How four kinds of women balance work and life
When you ask women about work-life balance, the air can easily become thick with sadness, regret, overwhelm, guilt or defensiveness. Very few women will raise their hand and say, “My life is as perfectly balanced as an ice-skater in a layback pose. Most of us just cry at the word “layback.” Wouldn’t it be great to lay back for just a minute in the contented space of feeling that we are enough and do enough both at work and at home?
Is it even truly good and important that we are all perfectly balanced all the time halfway between always working and always living family-focused, free and unfettered? What if the idea of balance is overrated and that you and I should actually be swinging and not standing still, following a work-rest-work-rest rhythm, sometimes being all-in for a season with our family’s needs; at other times buried in the work we’re wired to be fabulous at? And who says we’re all balanced at the 50/50 mark?
The more we at Tall Trees observe happy, fulfilled people, who excel in life, love, and leadership, the more convinced we become that their balance point is almost never on that 50/50 mark between doing life and doing work. Many can’t even tell you which one they’re really doing at any given time. Take the homeschooling mom, for example. When is she a teacher (work) and when is she mothering (life)? Her roles as wife, mother, teacher, and more are integrated from a place of clear identity.
Yes, sure, her to-do list can probably be separated out into work goals (order new math textbook), their healthy life goals (Gym on Wednesday at 6.30), and their loving relationships goals (make hubby that cheesecake he loves for his birthday and try to stay awake with Jake Jr. through his favorite movie), but they know full well that some of those are easier and weigh heavier than others.
So who is just wired to ace work and the corporate scene, eating competition and challenges like energy bars but struggling to slow down, sit down, savor the moments like watching the birds on her bird feeder, and enjoying the skin of a toddler against hers, as he crawls in between her and her laptop?
This likely is the woman with Rose Bush DNA in her soul. She is created for overcoming and her balance point is nowhere near a static place where all is well. God made her for struggle and the moving of boundaries. She is at her most balanced when she’s working hard on something meaningful that takes all that she has to give. She says, “I get bored when things are too easy. Give me a crisis I know I can solve rather than a day off with nothing on my plate.”
Do you have some Rose Bush DNA? Would you say you’re at about 70/30 for work/life balance, simply because work gives you so much meaning in life? What about the people around you? How can you be sure not to neglect them? You can bring all the skills that make work easy for you to home as well to pursue loving relationships and restorative recreation with the same creative tenacity as you use to flatten mountains at work!
Who has a guilty conscience whether she’s at work or at home, sure that there is someone or something she’s neglecting, when that something is most likely her own basic needs? She thinks she’s dropping balls while everyone around her is in awe at all she juggles with such preparedness, precision, persistence and perfection.
She is the Boxwood woman. She watches everyone at work, at the gym, with their families, busy at their hobbies and households, and notices every achievement, skill, and success. All of that becomes a part of their new standard. The bar keeps moving up and up. She says to herself, ‘I had great weekly goals, but it seems one should have quarterly, annual, and 5-year goals too! I knew nutritious food was something I should study to ensure I feed my family well, but now it seems I will need to study adaptogens and gut health too so I don’t miss anything and rob them of their best progress.”
Boxwood women do in fact feel balanced at the 50/50 point, although even life and love feel like work some of the time. They list them as tasks and believe one can always have the best of all worlds as long as one does all the things. Their freedom from overwhelm depends on the realization of a liberating truth: It is okay to swing back and forth between 80/20 and 20/80 as life keeps moving your cheese, to trust the process that when her principles are in place, practice will follow. Those of us who watch them are in awe. They do so much better than they know.
Who is the woman who could easily exchange all that feels like tasks into “being with people”, and “doing life together” goal? Even when her eyes and hands are on her computer, her heart is on who needs her the most at this moment or on the way she could make the drain of her duties a bit more bearable. People-focused work, preferably behind the scenes, will be fulfilling, though! She is about comfort and creating comfort, about seeking and making connection, and about savoring what is right here right now rather than working slavishly towards what can be.
She is the Pine Tree woman. If her work does not feel livable, she’ll be unproductive. She doesn’t force what does not come naturally unless there is immense pressure or fear to drive her that way. Her balance point is nowhere near the 50/50. She will easily drop the work, if doing it would hurt her or those she cares about. Rest is not hard for her, and she will do lots of it without a tinge of guilt. She’ll watch the Rose Bush feverishly at work, feeling sorry for her, missing that the sweat she sees on the Rose Bush brow is happy sweat! She’ll wish she could help the Boxwood be less stressed but she’ll wait to be asked before she’ll help, wisely knowing that timing is everything.
The last kind of woman can work as long as it involves playfulness. For her, work-life balance is a pendulum that spends at least two thirds of its swing on the fun-filled-life side of things. As long as the work keeps in mind the happiness of all the coworkers, her work will be a joy. Make it exciting and she won’t feel it interferes with life. If that can’t be done and the work is lonely, boring, repetitive, or colorless, she will get through it each day like a person holding their nose past the sewerage plant, and life will begin after hours. She is the Palm Tree woman.
Even if work smells flowery, she’ll need it to take up less space than her adventures and interactions with others. We’d be surprised if she can keep life from encroaching upon her work, but we know she can keep work out of her life for many hours at a time, without so much as a tinge of guilt! The Roses and Boxwood whose task focus is on pointe may have a hard time feeling that she’s pulling her weigh, but when their balance is off, and work has drained the color from them, count on the Palm Tree to drag them kicking and screaming back into life. They’ll thank her.
Embrace the place where work and life take up space in the way that your soul is wired, with an eye on the blind spots we’ve cast a light on above. Then, perhaps, ponder the fact that whatever is in perfect balance doesn’t move either up or forward, and make peace with a moving center that, when anchored to the right values and principles, will hold through even the most violent swings life can bring to your unique pendulum.
Hettie Brittz