Work Life Balance!

I know the topic I have chosen is quite boring, WORK LIFE BALANCE ! Let me make sure I am not boring you firstly. Secondly, this is one topic I have chosen because, this is the topic of the decade and for the coming decades. I want to make sure that my messages reaches people all over the world who are struggling with many personal issues. Now you might be wondering what’s the relevance with work life balance and personal issues. Well, a lot of our issues arise due to an imbalance we create in our own lives. Be it work or relationships and any other situations. 60% of the world population is working in the corporate environment. The erratic timings, distances, work stress, deadlines, eating disorders, mental disorders, break downs, anxiety, depression, frustrations etc are the consequences when we don’t set boundaries to the world. Saying a NO is a big no-no in the corporate. Standing on your word is a big no-no in the work place. This applies to both genders equally. And moreover men see women as their competitors and try to put them down most of times. And women bosses who are already so frustrated with the men around them throw their frustration on their male colleagues. Deadlines have become deadlier than deaths to the corporate employees. The causes of deaths are due to many reasons, few being mental health issues and few others being body metabolism related issues like diabetes, cardiac arrest, high blood pressure, obesity etc. How is this related to deadlines at work? Well, I can explain that in detail. Your boss, let’s say Mr/Miss A has given you a set of work and has set the deadline for the next 4 days. So, the next plan for you is to finish the work in the next 3-4 days. You convey this to your team which consists of 6-10 members at-most. The team’s next agenda is to split the work within the group. Now here comes the real fun. So you just sit to start on the job and you get a follow up mail from your boss asking to update the status of the project. This irritates you and you start calling your team lead asking the same question. This irritates him/her and they start putting the stress on the group. The person X who just is about to leave work because it is already dinner time will get a call from the team lead asking to push the work faster. And this person X unfortunately has to stay back skipping his dinner for the day. Or just picking up a fast food in the office pantry to keep him going. Person X and some others along with his group start working on the project till late and leave the office. Person X has skipped his dinner and also his group did the same as well. Lots of coffees and fast foods are the only foods that kept them going. The team lead, the next morning gets a call from you asking to update the status, so that you can update the status to your boss Miss/Mr A. The cycle of updates, calls, emails and meetings go on and on for the whole 4 days till the deadline is met. The deadline is met finally but shall we see the prequel now! Do not get triggered and offended but this is a truth I would like to share. The rate of suicidal tendencies is growing day by day due to the amount of stress the employee is not able to cope with. Say for example, you are feeling bloated and having sleepless nights, feeling on the heavier side, having breathless attacks. And someone suggested you to visit your doctor. You take tests, you visit many doctors, many times and now you are detected with anxiety disorder, hypertension, sleep apnea (sleeping disorder with breathlessness). The doctor says all this is due to your sedentary lifestyle, stress and panic.the doctor also says, if this is not taken care of now, you have to face harder consequences of cardiac arrests in the coming 7 years. Now you realise you are just too young and you have a family and many responsibilities to be taken care of. You try to share this with your team lead, and you will be shocked to know that they have been detected with diabetes an year ago (age and gender is not an issue here). You also realise how the women in your team are facing many fertility issues and obesity concerns. You try to take a resolution of maintaining a healthy lifestyle with diet and exercise. The first week, you try to enrol into the gym paying a hefty fee for the next 6 months. Then you start dieting, cutting down on sugar and salt as suggested by your friends and family. You try to eat salads, you try to eat all the food that is not palatable and yet is deemed as healthy endorsed by some celebrities. You try green teas and other detox diets. It’s already a week and your boss Mr/Miss A comes to picture again. A new project, a new deadline. Phew! The same cycle repeats and you have forgotten your diets, your exercise has gone into the gutter. You leave your work place late, you start skipping meals, you suddenly realise you have health disorders while in the middle of sipping a coffee. That makes you even more frustrated. You order a fast food to keep you calm. The same thing happens with your whole team. No one has an escape. All this happens because, you never said NO to that stupid deadline that was put onto you and the pressure from your boss which brought in stress that was not at all needed in the first place. WE don’t say NO, WE do not set boundaries, WE take stress for unnecessary situations that are bad examples for our family, children and friends as well. WE try to compete with an unhealthy social group. WE put health as the last best thing. WE assume, work is priority, which definitely is but not on the cost of our health and relationships at home front. So, where do we start the change? When you read the above situations that I have mentioned, if you look back and realise, all this is because of that boss who has set up deadlines on the first place. Should we kill him now 😂 ? Well, that’s not the solution we all know, the only change we can make is to bring changes to our own thoughts and lifestyles. Our integrity by setting boundaries and saying certain tasks cannot happen at the set time because we are all humans and our meal time, family time, hobby time, sleep time is as important as the deadline of the project. So the conclusion here is to LiVe and LeT LiVe ! 😇 Make peace with certain things in life, we always have to miss certain things in life to get into what we want. And what we want is always our first priority. Let the first priority be your health and family or your personal space. Work is worship, that’s true but do not forget that your body is the temple. Your health is the greatest gift that god has given. Try this out and trust me you will have more happy memories than health disorders. Hope you had a good read. Thank you for your patience 🙏

Author

Manisha B K

Clinical Nutritionist, Writer

Registered Yoga Teacher