1. Leading a Balanced Life

2. Is the Work/Life Juggle Driving You Insane?
The reality of life is that we have a “new normal”. Five trends create this new normal:
Technology enables us to be always connected.
There are fewer people needing to do more work.
Globalization and speed of information flow demands 24/7 responsiveness.
The speed of change is more than we can keep up with.
The need to be “on” as new competitors emerge.

3. Seven Paradigm Shifts to Work in The New Normal
Move from work life balance to work life energy. Think about ways you can be fully energized and creative throughout life.
Move from rigid to personalized.   Work life energy is personal.  Identify what personally energizes you in work and life and move toward that.
Move from balance on the outside to balance on the inside.  Your stress level has more to do with your response to events than the event or job itself.  
The boundaries between work and life are blurred.  We are most discontent with work life balance when we are burned out and not refueling ourselves. How did Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Martin Luther King, Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey and other inventors, change agents, and visionaries deal with their frustrations about work life balance? I didn’t find much on the topic--These individuals have lived lives of passion and contribution. What does that look like for you?
Rigid role definitions and structures of work need to become more fluid to accommodate what brings greater flexibility, flow and energy to people – because energized people are most creative and best serve our customers.   What helps one person feel “in balance” is very different than that for another person. It also varies according to life stage.  In my 20’s I used to joke with my colleagues at P&G that I had no issues with work life balance – because I had no life. And I was okay with that.
Many of us are tempted to believe “If I just had a less demanding job I’d have more balance”.  There is a Zen saying: “Wherever you go, there you are.” We need to evolve our skill sets and strengthen our prioritization muscles. A significant part of work life balance is managing the mindsets we have – what stresses us out and how we manage that stress. What mindsets keep you stressed out?

4. Seven Paradigm Shifts to Work in The New Normal
Move from “work harder” to “work with passion”.  There is a type of work you can do for hours that won’t deplete you. What type of work is that?
Move from managing time to managing attention. We are not present where we are.
Move from “work more hours” to “rest more hours”. Research shows that when you allow yourself to relax and have fun, it allows your creativity to flow through. 
Move from balance being an end-state to balance being a practice.  Work life balance is not a destination, it’s how you live.
Most of us are already working pretty hard and it can deplete us. It energizes us. It puts us in flow. We are our most creative and resourceful when we are in flow. We need to find this work and spend more of our time doing it. Organizations need to help people discover this work and align their career paths around it.
Multi-tasking is a myth. Our brain just moves from one task to another really fast. It creates additional stress and makes us less productive. Albert Einstein said: “Any man who can drive safely while kissing a pretty girl is simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.
Our friend, Albert Einstein said: “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”. Get some rest. Pause. Organization cultures need to allow for fun and rest as part of a productive workforce.
– We often go through the search for work life balance as if it’s a “Where’s Waldo” exercise. We walk in balance by having a set of tools and principles we practice on an on-going basis.
Do you know the most effective tools for you? Here are some practices for work life sanity.

5. Four Important Questions for You
What do I want in my work and in my life?
What is my definition of “having it all” and how is it different from “having enough”?
What are the trade-offs I am willing to make that are right for me?
What are my standards of success? Do they prevent me in attaining happiness and fulfillment?

6. Married to Your Work?
It can be tempting to rack up hours at work, especially if you're trying to earn a promotion or manage an ever-increasing workload — or simply keep your head above water.
Consider the consequences of poor work-life balance…
Sometimes overtime might even be required. If you're spending most of your time working, though, your home life will take a hit.

7. Consider the Cost Fatigue Lost time with friends and loved ones
Increased expectations
Fatigue. When you're tired, your ability to work productively and think clearly might suffer — which could take a toll on your professional reputation or lead to dangerous or costly mistakes.
Lost time with friends and loved ones. If you're working too much, you might miss important family events or milestones. This can leave you feeling left out and might harm relationships with your loved ones. It's also difficult to nurture friendships if you're always working.
Increased expectations. If you regularly work extra hours, you might be given more responsibility — which could lead to additional concerns and challenges.

8. Strike a Better Balance
As long as you're working, juggling the demands of career and personal life will probably be an ongoing challenge. Consider these ideas to find the work-life balance that's best for you.

