5 Tips to Finding the Right Work-Life Balance
You might know when you need to take a few minutes out of our day to slow down and give yourself a break. But, this also might be easier said than done.
It's especially difficult for those of you who are working parents and not only have to worry about work deadlines, going to the grocery store, and making dinner, but also about picking up your kids from school, getting them to sports or dance practice, and helping them with homework.
According to the Employment Characteristics of Families Summary, of the 34.4 million families with children under 18 in 2013, 88.2 percent reported having at least one employed parent.
Almost three out of every five married-couple families with children reported that both parents were working.
How can this balance out? Are both parents equally responsible?
Here are five tips for the right work-life balance:
- Learn how to set a Main Focus (following the concept of ego-RHYTHM).
- Evaluate if "this" (the errand, the task, the request) helps or hurts your Main Focus.
- Define what you want that makes you happy. It can be as simple as a cup of tea, a 20-minute walk, time alone, or a yoga class.
- Schedule "me" time in your calendar just as you would schedule a meeting or an appointment.
- Get and give support the right way.
Author Beate Chelette joins
HER Radio to share with you the five tips in creating the right work-life balance.
Featured Speaker: Beate Chelette, Author
At her lowest point, Beate Chelette was $135,000 in debt, a single mother, and forced to leave her home. Only 18 months later, she sold her image licensing business to Bill Gates in a multimillion dollar deal.
Chelette is a nationally known 'gender decoder,' respected speaker, career coach, consummate entrepreneur, Author of
Happy Woman Happy World, and founder of The Women's Code, a unique guide to women's leadership and personal and career success that offers a new code of conduct for today's business, private and digital world.
Determined to build a community of women helping each other, she took her formula and turned her life around into a book Brian Tracy calls "an amazing handbook for every woman who wants health, happiness, love and success!" She spends her time helping people and companies to improve gender equality, and transform leadership and success, sharing her foolproof fix: "From Overwhelmed to Awesome."
And because we get this asked a lot... Yes, The Women's Code expressively includes men. Women leadership, gender equality, and better balance is an all-inclusive subject. We need and support our men.
Transcription:
RadioMD Presents: HER Radio | Original Air Date: May 28, 2015
Hosts: Pam Peeke, MD & Michelle King Robson
Guest: Beate Chelette
Dr. Pam Peeke, New York Times Best Selling author and founder of the Peeke Performance Center and Michelle King Robson, leading women's advocate entrepreneur and founder of EmpowHER.com host the show everyone's talking about. It's time for HER Radio.
DR. PAM: Hi. I'm Dr. Pam Peeke. Michelle's off today.
What is this secret? Can we crack the code to the right work/life balance? You've probably heard this a million times out there, the “B” word--the balance thing. Is it really mission impossible? Can we find a way to make our own little formula for success? Well, I've got someone that we're going to be talking to that says, “Heck, yeah you can, girlfriend” and her name is Beate Chelette. She is a nationally known gender decoder, social media expert, speaker, creator of The Women's Code and author of Happy Woman, Happy World: The Fool Proof Fix That Takes You From Overwhelmed to Awesome.
Beate, welcome to HER Radio. We're so excited to have you on. What is this right work/life balance? What is this? Help us.
BEATE: Well, first of all, thank you, Dr. Peeke, for having me. I've been looking forward to this for quite some time. Well, work/life balance. Isn't that something that we all struggle with? So, being originally from Germany, I've put my German ingenuitive approach to it and I've some tips for you listeners today.
DR. PAM: All right. Well, let's go right to the tips because you want to know something? They've got their pen and pencils and their paper out there and they're saying, “What are those tips?” So, we've got five tips for the right work/life balance and the first one is about what focus main focus?
BEATE: Yes. So, in my book, Happy Woman, Happy World, I came up with a concept called egorhythm and egorhythm really helps to--very much like a loaf of bread--take our lives and take our bread knives and cut our life in sort of smaller slices. When we consume one slice at a time versus shoving the whole baguette in France on the street out of the bakery directly in our mouth, that way we can really enjoy each one of those slices. It helps us to, say, if we know what our egorhythm is, we can set a main focus based upon what is going on in our lives, what is the most important.
DR. PAM: Ah! So, it's prioritizing. That's what this main focus is. So, once you get into this egorhythm, then you're able to better see and create that main focus which takes us to tip number two and that is evaluating if this, whatever it is, the errand, the task, the request, helps or hurts your main focus. Explain that.
