Striving for Work/ Life Balance
October has been a busy month for me, particularly in work. I have completed my first month of work in the world of consulting and it has been met with a lot of growth and learning. Of course, this is exactly what I had wished for when I decided to make this transition. I wanted challenge and intensity. I wanted to feel like I was pushing myself and working with true purpose. I have certainly entered an industry where those are prized cultural values and so that contrast to my previous job has felt tremendous in many ways.
In Seoul, I was teaching conversational English in college. I had almost 5 months of vacation and worked only 4 days a week. I had so much creative freedom and independence in my job. In fact there was no set curriculum for the course and so essentially, I was able to teach whatever I wanted. It was an easy job, I must admit and although there was an initial learning curve and adjustment to the workplace culture; it became clear to me quite early on that I would have no trouble with the job. When I was in the middle of my second year there, I took a coaching course in Canada. It was mainly virtual and I was very easily able to balance the two jobs of studying, coaching and teaching. I also tutored on the side and did temporary contracts conducting English interviews at several companies through English Consulting and Recruitment firms. I still had a great degree of free time and enjoyed the balance of spending time with my husband and friends on the weekend and during evenings.
Fast forward to now, living in Ottawa and having not quite fully established a community yet for myself. Being apart from my husband (who is still in Korea), working only one job and I am busier than I have been in a long time. I wanted to enter a career where I saw potential for myself to grow and progress. I wanted to get on a track and work somewhere long-term and most of all do something that allowed for me to wear many hats and capitalize on my passion for working with others to help them achieve their goals.
Well, I have certainly gotten everything I wanted. And while I could not be more grateful for the opportunities that I have been offered in this position so far, there is one aspect of this culture that I have struggled with: workaholism. Furthermore, how that leads to a lack of work/ life balance. This is a shared value in many cultures and I grew up in home that held this value in high regard. My parents are extremely hard workers and they have provided for my sister and I to such a degree that our privilege in life is undeniable. I have also always been attracted to ambition in my friends and romantic partners. When I met my husband, his ambition and independent thinking was one of the qualities that attracted me most to him. The man knows how to work, his issue will always be the opposite of that: learning to be ok with taking time off for anything other than work.
I never really thought that this would be an issue for me. After all my sobriety has to come first in my life which gives me an automatic excuse to focus on something greater than me and greater than my work. As a child, I was always looking for the easy way around things, being the impatient person that I am, the idea of spending hours and hours working was just not ok with me. And now, here I am having found myself in a job, working until 9 pm on some nights, and starting up again at 7 the following morning. I have not even been staffed yet on a client site which will most likely demand more from me and my time.
It has been important for me to take a step back and recognize unhealthy patterns that I do not want to get into with regards to my career and life, but it is not easy when the shared value in a culture is being practised by everyone around you. As a new employee, the last thing I want is to appear as if I am not working as hard as everyone around me. So here is where I have been met with a bit of a predicament.
What I have realized is that it comes down to the difference between quality over quantity. If I commit to working incredibly hard during my 8 hour work day, putting my all into the projects I am assigned and communicating with my coworkers promptly and effectively, I can also commit to devoting the time I have in the evenings and weekends to self care and service to my community. It is all of these things that make me the multi-dimensional and caring woman that I am.
What this involves is boundaries. In order for me to follow through on my value of maintaining a solid work/life balance, I have to establish boundaries with regards to my work. This mainly involves not sending out an email at 9 pm and certainly not responding to one at 3 am. It involves respecting myself enough by choosing to respond to that email the next morning after 8. It also involves asking for more time on a deliverable when I just know that unless I work on it overnight I will not be able to complete it on my coworker's timeline. What I am coming to learn in this is that there is no harm in asking. I am also aware that there will be times when projects are on a tight deadline and I may need to break some of my pre-established rules in order to complete my work. However; recognizing that this may happen from time to time is very different from making a routine of it.
I am someone who is so strongly influenced by others. I have a deep need for connection with people, and I have always highly valued belonging to a group. Being the youngest in the family, I was born into a small community and I think I picked up on just how important it is to be connected with others for true happiness but also basic survival. So it has not been easy for me to practise this value in this job so far. I want really badly to fit in here, and this has led to me betraying some of my inner values around self-care. I also really love the company, and have already established deep connections with my coworkers. Something tells me that I have found my path and I am so grateful and excited for what lies ahead. But in order for me to be the truest and best version of myself in this job, I have to stay attuned to the values that make me that person. One of those values is maintaining balance and devoting a great deal of my energy to my spiritual practises and connection with my Higher Power. Reminding myself of how important that is, is crucial for me.
When I respect that value, and give myself time to devote to my spiritual practise as well as nourishing myself in other ways, I am also tapped into the realization that my coworkers would want the same for me. It brings me back to a space of gratitude, that I have been given the opportunity to work with people who are more than willing to respect my boundaries and recognize the value they hold for me.
I hope that this comes as a reminder to you to seek balance in your life. And that looks different for everyone. It also does not mean equal time devoted to everything that is important. It means prioritizing aspects of your life based on what you truly value and establishing practises and boundaries around that. I am certainly a work in progress, and life changes constantly, but when I connect to my relationship with God, my deepest value in life is showing up for the people whom I care about and nourishing those relationships. I think somewhere within me, I know that is what life is all about: being with each other, loving and caring for one another.