9. Define Success on Your Own Terms
Looking back when I am 80, what would a worthwhile life have looked like?
Set Your Priorities and Follow Them 
Having the best work life balance includes being very clear on your priorities and following them.  List your five life priorities.  For example:
Personal Health & Wellbeing
Connection with my family
Financial freedom
Making an impact in the world through the work I do
Fun/Friends
A bit much? Figure out what would work best for you.
Often we are so focused on climbing the corporate stair master we forget why we are doing it in the first place. Take a moment to reflect. What does success look like defined by my own terms? How does this align with my happiness? Given life expectancies and good health, women can live up to 80 years+ and healthfully work into their 70’s if they choose to. Does this mean that I climb the corporate ladder to my peak position by the time I’m 40? Whose clock am I running to?

10. Think About Options
Is the next promotion really contingent on answering every single immediately and working 24/7?  Start to step back and ask yourself, what assumptions am I making about what it takes to succeed? How do I know these to be true?
Are flex hours, job sharing, telecommuting, etc. possible?
Take advantage of your options. Ask your employer about flex hours, a compressed workweek, job sharing, telecommuting or other scheduling flexibility. The more control you have over your hours, the less stressed you're likely to be.

11. Reclaim Your Self-Worth
Many people associate their work with their worth as human beings. Unless we’re really productive we’re not feeling good about ourselves.
Sometimes our self-worth comes from getting approval from others.  
Take a moment to reflect whether your work satisfaction is contingent on someone’s approval, versus love for the work you do or your own definition of success.
While we may be happy to blame our boss for sending an at midnight, secretly we feel quite proud replying to it at 12:01am.
As we free ourselves from the notion that we must work constantly to be worth something then work becomes less compulsive. If the work we do comes from a place of love for the work, for expressing our creativity, rather than the fear of not succeeding or being worthy, it becomes more joyful and energizing. We may be well served to ask the question to ourselves periodically “Is this (insert specific work situation) coming from a place of love for the work or from trying to feel worthy?”
It’s just important to be aware if you’re doing that so you don’t blame others for making you work 24/7. Awareness brings power because with awareness comes choice. You may continue to work yourself into the ground waiting on approval and not even know why.

12. Give Up on Perfection and Start to Embrace “Good Enough”
We often associate our self-worth with the work we do: Can anything less than perfect be good enough? 
As you embark on any task at work or home ask yourself what’s good enough. Ask yourself what are the costs of getting to perfect and whether you really want to bear them.
“If all the work is not perfect then I must not be perfect.”
Or, because we want everything to be perfect we’d rather do it ourselves than give someone else a chance to fail (and learn). So guess what? We work 24/7.

13. Ask for What You Need and Learn How to Say “No”
We’re afraid to ask for help or resources because of how it will be perceived. If we ask for help it will make us look bad. If we say “No” we may not be liked. Make a list of what you need and ask  for it. Experiment with saying “No” in low-risk situations and see what happens. Daily practice makes each of us better at it.

14. Leave Work at Work
There might be no boundary between work and home unless you create it. Make a conscious decision to separate work time from personal time.
The daily actions we choose give us the power to change our workplace norms.
Getting to work life balance requires us to claim our power to make choices about what’s important to each of us, our power to become aware of all the reasons why we work, to be discerning and get clear about where we want to spend our time, our power to express ourselves to say “No” gracefully and to ask for what we need. 
When you're with your family, for instance, keep your laptop in your briefcase.

15. Build Downtime into Your Schedule
When you plan your week, make it a point to schedule time with your family and friends, and activities that help you recharge.
Put family dates on your calendar in advance of each month and then treat them with the importance of any other meeting. Schedule that time with them. They need you.
If a date night with your spouse or a softball game with friends is on your calendar, you'll have something to look forward to and an extra incentive to manage your time well, so you don't have to cancel. Plan an activity with family, like going to a movie or the park, every Sunday afternoon. Do this because if there's nothing on the schedule, time tends to get frittered away and the weekend may end without spending quality time together.
Michael Neithardt, an actor and television commercial producer in New York City, wakes up 3 hours before he has to leave for work so he can go for a run and spend some time with his wife and baby.
"A lot of my friends tend to wake up, shower, and go straight to work. And they often complain about having no time to do anything," he says. "I find that if I can get those 3 hours in the morning, I have a more productive and peaceful workday. I can sure tell the difference when I don't.“
An uncle, who was also an entrepreneur, told me when I started my very first business that I needed to block out time on my calendar for my family up front or I would never have it open. He was right, but unfortunately it took me a lot of years of my life to realize how right he was. I never blocked out the family time, and work slowly overtook my life because I wasn’t doing anything to make family time as scheduled as business meetings were. I would block off an hour lunch meeting with someone for business, so why not block off an hour dinner with my family at night?
It took me years and many hard lessons to figure out how critical it was for me to schedule my family time as carefully as I schedule my work day. The important thing is that you treat your family as if they matter just as much as the most important business person in the world, and don’t miss your scheduled meetings you have with them. Block out dinner on your calendar. Block out Saturday family events. Always keep Sunday as a sacred time with your family. Block out date night if you are married. Block out a once-a-month father/daughter or mother/son date with your child. Put these things on your calendar in advance of each month and then treat them with the importance of any other meeting. Schedule that time with them. They need you.

