Achieving True Work-Life Integration

What are you striving for when you are in the pursuit of balance in your life? Do you have a visual of a scale perfectly balanced in the middle? Are you looking to work 9-5 and then you are OFF? Are you looking to break down your day into thirds: sleep, work, live?

What is balance? I believe striving for balance means finding an equilibrium in our life that is satisfying to us. That honors who we are and what we are about. This is what I call work-life integration.

Work-life integration means you intentionally go about your life in a way that pleases you. If you choose to work 100 hours per week, then that’s your choice. The key is that we choose. When we don’t choose and we are at the mercy of our work, our schedule, our load, our responsibilities, and our days, this is when we become resentful and our life is not satisfying.

[Related: Is Your Balance Low?]

Work-life integration means setting up our life so that our routine, responsibilities, commitments, projects, and the rest of it are aligned with our purpose and what we are trying to achieve and accomplish. If we haphazardly go about our days putting out fires and not focusing on what is important to us and our priorities, then we are wasting our energy and efforts every day. This is when we feel zapped, blah, burnt-out, and stuck.

Work-life integration means we operate from a cohesive approach of who we are, what we are focused on - because that is important to us and flows from our purpose - and how we go about it, so we have our best human experience.

This means we are super intentional about everything in our lives, and that you maintain stellar boundaries. This means we are in charge of our life. This means we flow with our life.

Being super intentional doesn’t mean being rigid, inflexible, or harsh. It means quite the opposite. It means you can build into your routine plenty of flexibility, transition times, margin, down-time, self-care, and the like. It just means you fully own how the day goes.

You account for tantrums and fussiness. You account for traffic. You account for your website going down. You account for a sick team member, them going on vacation, or something else out of the norm. You create enough flexibility and cushion to stay the course with ease. And this means you can actually handle more in your life, believe it or not.

Being super intentional means you take good care of yourself so you can properly show up to your life. This means you build in and honor a rich self-care practice consistently. For when you are grounded and connected to yourself, to your higher self, you are more resourced, you have more bandwidth, you have more energy, you have more pizzazz! You are your true you!

[Related: Identify Your Values For More Harmony and Joy]

I know life gets so crazy and hectic that we think we don’t have time to plan things out, set all this up, do the self-care, and such. That we don’t have time to do all the things required to actually have a good life. We just jump in the deep end and expect to become Olympian swimmers. What we end up doing is barely keeping our head above water.

A little intentionality goes a huge way, and you can start with just a few seconds. I know you have that! Even if all you do is set the intention to have an amazing day. Of course, this is the bare minimum. But hey, we start where we are at.

I’m assuming you are a bit more advanced than this, and the next step for you is to claim your day and up-level your self-care routine.

You might already do some wonderful things for yourself, but review how they are serving you and if they need to be changed up or upgraded. Get the most from your investment!

Here is a lovely narration that captures this theme, and here are just delicious affirmations to add to your routine.

When we are in connection with our self, with our higher self, operating from a resourced state, this is where you find your juice. If you have been feeling spent, this is the answer.

In connection with our self, we find flow in our life. Energy, vitality, motivation, inspiration, creativity, joy, abundance, harmony, ease, love…from this state we seamlessly flow in our life between personal and work responsibilities. There is really no distinction between them. This might be a bit advanced, but stay the course. It’s extremely satisfying to find this equilibrium.

Start where you are at and keep striving for more intentionality and connection with your self. Keep striving for being in your life. Before you know it, you will experience true work-life integration.

Assignment: Add a wellness habit as part of your self-care practice in your daily routine that helps you connect with your self.

This is it! Connect to your self and feel the magic in your life.

Happy connecting!

[Related: Release Yourself From What is Holding You Back]

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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples. She is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that help couples succeed at their relationship and their life. To stay connected with her and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with personal development and relationship enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com.