Working Too Much? Get a Healthy Life Balance
Posted by admin on December 2, 2011
Are you working too much? Is your workplace becoming a second home? Stop for a second and consider whether you have a healthy life balance, if not, then it’s time to re-evaluate your life.
If you are lucky enough to be passionate about your job and you find it enjoyable and motivating, then there is nothing wrong with putting in some extra hours and feeling a sense of achievement as you accomplish your goals. Assuming that you thrive on hard work and reaching objectives, work can give you a buzz, providing of course that you are happy with the hours that you are working.
Sometimes working too much for too long leads to a serious work addiction and this can be very difficult to break free from once it has taken control of your life. A work addiction can seriously put your health under threat and your life on hold.
Life is all about achieving a healthy mix, work and spending time doing things that you like. If you feel that your work/life balance doesn’t exist and you want to make some changes, then have a think about some leisure activities that may appeal. It won’t necessarily be an easy transition, because if you are used to working too much, this will form part of a behavioural pattern that may be hard to break. Consider if you have become so obsessed by work that you cannot change the pattern straight away, it may be useful to start many changes slowly, injecting more social activities or quality family time in between your heavy workload.
If you tend to work on into the evenings, make sure that sometimes, you finish by 6pm at the latest to give yourself the benefit of time away from your work environment. With mobile phones now picking up emails, the temptation to carry on working whilst at home will gradually eat into your free time if you allow it. Try to avoid this trap. Switch off the phone where possible and try to relax.
Plan plenty of things to do with your free time, meet friends, go to the gym, and start a new hobby. It doesn’t matter what the activities are as long as you enjoy them. Eventually your desire to do the things that you enjoy will eat into the control the work addiction has over you.
Learning to enjoy relaxation is a positive step. Learning meditation can be a wonderful counterfoil against the stresses and strains encountered by working too much. Initially you may struggle as your workaholic brain may fight against shutting down but try to persevere. Remember that you are doing this for the good of your mind and body, it’s not an indulgence, it’s a necessity because you need down time.
Workaholism is a form of conditioning, it would be easy for you to continue in this vein, working too much, coping with increased pressures and deadlines and omitting to have a social life or a release from the stresses that you encounter en-route but it is absolutely vital that you strive for a healthier balance. Seek advice from a professional counselor or life coach who can work with you to put you on the right track. If you are working too much, you owe it to yourself to take a step back, consider the important things in life and achieve a healthy life balance before it’s too late.
Tags: Healthy life, Move with Freedom, working