The Fallacy of the Work/Life Balance | Michael Walters | TEDxGustavusAdolphusCollege

I've been working for long enough and I've come across a lot of people, a lot of different conversations, different countries. And there's people that have worked for me and some do still and some have moved on, obviously. But there's a theme. I'm sure you're all aware, but there's this theme of work-life balance, right? So we're all struggling. Even the theme up here, you heard it. People are, it's going too fast, we can't keep up, we're dropping all these balls all the time, we feel like we're failing. If I spend time at home, then I'm not doing my work. If I spend time at work, I feel like a bad mom. If I spend time with my kids, then I can't be with my husband. If I'm with my husband, I can't work out. We can't win, right? So people come and talk to me a lot. We can get coffee and they say, what do I do? I'm really stuck. And I say, stop searching. They say, what? Stop searching? I said, yeah, stop searching for balance. And they look at me and say, you need to explain a little bit more. So that's what I want to share with you. I'm really passionate about this. I go to them and I say, you cannot separate your work from your life. So stop trying to balance it. Stop trying to break it out. I said, explain more. I said, okay. So I'm going to ask all of you to walk through this with me. Think about this. If you get a raise or you lose your job, does it affect your life? Of course. Okay. Are you surprised how many people are like, no. So now firstly, right. So if you lose a loved one, you get in a car accident or you have a child, does it affect your work? Yeah. All right. You guys are great. So yeah, it does. Right. So that gets us to this next point of if you can't separate work in life, it's really hard to balance them, but we try to. So let me show you. Okay. Got these for you. So here's our life. And this is all the things that we have to do. As we're all aware, because it's fast, we can multitask and we can't keep up. How do we juggle all of this? Right. So like I said, because we're upset, because we're behind, a lot of us aren't happy. People that come talk to me, they're really stuck. They're not happy. They're stressed out. Life's falling apart. So what do we do? Well, we start peering in here and we say, I got to find the reason. There's a reason I'm unhappy. Well, it's the kids. I need to spend less time with my kids. That didn't work. Marriage. I need to invest less in my spouse. No. I got it. Okay. My faith. If I sin more. No, that isn't it. Okay. How about work? Work. Hey, that works. It fits. It takes time. It takes energy. It just takes. Right. All the time. I got it. I got it. The reason I'm unhappy, the reason I'm behind, it's work. There's a lot of people that normally be like, yep, I agree. But look what we've done. Okay. I've got my life. I've got work and I've separated it. This is me. I'm no longer associated with this. I don't live to work. I work to live. These mantras that we're trying to convince ourselves that it's okay to kind of disconnect ourselves from this. Well, this is what we do. We're seeking balance. Remember, there's no balance, right? There's a problem. So, we may have to what in our minds inflate. So, their balls are the same size. Well, we've just actually made work way larger, uglier. But think about this too. These are the good things, right? Marriage, family, fun, faith. That's me. These are the good things for balancing. And these are the bad things. So, now we have life good, work bad. Life big, work big. Big and bad. So, what do we do? If I didn't have to work so much, if I could get better at time management, if I could get better at prioritizing, right? Then it wouldn't be so bad. Even better yet, if I didn't have to work at all. Remember, we're seeking balance, right? Where'd the other side go? Well, it's over there. Got rid of it. Don't work anymore. We're still unbalanced. I'm still unhappy. I still can't keep up. So, what do I do? I pick out something out of the good stuff left. Marriage. All right, spouse. It's your fault. Left the socks on the floor, toilet seat, too much football. I mean, whatever it is. And then guess what we do? We're out of balance. We inflate it. It's your fault. I'm not happy because of you. So, we get rid of it. And we keep going. We keep going. We keep going. Pretty soon, right? There's nothing left. We're empty. We're alone. What do we do now? Doesn't work. Great, Mike. Thanks. You just ruined my night. There's no answer. That's really depressing. Well, I've got a solution for you. This is what I tell everybody. If instead we shift our paradigm, change your focus, right? What if you accepted that everything which all of you did, thank you, that everything is interconnected? It's in one ball, one sphere. This is me. All of it, including work. I can't reach in this one. I can't get in there. I can't take anything out. I have to accept that it's all interconnected. Okay, great. I'm with you. Well, think about this then. What does this give us? It gives us one piece that's grounded. No longer am I striving to balance and looking for a reason. I just accept it and I say, okay, I'm one holistic self. What do I do about that? Well, it matters because when you shift your view to a holistic sense, you get four transformative results. One, you get grace. Instead of being hypercritical of every ball and noticing specifically all your shortcomings, my belt buckle is one notch too far, late again, forgot to send an email. Instead of focusing on all these things, you're actually looking at the comprehensive sphere. So, it dilutes the magnitude of each of those things, right? You only have to worry about, hey, is my ball doing okay or is it kind of falling backwards? Two, you get awareness. The fact that now we are aware that we cannot separate our work from our life or any of the other balls. That means we can see every day the choices that we're going to run into and how our choice will affect the overall sphere. Okay? Three, that gives us momentum. If we know that we can take steps and they can go forward or backward based on the decisions we make every day, it opens up the concept that a step will move to another step will move to another step. So, for instance, if you had the decision right now, do I send the email or put it off till tomorrow? Do I eat cookies or fruit? Put the dish on the counter or rinse it and put it right in the dishwasher? These are everyday things. They are for me. So, if I look at that, one answer will help me. One answer won't. I know for me what that would be. You know for you what that would be for you. If you take the forward step and you say, I know what I should do, so I do that. That winds up creating movement forward. Again, balance, we are stationed. We're not moving. Here, we're moving forward. If you take that next step and tell you what, it gets easier to take a step when you take a step and you take another step. If you start running, it's easier to stay running after you take the first step. It's pretty simple, but it creates momentum as this ball starts to roll and roll. And guess what? Since everything is interconnected, all the balls start rolling with including work. The heavy, ugly thing is actually improving as we're rolling forward. So, all of that gives us the fourth thing, which is empowerment. If we're free to not be perfect, we are where we can make choices that will lead us to positive momentum. We are empowered to take so much more control of our lives, to live more purposefully, life on purpose. It's so much better than life by accident or life can't catch up, right? So, this is the thing. Okay, Mike, I'm with you, kind of. That sounds like a lot though. I know I have to accept I have all these balls, but this is the super cool thing. It's the crazy simple thing. It doesn't matter what step you take. What matters is that you take a step. Sounds simple? It is. It is that simple. Pick one thing in your life. One. Move it forward. Send that email. Choose fruit, or in my case, put the dish in the dishwasher, right? That will create positive momentum for me and you. And what you're going to find when you get momentum is that you no longer are focusing on your balance because you're moving forward, and that allows you to focus on your progress. So, that's all you have to do. Take one step. I tell people that, and they kind of look at me. At first, they're going through, I don't know, and at the end, they're like, oh. And I say, yeah, I know, right? So, just go do it. Go do it. And I get emails back, and they're like, I was really stuck. I was stuck. And you know what? I got up, and I did the jog. I didn't want to, and it was hard. And I said, what happened? I wanted to go home and clean my junk drawer. I said, right. And it all keeps working. So, it doesn't matter what area. They're all connected. Just pick one. For me, and the time I have with you, that's what I wanted to share. And for me, I really felt that this was an idea worth sharing and worth spreading. Thank you.