even though I don’t identify with spending my time this way, I do.
With this awareness we begin to find more time to spend on things that bring us joy. (When I realized I watched this much television, I began to choose to read more, which brings me joy and creates the feeling of having more time to do things I love.)
If you’re looking for more time, consider examining how you spend the time you have. Where might you find time you can dedicate to activities that support living your values and bringing you joy? The choice is yours, and you get to make that choice each day, every minute and every hour for how you want to spend your time.
About the Author:
In 2008, Jae founded Simple Intentions and developed the Mindful Life™ Program, which includes four group coaching workshops to generate reflection, awareness and action at the organizational and individual levels. Jae has taught the skill of awareness to thousands of employees at multinational corporations in more than 50 countries including China, Russia, India, Japan, Brazil, United Arab Emirates, Germany, United Kingdom, Norway, and the United States.
Jae contributes to the Awareness at Work column for Mindful Magazine, the Healthy Living section on Huffington Post as well as the Simple Intentions blog. Jae has a master’s degree in Communication Management from Colorado State University and a bachelor’s degree in Broadcast Communication from Metropolitan State College of Denver. She holds certificates in co-active coaching and organizational relationship systems coaching and is the author of seven books.
Connect with Jae Ellard :
Thank you, Whitney! I truly appreciate being able to share a guest post with your readers and for you featuring The Five Truths About Work-Life Balance on First Impressions Reviews.
Cheers!
Jae and the Simple Intentions team
It was my pleasure! Thank you for the great guest post.