BEATE: Absolutely. So, for example, I have a girlfriend who is a new mother and her daughter just turned two and she is just so overwhelmed with the change of hormones, being a mom, dealing with everything. So, in her mother egorhythm, I told her or I suggested to her don't try to find a new guy or find the new relationship but set a main focus on, you know, just enjoying this egorhythm usually about three to four years and focus on being a mother. So, were she now to go into her job and ask for a big promotion or wanting to pursue her career or even try to go out and heavily date it, would hurt her main focus on being a mother. So, that's the concept of does it hurt or help me?
DR. PAM: I love it. Then, that just takes us again to number three. Define what makes you happy and it doesn't have to be a cruise across the Caribbean. It could be something as simple as having a cup of tea. Help us understand that.
BEATE: So, here's my thought on that, Dr. Peeke. So, most people or a lot of times women, we never think about what would have to happen for this experience to be a 10. So, if I am making dinner tonight or my yoga class or my walk around the block a 10, then how would I need to set that up to be that? So, I want everyone to say, “How can I improve the experiences that I already have and take them from a three or a four and take them to a 10?” because that attention and the awareness--I talk a lot about awareness in Happy Woman, Happy World--allows us to be more present and enjoy what we have a lot more.
DR. PAM: Oh, I love it, and then, I think one of those things that makes you happy is time alone which takes us to number four. Schedule “me” time in your calendar just as you'd schedule a meeting or an appointment. Let's, let's talk about that.
BEATE: Yes, Dr. Peeke. So, I find this amazing on how so many women schedule their kids hair appointments in the calendar and the soccer practice and the ballet practice but for some reason what is important to us never makes it in the calendar. So, we somehow manage with the little time that's left, which there never seems to be any. So, we struggle to find time for ourselves, so for anybody--and this is, of course, for men as well. If you want a better work/life balance, make a meeting with yourself. Schedule yoga, schedule your work-out, schedule your walk, schedule your tea experience. Put it in the calendar. If it's in the calendar, you're going to be much more likely to do it.
DR. PAM: I love it and now the fifth one of the five is get and give support the right way. Clarify that, what does that mean? The right way?
BEATE: Absolutely, Dr. Peeke. So, most of the time, you know, women--we try to be really polite. So, my mother use to say, “One must know that one is overworked and one needs help.” So, we never really entirely knew what she was talking about. So, the best way to get support is just be specific. Say, “It really will help me if you take the trash out, on Thursday.” “I need two hours for myself of girlfriend time. It would really make me happy, would really help me or I need your support.” Help me out on that. The more specific we are, the easier it is for those around us to give us exactly what we need which is, again, what I said in the beginning. Get very clear on what it is that you need and others will help you.
DR. PAM: Well, you know. It's interesting. I don't think a lot of women believe that. I think that they just, you know, are all out there on their own really just slugging it out and really afraid to ask for help. Part of it is, they want to be the perfect person, so why should you need help if you're that perfect? Then, it's difficult to reach out for help because you don't want to bother someone else because they're just slugging it out, too, so why should you infringe on where they're coming from? I think that that fifth one is a tough one for a lot of women to delegate things like, “Please do this and please do that,” especially when it comes to their partners in life. Don't you agree, Beate?
BEATE: I completely agree with you and part of it also what goes into that as well is that we are not taught how to ask for support properly, so when we do it we might come across as complaining and a lot of time we talk about, we are caught in a super human paradox that we feel that we have to do it perfectly; we have to do it perfectly ourselves and we want others to do it perfectly. So, before we tell anybody else to do it perfectly then we'd rather do it ourselves and in the end, you know, we never get any help. So, it is also a lot about saying does it really matter if the dishes are put into the dishwasher one way or another? Do I really care about that? Is that really important? So, when I say to somebody, “Listen, please your job's now to load the dishwasher,” do I really care? That's one of the things that women have such a hard time with is just letting some of these things go but you're absolutely correct. That's one of the biggest struggles women have to get support.
DR. PAM: Oh, my gosh. So, this has been wonderful. Everyone, we've been talking to Beate Chelette who is author of Happy Woman, Happy World: The Foolproof Fix That Takes You From Overwhelmed to Awesome and we've been looking at the five tips she's got. Learning how to get that main focus, staying on that main focus, making sure you’re basically stick to task, defining what you makes you happy, scheduling “me” time and for crying out loud, getting and giving support the right way to protect yourself.
I really want to make sure everyone gets out there to Beate’swebsite, www.womenscode.com.
Beate, thank you so much for being on HER Radio. I'm Dr. Pam Peeke with Michelle King Robson. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and stay well.