In Seoul, I was teaching conversational English in college. I had almost 5 months of vacation and worked only 4 days a week. I had so much creative freedom and independence in my job. In fact there was no set curriculum for the course and so essentially, I was able to teach whatever I wanted. It was an easy job, I must admit and although there was an initial learning curve and adjustment to the workplace culture; it became clear to me quite early on that I would have no trouble with the job. When I was in the middle of my second year there, I took a coaching course in Canada. It was mainly virtual and I was very easily able to balance the two jobs of studying, coaching and teaching. I also tutored on the side and did temporary contracts conducting English interviews at several companies through English Consulting and Recruitment firms. I still had a great degree of free time and enjoyed the balance of spending time with my husband and friends on the weekend and during evenings.
Fast forward to now, living in Ottawa and having not quite fully established a community yet for myself. Being apart from my husband (who is still in Korea), working only one job and I am busier than I have been in a long time. I wanted to enter a career where I saw potential for myself to grow and progress. I wanted to get on a track and work somewhere long-term and most of all do something that allowed for me to wear many hats and capitalize on my passion for working with others to help them achieve their goals.
Well, I have certainly gotten everything I wanted. And while I could not be more grateful for the opportunities that I have been offered in this position so far, there is one aspect of this culture that I have struggled with: workaholism. Furthermore, how that leads to a lack of work/ life balance. This is a shared value in many cultures and I grew up in home that held this value in high regard. My parents are extremely hard workers and they have provided for my sister and I to such a degree that our privilege in life is undeniable. I have also always been attracted to ambition in my friends and romantic partners. When I met my husband, his ambition and independent thinking was one of the qualities that attracted me most to him. The man knows how to work, his issue will always be the opposite of that: learning to be ok with taking time off for anything other than work.
I never really thought that this would be an issue for me. After all my sobriety has to come first in my life which gives me an automatic excuse to focus on something greater than me and greater than my work. As a child, I was always looking for the easy way around things, being the impatient person that I am, the idea of spending hours and hours working was just not ok with me. And now, here I am having found myself in a job, working until 9 pm on some nights, and starting up again at 7 the following morning. I have not even been staffed yet on a client site which will most likely demand more from me and my time.
It has been important for me to take a step back and recognize unhealthy patterns that I do not want to get into with regards to my career and life, but it is not easy when the shared value in a culture is being practised by everyone around you. As a new employee, the last thing I want is to appear as if I am not working as hard as everyone around me. So here is where I have been met with a bit of a predicament.
What I have realized is that it comes down to the difference between quality over quantity. If I commit to working incredibly hard during my 8 hour work day, putting my all into the projects I am assigned and communicating with my coworkers promptly and effectively, I can also commit to devoting the time I have in the evenings and weekends to self care and service to my community. It is all of these things that make me the multi-dimensional and caring woman that I am.
What this involves is boundaries. In order for me to follow through on my value of maintaining a solid work/life balance, I have to establish boundaries with regards to my work. This mainly involves not sending out an email at 9 pm and certainly not responding to one at 3 am. It involves respecting myself enough by choosing to respond to that email the next morning after 8. It also involves asking for more time on a deliverable when I just know that unless I work on it overnight I will not be able to complete it on my coworker's timeline. What I am coming to learn in this is that there is no harm in asking. I am also aware that there will be times when projects are on a tight deadline and I may need to break some of my pre-established rules in order to complete my work. However; recognizing that this may happen from time to time is very different from making a routine of it.
I am someone who is so strongly influenced by others. I have a deep need for connection with people, and I have always highly valued belonging to a group. Being the youngest in the family, I was born into a small community and I think I picked up on just how important it is to be connected with others for true happiness but also basic survival. So it has not been easy for me to practise this value in this job so far. I want really badly to fit in here, and this has led to me betraying some of my inner values around self-care. I also really love the company, and have already established deep connections with my coworkers. Something tells me that I have found my path and I am so grateful and excited for what lies ahead. But in order for me to be the truest and best version of myself in this job, I have to stay attuned to the values that make me that person. One of those values is maintaining balance and devoting a great deal of my energy to my spiritual practises and connection with my Higher Power. Reminding myself of how important that is, is crucial for me.
When I respect that value, and give myself time to devote to my spiritual practise as well as nourishing myself in other ways, I am also tapped into the realization that my coworkers would want the same for me. It brings me back to a space of gratitude, that I have been given the opportunity to work with people who are more than willing to respect my boundaries and recognize the value they hold for me.
I hope that this comes as a reminder to you to seek balance in your life. And that looks different for everyone. It also does not mean equal time devoted to everything that is important. It means prioritizing aspects of your life based on what you truly value and establishing practises and boundaries around that. I am certainly a work in progress, and life changes constantly, but when I connect to my relationship with God, my deepest value in life is showing up for the people whom I care about and nourishing those relationships. I think somewhere within me, I know that is what life is all about: being with each other, loving and caring for one another.
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