Or any type of balance, for that matter!

Work life balance is commonly used to describe the balance that a working person needs between time allocated for work and other aspects of life, including personal interests, coping strategies, family, and social or leisure activities. As important as it is to do your best at work, it’s also important to spend your time on other things that you enjoy.

Work Life Balance

Many Canadians report ‘overload’ associated with their many roles. Some symptoms of imbalance and work overload include:

  • Feeling like you’ve lost control of your life
  • Feeling guilty about neglecting different roles
  • Finding it difficult to concentrate on the task at hand
  • Always being tired
  • Having low energy
  • Having trouble falling asleep

Surveys indicate that money is the main cause of stress outside work. Nearly half of respondents cited money issues as their top stressor. Financial stress may lead to stressful situations, people overworking themselves and even experiencing:

It is important to develop your own stress management strategies to try and avoid some of these negative responses, which can impact our mental health.

Learning How to Say No

One of the most common limiting beliefs we see pop up when people are struggling to find balance is: ‘I cannot say ‘no’’. How often do you say yes to things that you really don’t want to do? The next time you’re asked to do something, in your personal life, or at work, think about why it is that you feel compelled to say ‘yes.’ Think about whether or not you really want to do that thing, and if you don’t, then say ‘no’; you’ll be surprised at how much more free time you’ll have.

Other limiting beliefs that we see come up are:

The Shift Approach to Coping with Stress

One big issue we have as humans are often conflating our self-worth with the contributions we make at work, in our friends’ lives, or how well we do our hobbies, for example. Deriving our self-worth from these external factors might lead us to take more and more on, and feel like we need to do everything.

People also often struggle with the pressure or desire to succeed and challenges with setting limits or boundaries. The most important thing you can do is ask yourself why you’re engaging with something. Do you really need to? There’s probably a reason you’re struggling to say ‘no’ to something, especially if you don’t want to do it.

Life Analysis can help you with this. Life Analysis is a tool you can use to help you determine:

  • What your limiting beliefs are
  • What’s making you happy and feel satisfied
  • What’s allowing you to continue exhibiting maladaptive behaviours
  • What’s moving you away from progress

Once you identify these factors, you will come up with a strategy to mitigate what we call ‘pacifiers’ and ‘detractors’, and develop tools to optimize and bring balance to your life.

Work-Life Balance

Find Balance Once and For All

At ShiftGrit, our clinicians use tools like Life Analysis to help you find balance in your life. There are probably some underlying core beliefs that lead to the feeling of being overwhelmed, or feeling like you don’t have enough time in the day or week. With our origin-focused therapy, we will get to the root of these issues and eliminate these limiting beliefs using reprocessing.

Once we eliminate these limiting beliefs, you may find that you are better able to achieve your goals, which may include:

  • Being a better parent
  • Making friends or strengthening your friendships
  • Learning to say no
  • Being able to manage stress
  • Having better time management skills
  • Building a successful career
  • Making time for physical activity
  • Maintaining your social life
  • Finding more time to spend with family
  • Finding purpose in life
  • Having more energy