16. Drop Activities that Sap Your Time and Add No Value
Many people waste their time on activities or people that add no value.
Take stock of activities that don't enhance your career or personal life, and minimize the time you spend on them—television, Internet, video games, etc.
If you have distractions in your life that take too much time away from family then put stickers on the TV or computer or video game console that ask you “what matters most in my life?”
People in your life that gossip, are negative, complain, or vent can be a huge drain on your energy. Avoid them!
You may even be able to leave work earlier if you make a conscious effort to limit the time you spend on the web and social media sites, making personal calls, or checking your bank balance.

17. Rethink Your Errands
Consider whether you can outsource any of your time-consuming household chores or errands.
Trade services with friends or family. Offer to do tasks that you enjoy or that you were planning to do anyway.
Do what needs to get done and let the rest go.
Could you order your groceries online and have them delivered? Hire a kid down the street to mow your lawn? Have your dry cleaning picked up and dropped off at your home or office? Order your stamps online so you don't have to go to the post office? Even if you're on a tight budget, you may discover that the time you'll save will make it worth it.
Change the oil in your brother’s car and their family babysits the kids on Friday evening while you have a date night.
The day I discovered online grocery shopping was a good day for me. Getting groceries was a tough task, especially when I was a single mom. When I found out I could order groceries online and for a few dollars have them delivered to my front door, I was thrilled. A few dollars saved me hours of time in a store. There are a lot of similar little things that can free up your day a so you can have a more time with your family. Some other good finds are local dairies, such as Winder Dairy in Utah, for milk delivery to your home and dry cleaning services that let you bring your clothes to the office and they will pick them up for you.

18. Get Moving
It's hard to make time for exercise when you have a jam-packed schedule, but it may ultimately help you get more done by boosting your energy level and ability to concentrate.
"Research shows exercise can help you to be more alert," Brooks says. "And I've noticed that when I don't exercise because I'm trying to squeeze in another half hour of writing, I don't feel as alert."
Samantha Harris, a lawyer who works for a nonprofit organization in Philadelphia, goes to her gym 2 or 3 mornings a week before her family wakes up. "It's been a real boost in terms of the way I feel for the rest of the day," she says. "I feel like my head is clearer and I've had a little time to myself." 

19. Remember that a Little Relaxation Goes a Long Way
Don't assume that you need to make big changes to bring more balance to your life. Set realistic goals.
Slowly build more activities into your schedule that are important to you. Maybe you can start by spending an hour a week on your hobby of carpentry, or planning a weekend getaway with your spouse once a year."
No matter what you choose to do with your five minutes, it needs to be time that is just for you.
Even during a hectic day, you can take 10 or 15 minutes to do something that will recharge your batteries. You have to make a little time for the things that ignite your joy.
Better yet, discover activities you can do with your partner, family or friends — such as hiking, dancing or taking cooking classes.

20. Five Biggest Regrets
I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
I wish that I had let myself be happier.  
In the book ”The Top Five Regrets of the Dying,” a hospice nurse chronicled the five biggest regrets of people whose perspective on life sharpened as they got closer to losing it. Important lessons about living from those that are dying.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing
by Bronnie Ware

21. References
WebMD “Protecting and Insuring Your Health” Reviewed by on March 28, 2013 by Hansa D. Bhargava, MD.
The Power of Resilience: Achieving Balance, Confidence, and Personal Strength in Your Life. Robert Brooks, PhD.
SuperCompetent: The Six Keys to Perform at Your Productive Best. Laura Stack.
Forbes Work-Life Balance: 5 Ways To Turn It From The Ultimate Oxymoron Into A Real Plan Amy Rees Anderson.
Forbes Forget Work Life Balance - Seven Paradigm Shifts for The New 24/7 Normal Henna Inam.
Transformational Leadership practices-for-work-life-sanity Henna Inam.
Work-life balance: Tips to reclaim control When your work life and personal life are out of balance, your stress level is likely to soar. Use these practical strategies to restore harmony. Mayo Clinic staff.
The Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing Bronnie Ware.