The Secret to Work-Life Balance: Know, Work & Live Your Life Purpose
By Larry Boyer, Career Coach & Personal Branding Strategist
Could your work-life balance use some improving? With more ways than ever for work time to enter our personal time and personal time to enter work time professionals of all sorts are feeling more pressure and stress than ever. That stress is a sign that something in our life isn't right - out of tune or out of alignment.
If you're like me, you'll be skeptical of the answer. It wasn't until I took it on faith and started to work at that I understood and started seeing the results:
The source of your stress, that feeling of misalignment, results from your work or life or both being out of alignment with your life purpose.
It took me 3 months of coaching (see Discovering and Living On Purpose) to finally to start to understand my purpose enough to understand why I was no long enjoying my job and to know what to look for in my next job. One I understood my purpose my confidence shot up and I knew what to look for in a new position. Now, I love my work again. I feel more at ease and I'm feel more balanced than ever even though I'm working more.
Your life purpose is related to all that you enjoy, your motivated skills, your personal values, your personal brand. You know your job or your project is in alignment with your purpose when you lose track of time. When your work is actually fun rather than something you dread and force your way through. Your know your work is in alignment with your purpose when it fits in with and supports your personal life as well (as long as your personal life is in alignment with your purpose as well).
Knowing your purpose can also re-ignite the passion you have in your current job. Perhaps your job has changed focus over the years. When you know your purpose you can try to reconnect with those elements of the job. If you can't, you may find yourself ready to look for a job that does have those elements.
At the end of the discovery process for your life purpose you develop your own, succinct Purpose Statement. As an example, my current version (it's always an evolving process) of my life purpose is:
Help others achieve professional success by helping the understand themselves, learn and develop new skills and processes and providing knowledge and understanding to a variety of complex, analytical business processes and decisions. I manifest my purpose through my coaching and consulting work. I also live my purpose when I am teaching others anything from networking and life purpose to helping Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts learn camping skills.
Do you know your purpose? Are you ready to do the work to find it and learn how to live it?