Working and Living - Between Deadlines, Family Outings, and Self-Fulfillment

Work-life balance is on everyone's lips. It's addressed in almost every job ad. Countless magazines, daily newspapers, and trade journals deal with reconciling work and life. One thing is often left out: your own self-fulfillment.

Expectations From Everywhere

Today's working life is saturated with flexibility, mobility, pressure to adapt, recognition, and stress. Completing the boss's assignments, meeting the customer's needs, and constantly watching the market and the competition are just a few of the challenges that await today's employee when walking through the office door.

But it's not only professional expectations that accompany the workday. There are the kids, who will soon be changing schools, with the decision of which school it will be looming first. There's the wife, whose birthday gets closer day by day, with her expectations of an individual and meaningful gift. There are friends who have been waiting far too long for a reunion. There are bills and contracts that need to be dealt with and, last but seemingly not least: your own life and self-fulfillment.

[caption id="attachment_623" align="alignright" width="300"]Balance work with free time. Work Life Balance[/caption]

Work-Life Balance: Between Work and Life

Today's employee is confronted with numerous challenges, problems, and demands. The task is to reconcile private life with professional life and achieve a healthy work-life balance. The goal is not to put only the employer first but to take personal needs into account as well. Many people find this harder than ever today, because the workday often takes up considerably more time than was agreed when the contract was signed.

Pressure & expectations build up stress - find a way to deal with it

Often it isn't solely the employer who dumps immense pressure and workload on the employee. Employees themselves also bear responsibility for themselves and what they do. Your own unbalanced demands and expectations of work and family life make it harder to achieve a healthy balance.

What makes your life so worth living and loving?:

  • Family.
  • Friends.
  • Travel.
  • Spending time with friends.
  • Spending time with family.
  • Sports.
  • Success at work.

Achieving Balance and Fulfilling Yourself

Work-life balance is understood as reconciling the demands and expectations of working and professional life. What's often forgotten is that expectations and entitlements don't originate in the boss's chair but in the employee's head. That's why it's important for employees to become aware of their personal needs, expectations, goals, and limits. It's not other people's lives that should be lived, but your own. That also includes personal goals that can't always be reconciled smoothly with your social circle. This is where the foundation of work-life balance is laid. Many health-promoting and family-friendly measures by the company to promote work-life balance miss the mark if the employee feels exposed to high expectations from the supervisor and/or exposes themselves to them. If the employee projects their focus and their own self-fulfillment onto the company and working life, efforts to improve the family situation are in vain. The reverse is also true: if employees' life goals are found in their private lives, achieving work-life balance has to be adapted accordingly.

Create balance - first in your head!

Work-life balance begins in the employee's head. Knowing the goals and wishes of the people affected, who are not in a balanced relationship between work and private life, is decisive. Establishing and implementing a work-life balance starts with the employee.