Achieving Balance between Work and Home

Did you notice how many dynamic unities of opposites there are in the natural order? It is as if nature understood that if things remained in the same mode forever then we would stagnate and die. Take summer and winter for example. Each one is necessary to the other one, and without either of these the trees and plants would run out of energy, wither away and die. Balance between work and home works the same way.

Day and night is another perfect example. Our planet needs to maintain a median temperature as it rotates elliptically around the sun. It warms up every day, but not too much, for at night a moderating coolness returns. Our bodies refresh and reinvigorate themselves during every 24-hour cycle of this circadian rhythm – if this did not happen then for how long could we sustain the pressures of the busy day?

Primitive tribes still follow the tradition of men rising early to hunt while women prepare food and raise children. When men return home successfully, collection celebration follows, followed by an afternoon and evening relaxing as a family unit. If men for some reason no longer go out to hunt, or fail to return home afterwards with food, then the social order collapses – the centre can no longer hold, and the core of family life collapses.

The modern cycle of our lives is not different in that regard. Some family members go out to hunt for money while others may remain at home. As our working lives progress, the bounty that we hunt for shifts to trophies that include achievement, success and personal power. Families at home cannot sustain themselves on these things, because they have no appetite for them.

Their need continues to be a loving spouse or parent who returns from work at the end of each day, and relaxes with them as part of their family unit. When this no longer happens and family life begins to disintegrate, modern hunters stay away from their families for longer, and the self-fulfilling tragedy of divorce begins. Bereft of family support, the rising star of the workplace often falls from glory too, and nobody wins.

The truth is that work and family life are as complimentary as night and day, and that each is there to sustain the other. Our families and special friends are why we work so hard, and work should be what we do for them. Successful business owners and managers understand that a balance between work and family is essential if either is to grow and flourish – all work and no play still makes jack a hard man.

Business Coaches have an important role to play in this regard. They enter coaching relationships with an independent understanding of the tensions between work and home, because they are workers too. The mirror that they hold up to their client is often sufficient to inspire the quantum shift in thinking that all successful business owners and their managers eventually must make. Learn more here about how a Business Coach can help you discover how to balance the dynamic unities of opposites that are work and home.