Lia

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. In this week's episode, we want to talk about work/life balance. And if it is a myth, or if it's not a myth.

Briar, what are some of the things that come up for you when I talk about the work life balance myth?

Briar

Yeah, I mean, our whole business is based around the idea of having a work/life balance and helping the business owners create more balance so that they can do the things that they want to do when and how they want.

So I don't think that having work/life balance is a myth per se, but talking about this topic brings up a lot of things in my mind about all of the different promises that are out there, all of the different books and systems and programs that you can buy that are, you know, suggesting that we can do things a little bit differently. For instance, the four-hour work week, the power hour, the 5 a.m. club, all of these different ways to start creating more balance in your life. 

And my personal opinion is that finding balance is a little bit of an ongoing teeter totter, right?

That if we want to spend more time working, then something's got to give in our personal or family lives.

If we want more time for our family and our kids and our hobbies and activities, then we probably have to give a little bit of our work time up, right?

So I don't think that it is a myth to be able to find that balance, but I do think it's this ongoing, not a juggling act, but an ongoing shift of finding that balance, because there's going to be times in our life and times in our year or in our month or even in our week where we have to give more time and attention to something specific in our life and therefore other things have to give.

Does that make sense?

Lia

That makes sense and I think we've, you know, talked about this before on the podcast at that given take and but something that came up for me when you were talking was the ability to let go and I think this for me kind of falls into into this whole work/life balance equation, is how can we let go of things that we're holding on to that we maybe don't need to hold on to, so in our work/life we see this often with delegation and issues with delegation and entrepreneurs, CEOs, managers or leadership members really struggling to delegate truly and  completely tasks off their plate and holding on to them for various reasons. 

Figuring out how to let go of some of those tasks and really focusing on the tasks that are truly important that you do and letting go of the stuff that's not truly important for you to do, that somebody else really can do with the proper training and proper information and knowledge. That is such a skill to be learned and practiced. And it can be implemented in your personal life as well as your business life. 

But more and more as I look at this question of balance in life, it keeps coming back to me of what can I let go of? What can I take away so that I can focus on the truly important things, the things that truly matter to me, that are truly important for my business and are truly going to move the needle forward in my business and being able to let go of the other things or pass those other things on and not worry about them. 

And giving people the kind of grace to figure them out and the time to figure them out and knowing that that's going to be part of that process of letting go is that it's not just here you go and I'm done with it but here you go and how can I support you until you're fully ready to to do it on your own.

I think that continually comes up for me in this process of balance and this question of balance.

Briar

Yeah, that letting go piece is definitely a tricky one for sure. For me the biggest piece comes with efficiencies and how can I do the things that I know I have to do in a more efficient and streamlined manner. 

And I was talking with one of my clients just the other day about the efficiency is around meal planning and I mean we talk about this, you and I, as sisters all the time because we love to create systems for things and neither of us really enjoy meal planning or grocery shopping.

So that's been an area of our life that we have streamlined, but you know, we know we always have to make dinner for our families. We know we have to have food in our fridge. It's not a choice to do groceries and figure out what we're eating, but we can make it more efficient.

And I feel like that's the direction that I go in when I think about creating more balance in my life. What systems can I put in place? How can I simplify things? How can I be more efficient with my time and energy so that I can have more balance in my life?

I love the idea of letting more go. And for sure, I think there's always things that we are doing that we don't need to be doing. Or even that we don't realize we're doing because we're just on autopilot with them and we really could let them go. But then it's also how we can be more efficient in what we're doing. 

Lia

Exactly. I think those two pieces together, because you're not always going to be able to delegate things off, right?

I think there's, like you say, that grocery and cooking dinner is a really great example from a personal life, is that we all need to eat.

There's lots of people in the world who can afford to delegate that to somebody else, right? Who can afford to go out to a restaurant every night or to have someone like a meal service or whatever.

There's lots of people who can do that and there’s lots of people who can't do that. 

But that is something that's a really good example of something that is really important, right? We can't just drop it. We have to figure out a way to get it done, whether we're delegating it or making it a more efficient process for us.

So, I think it's using these two ideas, right? What do I have the ability to let go and pass off and really examining the things that I'm holding on to, am I holding on to them because I'm really the only person who can do them or because I'm scared about letting them go, right?

And then the things that only you can do and that are really important for you to do, then where can we find efficiencies? Where can we streamline it? And where can we make it take less time and have it work better for you and for your life and your schedule?

Briar

Absolutely. And as you can probably tell, Lia and I are very passionate about this subject. And we are happy to meet with you and chat about how we can help create more balance in your life.

We do have free discovery calls if you would like to chat with us about any area of your life that you feel needs a little bit more balance.

Please feel free to go to our website. It's balancedentrepreneur.ca to book yourself a discovery call and we hope to be chatting with you soon.